Chiclana-Barrosa, 5 March 1811: The Eagles in Andalusia

February 1811. Marshal Victor had besieged the Spanish city of Cádiz for a year. Generals Manuel de Lapeña and Thomas Graham, at the head of Spanish and British troops, disembarked at Algeciras and at Tarifa and led their men towards Chiclana in order to attack the French lines from the rear. On 5 March, the opposing armies ran into each other on ground overlooked by the Bermeja and the Barrosa towers ; the latter giving its name to the battle. The French troops commanded by Generals Villatte, Leval and Ruffin fell back before the Allied army. The fighting was fierce and the 8e Regiment of the Line lost its golden wreathed Eagle. Using French, Spanish and British sources and archives, drawing on numerous eyewitness accounts, the author captures the views of both sides of the conflict and provides a new and objective narrative of this long-forgotten and little-known battle of the Peninsular War.
 
Natalia Griffon de Pleineville graduated from the Pedagogical University of Petrozavodsk (Karelia), she obtained a research grant of the Fondation Napoléon and received her DEA at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes under the direction of Professor Jean Tulard. A specialist on the Peninsular War, in 2009 she published a detailed study of Napoleon's campaign against Sir John Moore's British army in 1808-9 entitled “La Corogne, les Aigles en Galice”.