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Special pages :
Albuera
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 24 July 1857 |
Reproduced from The New American Cyclopaedia
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 18
Albuera, a village and rivulet in the Spanish province of Estremadura, about 12 miles S. E. of Badajos. In the spring of 1811, the British laid siege to Badajos, then in the hands of the French, and were pressing the fortress very hard.[1]Beresford, with about 10,000 British and Germans, and 20,000 Portuguese and Spanish troops, covered the siege at Albuera. Soult advanced with the disposable portion of the army of Andalusia, and attacked him May 16. The English right was posted on a rounded hill, from which a saddle-shaped prolongation extended along the centre and left. In front the position was covered by the Albuera river. Soult at once recognized this round hill as the commanding point and key of the position; he therefore merely occupied the centre and left, and prepared an attack en masse upon the English right. In spite of the protestation of his officers, Beresford had posted nearly all the English and German troops on the centre and left, so that the defence of the hill devolved almost exclusively upon Spanish levies. Accordingly, when Soult’s infantry advanced in dense concentric columns up this hill, the Spaniards very soon gave way, and the whole British position was at once turned. At this decisive moment, after Beresford had several times refused to send British or German troops to the right, a subordinate staff officer,[2] on his own responsibility, ordered the advance of some 7,000 English troops. They deployed on the back of the saddle-shaped height, crushed the first French battalions by their fire, and on arriving at the hill, found it occupied by a not very orderly mass of deep columns, without space to deploy. Upon these they advanced. The fire of their deployed line told with murderous effect on the dense masses; and when the British, finally, charged with the bayonet, the French fled in disorder down the hill. This supreme effort cost the British line four-fifths of their number very near in killed and wounded; but the battle was decided, and Soult retreated, though the siege of Badajos was raised a few days afterward.
- ↑ During the Peninsular war between Britain and Napoleonic France (1808-14), the fortress of Badajos (Southwestern Spain) was three times besieged by the Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese allied army under Wellington. Alongside the regular hostilities, the Spanish and Portuguese peoples waged a national liberation war against the French invaders. Captured by the French in March 1811, Badajos was besieged by the allies on May 4. The siege lasted 10 days and was raised in view of Souk's approaching army. At the end of this article Engels says that the siege of Badajos was raised a few days after the battle of Albuera (May 16, 1811), an inaccuracy which was revealed after publication of the article and which is explained (see Engels' letter to Marx of February 18, 1858) by a mistake in one of the sources used by Engels. On May 25, following the victory at Albuera, the allies resumed the siege but on June 17 they lifted it because of the approaching French reserves. The allies laid siege to Badajos for a third time on March 16, 1812 and took it on April 6 after successfully storming it.
- ↑ Henry Hardinge.— Ed.