Peninsular War

For the 1862 American Civil War campaign, see Peninsula Campaign.

Peninsular War
Part of the Napoleonic Wars
The Second of May 1808: The Charge of the Mamelukes by Francisco Goya, 1814
Date 2 May 1808 (sometimes 27 October 1807) – 17 April 1814 (5 years, 11 months, 2 weeks and 1 day) Location Iberian Peninsula and southern France Result Allied victory Treaty of Paris
Belligerents
United Kingdom Spain Portugal Spanish partisans Portuguese partisans	French Empire Napoleonic Spain Various contingents from Germany, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland
Commanders and leaders
Arthur Wellesley William Beresford John Moore  † Francisco Castaños Juan Martín Díez José Palafox Gregorio de la Cuesta Miguel Álava Esquivel Joaquín Blake y Joyes Bernardino Freire  † Miguel Pereira Forjaz Carlos Frederico Lecor Francisco Silveira	Napoleon I Joseph I of Spain Joachim Murat Jean-Andoche Junot Jean de Dieu Soult André Masséna Michel Ney Louis Gabriel Suchet Joseph Mortier Auguste de Marmont Jean-Baptiste Bessières Jean-Baptiste Jourdan Claude Victor-Perrin

The Peninsular War^[a] was a military conflict between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war started when French and Spanish armies occupied Portugal in 1807 and escalated in 1808, when France turned on its ally, Spain. It lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814. In the Spanish-speaking world the war is known as the Guerra de la Independencia Española, or the Spanish War of Independence.

The conflict is regarded as one of the first national wars and is significant for the emergence of large scale guerrilla warfare The French occupation destroyed the Spanish administration, which fragmented into quarrelling provincial juntas. In 1810 a reconstituted national government fortified itself in Cádiz but proved unable to raise effective armies due to being under siege. British and Portuguese forces secured Portugal, using it as a safe position from which to launch campaigns against the French army, while Spanish guerrilleros bled the occupiers. Combined regular and irregular allied forces prevented Napoleon's marshals from subduing the rebellious Spanish provinces, and the war dragged on through years of bloody stalemate. Napoleon had unwittingly provoked a total war against the Spaniards, a mistake from which the French Empire would never truly recover.

The years of fighting in Spain gradually wore down France's Grande Armée. While the French were often victorious in battle, their communications and supplies were severely tested and their units frequently cut off, harassed, or overwhelmed by partisans. The Spanish armies, though repeatedly driven to the peripheries, could not be stamped out and continued to hound the French. This drain on French resources led to the conflict being termed the Spanish Ulcer.

The British force under Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, which became the most experienced and steady force in the British army, guarded Portugal and campaigned against the French in Spain alongside the reformed Portuguese army. Allied to the British, the demoralized Portuguese army underwent extensive reorganizing and refitting under the command of General William Carr Beresford, who had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Portuguese forces by the exiled Portuguese royal family, and fought as part of a combined Anglo-Portuguese army under Wellington.

In 1812, as Napoleon embarked upon his disastrous invasion of Russia, a combined Allied army under Wellesley pushed into Spain and took Madrid. Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult led the exhausted and demoralized French forces in a fighting withdrawal across the Pyrenees and into France during the winter of 1813–1814.

War and revolution against Napoleon's occupation led to the Spanish Constitution of 1812, later a cornerstone of European liberalism. The burden of war destroyed the social and economic fabric of Portugal and Spain and ushered in an era of social turbulence, political instability, and economic stagnation. Devastating civil wars between liberal and absolutist factions, led by officers trained in the Peninsular War, persisted in Iberia until 1850. The cumulative crises and disruptions of invasion, revolution, and restoration led to the independence of most of Spain's American colonies and the independence of Brazil from Portugal.

Origins

Further information: Enlightenment Spain

The Portuguese royal family escapes to Brazil

Subdued by its defeat in the Pyrenees War, Spain became an ally of France. In 1806, while in Berlin, Napoleon Bonaparte declared a continental blockade, forbidding British imports into continental Europe. Of the two remaining neutral countries, Sweden and Portugal, the latter tried in vain to avoid Napoleon's ultimatum (since 1373, it had had a treaty of alliance with the English, which became an alliance with the United Kingdom). After the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, which cemented French dominance over central and eastern Europe, Napoleon decided to capture the Iberian ports. The decision went against Napoleon's own advice from earlier in his career, as he had once remarked that the conquest of Spain would be "too hard a nut to crack".

