War of the Pyrenees: The Battle of Boulou ends, in which French forces defeat the Spanish and regain nearly all the land they lost to Spain in 1793.
The Second Battle of Boulou (29 April to 1 May 1794) was a battle in the War of the Pyrenees, part of the French Revolutionary Wars. This battle saw the French Army of the Eastern Pyrenees led by Jacques Franois Dugommier attacking the joint Spanish-Portuguese Army of Catalonia under Luis Firmn de Carvajal, Conde de la Unin. Dugommier's decisive victory resulted in the French regaining nearly all the land they lost to the Kingdom of Spain in 1793. Le Boulou is on the modern A9 highway, 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of the department capital at Perpignan and 7 kilometres (4 mi) north of Le Perthus on the France-Spain border.
The spring of 1794 found the Spanish army holding a slice of French territory south of the Tech River and north of the Pyrenees. The Spanish right wing on the Mediterranean coast was separated from the center and left wing by a mountainous gap. First, Dugommier mounted a successful feint with his right wing that drew Spanish troops away from the center. Then he launched powerful French forces into the gap. These forces circled behind the Spanish center and forced their adversaries to retreat across a difficult mountain pass. The Spanish suffered heavy losses of troops and abandoned their wagon trains and all their artillery.
The War of the Pyrenees, also known as War of Roussillon or War of the Convention, was the Pyrenean front of the First Coalition's war against the French First Republic. It pitted Revolutionary France against the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal from March 1793 to July 1795 during the French Revolutionary Wars.
The war was fought in the eastern and western Pyrenees, at the French port of Toulon, and at sea. In 1793, a Spanish army invaded Roussillon in the eastern Pyrenees and maintained itself on French soil through April 1794. The French army drove the Spanish army back into Catalonia and inflicted a serious defeat in November 1794. After February 1795, the war in the eastern Pyrenees became a stalemate. In the western Pyrenees, the French began to win in 1794. By 1795, the French army controlled a portion of northeast Spain.
The war was brutal in at least two ways. The Committee of Public Safety decreed for all French royalist prisoners to be executed. Also, French generals who lost battles or otherwise displeased the representatives-on-mission often faced prison or execution. Commanders of the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees were especially unlucky in this regard.