What happened at the Battle of Medina de Rioseco?
On 14 July 1808, early in the Peninsular War, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières with about 14,000 French troops defeated a larger Spanish force under Generals Gregorio de la Cuesta and Joaquín Blake outside Medina de Rioseco in Castile. Cuesta had placed his two wings so far apart that they could not see each other, and Bessières beat them one after the other. The victory kept open the French road between Madrid and France, and Joseph Bonaparte entered Madrid as king six days later.1
When Spain rose against the French in 1808, the governor-general of Old Castile, Gregorio García de la Cuesta, was in his late sixties. According to John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org, he at first refused to lead the rebels of Valladolid and changed his mind only when the mob had a noose round his neck. His raw Army of Castile was destroyed in a few minutes at Cabezón on 12 June, but he was not ready to give up. He appealed to the juntas of Asturias and Galicia, and the Galicians sent most of their much better army under General Joaquín Blake.2
A threat to the French road
The two armies met at Villalpando on 10 July. As the senior officer, Cuesta took command of the combined force of about 21,000 infantry, 700 cavalry and 20 guns, and planned to cut the French line of communication between France and Madrid. The Fondation Napoléon's biography of Bessières, whose 2nd Corps held northern Castile from Burgos, puts the Spanish threat at 40,000 men, a figure far above the count given by John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org.3
Napoleon had expected just such a move and reinforced Bessières, who soon had about 14,000 men; the Napoleon Guide counts some 13,000. He decided they were enough and marched to meet the Spanish. On 13 July the French light cavalry of General Antoine Lasalle found the Spanish outposts near Medina de Rioseco.4 › Napoleon Bonaparte
Two wings out of sight
Cuesta, Rickard writes, seemed to go out of his way to waste his advantage. He took a poor position on a gentle slope in front of the town and split his army. Blake, with one division of the Army of Galicia and the vanguard, held part of the Valdecuevas plateau. Cuesta, with his own Army of Castile and another Galician division, stood a mile away behind Blake's left. The two halves could not even see each other, and no good reason for the deployment has ever been found.5
Bessières strikes
Bessières saw the chance at once. Advancing on 14 July, he found the mile-wide gap in the Spanish line. Five battalions under General Mouton pinned Cuesta in place, while fifteen battalions under Generals Merle and Sabathier attacked Blake. After an hour of fighting, Bessières sent Lasalle's cavalry into the gap and onto Blake's open left flank. Within minutes Blake's whole force was in retreat, except for one battalion from Navarre that formed square and held up the French long enough for Blake to escape. The Napoleon Guide describes Bessières sending his men in with the bayonet and scattering Blake's army.6
Cuesta should now have retreated. Instead, as the French appeared on the heights, he sent the Galician division with him to attack uphill. The attack reached the French line in the center and took four guns before it was thrown back with heavy losses. Only then did Cuesta order the Army of Castile to fall back through the town.7
Counting the cost
The French had been marching and fighting since two in the morning, and Bessières did not press the pursuit. Even so, Rickard counts Galician losses at about 3,000: 400 killed, 500 wounded, 1,200 prisoners and the rest deserters, against just 155 in the Army of Castile. He puts French losses at 105 killed and 300 wounded. The Napoleon Guide gives almost 3,500 Spanish and fewer than 1,000 French casualties.8
From Medina de Rioseco to Bailén
The battle ended the Spanish threat to the French road to France, and Joseph Bonaparte could travel to Madrid, which he entered on 20 July. Blake retreated into Galicia and Cuesta to León, and the two generals quarreled over the blame. The French triumph did not last. Within days a French army surrendered in the south at Bailén, and at the start of August the French abandoned Madrid and fell back to the Ebro. Bessières rejoined Napoleon for the short campaign in Spain at the end of 1808 and in 1809 led the Guard cavalry at Essling and Wagram, where the emperor, seeing him unhorsed by a cannonball, remarked that the shot had made his Guard weep.9 › Battle of Zornoza, 1808
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; Fondation Napoléon, “BESSIÈRES, Jean-Baptiste, duc d'Istrie (1768-1813), maréchal”; Napoleon Guide, “Medina del Rio Seco”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 1740-1812”; John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; John Rickard, “Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 1740-1812”; Fondation Napoléon, “BESSIÈRES, Jean-Baptiste, duc d'Istrie (1768-1813), maréchal”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; Fondation Napoléon, “BESSIÈRES, Jean-Baptiste, duc d'Istrie (1768-1813), maréchal”; Napoleon Guide, “Medina del Rio Seco”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; John Rickard, “Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 1740-1812”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; Napoleon Guide, “Medina del Rio Seco”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; John Rickard, “Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 1740-1812”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; Napoleon Guide, “Medina del Rio Seco”; John Rickard, “Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 1740-1812”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”; John Rickard, “Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 1740-1812”; Fondation Napoléon, “BESSIÈRES, Jean-Baptiste, duc d'Istrie (1768-1813), maréchal”. ↩
Sources
- John Rickard, HistoryOfWar.org, “Battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 14 July 1808”
- Fondation Napoléon, napoleon.org, “BESSIÈRES, Jean-Baptiste, duc d'Istrie (1768-1813), maréchal”
- Napoleon Guide, “Medina del Rio Seco”
- John Rickard, HistoryOfWar.org, “Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 1740-1812”
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