What happened at the Battle of Zornoza?
On 31 October 1808 Marshal Lefebvre's French IV Corps attacked General Joaquín Blake's Spanish army at Zornoza in Biscay. The Spaniards gave way under a column that broke their center, but retreated in good order beyond Bilbao. Lefebvre won the field, yet by attacking before Napoleon was ready he let Blake escape the trap the emperor had planned.1
In the autumn of 1808 Napoleon was about to take charge in Spain in person, with a plan to crush the Spanish armies at one blow. The first real battle of that campaign was fought before he arrived, by a marshal who could not wait.2
Blake in Biscay
The Spanish had no supreme commander, and each general fought his own war. The most active was Joaquín Blake, with the Army of Galicia. In October he pushed into Biscay, took Bilbao and stood facing the French in front of Durango, near the village of Zornoza. Then, both Rickard and Oman write, he did nothing for a week while French reinforcements arrived.3
That suited Napoleon. His plan was to let Blake and the army of Aragon stay far forward and then fall on their flanks and rear from Burgos and Logroño. For that reason, Oman explains, he wanted his lieutenants to hold the Spaniards in place without attacking them until he was ready. Lefebvre's IV Corps was to stand in front of Blake between Durango and Zornoza and hold him fast without pressing him.4 › Napoleon Bonaparte
A marshal's own battle
King Joseph and his chief of staff Jourdan had a bolder idea: send Marshal Victor over the hills to Bilbao while Lefebvre pushed along the high road, and catch Blake between them. Bessières, Victor and Ney opposed it, because Napoleon had said he did not want matters hurried before he came, and Lefebvre was told to keep to the defensive.5
He attacked anyway. Oman sees the reason in the old marshal's ambition: Lefebvre had never fought a pitched battle of his own, and the timid Spanish army had been sitting in front of him for a week. He covered his disobedience with the excuse that the enemy had been preparing an offensive and had attacked his outposts. Rickard, too, describes the attack as made against Napoleon's orders.6
Fog over Zornoza
Lefebvre had three divisions, under Sebastiani, Leval and Villatte, about 21,000 men; Blake had about 19,000, with only six guns, because he had sent the rest of his artillery to the rear. Rickard adds that the French were generally the better troops. The Spaniards stood in three lines on low hills, with a reserve in the houses of Zornoza behind them.7
The attack came on 31 October in three prongs. Villatte drove in the Spanish right and spread out to threaten Blake's flank, Leval's German battalions struck the Spanish left, and Sebastiani marched up the valley road against the center. Oman writes that a dense fog hid the French until they were almost on the Spanish front line. The first line fell back, and the army rallied on the heights of San Martin.8
Lefebvre bombarded the new position. Blake had already sent his single battery away, so there was no reply. Then ten battalions of Sebastiani's division went in and cut through the Spanish center, leaving the two wings isolated. Blake ordered a retreat on Bilbao, and his intact wings covered it.9
A cheap victory
The fight was short. The Spaniards lost about 300 killed and wounded and about as many prisoners; the French lost about 200 men. Oman judges that Blake had been surprised and beaten tactically rather than by force of arms, and quotes British eyewitnesses who praised the steadiness of the retreating troops.10
The costly part came after. About 8,000 Spaniards under Acevedo, left to guard the mountain passes south of Bilbao, were cut off when the French entered the city. Lefebvre occupied Bilbao on the night of 1 November. On 5 November Blake turned back, drove Villatte's division out of Valmaseda and let Acevedo's men escape. Villatte, Oman writes, broke out in a solid mass but left behind a gun, much of his baggage and 300 prisoners.11
Why Zornoza mattered
The victory spoiled the plan it was meant to serve. By pushing Blake back early, Lefebvre made the northern half of Napoleon's double envelopment much harder. King Joseph, Oman writes, was much vexed by the disobedience. Blake was caught only at Espinosa de los Monteros on 10 and 11 November, where Victor beat him, and even then much of his army escaped. Napoleon pushed on to Madrid, forcing the pass at Somosierra, but the Spanish armies he had hoped to destroy at once kept fighting.12
The ground of the battle was mapped long afterward. The Spanish army's map archive holds a manuscript plan of the battle, drawn in pen and watercolor about 1854 by Francisco Nebot and Joaquín Blake y Orbaneja, a namesake born in 1829 and not the general of 1808, with a table marking the French and Spanish positions.13
