19 July 1808, afternoon
Vedel’s attack and the surrender
Towards noon Vedel’s division comes down the road from Guarromán to Bailén. Reding turns Coupigny’s division to face it, with an Irish battalion and two guns on a knoll towards the hills and the regular regiment of the Órdenes Militares at the monastery of San Cristóbal. Two Spanish officers tell Vedel under a flag of truce that Dupont has proposed a suspension of arms, and Vedel attacks all the same.
Cassagne’s legion assaults the knoll while General Boussart’s dragoons ride round it, and the Irish battalion surrenders, leaving Vedel the knoll and 1,500 prisoners. Colonel Roche’s column attacks San Cristóbal, where the regulars under Colonel Francisco Soler hold their ground.
The Surrender of Bailén, Dupont before Castaños, painting by José Casado del Alisal, 1864, Prado MuseumWikimedia Commons, José Casado del Alisal, Public domain (La Rendición de Bailén (Casado del Alisal).jpg)
In the talks of the following days Dupont agrees to surrender Vedel’s troops as well as his own. Vedel withdraws along the highway, but comes back and lays down his arms when the Spanish commanders threaten the French in their hands. Dupont has lost about 3,000 killed and wounded and 17,000 captured, the Spaniards about 1,000 killed and wounded. The terms promise the prisoners passage home to France, but the junta of Seville does not honour them, and most die in captivity, many on the island of Cabrera.
Sources
- Maximilien Sébastien Foy, History of the War in the Peninsula under Napoleon, vol. II (1827).
- Charles Oman, A History of the Peninsular War, vol. I (1902).
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