The Battle of Orthez (27 February 1814) saw the Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese Army under Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington attack an Imperial French army led by Marshal Nicolas Soult in southern France. The outnumbered French repelled several Allied assaults on their right flank, but their center and left flank were overcome and Soult was compelled to retreat. At first the withdrawal was conducted in good order, but it eventually ended in a scramble for safety and many French soldiers became prisoners. The engagement occurred near the end of the Peninsular War.
In mid-February, Wellington's army broke out of its small area of conquered territory near Bayonne. Moving east, the Allies drove the French back from several river lines. After a pause in the campaign, the westernmost Allied corps surrounded and isolated Bayonne. Resuming their eastward drive, the remaining two Allied corps pushed Soult's army back to Orthez where the French marshal offered battle. In subsequent operations, Soult decided to abandon the large western port of Bordeaux and fall back east toward Toulouse. The next action was the Battle of Toulouse.
Preliminaries
Armies
The Battle of the Nive ended on 13 December 1813 when Wellington's army repulsed the last of Soult's assaults. This ended the fighting for the year. Soult had found the Allied army divided by the Nive River but failed to inflict a damaging defeat. The French then pulled back within Bayonne's defenses and entered winter quarters. Heavy rains brought operations to a standstill for the next two months. After the Battle of Nivelle on 10 November 1813, Wellington's Spanish troops had gone out of control in seized French villages. Horrified at the idea of provoking a guerilla war by French civilians, the British commander imposed a vigorous discipline on his British and Portuguese soldiers and sent most of his Spanish troops home. Since his men were paid and fed by the British government, Pablo Morillo's Spanish division remained with the army. Wellington's policy paid dividends; his soldiers soon found that guarding the roads in his army's rear areas was no longer required.
In January 1814, Soult sent reinforcements to Napoleon. Transferred to the Campaign in Northeast France were the 7th and 9th Infantry Divisions and Anne-François-Charles Trelliard's dragoons. Altogether, this totaled 11,015 foot soldiers under Jean François Leval and Pierre François Xavier Boyer and 3,420 horsemen in the brigades of Pierre Ismert, François Léon Ormancey and Louis Ernest Joseph Sparre. This left Soult with the 1st Division under Maximilien Sébastien Foy (4,600 men), 2nd Division led by Jean Barthélemy Darmagnac (5,500 men), 3rd Division commanded by Louis Jean Nicolas Abbé (5,300), 4th Division directed by Eloi Charlemagne Taupin (5,600 men), 5th Division commanded by Jean-Pierre Maransin (5,000 men), 6th Division under Eugène-Casimir Villatte (5,200 men), 8th Division led by Jean Isidore Harispe (6,600 men) and Cavalry Division under Pierre Benoît Soult (3,800 men). Marshal Soult also commanded 7,300 gunners, engineers and wagon drivers plus the garrisons of Bayonne (8,800 men) and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (2,400 men).
Wellington's army consisted of the 1st Division under Kenneth Howard (6,898 men), 2nd Division commanded by William Stewart (7,780 men), 3rd Division led by Thomas Picton (6,626 men), 4th Division directed by Lowry Cole (5,952 men), 5th Division under Andrew Hay (4,553 men), 6th Division commanded by Henry Clinton (5,571 men), 7th Division led by George Townshend Walker (5,643 men), Light Division under Charles Alten (3,480 men), Portuguese Division directed by Carlos Lecor (4,465 men) and Spanish Division led by Morillo (4,924 men). Stapleton Cotton commanded three British light cavalry brigades under Henry Fane (765 men), Hussey Vivian (989 men) and Edward Somerset (1,619 men). There were also three independent infantry brigades, 1,816 British led by Matthew Whitworth-Aylmer, 2,185 Portuguese under John Wilson and 1,614 Portuguese directed by Thomas Bradford.