Battle of Toulouse (1814)

Battle of Toulouse
Part of the Peninsular War
Battle of Toulouse, 10 April 1814
Date 10 April 1814 Location Toulouse, France Result Indecisive: Allied victory and French victory are both claimed.
Belligerents
French Empire	United Kingdom Spain Portugal
Commanders and leaders
Nicolas Jean Dieu Soult	Marquess of Wellington
Strength
42,430	49,446
Casualties and losses
321 dead, 2,369 wounded	593 dead, 5,024 wounded

Indecisive:

The Battle of Toulouse (10 April 1814) was one of the final battles of the Napoleonic Wars, four days after Napoleon's surrender of the French Empire to the nations of the Sixth Coalition. Having pushed the demoralised and disintegrating French Imperial armies out of Spain in a difficult campaign the previous autumn, the Allied British-Portuguese and Spanish army under the Marquess of Wellington pursued the war into southern France in the spring of 1814.

Toulouse, the regional capital, proved stoutly defended by Marshal Soult. One British and two Spanish divisions were badly mauled in bloody fighting on 10 April, with Allied losses exceeding French casualties by 1,400. As Wellington pulled back to reorganize his shattered units, Soult held the city for an additional day before orchestrating an escape from the town with his entire army.

Wellington's entry on the morning of 12 April was acclaimed by a great number of French Royalists, validating Soult's earlier fears of potential fifth column elements within the city. That afternoon, the official word of Napoleon's abdication and the end of the war reached Wellington. Soult agreed to an armistice on 17 April.

Following their successful invasion of France earlier in the year, an allied army of the Sixth Coalition, composed of British, Portuguese and Spanish troops under the supreme command of the Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington, laid siege to the city of Toulouse, one of the few remaining urban centres in France still loyal to Napoleon.

The city of Toulouse was garrisoned by around 42,000 French troops, under the command of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia. Imperial forces across southern France were greatly demoralised by fighting the Anglo-Allied forces in their own country, and were further shaken by news of repeated Coalition victories in northern and eastern France. Allied campaigning had gradually pushed French forces out of Spain during 1813, after endless guerrilla wars which had resulted in more than 300,000 French casualties between 1808 and late 1813. The French suffered greater losses in manpower in southern France, as Napoleon diverted many southern forces to bolster his troops facing the Coalition armies invading northern and eastern France after an allied victory at Leipzig in October, 1813.

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