Siege of Badajoz

1658 CE.

Shown on the map at 38.879°, -6.967°.

The fourth siege of Badajoz took place from July to October 1658 during the Portuguese Restoration War. It was an attempt by a huge Portuguese army under the command of Joanne Mendes de Vasconcelos, governor of Alentejo, to capture the Spanish city of Badajoz, which was the headquarters of the Spanish Army of Extremadura. The fortifications of Badajoz were essentially medieval and considered vulnerable by the Portuguese, and had already been attacked by them three times during this war. So in 1658, Mendes de Vasconcelos gathered an army at Elvas and advanced on Badajoz. The city was poorly defended and the Spanish troops under the command of Francisco de Tuttavilla, Duke of San Germán, looked principally to their own survival until a Spanish relief expedition could be mounted. The Portuguese forces launched a direct assault on the town, hoping initially to capture a key fort, San Cristóbal, but after 22 days of unsuccessful attack, the Portuguese abandoned this plan and began to build a circumvallation wall around Badajoz instead, to try to isolate the city.

Text from the Wikipedia article Siege of Badajoz (1658), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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