Military History | Liberators | Chile
Pezuela's Order of Battle before the Battle of Maipo

Posted 26 June 2010 2:36

John Fletcher cited Pezuela's order of battle and his associated thinking on the Liberators Forum For Free.

Royalist Order of Battle at Maipo
Source: Memoirs of Pezuela, Viceroy of Peru

  • Osorio's Division:
    • Infante Don Carlos Battalion: 983
    • 1st Burgos Battalion: 856
    • Arequipa Battalion: 899
    • Volante Artillery: 112
    • Zapadores: 81
    • Lanceros del Rey: 193
    • Dragones de Arequipa: 198
  • Ordonez's Division:
    • Valdivia Battalion: 136
    • Concepcion Battalion: 807
    • Artillery: 219
    • Dragones de la Frontera: 316
    • Dragones de Chillan: 86
    • "Reunion of various units": 147
  • Total: 5033

So there's the magic 5000, straight from the memoirs of the Viceroy of Peru. However, let's subtract the following, who stayed in garrison at Talcahuano:

Valdivia: 136
Artillery: 219
Various Units: 147
Zapadores: 81

Total Garrison: 583
Total Remaining 4451

Subtract the 200 lost at Cancha Rayada and you're at 4251. If you consider that the book OB does not show the number of artillerists, only the number of guns, you can take another 112 from Pezuela's 4251, leaving 4139, not far from the 4188 I show in the book OB. If anything, my OB starts to look generous, especially if we had a sense of the number of desertions and stragglers in the Royalist ranks.

The one area of the book OB where you could really do some tweaking are the combined cazadore and grenadier battalions. I basically extrapolated these numbers and one could easily bring these down to around 450-500 and assign the remainder among the various infantry battalions.