First Battle of Porto
1809 battle during the Peninsular War
In the First Battle of Porto (29 March 1809) the French under Marshal Soult defeated the Portuguese, under General Parreiras, outside the city of Porto during the Peninsular War. Soult followed up his success by storming the city, in the course of which thousands of fleeing citizens drowned in the Porto Boat Bridge disaster.
Background
The Second Portuguese campaign started with the Battle of Braga.
Soult's invasion of Portugal
After the Battle of Corunna, Napoleon ordered Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult to invade Portugal from the north. He was to seize Porto by 1 February and Lisbon by 10 February. Napoleon failed to take into account both the wretched condition and the roads or the fact that a full-scale guerrilla war had broken out in Northern Portugal and Spain.
Soult's II Corps had four infantry divisions, commanded by Generals of Division Pierre Hugues Victoire Merle, Julien Augustin Joseph Mermet, Étienne Heudelet de Bierre, and Henri François Delaborde. Merle had four battalions each of the 2nd Light, 4th Light and 15th Line Infantry Regiments and three battalions of the 36th Line. Mermet's division included four battalions each of the 31st Light, 47th Line, and 122nd Line, and one battalion each of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Swiss Regiments. Heudelet led two battalions each of the 22nd Line and 66th Line, one battalion each of the 15th Light, 32nd Light, 82nd Line, Légion du Midi, Paris Guard, and Hanoverian Legion.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1632116. Authority coordinates are 41.149, -8.611. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1809.
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