Script for War Room XXI: Battle of Ucles, 1809 (Patreon)

Phew, this one was relatively chunky. Lots going on. Lots of exciting Spanish place names to butcher...

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Welcome back to the War Room where we’re going to tackle the Battle of Ucles, fought between French and Spanish forces in the early stages of the Peninsular War.

This is another battle that is relatively unheard of, at least in the English-speaking world, and it’s mostly notable because it’s rather one-sided. But, how it came to be one-sided is a really useful, interesting rabbit-hole that highlights a lot of military constants.

We’re going to be using Volume 2 of Oman’s History of the Peninsular War for this one, and I’m to apologise in advance to any French and Spanish speakers about to listen to me mangle their languages.

Situation in late 1808

We have to start in late 1808, around the Spanish capital of Madrid. Effectively invading the country for a second time in November, 280,000 French troops under Napoleon himself crossed the Pyrenees with the intent of crushing Spanish resistance to French overlordship.

This overwhelming force blew through everything the Spanish could throw against them, reaching the capital at the beginning of December. Madrid promptly surrendered.

Napoleon’s next moves were to complete the conquest of the Iberian Peninsular by marching on Seville in the south and turning to Portugal, where British troops had undone the first French invasion.

Ever a thorn in the Emperor’s side, however, the British army appeared in North West Spain and Napoleon dropped everything he was doing and re-tasked his Army of Spain with defeating them. Retreating from the multiple French army corps descending on them, the British marched away to the port of Corunna and successfully evacuated the peninsular having drawn Napoleon’s forces away from central Spain.

The Corunna Retreat is worth a video all on its own, the main takeaway here is that by running off to chase the British, the French simultaneously relieved the pressure on the Spanish and reduced the strength of their forces around Madrid.

French Dispositions around Madrid

All in all, the French disposed of the 1st Corps, the 4th Corps minus one division, three independent cavalry divisions and a few other odds and ends. These were all under the nominal command of Napoleon’s brother Joseph, the recently crowned King of Spain, and his Chief of Staff, Marshal Jourdan.

In the capital itself, were the King’s Royal Guard, a handful of infantry divisions and a regiment of horse, plus Leval’s Division from the 4th Corps. These were later joined by Ruffin’s Division from the 1st Corps.

To the southwest, at Talavera, was the rest of 4th Corps- Valence and Sebastiani’s Divisions- under the 4th Corps commander Marshal Lefebvre. Beyond them, covering the bridge at Almaraz and the passes of the Sierra Toledo were Lassalle’s Light Cavalry division and Milhaud’s division of dragoons, respectively.

Due south of Madrid was Marshal Victor and Villatte’s Divison from the 1st Corps holding Aranjuez. Immediately south of them at Ocana was one of Latour-Maubourg’s cavalry brigades, backing up the other two at Madridejos and Tarancon.

Finally, there was a stray regiment of infantry at Guadalajara.

All in all, this was a pretty significant force- Oman puts them at 28,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 90 guns. And they’re well deployed. The cavalry is out in front screening the infantry and all the forces are able to exploit interior lines around Madrid to march in support of one another if necessary.

Spanish Dispositions

Ranged against them in the area was a considerably less impressive array of Spanish regulars.

On the other side of the River Tagus to the south-west were 6-7 thousand levies under General Galluzo. These were mostly the remnants of Spanish forces defeated months earlier as Napoleon bulldozed his way from Bayonne to Madrid, had variously routed or mutinied and were generally in a very sorry state.

Off to the east, and as yet unbeknownst to the French, was what remained of the Spanish Army of the Centre, led by the Duke of Infantado. This had been smashed at the Battle of Tudela and only narrowly escaped destruction when it had failed to get to Madrid before the French and been pursued into the mountains east of the capital.

Like Galluzo’s troops, the soldiers were in a terrible state exacerbated by winter weather and supply problems as they made their way to Cuenca, but Infantado was able to maintain some degree of discipline and rebuild his force in the following weeks as stragglers steadily returned to the colours.

By January the 11th, he had accumulated about 21,000 men and gone a good way towards reconstituting and reorganising them without the French having discovered him.

Napoleon’s Orders, Lefebvre’s Jaunt

Meanwhile, the French had not been idle. Before leaving to chase the British, Napoleon had left orders for Jourdan to carry out in his absence.

