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Updated: June 3, 2025
There exaggerated reports of the French advance induced him to halt, but by Moore's orders he continued his march. On the 28th the news of the defeat of Castaños at Tudela reached Moore at Salamanca. Co-operation with a Spanish army now appeared impossible, and even a junction with Baird seemed too hazardous to attempt.
General Dupont was threatened, in a badly chosen position, by the insurgents of Grenada, commanded by General Reding, formerly colonel of one of the Swiss regiments; General Castanos brought up the troops of Andalusia. The orders of the emperor were precise; General Dupont was not to repass the Sierra Morena, he was not to retreat on Andalusia.
The negotiations had commenced. General Castanos marched on Baylen. The enthusiasm and triumph of the Spaniards did not give him time to arrive there. The general of engineers, Marescot, had been charged with the sad duty of treating with the Spaniards.
The only corps left exposed was that of Dupont, to whom reinforcements had been promptly despatched; but the Spaniards under Castaños caught his army, now twenty-five thousand strong, in the mountain pass of La Carolina, among the Sierra Moreña mountains, and on July twenty-first forced him to capitulate at Baylen, where his whole corps laid down their arms.
The anxiety of General Dupont was entirely for his rearguard; he feared that General Castanos, informed of his movements by the hundreds of voluntary spies who served the Spanish cause, would throw himself on his rear.
General Castaños, the Spanish commander in that province, meanwhile, having held back from battle until his raw troops should have had time to be disciplined, began at length to threaten the position of the French.
Castaños and Palafox separated in the moment of overthrow; the former escaping to Calatayud with the wreck of his troops, while the latter made his way once more to Zaragossa.
What efforts of patience, courage, and resignation did it not cost the troops of Napoleon, Massena, Soult, Ney, and Suchet to sustain themselves for six years against three or four hundred thousand armed Spaniards and Portuguese supported by the regular armies of Wellington, Beresford, Blake, La Romana, Cuesta, Castaños, Reding, and Ballasteros!
On the 16th of July, Dupont was attacked at Baylen by Castaños, who knew from an intercepted despatch the extent of his enemy's distress: the French were beaten, and driven as far as Menjibar.
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