Peninsular War

8 Key excerpts on "Peninsular War"

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  Anglo-Hispania beyond the Black Legend

  British Campaigns, Travellers and Attitudes towards Spain since 1489

  • Mark Lawrence(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  4 The Peninsular War and its aftermath

  The Peninsular War (1808–14) opened a ‘short’ nineteenth century for Spain. Bounded by two foreign wars, the first causing devastation at home and, indirectly, in Spanish America, and the second (1898) stripping Spain of its remaining pretensions to world empire, the nineteenth century was marked by war, revolution and counter-revolution. It was spawned by the impact of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, a period of trauma which robbed Spain of its eighteenth-century Bourbon alliance and made its own progressives more progressive and its much larger number of traditionalists reactionary. The Peninsular War (known in Spain from the 1830s as the ‘War of Independence’) snatched away Spain’s world-power status whilst also guaranteeing her conflicted future. These six years etched indelible marks in French and especially British political and cultural identity. In Spain, these years bequeathed the fault lines of 170 years of subsequent history: from the national and international image of guerrilla warfare to the founding myths of incompatible Left versus Right claims to national identity, from the origin of the stereotypical ‘Two Spains’ to the decades of military interventionism in modern politics which would culminate in the civil war of 1936–9.

  From a British point of view, the Peninsular War might seem merely a footnote (albeit a large one) in over a century of Anglo-French struggle. But this bird’s eye view would miss a more profound entanglement arising from a generation of young men who served in the only protracted British land campaign during the French Wars of 1792–1815. Over the past four decades, a wealth of studies has placed the experience of the British soldier in his late-Georgian context, as well as his privations and adventures on campaign in Iberia.1

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  The Peninsular War

  Wellington's Battlefields Revisited

  • Ian Fletcher(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Pen & Sword Military

    (Publisher)

  The Peninsular War

  It can be argued that the Peninsular War exploded into life on 2 May 1808 when the Madrid mob turned upon those French troops who were attempting to carry off to France Don Francisco, the youngest son of King Carlos IV and Queen Maria Luisa of Spain. It can also be argued that it began on 9 May, in Oviedo, the capital of the province of the Asturias, when the people came out in open revolt, declaring war on Napoleon Bonaparte some two weeks later. In truth, the war began on 18 October 1807 when General Andoche Junot, at the head of 25,000 troops of the Army of the Gironde, crossed the Bidassoa river and set foot on Spanish soil in order to begin his long march to the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. By a strange irony, it was to be that very same month, six years on, that Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington, crossed the very same river to invade France and begin his final drive to victory in the Peninsula, a victory which would help bring about the first downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte in April 1814.

  Portugal had long been due for Napoleon’s attention for when he stepped from his boat out onto the banks of the river Niemen after concluding the Treaty of Tilsit with the Russian czar and Frederick William III of Prussia in July 1807, he did so having decreed that both Sweden and Portugal, the only European powers yet to implement his so-called Continental System would be forced to do so. This system effectively banned all European countries from trading with Britain, France’s last remaining enemy, in the vain hope that he would be able to starve her into submission. The Portuguese Regent, John, somewhat timidly bowed to pressure from both France and her ally, Spain, and declared her ports closed to British shipping. He was not, however, prepared to order the incarceration of all British citizens resident in his country and the seizure of their property. Unfortunately for the Regent, this was not good enough to satisfy Napoleon’s demands and the response was Junot’s advance into Spain, through which he would have to march in order to reach Lisbon.

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  Fighting for Napoleon

  French Soldiers' Letters, 1799–1815

  • Bernard Wilkin, René Wilkin(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Pen & Sword Military

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4

  The Peninsular War

  The Conquest of Portugal and the Spanish Uprising

  Although a major world power for hundreds of years, Spain was in a difficult position at the end of the eighteenth century. The country had a historical rivalry with France in continental Europe while her trade routes to the American colonies were threatened by the British. To ease her situation, Spain had signed the 1761 Family Pact with France in order to create a maritime bloc against Great Britain. The French Revolution brought this bloc to an end and encouraged the Spanish to join an anti-revolutionary coalition with the British. The subsequent conflict against France, known as the Pyrenees War, proved disastrous. After a few initial successes in 1793, Spain began to lose ground and was eventually forced to sue for peace in 1795. By May 1796, Spain was an ally of France and was at war with Britain.1 This new alliance lasted until 1808 and saw, among other things, the Spanish fight alongside the French at the battle of Trafalgar.

  French soldiers served in Spain from 1802. The following letter was written by a merchant who was arrested by the French army:

  From Valladolid to the army of Gironde in Spain 10 vendémiaire year 10 [2 October 1801]

  To the mayor of the borough

  I left Liège for Saint-Jacques [Santiago] in Galicia with the passport that you gave me and that you sealed. I was unfortunate enough to be robbed by Spanish bandits. Spanish soldiers brought me to the French army’s headquarter but since my money and my papers have been stolen, I cannot prove anything. I have been arrested as a deserter and I am imprisoned as such.