To the west, Lefebvre was to cross the Tagus on December the 24th, break up Galluzo’s force and then secure a bridgehead on the far side before returning to Talavera.

Lasalle’s light cavalry would then hold this bridgehead and all the while, Victor’s corps would guard the capital against potential Spanish threats from the south and east.

These orders make perfect sense. The 1st Corps was more than a match for Galluzo: dealing him a defeat would not only remove a potential threat to Madrid but secure the bridge at Almaraz but leave a solid foothold in the direction of Seville and Badajoz.

As such, Lefebvre advanced on the 24th. Aided by a feint towards Arzobispo, he stormed the Bridge at Almaraz and overran the Spanish positions on the far bank. Galluzo’s small force disintegrated and fled into the Sierra de Guadalupe.

Leaving a couple of Polish battalions and Lassalle to hold the bridgehead, Marshal Lefebvre then decided to go bizarrely off-script. Instead of heading back to hold position at Talavera, he marched off to the north on his own initiative and entered the Sierra de Gredos.

Not only was this in direct contradiction of his orders, but he went off at the worst possible time for the French around Madrid.

Infantado Makes His Move

By now news of events in north-western Spain had filtered south. The British had evacuated and, learning of brewing problems back in Paris and Central Europe, Napoleon was heading back to France.

On hearing this, Infantado decided to strike out at Madrid. He detailed General Venegas to take the Army of the Centre’s Vanguard and most of its cavalry out to Tarancon and surprise the French cavalry stationed there.

This Venegas did on Christmas Day 1808, so the day after Lefebvre attacked Galluzo in the west. The French at Tarancon- Pirreimond’s brigade of Dragoons from Latour-Maubourg’s Division, only realised they were being threatened after the Spanish infantry had gotten around behind them.

Luckily for the French, the Spanish cavalry which was presumably going to drive them onto the infantry failed to arrive on time. The French dragoons made to escape, closing on the Spanish infantry who formed square to repel them. The squares were dispersed enough for the French to dash between them and get away, though they 50-60 men in the process.

Venegas was unable to pursue before his cavalry arrived, by which time it was too late, but he had secured Tarancon.

At the same time, Infantado had sent another column of about 4000 men under General Senra to attack Aranjuez. This, however, was occupied by Marshal Victor, with Villatte’s Division and support from Latour-Maubourg’s Dragoon Brigades- about 9000 men in all. Senra declined to engage such a superior opponent and sensibly fell back to join Venegas.

This would not a significant problem if Lefebvre was stationed at Talavera with Sebastiani and Valence’s divisions, but with the errant Marshal taking them off to the north the French position in and around Madrid was suddenly precarious.

French Problem, Infantado’s Pause

The only force between Infantado’s 20,000 strong Army of the Centre and the capital was Victor and his 9000 men at Aranjuez. They could be reinforced by Ruffin’s Divison, maybe another 5000 men held in reserve at Madrid, but the rest of the French forces were needed to keep the city secure.

An upsurge in patriotic fervour further stretched the occupiers and spawned revolts in the towns between Tarancon and Madrid, principally Chinchon and Colemnar.

Fearing disaster, Jourdan and Joseph ordered Victor to abandon Aranjuez and interject his force between Infantado and Madrid by occupying the town of Arganda. Closer to the capital, it would be quicker and easier to send Ruffin out to join them if necessary, though committing the only reserve was a last ditch option and would require the rest of the French garrison to abandon the city.

So Infantado has numerical superiority. His vanguard at Tarancon is only 80km away from Madrid and his main body can close up behind it from Cuenca unopposed. The whole area is hostile to the French and it’s hard to believe he wasn’t being fed news and intelligence on enemy dispositions.

He clearly understood that he had an opportunity: Oman relates that he was making plans that went far beyond the immediate liberation of Madrid and was actively petitioning the Spanish Junta for support.

But what he actually did was nothing. From December the 26th to January the 11th, he didn’t even send any orders to Venegas, never mind actually take advantage of the opportunity in front of him.

