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:
“In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“That we can come here today and in the presence of thousands and tens of thousands of the survivors of the gallant army of Northern Virginia and their descendants, establish such an enduring monument by their hospitable welcome and acclaim, is conclusive proof of the uniting of the sections, and a universal confession that all that was done was well done, that the battle had to be fought, that the sections had to be tried, but that in the end, the result has inured to the common benefit of all.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes, 9:11.