Battle of Cabezón

Overview

The Battle of Cabezón was an engagement early in the Peninsular War on 12 June 1808 between Spain's Army of Castile, under Cuesta, based at Valladolid, and detachments of Marshal Bessières' French Army Corps under generals General Lasalle and Merle. Lasalle occupied Valladolid without opposition that same evening.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Cabezón was an early engagement of the Peninsular War, fought in June 1808 between Spain's Army of Castile under Cuesta and French detachments from Marshal Bessières' corps under Lasalle and Merle. The Spanish force of approximately 4,700 suffered around 1,000 casualties against a French force nearly double their size. The engagement was brief and decisive enough that Lasalle occupied Valladolid without opposition the same evening, extending French control over a strategically significant Castilian city. The battle illustrated the difficulty Spanish regular forces faced in the opening phase of the war when attempting to contest French advances with numerically inferior and less experienced formations.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (3)