Battle of Bailén

The Battle of Bailén was fought in 1808 between the Spanish Army of Andalusia, led by General Francisco Javier Castaños and the Imperial French Army's II corps d'observation de la Gironde under General Pierre Dupont de l'Étang. This battle was the first open-field defeat of a Napoleonic army. The heaviest fighting took place near Bailén (sometimes anglicized Baylen), a village by the Guadalquivir river in the Jaén province of southern Spain.

In June 1808, following the widespread uprisings against the French occupation of Spain, Napoleon organized French units into flying columns to pacify Spain's major centres of resistance. One of these, under General Dupont, was dispatched across the Sierra Morena and south through Andalusia towards the port of Cádiz where a French naval squadron lay at the mercy of the Spanish. The Emperor was confident that with 20,000 men, Dupont would crush any opposition encountered on the way, despite most of them being inexperienced new recruits. Events proved otherwise when Dupont and his men stormed and plundered Córdoba in July. General Castaños, commanding the Spanish field army at San Roque, and General Theodor von Reding, Governor of Málaga, travelled to Seville to negotiate with the Seville Junta—a patriotic assembly committed to resisting the French incursions—and to turn the province's combined forces against the French. Upon learning of the approach of a larger Spanish force, Dupont fell back to the north of the province. Sick and burdened with wagons of loot, he unwisely decided to await reinforcements from Madrid. However, his messengers were all intercepted and killed and a French division under General Dominique Vedel, dispatched by Dupont to clear the road to Madrid, became separated from the main body.

Between 16 and 19 July, Spanish forces converged on the French positions stretched out along villages on the Guadalquivir and attacked at several points, forcing the confused French defenders to shift their divisions this way and that. With Castaños pinning Dupont downstream at Andújar, Reding successfully forced the river at Mengibar and seized Bailén, interposing himself between the two wings of the French army. Caught between Castaños and Reding, Dupont attempted in vain to break through the Spanish line at Bailén in three bloody and desperate charges, suffering 2,000 casualties, including himself wounded. With his men short of supplies and without water in sweltering heat, Dupont entered into talks with the Spanish.

Vedel finally arrived, but too late. In the talks, Dupont had agreed to surrender not only his own but Vedel's force as well even though the latter's troops were outside the Spanish encirclement with a good chance of escape; a total of 17,000 men were captured, making Bailén the worst defeat suffered by the French in the entire Peninsular War. Under the surrender terms, the men were to be repatriated to France, but the Spanish did not honor the terms and transferred them to the island of Cabrera, where most died of starvation.

When news of the catastrophe reached Joseph Bonaparte's court in Madrid, the result was a general retreat to the Ebro, abandoning much of Spain to the insurgents. France's enemies throughout Europe cheered at this first major defeat inflicted to the hitherto unbeatable French Imperial army. "Spain was overjoyed, Britain exultant, France dismayed, and Napoleon outraged. It was the greatest defeat the Napoleonic empire had ever suffered, and, what is more, one inflicted by an opponent for whom the emperor had affected nothing but scorn."—tales of Spanish heroism inspired Austria and showed the force of nationwide resistance to Napoleon, setting in motion the rise of the Fifth Coalition against France.

Alarmed by these developments, Napoleon decided to personally take command of the Spanish theatre and invaded Spain with the Grande Armée. They dealt devastating blows to the Spanish forces and their British allies, recapturing the lost territories, Madrid included, in November 1808, before turning their attention to Austria. The struggle in Spain continued for many more years. Enormous resources were committed by the French to a long war of attrition waged against determined Spanish guerrillas, ultimately leading to the expulsion of L'Armée d'Espagne (The Army of Spain) from the Iberian Peninsula and the exposure of southern France to invasion in 1814 by combined Spanish, British, and Portuguese forces.