French Reinforcements Arrive

In the meantime, the French exploited Infantado’s inactivity as much as they could. Venegas’ men didn’t stray far beyond Tarancon, allowing them to brutally put down the revolts at Chinchon and Colemnar. Oman quotes Jourdan in one of his footnotes and he relates words to the effect that one French regiment took some musket fire from the walls of Chinchon, upon which point the French stormed the place, killed everyone and torched it.

On the 5th of January, Lefebvre’s Corps arrived at Avila, north of Madrid, and re-entered communication with the army. Napoleon immediately sacked Lefebvre, sent him back to France and ordered his troops to Madrid under command of their senior divisional commander, Sebastiani.

They arrived on the 10th of January, two days after Desolles Division also marched in from the north.

The 4th Corps buttressed the defence of the capital.  Valence’s Polish Division was sent out to Toledo and Leval’s German Division to Talavera, freeing up Ruffin’s Division to join Victor and the rest of the 1st Corps, who were now free to take offensive action against Infantado.

The Stage is Set

With orders to attack Venegas, Victor left Arganda on the 12th of January and marched on Tarancon.

Venegas left Tarancon as soon as he realised the French were heading his way and fell back east to the village of Ucles.

Ucles sits in the middle of a long ridge stretching roughly north-to south. The ridge’s western side- facing the most likely direction of a French attack- was not only steep and difficult, but looked out over kilometres of open fields. The village itself was dominated by a monastery, behind it, a road led off to the east, towards Cuenca and the rest of Infantado’s army.

Venegas had been sending messages back about his movements and those of Victor, but Infantado hadn’t returned any concrete orders. He sent up a few more battalions to reinforce Venegas and informed him that he was bringing the rest of the army up to join him, but failed to provide any kind of timespan.

This left Venegas unsure of what he was supposed to do. To quote Oman:

“Much troubled by the want of definite orders, Venegas doubted whether to hold his ground and await his chief, or fall back into the mountains. After some hesitation he resolved to take the more dangerous course, tempted by the fine position of Ucles, which offered every advantage for a defensive action.”

Combined with Senra’s brigade and the reinforcements from Infantado, Venegas had a total force of about 9,500 infantry in 22 battalions and 1,800 cavalry in 9 regiments, plus a grand total of 5 guns, one of which was out of action. These he deployed on the ridge at Ucles, throwing three infantry battalions and five regiments of cavalry three kilometres forward to the village of Tribaldos to serve as an outpost.

Victor arrived at Tarancon with 12,000 bayonets in the 21 battalions of his two infantry divisions, 3,500 horse split between Latour-Maubourg’s 3 brigades and the corps light cavalry, as well as about 30 guns. French scouts discovered the Spanish at Tribaldos on the night of the 12th.

Victor Advances

So Victor knows that the Spanish are somewhere ahead of him to the West, but he’s not 100% sure where. In the morning, he resolved to march east and seek an engagement, leading Villatte’s division and most of the cavalry on the road to Tribaldos, Ucles and Carrascosa, while sending Ruffin’s Division and the rest of the cavalry on a more northern road that ran parallel, past Ucles all the way to Carrascosa.

This might sound a little risky but it’s some classic Napoleonic manoeuvring. The risk is that by splitting his larger single force into two smaller elements, Victor is sacrificing his numerical advantage and giving Venegas the opportunity to defeat him in detail. That is: to engage and destroy the separated elements of his corps one at a time.

But, Ruffin and Villatte’s divisions aren’t that far away from each other- only 5-6km at any stage- and they’re each big enough to give Venegas a good fight. They might ultimately lose an isolated battle against the entire Spanish force, but that would take time and during that time, the Spanish would be fixed in place for the other half of the corps to come up on their flank.

Marching by separate roads has other advantages as well. It’s faster to move and deploy, because the corps isn’t restricted to a single long column. It increases the uncertainty of the enemy, because they have to worry about multiple approaches. And in places that aren’t Spain, Portugal or Russia, it allows the troops to forage for food over a wider area, enabling them to better live off the land and avoid being slowed down by huge supply columns.

On the 13th of January then, Victor set out at dawn and his vanguard quickly pushed Venegas’ outpost out of Tribaldos. Following up, the French soon encountered the Spanish army drawn up on the ridge at Ucles.

Venegas’ Dispositions

Riding out to reconnoitre, Victor quickly realised that he had a golden opportunity.

Venegas had lined his force up on the ridge at Ucles, with 4 infantry battalions in the village itself, 6 on the left and 8 on the right.

