Spain’s Bastion: The Siege of Cadiz and the War in Spain

Spain’s Bastion: The Siege of Cadiz and the War in Spain

By Anthony C. Marco

Napoleon’s Typhoon:

The emperor had enough. After witnessing the humiliating defeat of General Pierre Dupont at Bailén, which resulted in over 17,635 French prisoners of war, and General Junot’s calamity at Vimeiro, Napoleon knew the devolving situation in the Peninsula required his command. To rectify the French predicament, the French emperor amassed approximately 200,000 men for his whirlwind campaign across the Ebro River. When Napoleon renewed the war in Spain on November 7^th, the Spanish forces crumbled under the weight of the offensive.[2] Within three weeks, Madrid fell, and the Spanish armies retreated in every direction. As his  Marshals pursued the Spanish, Napoleon focused his attention on General Sir John Moore and his relatively insignificant British force. Unfortunately for the emperor, Moore slipped from his grasp at Corunna, and the complete annihilation of the Spanish armies remained incomplete; however, Napoleon, largely satisfied with the reversal events since his second invasion and the specter of an Austrian resurgence, shifted his attention away from the Peninsula.[3] The war continued to rage and expand as the British, Portuguese, and Spanish constantly attempted to wrest control of Iberia away from the advancing French armies. The French soon discovered at places like Cadiz, on the edge of their empire, nothing but death and defeat awaited them.

The Road to Cadiz:

            As the war expanded in 1809, the Anglo-Portuguese forces under Sir Arthur Wellesley established a lengthy battle record by beating back Soult’s invasion of Portugal and delivering the French a heavy defeat at Talavera.[4] Despite such successes, Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington, felt compelled to withdraw his army back to Portugal for the next round of French offensives. Meanwhile, the Spanish vacillated and suffered further military setbacks. At Ocaña, Spanish General Juan Carlos de Areizaga suffered a serious defeat by Marshal Édouard Mortier and General Horace Sébastiani’s 34,000 men; Napoleonic historian Charles Esdaile accentuates the impact of the battle noting “[it] sealed the fate of Andalusia.”[5]

In the wake of the defeat, Areizaga withdrew to Andalusia and consolidated what formations remained around Seville with Duke of Albuquerque’s Army of Extremadura; however, they could only concentrate 25,000 men at any point, while attempting to defend the mountain passes of the Sierra Morena spanning the 150-mile border of Andalusia. Esdaile asserts that the combining effects of Wellington’s withdrawal and the thrashing suffered by Areizaga forfeited the operational initiative to the French, which provided them an opportunity to invade Andalusia and seize Cadiz.[6] With a French attack imminent, Wellington expressed to his liaison in Andalusia, Major General Sir Samuel Whittingham, the strategic importance of Cadiz; yet, he suggested that the Spanish should carry out the defense without the involvement of British land forces, while the Royal Navy remained on standby to offer assistance.[7] Given the circumstances, Wellington’s assessment of the Spanish forces in Andalusia strongly takes into consideration their military track record following Ocaña. Wellington’s position remains understandable since his focus was on the defense of Portugal. 

            With the new year, the French amassed 62,000 men under Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult divided into three independent commands: I Corps under Marshal Victor, IV Corps under General Sébastiani, and V Corps under Marshal Mortier. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Whittingham offered a grim appraisal stating, “I fear that Andalusia will be lost.”[8] On January 19^th, Soult’s Army marched southward and burst through the Sierra Morena within two days for a meager loss of 500 men.[9] The Spanish could do little to thwart the French onslaught as Soult’s legions concentrated their efforts on capturing the city of Seville a hundred miles to the south: the seat of the Supreme Junta in Spain. Operating under the assumption that Spanish opposition would evaporate, French leadership became increasingly tunnel-visioned on Seville, while, as noted by Napoleonic historian Charles Oman, “Cadiz seemed but a secondary affair at the moment.”[10] Wellington, however, remained optimistic and expressed to the Secretary of State, the Earl of Liverpool, “Cadiz may possibly still hold out, and the Central Junta may continue in existence in that town.”[11] Wellington remained prepared to send a detachment to Cadiz per Lord Castlereagh’s orders, but Wellington awaited word from Britain’s plenipotentiary with the Supreme Junta, Mr. John H. Frere.[12] 

