Outbreak '' by
Paul Delaroche, 1828. depicting the successful French
siege of Pamplona On 6 April, the doubts of some and the illusions of others dispersed. On the banks of the
Bidassoa, 500 liberal French and Piedmontese men faced off against the forward positions of the 9th Light Infantry Regiment. Brandishing a
French Tricolour flag and singing
La Marseillaise, they incited the soldiers not to cross the frontier. The King's infantrymen hesitated until General
Louis Vallin rushed to them and ordered them to open fire. Several of the demonstrators were killed and the others dispersed. Many of them joined Englishmen under Colonel
Robert Wilson, Belgians under
Jan Willem Janssens and other French or Italian volunteers to form a liberal legion and a squadron of "liberty lancers" to fight beside the Spanish constitutional forces. The following day, on 7 April, the "100,000 Sons of Saint Louis" under the Duke of Angoulême entered Spain without opposition from the constitutional government's forces and with the support of the middle classes and part of the urban population.
French advance In the north, Hohenlohe's 3rd Corps (reinforced in July by
Lauriston's 5th Corps) forced
General Morillo to retreat before rallying his troops. The French were left in control of the rural parts of
Navarre,
Asturias and
Galicia; however, lacking siege equipment, they were unable to blockade the towns, where the liberals continued to resist for several more months. The city of
A Coruña surrendered on 21 August,
Pamplona on 16 September, and
San Sebastián on 27 September. To the east and the southeast, General Molitor pushed back General
Francisco Ballesteros into
Aragon, pursuing him as far as
Murcia and
Granada, winning an engagement at
Campillo de Arenas on 28 July and forcing his surrender on 4 August. At
Jaén, he defeated the final columns of
Rafael Riego, who was captured by the Absolutists on 15 September and hanged in
Madrid on 7 November, two days before the fall of
Alicante. In
Catalonia, Moncey managed to quell
General Mina's regular and guerrilla forces, with
Barcelona surrendering only on 2 November.
Andalusian front and
Galathée attacking Spanish batteries in the
Bay of Gibraltar on 13 August 1823 by
Pierre-Julien Gilbert More decisive operations spread across
Andalusia, since it was the site of
Cádiz, transformed into the Constitutionalists' provisional capital and thus the French force's main strategic objective. It contained the
Cortes and the imprisoned king and was defended by a garrison of 14,000 men. At first Riego, then Generals
Henry Joseph O'Donnell, Count of La Bisbal, Quiroga and
Miguel de Álava led the action. Access to the city was protected by the batteries of
Fort Santa Catalina and
Fort San Sebastian to the west,
Fort Santi-Pietri to the east and above all by the fortified peninsula of Fort de Trocadéro, where Colonel Garcés positioned 1700 men and 50 guns. Under the command of General
Étienne Tardif de Pommeroux de Bordesoulle, soon joined by the Duke of Angoulême and Guilleminot, the infantry of generals Bourmont, Obert and Goujeon, the cavalry of Foissac-Latour, the artillery of
Louis Tirlet and the engineers under
Guillaume Dode de la Brunerie took up positions before Cádiz from mid-July. Forced to use several naval divisions for surveillance of Spain's Atlantic and Mediterranean ports and coasts (held by the Constitutionalists), the French navy was able to spare only a small squadron of 10 ships under
Counter-Admiral Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin to blockade the city. That proved too small a force for Hamelin to succeed in this mission and so on 27 August he was replaced by Counter-Admiral des Rotours, then by
Duperré, who arrived only on 17 September, with meagre reinforcements.
Conclusion On 31 August the French infantry
assaulted Fort de Trocadero and successfully captured it at the cost of 35 killed, 110 wounded (with 150 dead, 300 wounded, 1,100 captured among the garrison), turning its powerful guns towards Cádiz. On 20 September, Fort Sancti-Petri fell in its turn in a combined army–navy operation. On 23 September, the guns of the Sancti-Petri and Trocadero forts and of Duperré's fleet bombarded the town and on 28 the constitutionalists adjudged the town lost. Thus, the Cortes decided to dissolve itself, give back absolute power to Ferdinand VII and hand him over to the French. On 30 September Cádiz surrendered and on 3 October more than 4,600 French troops landed at its port. The French army fired its last shots in Spain at the start of November. On 5 November, the Duke of Angoulême left Madrid and re-entered France on 23 November, leaving behind an occupying force of 45,000 men under the command of
Bourmont. Spain was then progressively evacuated, but the French withdrawal was fully completed only in 1828. ==Consequences==