Battle of San Carlos (1813)

The battle of San Carlos
	Part of the Chilean War of Independence
Date	15 May 1813
Location	San Carlos near Chillán, Chile
Result	Royalist victory
Belligerents
Chilean patriots	Royalists
Commanders and leaders
Jose Miguel Carrera	Juan Francisco Sanchez
Strength
4,000	1,500
Casualties and losses
100 killed	5 killed

The battle of San Carlos occurred on 15 May 1813, during the War of Chilean Independence.

Background

In May 1813, the Royalist forces, under the command of Juan Francisco Sánchez were retreating to their stronghold of Chillán. The Royalist army's situation during the retreat was desperate; their baggage train had advanced significantly ahead of the main force to avoid being attacked, and the rearguard were almost without supplies. In these circumstances, the patriot commander, Jose Miguel Carrera could potentially have just avoided battle by instead advancing along the left bank of the Ñuble river and have occupied Chillán without a fight. Instead he chose to intercept the Royalist army directly on the outskirts of San Carlos, Chile.

The battle

Carrera placed his infantry in the centre of his force, using his cavalry to flank the enemy positions, avoiding the Royalist artillery. Unfortunately, the patriot infantry appear to have been ordered to mount a sudden bayonet charge; they received a full volley from the Royalist guns, broke formation and fled from the field. Unsupported, the cavalry attacks also dispersed. Juan Mackenna brought up a fresh division later in the day, but could not make much impact on the Royalist infantry. By nightfall, the patriots had dispersed completely, and on the following morning neither Carrera nor Mackenna had any units left to continue the attack.

Aftermath

Carrera's failure to achieve a decisive victory at San Carlos, Chile resulted in the Siege of Chillan later that year; the siege, held in mid-winter, was a disaster both for the patriots and for Carrera personally, ultimately leading to his dismissal from office.

gollark: Anyway, I have, I think, reasonably strong "no genocide" ethics. But I don't know if, in a situation where everyone seemed implicitly/explicitly okay with helping with genocides, and where I feared that I would be punished if I either didn't help in some way or didn't appear supportive of helping, I would actually stick to this, since I don't think I've ever been in an environment with those sorts of pressures.

gollark: Maybe I should try arbitrarily increasing the confusion via recursion.

gollark: If people are randomly assigned (after initial mental development and such) to an environment where they're much more likely to do bad things, and one where they aren't, then it seems unreasonable to call people who are otherwise the same worse from being in the likely-to-do-bad-things environment.I suppose you could argue that how "good" you are is more about the change in probability between environments/the probability of a given real world environment being one which causes you to do bad things. But we can't check those with current technology.

gollark: I think you can think about it from a "veil of ignorance" angle too.

gollark: As far as I know, most moral standards are in favor of judging people by moral choices. Your environment is not entirely a choice.

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