Toulouse
This, the closing action of the Peninsular War was fought after the abdication of Napoleon and was the final act of the campaign which Sir Arthur Wellesley opened at the combat of Roleia on August 17th.
The Honour was awarded the 3rd Hussars.
Detail
On the 21st of March, 1814, at La Mosquiere, the King’s Own Dragoons charged a French regiment of mounted infantry, who were rounding up their own stragglers, and took several prisoners and horse, as well as a big quantity of bread.
The regiment’s only loss in this encounter was three horses killed and another wounded. They remained at La Mosquiere until the last day of March when their brigade moved up to join the main army before Toulouse.
Here they stayed for two weeks, while Wellington manoeuvred his army into position.
The assault on Toulouse on Easter Sunday, the 10th of April, 1814, should never have happened.
The war was over: Napoleon had abdicated, and the Allied sovereigns had made peace with the new Bourbon government of France, but the news did not reach Wellington until after two days after more than 4,000 of his army had been killed or wounded.
The French, whose casualties did not exceed 2,000, were for the most part firmly entrenched and Soult was able to inflict heavy punishment before he was compelled to withdraw his troops behind the Languedoc Canal.
The next evening, Soult evacuated the town and retreated towards Carcassonne, to join up with Suchet; and on the 17th, the rival armies made peace.
Only the French garrison at Bayonne, 150 miles to the west of Toulouse, prolonged the war with useless bloodshed, until the 26th of April when the stubborn governor obeyed Soult’s order to stop fighting, two days before Napoleon sailed to his exile in Elba.
The casualties for the King’s Own Dragoons in this last battle had been slight – one officer, one trumpeter and four privates wounded, and two troop horses killed.
