The Liberal force was weaker than their opponents but Colonel Perry-Arehajos thought that with surprise and a superiority in cavalry he may be able to make a break through. All would depend on the enemy not becoming alert to the concentration of the threat before him.
His men were alert on the hills above the town. Colonel Falco`n was moving up just in time. The camp fires were just becoming visible in the half gray light when a shot rang out from the Carlist lines.
With that Perry-Arehajos urged his men forward to the attack.
The skirmishers moved ahead of the main body firing as they moved. The men in the lines before the town were not yet completely alert and the skirmishers took advantage of the disorder their attack had caused.
The alarm could be heard ringing through the town even over the guns shots from the walls.
Falco`n's men moved up but were hesitant to cross the bridge in the face of the cannon fire spewing forth from the Carlist lines.
The Cavalry brigades five units swept through the fields that only barely slowed them down and met their Carlist opposites head on.
The pink light of dawn glinted off of steel and lance tip alike as the cavalry swirled around in melee trampling down crops and men alike.
Perry-Arehajos realized that his cavalry attack was not going to reach the rear of the trench lines before the Carlist reinforcements came up from the other parts of the town. He sent in his columns to take the walls before more Carlists could arrive.
Bitter hand to hand fighting ensued and with the Carlists, locally outnumbered, getting the worst of it but they held.
The cavalry engagement broke off as reinforcements swept through the area where the horsemen had been fighting both liberal and reactionary troopers withdrawing to fight another day.
Then the Carlists poured from a part of the line not under attack taking the Isabellino's from Falco`n's brigade that had reached the wall in the flank and mauled them terribly.
Falco`n was having difficulty getting all of his men up. The French Foreign Legion troops under his command seemed especially unwilling to engage.
Perry-Arehajos could see the his surprise attack slowing to a halt, stopping and now, with this attack on his flank and his cavalry running, turning into a counter attack and he knew despair.
Just then the Carlist center collapsed and with a cheer his columns went over the wall and struck the reinforcements coming up to relieve the men that had just fled.
They caught them by surprise, so sudden was the collapse and the men running towards the edge of town soon found themselves flooding back the way they had come.
Falco`n's men held on the flank just long enough for the Carlists on that side of the wall to see that there was a general route and they began to fall back too.
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Their retreat was orderly at first with a mountain gun covering it, the men loading and firing and allowing the gun's movement backwards to keep them in time with the infantry retreating. The orderliness collapsed into chaos when the gun crew were shot down by Perry-Arehajos' light infantry.
And so the town was taken with minimal loss.
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September 24, 2023, 09:02:58 PM