On January 23^rd-24^th the Junta abandoned Seville and relocated to Cadiz; however, Cadiz remained entirely exposed with little more than a local militia to defend it.[13] The desperation of the situation compelled Mr. Frere to write to the British post Commander at Gibraltar, Sir Colin Campbell. Frere pleaded for reinforcements stating, “Without British troops this place will fall.”[14] Fortunately, Colin was receptive and immediately dispatched Brigadier General William Bowes with 1,000 men to supplement the city’s defenses.[15] Once Wellington caught wind of the deteriorating circumstances in Andalusia from Frere, he promptly dispatched Major General William Stewart with two companies of artillery, the 79^th, 94^th, and 2^nd Battalion 87^th regiments, 2,100 men in all, to Cadiz.[16] While the British made rapid preparations to reinforce Cadiz, the city remained open. The French possessed an opportunity to seize the undefended city, yet they remained fixated on Seville as Albuquerque’s Army of Extremadura made the crucial decision to march 260 miles for Cadiz.[17] Only after marching into Seville on February 1^st, Joseph sent Victor after Albuquerque, but it was too late; Albuquerque reached Cadiz on February 4^th with 11,000 men following a trying forced march.[18] According to Rear Admiral Purvis aboard the HMS Atlas, “the spirits of the inhabitants of Cadiz were much raised by the arrival of the Duke of Albuquerque’s Army.”[19] Despite the celebration, Victor’s vanguard reached within cannon’s distance of Cadiz the following day, the siege finally began.[20]

While the Spanish organized their defense, the British, employing the power of the Royal Navy, successfully landed Bowes’ detachment on the 7^th and Stewart’s force on the 11^th: raising the total garrison to approximately 14,000 personnel.[21] Although the French were masters of Andalusia, the vital city of Cadiz would evade their capture. The strategic implications of the French predicament became apparent as they settled in for an extensive siege.

Cadiz:

Cadiz stood as Spain’s third-largest city in 1810 with a population of over 75,000 inhabitants and a major deep-water port capable of sustaining a major land force. British member of parliament (MP) William Jacob, while visiting Cadiz, commented on the city’s highly urban infrastructure that included countless paved roads and “magnificent” houses along every street; he further noted the lack of shade due to a minimal number of trees but claims the city’s seaside location provides a sufficient breeze.[22] The sea not only acted as a cooling effect for the residents of Cadiz but served as its live line during the siege. In his memoirs, Major General Sir Thomas Graham accentuated this point, remarking that “the capture of Cadiz [French] and the Isla de Leon with its harbors and fortified place, would have been a fatal blow to the patriotic cause.”[23] Cadiz’s port linked the city directly with the Royal Navy, which continually reinforced and resupplied the city’s garrison during the siege. For the British, the location functioned as another base of operations to utilize as a springboard for expeditions and operations across the region. Secretary Liverpool considered Cadiz vital to continued resistance in Spain and expressed this sentiment to Wellington, “with Cadiz and Gibraltar in our hands, and those of your office [Portugal], the continent may still be maintained.”[24]

The Central Junta’s flight from Seville to Cadiz factored immensely into Britain’s strategic calculus. The British deemed the Junta’s executive governing power essential to maintaining control over Spanish forces across the Peninsula, while also serving as a continued symbol of resistance for the armies and guerrillas in the field.[25] Britain’s decision to preserve the Junta, which morphed into the Council of Regency of Spain, possessed ulterior motives, which concerned the leadership of General Francisco Javier Castaños.[26] Liverpool articulated to Wellington that due to Castanos’ predisposition toward the “British connection,” he can be relied upon to cooperate with the British rather than protest their decisions.[27] Overall, the British deemed Cadiz valuable strategically, but without its advantageous geographical characteristics, the British likely would have not considered preserving the city.  

