We have met the enemy and they are ours

Issue number: 37 – July 2013 (KA 37)

Two hundred years ago in the evening of 21st June 2013 the city of Vitoria played a leading role in European history. It was the day Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, was defeated in a battle that took place in a small, little known city only 100 kilometres from the French border in the Spanish province of Alava. The battle had unimaginable repercussions in Europe.

A few days before the battle, the Duke of Wellington, with the collaboration of his friend, Vitorian-born Lieutenant-General Miguel Ricardo de Álava y Esquibel, had advanced on the city having observed the weakness of the French deployment. There were large gaps between the French divisions and the bridges that led to the battleground on the western plains of Alava were poorly protected. Nevertheless, it was an important strategic location. Five roads radiated from the city, which is why the French had occupied and garrisoned Vitoria in 1807. It was their door into the Iberian peninsular. After ‘Wellington’s Victory’, as Ludwig van Beethoven’s Overture No, 91 celebrating the French defeat was known, it became the allied door into France. At the news Austria, Prussia, Russia and Sweden immediately broke off negotiations with Napoleon and in October defeated him at the colossal Battle of the Nations, at Leipzig.

To read the full Chairman’s Dispatch please download the PDF here.