  As a result, I beg you, mayor, to ask for me to the chief of the army in Spain. They might send me to the navy if I do not provide the right papers […].2

  In 1806, Napoleon instituted the Continental System to prevent the British from exporting goods to continental Europe. Neutral Portugal was less than keen to comply as she had signed a treaty sealing an alliance with the British. On 2 August 1807, Napoleon ordered the creation of the I Corps of the Army of Observation of the Gironde, headed by Marshal Junot, to invade Portugal. Jean-Joseph Renier3

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  The Roots and Consequences of Independence Wars

  Conflicts That Changed World History

  • Spencer C. Tucker(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Spanish War of Independence (Peninsular War) (1808–1814) Causes

  The Spanish War of Independence (Guerra de la Independencia Española as it is known in the Spanish-speaking world or Peninsular War as it appears in English-language history books), is directly linked to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s institution of the Continental System. The Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) had established British supremacy at sea and led Napoleon to try to get at the British by economic means. First announced in the Berlin Decree of November 21, 1806, during the War of the Fourth Coalition (1806–1807), the Continental System prohibited trade between the French Empire, including the German states, and Britain. The system was subsequently strengthened through additional decrees. In 1807 following the entente between France and Russia, the system was extended to Russia; the next year Portugal and Spain were added. Napoleon’s intention was to cut off British trade with the European continent, forcing Great Britain into ruinous inflation. He also hoped that with continental Europe deprived of British-manufactured goods, the Continental System would stimulate industry, especially that of France, which received preference.

  Napoleon’s decision to institute the Continental System was a major blunder. It not only excited great resentment of France in many parts of Europe but also led Napoleon to undertake perhaps the most disastrous decision of his career: a military intervention in the Iberian Peninsula. This “Spanish ulcer,” as Napoleon would come to call it, would cost France 300,000 casualties in five years of fighting and have a profound impact on his military operations elsewhere.

  On July 7, 1807, the Treaty of Tilsit, concluded between Napoleon and Czar Alexander I of Russia, brought to an end the War of the Fourth Coalition. The treaty solidified Napoleon’s hold on continental Europe and caused him to consider ways in which he might strengthen the Continental System against Britain. This in turn led to his intervention in the Iberian Peninsula. Bourbon Spain had long had close relations with France. The so-called Pacte de Famille (Family Compact) between the two states dated from 1733. True, Spain had joined the coalition of powers against revolutionary France in 1793, but this had ended in the Second Treaty of Basel of July 22, 1795, and the next year in the Treaty of San Ildefonso of August 19, 1796, when Spain allied with revolutionary France against Great Britain.

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  Wellington Against Massena

  The Third Invasion of Portugal, 1810–1811

  • David Buttery(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Pen & Sword Military

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1

  The Peninsular War

  I n 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte had reached the zenith of his power in Europe. Born in relative obscurity on the isle of Corsica, the French Revolution enabled him to rise with stunning rapidity through military talent, political opportunism and unwavering ambition. During the Revolutionary Wars, France fought to maintain her borders and preserve the new republic and, as one of her foremost generals, Bonaparte’s influence increased until he overthrew the Directorate in the coup d’ état of 18 Brumaire 1799. Though initially sharing power, as First Consul he rapidly began to assume the status of a dictator. As his popularity grew, many Frenchmen were persuaded to accept a strong leader, fearing the old monarchies of Europe who despised the young republic and wishing to avoid the terror and corruption that typified the Revolution’s seedy aftermath. By 1804 Napoleon felt confident enough to crown himself Emperor and his coronation took place at N ôtre Dame on 2 December.

  France had been in a state of almost continual warfare since 1792, but the wars now took on a different character. Defending French interests alone was no longer enough for the ambitious new Emperor, who wished to make France the dominant European power. He believed that maintaining supremacy was closely inter-linked with imperialism and military success:

  My power depends on my glory and my glory on the victories I have won. My power will fall if I do not feed it on new glories and new victories. Conquest has made me what I am and only conquest can enable me to hold my position.1

  With much of Europe opposed to France, Bonaparte had ample opportunity to put this theory to the test. Britain remained an implacable foe of French expansionism, so the invasion and subjugation of England became his first objective. However, the catastrophic defeat of the combined French and Spanish fleets at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 saw this operation postponed indefinitely.

