Battle of Mendaza
The battle of Mendaza was the first battle fought during the first Carlist war. It took place on December 12, 1834 in the fields of Mendaza in Navarra. The battle was presented by the Carlist general Tomás de Zumalacárregui, being accepted and won by the Christian general Luis Fernández de Córdoba.
The Battle
Zumalacárregui deployed his forces before dawn in the valley of La Berrueza between Mendaza and Asarta, orienting them towards the south, with the left flank in Mendaza and the right in Asarta. In the depth of the valley was the center of it. This hollow and a large part of the slopes were made up of small pieces of cultivated land, all of them surrounded by walls of stacked stone slabs. His headquarters were set up in the uninhabited area of Designana.
The Christian troops under the command of General Luis Fernández de Córdoba were stationed outside the valley, to the south, in the town of Los Arcos.
Zumalacárregui planned to develop the battle according to the classic model of Hannibal in Cannae: he would accept the encounter in its center that would begin to withdraw in stages in a northerly direction, causing the enemy to advance through the depth of the valley, entering through the mouth of a & #34;U". Once this situation arrived, the flanks, especially the left one reinforced by the complementary forces that had hidden during the night in the holm oak forest of the Dos Hermanas mountain (in the foreground of the drawing) that rises behind Mendaza, would launch from the flanks and downhill on the cristinos.
It was noon, therefore already very late, when the Cristino general, very little gifted for the command he exercised, arrived with his troops in the valley and, seeing the formation of the bulk of the Carlist troops in the depth of this, was ready to leave. fall into the trap by ordering Marcelino Oráa, head of his vanguard, to march on the center. But Oráa was a good soldier, with a lot of experience that went back to the times when he was under the command of Espoz and Mina during the Spanish War of Independence. He was also from Navarre and knew the valley very well as well as the cunning of Zumalacárregui.
For this reason he ignored his chief and marched with his troops towards Mendaza, attacking the Carlist left flank. Faced with this unexpected movement, Zumalacárregui turned his troops deployed in the center in the direction of Mendaza, to support the threatened left flank. The Carlist troops had very little experience in maneuvers and fell apart while carrying them out; on the other hand, it was now deployed from South to North, outside the protection of the stone walls and within range of the Christian artillery mounted to the South at the entrance to the valley.
The Carlists soon began to rout, abandoning the field to the Cristinos, taking refuge on the slopes of the mountains that enclose the valley, passing into the valley of the Ega river, giving up the battle as lost.
Testimonials
The Englishman Henningsen, the Frenchman Sabatier and the Spanish Zaratiegui, the two brothers Fernández de Córdoba and Oráa, all of whom participated in the battle, left written testimony of its development.
Geographic location
In Google Earth the center of the battlefield is located at 42° 38'10.56 N - 2° 14'54.77 S