During a correspondence with Admiral Richard Keats during the Siege of Cadiz, Wellington stated, “I am so strongly of the opinion that no serious attack can be made at Cadiz.”[28] Wellington’s assessment took into consideration Cadiz’s geographic characteristics that made the site ideal to defend. The city itself sat at the end of a thin isthmus connected to the Isla de Leon that hugged the Spanish mainland along the saltwater Rio Santi Petri channel. The Isla de Leon stretched approximately 7.4 miles at its longest point along the Rio Santi Petri and extended roughly 2.9 miles wide. The Rio Santi Petri remained inundated by dense salt marches that restricted movement across it. To amplify the hydrological impact, Albuquerque destroyed the only bridge across the Rio Santi Petri at Zuazo. Also, the Isla de Leon possessed several batteries stretching the length of the Rio Santi Petri, which dominated any potential crossing points. If the French managed to ford the Rio Santi Petri and occupy the Isla de Leon, they would struggle immensely attempting to cross the Cadiz isthmus, which contained a two-mile stretch only a quarter of a mile wide. Attempting to assault the city in such a confined space would have been suicide. [29]

            However, Cadiz’s inner harbor remained vulnerable. Across from the city to the north, the Trocadero Spit protruded into the harbor, which contained three fortifications: Fort San Jose, the Matagorda, and Fort San Luis. The Matagorda, which lay in the marshes offshore of the spit, stood only three-quarters of a mile away from the Spanish-controlled fortifications at Puntales on the Cadiz peninsula. If occupied, these positions provided the French the opportunity to bombard the peninsula and target the sea lanes leading into Cadiz, so the British and Spanish destroyed the forts. Cadiz’s geographic disposition largely disqualified a direct ground assault on the isthmus, and the French lacked the naval capabilities to attempt a sea landing, which left them with one viable option: a siege.[30]

The Siege:

            The end of the lighting French Andalusia Campaign signaled a swift shift toward siege operations. Predictably, Victor sought a quick assault across the Rio Santi Petri River and soon realized the pointlessness of such an attack against formidable Spanish positions in conjunction with the river’s salt marsh conditions.[31] On March 24^th, Graham arrived to take command at Cadiz indefinitely.[32] Upon his arrival, he sought to enlarge the garrison and strengthen the defenses on the Isla de Leon with a system of redoubts to further deter a French attack. Alternatively, Victor and his engineers perceived the Trocadero Spit as the ideal place to establish a series of batteries to bombard the city. However, the British and Spanish reassessed the value of Fort Matagorda and elected to reoccupy it with a company from the 94^th Regiment of Foot; to strengthen the Fort, the Cadiz garrison ferried large-caliber cannons across the inner harbor in preparation for the impending attack. The French, seeking the fort’s capture, prepared six batteries numbering forty guns to barrage the paltry British garrison.[33] When the French cannons unleashed their initial salvos against the dilapidated fort on May 2^nd, the defenders suffered dearly. Private Joseph Donaldson of the 94^th captures the slaughter: “The first man killed was a sailor. The whole of his face was carried away … I had stooped to take a fresh purchase when a cannonball carried the forage cap off my head and struck the man behind me, and he fell to rise no more.”[34] As the French cannon fired at an increased tempo, lifeless bodies and limbs lay scattered throughout the fort with casualties numbering 68 out of 140. The British acknowledged the futility of their position and abandoned the fort, forfeiting the position to the French, which they hastily occupied and readied to bombard Cadiz.[35]