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  A History of the Peninsular War, Volume VII: August 1813 to April 14, 1814

  St Sebastian's Capture, Wellington's Invasion of France, Battles of Nive, Orthez, Toulouse [Illustrated Edition]

  • Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman KBE(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wagram Press

    (Publisher)

  FINIS — THE PLACE OF THE Peninsular War IN HISTORY THIS book, being a military history of the Peninsular War, and not a political history of Europe during the Napoleonic Era, comes naturally to an end with the complete execution of the armistice which Wellington concluded with Soult and Suchet on April 17 th, 1814. It is not our task to tell of the details of the first Bourbon restoration—of the Duke of Angoulême’s triumphal entry into Toulouse, of his reviews of the dejected and malcontent imperial regiments now wearing the white cockade {755}, or of the prompt dismissal of Soult, and his supersession by his rival Suchet as commander of their united armies. Nor are we concerned with the pleasant and easy marches of the British to their great concentration camp of Blanquefort near Bordeaux, from which they were shipped off by degrees to England, or in many cases to North America. For there the war of 1812 was still in progress, though its ostensible causes had ceased to exist. The cavalry, by a special agreement with the new Royalist government, were allowed to avoid the long voyage over the Bay of Biscay by riding across the whole length of France, from Toulouse to Boulogne and Calais. This was a wonderful trek for those who took part in it—their memories are full of hospitable chateaux, and of inns where local champagnes cost about a shilling a bottle. Nor need we tell at length of the breaking up of the old Peninsular divisions on their way to Bordeaux, when the faithful Portuguese brigades made their sorrowful adieux to their comrades of the last six years, not without tears and vain hopes of a future meeting {756}. Many in 1815 hoped that the meeting would come, when Wellington applied for a Portuguese contingent for the Waterloo campaign

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  War and Empire

  The Expansion of Britain, 1790-1830

  • Bruce Collins(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Moreover, British victories were usually qualified. Masséna’s losses in 1810–11 were inflicted by food shortages and disease; even so the marshal fielded a full-scale army within weeks of returning to his base at Salamanca. Only once, at Salamanca, did British forces break a French army and by themselves open the way to a significant British advance. Although the encouragement Wellington’s operations gave to the Spanish and the threat posed by the British to the French probably exceeded a straightforward headcount of troops, when all such allowances are made, the Spanish armies, although discredited and dispersed, continued to occupy the bulk of the French army’s attention. The difficulty in evaluating the Spanish role flows from three factors. First, British interest in the war has focused on Wellington’s achievements in building an army and using it effectively for five years from the spring of 1809. The entire war is often subconsciously treated by British military historians – who dominate the historiography of this particular theatre of war – simply as the setting in which the British created an army capable of challenging the best soldiers in Europe. Offering an alternative to this focus is made extremely difficult by the second factor, which is the lack of concentrated documentation on the Spanish forces. That defect in turn reflects the third, the particularist realities of resistance in Spain. The Peninsular War was part of a more complex revolutionary situation than any other conflict which the British engaged in during the long years of war from 1775 to 1830. The American Revolution and even the upheavals in contemporary India were less multilayered than the impact of revolution in Spain. The French invasion triggered widely divergent political and social movements

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  Saragossa

  A Story of Spanish Valor

  • Benito Pérez Galdós(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  The events leading up to the siege of Saragossa are a part of the history of Spain in her struggle for continued national existence against the encroachments of Napoleon. Although it was national warfare, each province and strong provincial city made its own individual stand. Therefore words like those quoted on a preceding page from Napier's "Peninsular War" have an especial significance. The English general's words are doubly striking when read in connection with these of Galdós, "Men of little sense—without any on occasion—the Spanish to-day, as ever, make a thousand blunders, stumbling and rising in the struggle of their inborn vices with the eminent qualities which they still preserve. Providence holds in store for this people great advancings and abasements, great terrors and surprises, apparent deaths and mighty resurrections."

  The threatened loss of her nationality was the terror which hung above Spain in the dark days of 1808. Her court was rent with factions; her royal house was divided against itself. Three parties had made dissension in the palace and among the people. One was the party of the King Carlos IV; one was that of his son, Prince Ferdinand; the third, of a most insidious power, was that of Don Manuel Godoy, whose ambitions and pretensions were supported by the queen. A corrupt court and an intriguing priesthood had promoted the troubles of Spain, causing king, prince, and favorite, each and separately, to make application to Napoleon for protection, and for the support of their various plans. The imbecility of the Spanish Bourbons at such an hour in European history was inevitable in its influence upon the Emperor of the French. His ambition grew with this new opportunity. Under the mask of operating with Spain against Portugal, Napoleon filled the Peninsula with French troops under generals like Junot and Moncey and Lannes. The Spanish king and prince were already in France, and practically in durance there, before the people realized the danger which was close upon their very existence as a nation. Popular insurrections at Toledo and Madrid followed immediately upon the appointment of Murat to a place in the government. The abdication at Bayonne of Carlos IV in favor of Napoleon, and the appointment of Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain, with the consent of ninety-one Spanish nobles, roused the Peninsula into a spontaneous and determined revolt. War against the French invaders was already raging in every province when King Joseph was crowned at Madrid on July 24. Thus in the virtue of her people began the long struggle of Spain for independence as a nation,—a struggle which was destined not to end until England came to her aid, and the Duke of Wellington delivered her from the power of France.

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