On 27 October 1807, Spain's prime minister Manuel de Godoy signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau with France, agreeing that after Spain and France had defeated Portugal, it would be split into three kingdoms: the new Kingdom of Northern Lusitania, the Algarve (expanded to include Alentejo), and a rump Kingdom of Portugal. In November 1807, after the refusal of Prince Regent John of Portugal to join the Continental System, Napoleon sent an army into Spain under General Jean-Andoche Junot with the task of invading Portugal.

Godoy initially requested Portugal's alliance against the incoming French armies, but later secretly agreed with France that, in return for Spain's cooperation, it would receive Portugal's territories. Spain's main ambition was the seizure of the Portuguese fleet, and it sent two divisions to help French troops occupy Portugal. Junot initiated the Invasion of Portugal on 19 November 1807.

The Portuguese army was positioned to defend the ports and the coast against a French attack, and Lisbon was captured with no military opposition on December first. The escape on 29 November of Maria I of Portugal and Prince Regent John, together with the administration and the Court (around 10,000 people and 9,000 sailors aboard 23 Portuguese war ships and 31 merchant ships) was a major setback for Napoleon and enabled the Prince Regent to continue to rule over his overseas possessions, including Brazil. The Portuguese royal family would remain in Rio de Janeiro for the next 13 years.

In 1807, Spain was experiencing corruption on the political scene: Charles IV was considered to be incompetent to run the country. Napoleon, now Emperor of the French, decided to take advantage of the dissensions in the Spanish court. Feigning sympathy with their situation, he lent a listening ear to Charles and his son Ferdinand, inviting them to Paris. Ferdinand responded favourably to Napoleon's advice and asked for the hand of a Bonaparte princess. Napoleon played the part of an ally, and coaxed the two Spaniards into believing he had friendly and peaceful intentions. In the absence of both Charles and Ferdinand, Napoleon used the opportunity to invade Spain.

All over Spain, townsfolk and peasants who had been forced to see their loved ones buried in new-fangled municipal cemeteries stole their bodies back at night and tried to restore them to the protection of the old resting-places; in Madrid the growing afrancesamiento of the court was met by the swaggering majos – shopkeepers, artisans, taverners and labourers who, together with their women, dressed in traditional style and took pleasure in picking fights with petimetre.

Under the pretext of reinforcing the Franco-Spanish army occupying Portugal, French imperial troops entered Spain, where they were greeted with enthusiasm by the populace despite growing diplomatic unease. In February 1808 Napoleon ordered the French commanders to seize key Spanish fortresses, officially turning on his ally. A French column, disguised as a convoy of wounded, took Barcelona on 29 February by persuading the authorities to open the city's gates. Many commanders were not particularly concerned about the fate of the ruling regime, nor were they in any position to fight.

The Spanish Royal Army of 100,000 men found itself paralysed: it was under-equipped, frequently leaderless, confused by the turmoil in Madrid, and scattered from Portugal to the Balearic Islands. Fifteen thousand of its finest troops (Pedro Caro, 3rd Marquis of la Romana's Division of the North) had been lent to Napoleon in 1807 and remained stationed in Denmark under French command. Only the peripheries contained armies of any strength: Galicia, with Joaquín Blake y Joyes's troops, and Andalusia, under Francisco Javier Castaños. The French were consequently able to seize much of northeastern Spain by coups de main, and any hope of turning back the invasion was stillborn.

Riots and a popular revolt at the winter palace Aranjuez in 1808 forced the king to abdicate on 19 March, in favor of his son. Though the rebellion seemed popular, and was inspired outside the military, it was in effect a coup d'état by the Royal Guard. Challenged by this call to arms, Godoy and his royal patrons found they had few defenders. The officer corps as a whole was disgruntled by the failure of the favorite's reforms to make any difference in its situation and his orders to resist the French were already being disobeyed. Much of the upper nobility and the Church were hostile. Reformist circles had lost faith in Godoy's political credentials and the common people were in a state of open revolt. Spain's political leaders had lost faith in Godoy and Ferdinand was hailed as a savior when he entered Madrid on 24 March.

