Battle of Sant Esteve d'en Bas

Battle of Sant Esteve d'en Bas
Part of the Nine Years' War
Date 10 March 1695 Location La Vall d'en Bas and Olot, Catalonia, Spain Result Spanish victory
Belligerents
France	Spanish Empire
Commanders and leaders
Urbain Le Clerc de Juigné (DOW)	Ramon de Sala i Saçala
Strength
1,300 regular infantry	650 militia
Casualties and losses
1,086 killed or captured	7 killed 5 wounded

The Battle of Sant Esteve d'en Bas took place on 10 March 1695 in the Catalan front of the War of the Grand Alliance. It was fought between a column of French regular infantry under Brigadier Urbain Le Clerc de Juigné, governor of the nearby French-occupied Castellfollit de la Roca, and 16 companies of Catalan miquelets and several armed peasants at the orders of Ramon de Sala i Saçala, the veguer of the town of Vic. Juigné's force was on a punitive expedition to burn the village of Sant Esteve d'en Bas, whose inhabitants had refused to pay war contributions to the French army, when it was attacked by the Catalan militia and nearly destroyed in two separate engagements.

The first and more bloody fight took place at the wood of Malatosquera and the bridge of Sant Roc, where the French lost 500 men killed or wounded. Defeated, Juigné and his remaining troops fled to Olot, where they entrenched themselves in a convent. The Catalans forced the French to surrender by setting the building on fire. At the slight cost of 7 men killed and 5 wounded, the miquelets and peasants under Sala i Saçala killed 260 French soldiers and took 826 prisoners. Juigné was among the first. This French defeat was followed, just a month later, by the blockade by Spanish troops, miquelets and armed peasants, of the French garrisons of Castellfollit and Hostalric, which the French command decided to demolish and evacuate in July under the impossibility of keeping both positions.