The only battle where an Englishman led the French and a Frenchman led the English
On April 25, 1707, the Battle of Almansa saw the Duke of Berwick, an Englishman, command Bourbon forces against an Allied army led by the Earl of Galway, a French Huguenot. This decisive clash during the War of the Spanish Succession fundamentally reshaped control over eastern Spain for the Bourbon claimant.
The conflict arose from the struggle between Philip V of Spain and Archduke Charles of Austria for the Spanish throne. By 1707, the Bourbon army, commanded by the Duke of Berwick, faced an Allied force led by the Earl of Galway. Logistics dictated the scale of the engagement, as arid terrain in Spain limited the size of armies compared to those in Flanders or Italy. Berwick, the illegitimate son of James II of England, commanded 33,000 troops, while Galway’s Allied force was significantly smaller, numbering roughly 16,500 men.
The battle commenced in mid-afternoon after a brief artillery exchange. Although the Allied infantry initially pushed back the Bourbon centre, a gap emerged between them and the Portuguese troops under the Marquess of Minas. The Franco-Spanish cavalry exploited this opening, causing the Portuguese to collapse. While Galway managed to withdraw some forces, 13 battalions were surrounded and forced to surrender the following morning. The aftermath was devastating for the Allies, who were pushed back to Catalonia and the Balearic Islands by the end of 1707.
Historical estimates of the casualties vary wildly. Henry Kamen suggests 4,000 Allied killed or wounded and 3,000 captured, against 5,000 Franco-Spanish losses. Conversely, Gaston Bodart records 12,000 Allied losses and 2,000 for the Bourbons, while Joaquim Albareda estimates 7,000 Allied losses and 1,500 for the Bourbons. Regardless of the exact figures, the victory was monumental. Frederick the Great later hailed it as the most impressive battle of the century, and the event remains deeply embedded in local memory, with a portrait of Philip V still hanging upside down in the museum of Xàtiva, a town destroyed following the Bourbon victory.
Source: Battle of Almansa