            Under Graham, the garrison at Cadiz slowly grew as additional reinforcements reached the city much to Victor’s chagrin. By the summer, over 30,000 soldiers garrisoned Cadiz: a numerical advantage over Victor’s 20,000 men. By mid-May, full-scale siege operations commenced, but the French bombardment from the Trocadero Spit proved ineffectual. Alcála Galiano, a resident of Cadiz, explained that French fire occurred “very infrequently” and “caused little damage and in the end little notice was taken of them other than to make them the subject of humour.”[36] The siege proceeded but had little effect since the garrison remained continually resupplied by the Royal Navy; however, with the increasingly oppressive conditions associated with the late-spring and summer weather, the French assailants suffered terribly. Antoine Fée, a pharmacist with Victor’s staff, recorded the late-May temperatures at “40 degrees centigrade in the shade;” he further recounted that “streams run dry, plants wither and animals die of asphyxia.”[37] Due to Cadiz’s geographical position, Fee attributed the episodic instances of extreme temperatures to the Solano wind that originates in the Sahara Desert and blows across Morocco to Cadiz. The extreme temperatures inflicted several non-combat casualties on the French as a result of heat exhaustion, but food shortages accredited to a lack of foraging magnified Victor’s casualty count further. A shortage of provisions, intense heat, and the marshlands surrounding the siege lines induced several cases of illness according to Fee. To add to the French’s woes, they suffered from a lack of mail, which plummeted morale further. [38]

Meanwhile, Cadiz proceeded with life as usual, except for the slight inconvenience of an occasional cannonball. To illustrate the normalcy of life in Cadiz during the siege, Jacob accounts, “the ladies are seen drinking iced water, and the gentlemen are employed in smoking cigars.”[39]  As an almost daily occurrence, the Spanish opera remained open with a packed audience that consisted of uniformed men. Jacob also tells of Cadiz’s markets that remained “excessively crowded.”[40] As illustrated by Jacob, the French siege acted as little more than an inconvenience and probably boosted the local economy with the presence of thousands of British and Spanish soldiers. With Cadiz firmly in the possession of the British and Spanish, a brutal guerilla war preoccupied tens of thousands of French across Andalusia.[41] The French, suffering immensely from a stalemate in front of Cadiz and an intensifying guerilla war, faced the prospect of a sortie from Cadiz itself.   

After approximately a year into the siege, Graham readied an expeditionary force capable of challenging Victor, who increasingly tested and prodded the defenses along the Rio Santi Petri. Upon receiving additional reinforcements from Sicily, Graham possessed 6,000 troops on the eve of his offensive; for his expedition, he planned to take 4,000 British troops and 7,000 Spanish under General Manuel Lapeña and land at Tarifa along the Strait of Gibraltar.[42] Within a week of the landing at Tarifa the Anglo-Spanish marched toward Cadiz to engage Victor’s army. During the early hours of March 5^th, the British and Spanish reached a prominent hill colloquially known as Barossa Ridge and awaited the arrival of Victor’s force.[43] A furious engagement broke out between the two armies, but the British devastated each of Victor’s attacks, which produced over 3,000 French casualties, including Victor’s chief of staff and an eagle. The Anglo-Spanish suffered 1,200 casualties in comparison, yet, according to Graham, Lapeña hesitated and refused to pursue the fleeing French due to “cowardice.”[44] Graham’s account is supported by Wellington who boldly asserted, “[the British] would have raised the siege on Cadiz if the Spanish made any effort to assist.”[45]

The Anglo-Spanish army returned to Cadiz and the siege continued; however, following their disastrous performance, the French lacked the means and will to effectively carry out the siege. With increasingly important campaigns to pursue and Cadiz firmly in Anglo-Spanish hands, Wellington recalled Graham to serve as a division commander in his army. The siege continued for another year and a half but remained largely uneventful with occasional bombardments and sorties. Since the French recognized the futility of capturing Cadiz, their focus on seizing the city dwindled as major campaigns occurred elsewhere. Due to the success of Wellington’s 1812 summer campaign and victory at Salamanca, the French finally raised the siege on August 24^th, 1812, and withdrew from Andalusia.[46]

Analysis of Cadiz:

