The Battle of Ordal on 12 and 13 September 1813 saw a First French Empire corps led by Marshal Louis Gabriel Suchet make a night assault on a position held by Lieutenant General Lord William Bentinck's smaller Anglo-Allied and Spanish advance guard. The Allies, under the tactical direction of Colonel Frederick Adam, were defeated and driven from a strong position at the Ordal defile largely because they failed to post adequate pickets. In an action the next morning at Vilafranca del Penedès, the Allied cavalry clashed with the pursuing French horsemen. The actions occurred during the Peninsular War, part of the Napoleonic Wars. Ordal and El Lledoner are located on Highway N-340 between Molins de Rei and Vilafranca. Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington's triumph at the Battle of Vitoria made Suchet's positions in Valencia and Aragon untenable. Accordingly, the marshal withdrew his soldiers from those two places and concentrated them near Barcelona. As the French withdrew, they were followed up by Bentinck's army of 28,000 Spanish, British, Germans, and Italians. Suchet resolved to strike at Adam's advance guard near Ordal with 12,000 soldiers while Charles Mathieu Isidore Decaen's 7,000 men advanced from the northeast. After Adam's defeat, Bentinck abandoned Vilafranca and fell back to Tarragona. Soon after, he resigned his command. Suchet's victory did not salvage the French position in Catalonia. As his troops were steadily siphoned away to defend eastern France, the marshal was forced to retreat to the Pyrenees, leaving behind several garrisons. These were picked off one by one until only Barcelona remained in French hands at the end of the conflict. Background After the Siege of Valencia ended with a Spanish capitulation on 9 January 1812, the victorious French army was temporarily halted by the illness of Marshal Louis Gabriel Suchet. The withdrawal of troops for Emperor Napoleon's planned invasion of Russia made additional conquests out of the question. Suchet, suffering from strategic overstretch, remained fairly quiet that year. On 21 July 1812, one of his division commanders, General of Division Jean Isidore Harispe drubbed General José O'Donnell's Spanish army at the First Battle of Castalla. This persuaded Thomas Maitland to abandon his amphibious invasion of Catalonia and land his small Anglo-Allied army at Spanish-controlled Alicante instead. That summer and fall, Arthur Wellesley, Marquess Wellington defeated the French at the Battle of Salamanca, captured Madrid, and was subsequently driven back to Portugal after the Siege of