Battle of Albuera 1811
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 16 May 1811 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1811 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | 19th century (1800–1913) | derived from year |
| Location | Spain | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Peninsular War | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | First French Empire, Kingdom of Portugal, Kingdom of Spain, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 38.7083, -6.8192 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Albuera (16 May 1811) was a battle during the Peninsular War. A mixed British, Spanish and Portuguese corps engaged elements of the French armée du Midi (Army of the South) at the small Spanish village of Albuera, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of the frontier fortress-town of Badajoz, Spain.
From October 1810, Marshal Masséna's French Army of Portugal had been tied down in an increasingly hopeless stand-off against Wellington's Allied forces, safely entrenched in and behind the Lines of Torres Vedras. Acting on Napoleon's orders, in early 1811 Marshal Soult led a French expedition from Andalusia into Extremadura in a bid to draw Allied forces away from the Lines and ease Masséna's plight. Napoleon's information was outdated and Soult's intervention came too late; starving and understrength, Masséna's army was already withdrawing to Spain. Soult was able to capture the strategically important fortress at Badajoz on the border between Spain and Portugal from the Spanish, but was forced to return to Andalusia following Marshal Victor's defeat in March at the Battle of Barrosa. However, Soult left Badajoz strongly garrisoned.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Albuera (revision 1373550746), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the Peninsular War
- Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo (1810) 1810
- Siege of Cádiz 1810
- Siege of Lérida 1810
- Siege of Mequinenza 1810
- Siege of Tortosa (1810–1811) 1810
- Battle of Arlabán (1811) 1811
- Battle of Barrosa 1811
- Battle of Bornos (1811) 1811
- Battle of Campo Maior 1811
- Battle of Casal Novo 1811
All 124 battles of the Peninsular War →
Browse more: battles in Spain · Europe · 19th century battles