            Undoubtedly, retaining control of Cadiz proved essential to Anglo-Spanish success on the Peninsula as a whole. Not only did Cadiz serve as the refuge for Spain’s Supreme Junta but also the persistence of a governing body in Spain that served to coordinate Spanish efforts across the Peninsula. Importantly, Cadiz acted as a major transportation hub for supplies and troops for the British across the Mediterranean Theater; without Cadiz, Gibraltar, which lacked Cadiz’s naval capacity, likely would have been overwhelmed. From the perspective of Liverpool and the British civilian leadership in London, Cadiz occupied a higher level of importance than Lisbon. Liverpool considered Cadiz a vital fallback point to resume the war in the Peninsula in the event of French success in Portugal. Although Wellington vehemently disagreed with Liverpool’s assessment, Cadiz weighed heavily on British strategic planning and remained viewed as a potential last stand of British resistance in Spain.[47]

            The French, meanwhile, grossly miscalculated the importance of Cadiz when they failed to capture the city. They proceeded to underestimate the geography of Cadiz, which left them completely disadvantaged. Wellington even expressed to Admiral Keats that Cadiz was “impregnable” and the French would likely not capture the city. The French could not ford the Rio Santi Petri without heavy losses, and if so, they would have been massacred along the Isthmus’ one-mile-long chokepoint. For the siege operations, the only reasonable position for their batteries was the Trocadero Spit, which proved ineffective anyway. Overall, the French could do little more than cordon off Cadiz’s landward approaches and prevent the growing Anglo-Spanish garrison from bursting through their siege lines. Most importantly, the siege of Cadiz coincided with Massena’s invasion of Portugal. The results of Massena’s campaign would prove decisive for the war. As the Siege of Cadiz persisted, 20,000 men of Victor’s Corps suffered from attrition due to the oppressive heat and exposure to lethal illnesses, while remaining relatively inactive. Wellington was deeply concerned that the French would abandon the siege and relocate Victor’s Corps to Portugal following the Battle of Bussaco. By resisting at Cadiz, the Anglo-Spanish garrison effectively removed 20,000 or more men from Portugal, which could have had serious consequences for Wellington. [48]

Conclusion:

            The approximately two-and-a-half-year-long siege at Cadiz served as a symbol of Anglo-Spanish defiance following a series of cataclysmic Spanish defeats in the early days of 1810. Always considered important by either side, Cadiz’s value quickly became apparent as the Duke of Albuquerque conducted his fateful march for the city. Once Albuquerque occupied Cadiz, Victor’s exhausted troops, after weeks of campaigning, could do little except conduct a siege against a superior Anglo-Spanish position, which spelled agony and misery for thousands of French soldiers in the harsh climate around Cadiz. With thousands of French committed to the siege, the consequences for Wellington’s defense of Portugal and the whole war in the Peninsula can only be imagined if the southern tip of Spain failed to hold.

Image Citations:

Figure 1, Orange, Maurice. “General Dupont Surrenders his Army to the Spanish at Bailén, and Event that broke the Myth of Napoleonic Invincibility,” Oil on Canvas, 1906, In Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by William M. Sloane, New York, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orange-Capitulation_at_Bailen.jpg.

Figure 2, Lawrence, Thomas, “Arthur Wellesley, 1^st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852),” Oil on Canvas, 1815-16, In Aspley House Collection, London, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington.png.

Figure 3, Gros, Antoine-Jean, “Claude-Victor Perrin, duc de Bellune, márchal de France (1764-1841),” Oil on Canvas, 1807, In Palace of Versailles Collection, Versailles, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Claude-Victor_Perrin.jpg.

Figure 4, Vallejo, José Mariano, “Sitio de Cádiz, entre 1810 y 1812,” Map, 1850, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SitiodeCadiz.jpg.

Figure 5, “Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch,” Portrait, 1880, In Alexander M. Delavoye’s Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Graham_Lord_Lynedoch.jpg.

Figure 6, Lejune, Louis-François, “Battle of Chiclana, 5^th March 1811,” Oil on Canvas, 1812, In Palace of Versailles Collection, Versailles, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Chiclana.jpg.