Venegas deployed his cavalry and artillery in front of the town, where they were joined by the force from Tribaldos, and the general took up a position in one of the monastery’s towers where he had an excellent view of what was going on.

It doesn’t take a military genius to work out that Venegas is in a really bad position here. The ridgeline is a strong defensive feature, but its flanks are up in the air. If we think back to the Battle of Bussaco, the ridge defended by Wellington there was anchored to north by mountains and to the south by the River Mondego. Here, there’s nothing to stop the French from just marching around the ridge.

Worse, Venegas doesn’t have enough men to hold its entire length in any strength. He has a single battalion of infantry in reserve, everything else is committed to a single line with no depth.

While Victor would not necessarily be aware of the lack of depth- he couldn’t see the far side of the ridge and it’s not impossible that there were more Spanish forces hiding on the reverse slope-but it didn’t take him long to issue his orders.

The first thing to do was to send a message off to Ruffin with orders for him to bring his division down onto the flank and rear of the Spanish position.

Then, he threw his own column into the attack.

The Battle

Starting by threatening the Spanish centre with Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons and an artillery bombardment of Ucles itself, Victor sent Villatte’s 2nd Brigade off to the south.

This involved marching across the front of the Spanish left, but Venegas did not interfere. Having gotten round onto the enemy flank, the 2nd Brigade formed up at right angles to the Spanish line and then proceeded to attack along the line of the ridge. This stacked an entire French brigade- 2 regiments, or six battalions- against successive individual and understrength Spanish battalions. It didn’t take long for the French to roll up the Spanish left and reach Ucles.

Venegas could see all of this going on, but with only a very limited reserve, he was forced to take troops from his right to try and halt the French advance on the left.

Victor, meanwhile, may have been expecting more resistance. 2nd Brigade’s hook onto the Spanish right certainly focused Spanish attention to the south, while the rest of Villatte’s 1st Brigade fixed the Spanish right, leaving Venegas vulnerable to the descent of Ruffin’s division from the north.

But seeing Venegas taking battalions from his unengaged right to feed into his crumbling left revealed how overstretched the Spanish were. Probably realising he didn’t need to wait for Ruffin, Victor threw Villatte’s 1st Brigade at the battalions left defending the Spanish right.

The ridge here was a better position than elsewhere along its length thanks to a steeper slope, but there had never been enough Spanish troops to hold it properly and with half of them pulled out and redirected to deal with the crisis on the other flank, the remaining battalions were unable to stop the French.

With the collapse of both flanks, Venegas’ army disintegrated and fled to the east. Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons and the 1st Corps cavalry were unleashed in pursuit. The Spanish cavalry, whose role it was to screen the retreat from the depredations of their counterparts, turned and ran instead of putting up any kind of rearguard action. This instead fell to General Giron, who managed to keep 3 battalions under control and offer some degree of resistance to the chasing French.

However, the fleeing Spanish ran straight into Ruffin’s division. Ruffin had taken a wrong turn off the northern road and come down much further behind Ucles than intended, but marching to the sound of the guns, he now found himself blocking the Spanish line of retreat.

Most of the Spanish cavalry was able to get away by scattering and riding like mad. General Giron’s little force managed to cut its way out through a gap between two French regiments, and a few more battalions squeezed around Ruffing’s division to the south east, but the bulk of Venegas’ infantry was caught.

The Spanish lost about a thousand men killed and wounded, but the French captured 4 generals, 17 colonels, 306 other others and 5560 other ranks. The French lost maybe 150 men in total.

The Aftermath

This was clearly a decisive Spanish defeat, but it may have been closer than it looks. Infantado was actually quite close. He and the rest of the Spanish army- another 9000 men- had spent the night at Horcajada and set off towards Ucles on the morning of the battle. He got as far as Carracosa before running into the first scattered survivors of Venegas’ force, so he was perhaps less than 10km away from the victorious French.

It’s entirely plausible that a disaster could have been avoided or mitigated by better coordination between Infantado and Venegas. Had Venegas fallen back or Infantado hurried, they could have combined and at least given Victor a much harder fight.

But, Venegas had stood his ground and been destroyed. Infantado was too late to help and now he rapidly turned back to Cuenca lest he suffer the same fate.

