Battle
On the first day of the battle, Victor, seeking an easy victory to erase his humiliation at Valmaseda, launched a series of ill-advised attacks that were thrown back with heavy losses by General La Romana's disciplined regulars. By nightfall, Blake's positions still held. On the morning of November 11, Victor regained his composure and coordinated a massive French attack that pierced Blake's left wing and drove the Spaniards from the field. The French captured a healthy total of 30 guns and 30 standards.
Although not a decisive defeat in itself, the hopeless confusion of the tattered and weary Spanish army (having neither a government nor a military command structure to coordinate it) meant that Espinosa marked the deathblow to Blake's Army of Galicia. Blake, to his credit, led his remaining men through an heroic retreat west through the mountains, escaping, to Napoleon's disbelief, Soult's pursuit, but when he arrived at León on November 23, only 10,000 men remained under his banner.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Espinosa
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
“A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)