Battle of Toulouse (1814)

Battle Of Toulouse (1814)

The Battle of Toulouse was one of the final battles of the Napoleonic Wars, four days after Napoleon's surrender of the French Empire to the nations of the Sixth Coalition. Having pushed the demoralised and disintegrating French Imperial armies out of Spain in a difficult campaign the previous autumn, the Allied British-Portuguese and Spanish army under the Marquess of Wellington pursued the war into southern France in the spring of 1814.

Toulouse, the regional capital, proved stoutly defended by Marshal Soult. One British and two Spanish divisions were mauled in the bloody fighting on 10 April, with Allied losses exceeding French casualties by 1,400. Soult held the city for an additional day when he orchestrated an escape from the town with his entire army. Wellington's entry on the morning of 12 April was acclaimed by a great number of Royalists. That afternoon, the official word of Napoleon's abdication and the end of the war reached Wellington. Soult agreed to an armistice on 17 April.