Battle of Villaviciosa

On 10 December 1710, near Villaviciosa de Tajuña in the Alcarria (province of Guadalajara), the Franco-Spanish army of the Duke of Vendôme, joined that same morning by King Philip V, faced the relief army of the Grand Alliance commanded by Field Marshal Guido von Starhemberg. Two days after Vendôme's capture of James Stanhope's British corps at Brihuega, Starhemberg, arriving too late to relieve it, ran into a larger, well-positioned Franco-Spanish army. Starhemberg managed to save most of his infantry through an orderly retreat, but abandoned his artillery, fourteen standards and fifty-four flags. This twin victory at Brihuega and Villaviciosa ended the Grand Alliance's hopes of placing Archduke Charles on the Spanish throne and secured the crown for Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV.

The battle took place during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), which pitted the supporters of Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV, against those of Archduke Charles of Habsburg, backed by the Grand Alliance (Austria, the United Provinces, England, Portugal). After an Allied advance that allowed them to occupy Madrid for a second time in autumn 1710, the army of the Austrian general Guido von Starhemberg — victorious at Almenar and Saragossa earlier that year and commander-in-chief of Imperial forces in Spain since 1708 — was forced to fall back toward Catalonia, unable to hold the capital or secure enough reinforcements. On 9 November 1710 the Allies evacuated Madrid and began their retreat across the Alcarria. Vendôme, leading the Franco-Spanish army, pursued and isolated the English rearguard under General James Stanhope, capturing almost all of it at Brihuega on 9 December 1710. Starhemberg, marching to its relief with the bulk of the Allied army, arrived a day too late and found Vendôme, reinforced by King Philip V, entrenched in a strong position near Villaviciosa.

Vendôme chose to await Starhemberg on favourable ground, holding a dominant position on parallel ridges, rather than letting him dictate the encounter. The Franco-Spanish army, numerically superior (around 20,000 against 12,000-14,000), engaged on 10 December; according to several accounts fighting continued into the following day. Franco-Spanish cavalry played a decisive role on the flanks, while Starhemberg, realizing his position was untenable and that Brihuega had already fallen, organized an orderly retreat to save the core of his army, sacrificing his artillery and standards. The pursuit was then left to Spanish cavalry and irregulars, who harried the Allied column all the way to Catalonia.

Starhemberg's defeat at Villaviciosa, coming on top of Stanhope's at Brihuega, ended Allied attempts to hold central Spain for good. Starhemberg brought part of his army back through Aragon and into Catalonia, harried the whole way by Spanish cavalry and irregulars; his force, estimated at 12,000-14,000 men before the battle, was down to 5,000-6,000 men by the time it reached Barcelona on 6 January 1711. The French foreign secretary Torcy summed up the victory's significance by saying it fixed the crown firmly on the head of the Catholic king, Philip V. The Allies kept Catalonia but abandoned any large-scale offensive in the rest of Spain; Philip V's hold on the throne, now barely contestable by force of arms, was confirmed by the treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714), which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.