Battle of Toulouse (1814)
Battle of Toulouse
| date | April 10, 1814 |
|---|---|
| place | Toulouse |
| output | French victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 42,430 | 49,446 |
| losses | |
|
3,236 killed and wounded |
4,600 dead and wounded |
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The Battle of Toulouse took place on April 10, 1814 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. between Napoleonic troops under the command of Maréchal Soult and a coalition army from Great Britain , Spain and Portugal under Field Marshal Wellington in what is now Toulouse. Despite the loss of the city, the result is considered a defensive victory for the French. The memory of the battle lives on in Toulouse as a street was named with this date: Rue du 10 Avril .
prehistory
After the heavy defeats of the Napoleonic army in the Spanish War of Independence , they withdrew to the northern side of the Pyrenees , where they figured out better options in the fight against the English. With this battle Soult hoped to be able to hold off the English until reinforcements would arrive from Italy to protect southern France. In retrospect, it was all in vain, as Napoleon had already abdicated, but this had not yet reached Soult.
Course of the battle
On March 24, 1814, Maréchal Soult, Duc de Dalmatie (Duke of Dalmatia) arrived in Toulouse after the British, Spanish and Portuguese troops under the Duke of Wellington had ousted him from Spain and defeated him in the Battle of Orthez . Soult decided to make the city the core of his defense. However, the residents with a royalist attitude refused to feed the soldiers and also rebelled against a fortification. Wellington tried to bypass the city to make it impossible for Soult to retreat to Narbonne .
Wellington moved an army corps in front of Saint-Cyprien (today a district of Toulouse) and the rest, after crossing the Garonne , to Merville (Haute-Garonne). The battle began on April 10, 1814 (Easter Sunday). The English attacked Saint-Cyprien, but were stopped in the (today's) "Allée Charles des Fitte". The Scots attacked Ponts-Jumeaux , but were unable to do anything against the bridgehead defended by 300 men and five cannons , which meant another setback. The Spaniards were fought off at the Matabiau bridge and at Jolimont (now a district of Toulouse). However, the English were still able to take the road to Castres , cross the flood-leading Hers-Mort river and launch an attack on the La Cépière redoubt .
Soult then sent reinforcements to Général Taupin , but he had already fallen in a counterattack, which he himself led, at Jolimont. Wellington's troops, commanded by General Beresford, were able to take the entrenchments and Jolimont.
Effects
On the night of April 11th to April 12th, Soult left Toulouse for tactical reasons. Wellington entered triumphantly on the same day, received by the royalists like a liberator. After the abdication of Emperor Napoleon in the same year and after his final defeat in the Battle of Waterloo , the “Verdets” began a white terror (Terreur blanche) against the Bonapartists.
For Général Ramel there was no quarter after Napoleon during the day domination of the hundreds of a command had assumed. He was murdered in Toulouse on August 15, 1815.
Final consideration
The outcome of the Battle of Toulouse was viewed from different angles. For the British it was a victory, because they had driven the Maréchal Soult out of the city, respectively he had withdrawn under pressure from the royalists. On the other hand, the Bonapartists claimed victory for themselves, since the city had not been taken on April 10, and Soult's troops had not been defeated or forced to surrender. The losses of the coalition troops were also higher than those of the French.
Ultimately, on the evening of April 11th, the two armies stood idly facing each other until Soult decided to withdraw with his intact troops on the night of April 12th, whereby he managed to take all the wounded and all equipment with him. For this reason it does not seem absurd to accept the French version, especially Wellington claiming victory for more trivial reasons. After the battle of La Albuera (which had a similar outcome) he remarked to General Beresford, who had considered the battle lost:
"That does not work like this. Let's write a victory for ourselves. "
Obelisk in memory of the Battle of Toulouse
Inscription:
The grateful Toulouse .....
Inscription:
.... the brave who fell for the fatherland
(The two inscriptions are related, which was taken into account in the translation)
literature
- Toulouse Impériale (1804–1814) - Published by the Toulouse City Archives
- David Gates: The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War. Da Capo Press 2001. ISBN 0-306-81083-2
- Jean-Paul Escalettes: 10 avril: la bataille de Toulouse , Loubatieres, ISBN 978-2-86266-309-8
- Pierre Migliorini, Jean Quatre Vieux: Les batailles de Napoléon dans le Sud-Ouest , Éditions Atlantica. ISBN 2-84394-531-3
Footnotes
- ↑ Green (vert) clad ultra-royalists