Naval battle of Tarragona 1641
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 4 July 1641 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1641 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Location | Spain | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Thirty Years' War | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 41.1181, 1.2519 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The battle of Tarragona fought between 4 and 6 July 1641, was a naval engagement of the Reapers' War in which a Spanish galley fleet led by the Duke of Fernandina attempted to break the French naval blockade of Tarragona, at that time besieged by land by the French and Catalan armies under the French Viceroy of Catalonia. The French blockading fleet was under command of Henri d'Escoubleau de Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux, and consisted both of sailing and rowing vessels. On 4 July it was engaged by the Spanish galleys, of which some managed to enter the port of the town during a fierce action. In the end, a large number of Spanish galleys were abandoned when their crews panicked and fled to the beaches. On the night of 6 July Abraham Duquesne escorted 5 fireships to the mole of the harbor, where the Spanish galleys were abandoned, and set fire to them.
The worsening of the situation inside Tarragona after the battle, caused largely because the vessels that had entered the port remained blocked, adding hundreds of mouths to feed, compelled Philip IV of Spain to order the assembling of a second relief fleet. This time, the number of vessels gathered was much larger, after the joining of Fernandina's squadron with another one commanded by the Duke of Maqueda.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Naval battle of Tarragona (revision 1370629359), 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.
Nearby battles
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Other battles of the Thirty Years' War
- Battle of the Downs 1639
- Relief of Thionville 1639
- Siege of Salses 1639
- Siege of Arras (1640) 1640
- Siege of Turin (1640) 1640
- Battle of Martorell (1641) 1641
- Battle of Preßnitz 1641
- Siege of Dorsten 1641
- Battle of Breitenfeld (1642) 1642
- Battle of Kempen 1642
All 80 battles of the Thirty Years' War →
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