Eugenio Eulalio Palafox Portocarrero
# Eugenio Eulalio Palafox Portocarrero

Eugenio Eulalio Palafox y Portocarrero, 7th Conde de Montijo and Count of Teba (1773–1834) was a Spanish military officer during the Peninsular War.

## Early career

Elected honorary academician of the Real Academia de la Historia in 1794, he was prevented from reading his inaugural speech, which proposed presenting the nobility as a moderating power on the absolutist monarchs, when Godoy got wind of it. Banished initially to Toledo, he finally ended up in Granada, where he enlisted, as a lieutenant colonel, in the city's Regiment of Provincial Militias.

## 1808

On 27 August, following Palafox's instructions to push as far up the Ebro as he could, Montijo, at the head of a column of the Army of Aragón reached the bridge at Alfaro, almost opposite the left flank of the French forces at Milagro. When attacked there by Lefebvre-Desnouettes's cavalry, the Spanish column retreated to Tudela, where Marshal Moncey met them with an infantry division. Again, Montijo retreated. Thinking that these skirmishes must be mere diversions, and under the impression that the attack would be coming from that side, King Joseph moved his reserves up the river to Miranda. Montijo, however, had given way because his troops were raw levies, and because his nearest support was Saragossa.

