What if the French forces in Spain, under Marshal Jourdan, had managed to defeat the Anglo-Spanish forces commanded by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Vitoria in June 1813?
I'd wager that the French would still want to make king Joseph's possessions in Spain more compact, as holding to all of Spain was already a foregone conclusion by that point. Could a rump Napoleonic Spain linger on? I could see it controlling the Spanish provinces of Navarre, La Rioja (boosting its wine industry), Huesca, Zaragossa, Teruel, Castellón and Valencia, while the French Empire proper keeps all of Catalonia and Guipuzkoa.
How does a better situation in Spain, maybe edging towards a negotiated armistice, affect Napoleon's fortunes in the 1813 German campaign?
 
It won’t change much, except maybe for Wellesley’s reputation and future career.

It was the campaign of Germany that mattered. The peninsular war was peripheral. What France needed, be it winner or loser at Vitoria, was to withdraw most of its forces out of Spain and send them in Germany.

If France loses the campaign of Germany as it finally did OTL at Leipzig, retaining control of northern Spain will change nothing.

Occupying Spain was a liability for napoleonic France.
 
How? Wellington's army outnumbered the French by 4:3, the French C-In-C had spent the period in the run up to the battle bedridden from fever and the army itself was more interested in getting out of Spain intact and in full possession of "the loot of a kingdom" than in standing and fighting. There are battles in the Peninsular war that could have gone the other way (Sorauren is a better late period example) but Vitoria really wasn't one of them.
 
Top