Toulouse

Context

After six years of war in Spain, Wellington's army had crossed the Pyrenees in the autumn of 1813 and was moving north. Soult, commanding the remains of the Army of the South, fell back on Toulouse, France's fourth city, protected by the Garonne to the west and the Canal du Midi to the north and east.

Forces

France: about 42,000 men, entrenched on the heights of Calvinet east of the city, with hastily built redoubts.

Allies: about 50,000 British, Portuguese and Spanish under Wellington.

Course of the battle

On 10 April, Easter Day, Wellington attacked the Calvinet redoubts by working round the city from the north — a long manoeuvre carried out under fire and over waterlogged ground. Freire's Spanish divisions, launched too early, were driven back with heavy losses; it was Beresford's British troops who finally carried the heights late in the day.

Soult evacuated the city in the night of 11-12 April and withdrew towards Carcassonne in good order. Wellington entered on the 12th, cheered by part of the population, which was royalist.

Consequences

That same day a courier finally brought the news: Napoleon had abdicated at Fontainebleau on 6 April, and the Empire had not existed for six days. Communications in 1814 took four to six days to cross France; the two generals fought in a complete information vacuum. Soult at first refused to believe it and signed the armistice only on 17 April, after verification.