The French, meanwhile, sacked Ucles, executed a selection of local civilians, including monks from the monastery, and sent their prisoners back to Madrid under a guard which executed anyone who couldn’t keep the pace.

Victor went after Infantado, but was unable to catch him. The Spanish general paused briefly at Cuenca to pick up his stores, then marched south to Chinchilla. He lost 15 guns in the process when the artillery was caught by French cavalry at Tortola on the 18th of January, but the bulk of his army got away.

Leaving Cuenca when it was clear Infantado was beyond his reach, Victor scared off a smaller force of Spanish at Villacharta sent up by the Junta to support Infantado and then settled in to await further orders at Madridejos.

The Spanish threat to Madrid had been neutralised, the British had been driven off the peninsular and Napoleon was confident he could return to France, having delivered orders to his subordinates to complete the conquest of Spain and Portugal.

Missed Opportunities

So, that’s the 1809 Battle of Ucles- I said it was one sided.

For me, despite all the interesting manoeuvring, what stands out most are the repeated lost opportunities on the Spanish side.

First, Infantado launched an attack that found the French at a moment of weakness and opened up a route to Madrid. With Lefebvre’s corps AWOL and Victor at Aranjuez, it’s not inconceivable that on taking Tarancon, Infantado could have rushed his whole army up and attacked Madrid.

That’s evidently what the French were worried about because they rushed Victor over to Arganda to block that exact avenue of approach.

Second, once the French had reacted, Infantado again did nothing to keep the pressure up. In its entirety, his force would outnumber Victor’s corps even if reinforced by Ruffin leaving Madrid, and there was potential had he moved fast and hit hard to do to Victor what Victor did to Venegas at Ucles.

Even a strong demonstration that prompted Ruffin to be despatched from the capital would have had significant political effect. The French needed Ruffin’s division in Madrid to help hold down the city. Without them, they wouldn’t have the manpower to maintain the occupation: Joseph and Jourdan were ready with plans to evacuate the garrison, French nationals and their sympathisers if Ruffin left.

Slightly more subtly, in the same timespan Infantado evidently did nothing to improve his own position or engage in planning for future operations. There were two weeks between Venegas’s successful seizure of Tarancon and Victor setting out from Arganda to counterattack.

In that time, Infantado remained at Cuenca and left Venegas at Tarancon without support and without orders. With clear instructions of what to do in case of French attack and the other half of Infantado’s army in position nearby where it could come up in support or where Venegas could fall back on it, things would no doubt have turned out differently.

Finally, Venegas had the opportunity to fall back as soon as it became clear Victor was coming for him. He apparently had no problem retreating from Tarancon, but then decided to stand and fight at Ucles. This may have been, as Oman suggests, due to the terrain, but as we saw that was actually something of a poisoned chalice for a force the size of Venegas’.

Two of the key problems with the Spanish dispositions at Ucles were directly related to the fact that Venegas didn’t have enough men. The ridgeline might have been a good defensive position, but it was only defensible if the entire length and its flanks were covered. Venegas had to put almost his entirely corps into a single line just to hold the ridge, sacrificing any depth and a meaningful reserve.

With that in mind, it’s important to understand that Venegas didn’t have to fight at Ucles. He wasn’t forced to fight at all and it may have been more profitable in the long term to keep marching east, recombine with Infantado and, to steal a naval term, maintain an army-in-being. 20,000 Spanish troops lurking near Madrid would have been a problem that the French would have had to deal with and the time it would take them to do so, would have been time the rest Spain could have used to better prepare.

That’s a lot of armchair generalling though. The reality is that Infantado’s army was probably just not well enough trained, experienced, equipped, supplied or motivated to go toe-to-toe with the French. The relative aggression, confidence and speed of decision-making between the two sides is inextricably wound up in this qualitative imbalance.

In other words, in the run up to the Battle of Ucles, although we can’t rule the simplest explanation that the Spanish commanders were just less competent than the French, we can argue that they didn’t have the combat power they needed to run the risks of exploiting the time and opportunity that they had. Just like combat power is useless without opportunity, opportunity is useless without combat power.

Hope you all enjoyed this latest episode of the War Room. If you’d like to see these videos early and support the channel you can do so via Patreon and Youtube memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one.