Though he was popular, Ferdinand's future was not certain. Joachim Murat had occupied Madrid the day before, and despite abject attempts to win France's favor, he refused to recognize Fernando. Carlos IV was persuaded to protest against his abdication and appeal to Napoleon for assistance. Both the new king and the old appealed to Napoleon for mediation, giving the Emperor a chance to seize Spain. Carlos, María Luisa, and Fernando were summoned to meet Napoleon for a conference at Bayonne (as a sop to the former king and queen, Godoy was rescued from captivity and whisked to safety in France). With all the protagonists in the drama united in his presence, Napoleon exploded the waiting bombshell: the rival kings were both to renounce the throne and hand it to the emperor. Napoleon forced both the former king and his son to abdicate, declared the Bourbon dynasty of Spain deposed, and installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as King Joseph I of Spain. Carlos did not resist this demand and on 5 May, after some days of unedifying squabbles, he ceded the throne, despite some protest from Ferdinand, in exchange for pensions for the royal family and promises of religious and territorial contiguity for Spain. With the whole of the Peninsula now subjugated, Napoleon appeared to have achieved his every objective. The Peninsula was astir, even as the Bourbons departed to a decorous exile: Carlos, María Luisa and Godoy to Italy, and Fernando, his brother Carlos, and uncle Antonio, to Talleyrand's chateau at Valençay. Setting this aside opportunism was the key. Napoleon had been motivated neither by an altruistic desire to spread the benefits of freedom and enlightenment, nor by a gigantic strategic combination, nor by an overwhelming clan loyalty that made the creation of family courts the centrepiece of French foreign policy. Strategic, ideological and historical factors were present in his thinking but in the last resort what mattered was, first, the emperor's character, and, second, the force of circumstance. Forever eager to demonstrate his prowess, impose his stamp upon affairs, and demonstrate his contempt for diplomacy, the emperor was confronted with a situation in which nothing seemed to stand between him and the stroke that was more audacious than anything that he had yet attempted.

Iberian insurrections

Further information: Dos de Mayo Uprising

Second of May 1808: the defenders of Monteleón make their last stand

Joseph-Bernard Flaugier's 1808 painting Escena de la Guerra de la Independencia depicts Imperial troops battling the Catalan militia

Ever since the motín de Aranjuez Spain had been in ferment: attacks on godoyistas were frequent, whilst the failure of the French to recognise Fernando caused much discontent and in particular gave rise to the suspicion that they intended to bring back the favourite. In consequence, it was not very long before discontent raised its head. By the beginning of May rumours were spreading through the streets that the Junta de Gobierno - the council of regency left behind by Fernando - was being pressurised into sending the last members of the royal family to Bayonne. On 2 May, the citizens of Madrid rose up in rebellion against the French occupation, killing some 150 French soldiers before the uprising was put down by Joachim Murat's elite Imperial Guard and Mamluk cavalry, which crashed into the city, trampling the rioters. The next day, as immortalized by Francisco Goya in his painting The Third of May 1808, the French army shot hundreds of Madrid citizens in retaliation. Similar reprisals were repeated in other cities and continued for days, the military effect being to strengthen the resistance. Soon afterwards bloody spontaneous fighting known as guerrilla (literally "little war") erupted in much of Spain; the term "guerrilla" has been used ever since to describe such combat.

When Fernando departed for Bayonne he had left behind a structure of government headed by the Junta de Gobierno. Presided over by Fernando's uncle, the Infante Don Antonio, it was composed of the ministers who had been appointed by the new king to head the five ministries (Foreign Affairs, War, Finance, Navy, and Grace and Justice), which since the reign of Carlos III had constituted the heart of the Spanish administration. Coexistent with the departments over which these five officials presided were the organs through which Spain had been governed prior to their formation, including the Councils of Castile, the Indies, War, the Admiralty, the Treasury, the Military Orders, and the Inquisition. Lower down the scale this duplication was perpetuated in that Spain was divided into both thirty-two provinces, each headed by a Treasury official known as an Intendent, and fourteen military regions, each headed by a Viceroy, Captain General or Commandant General. New heads had been found for all the ministries; the Duque de Infantado appointed president of the Council of Castile; an old enemy of Godoy, the tough and experienced Gregorio Garcia de la Cuesta, had been made Captain General of Old Castile; and a few officials driven from their posts by popular fury. The overall system was unchanged.

Examples of the first pattern that can be picked out from what may be described as the first wave of risings (those that took place without any knowledge of revolt elsewhere) include Cartagena and Valencia (23 May), Zaragoza and Murcia (24 May) and Leon (27 May). Thus, in Cartagena red cockades (the traditional badge of the Bourbon monarchy) were handed out to the people, and the garrison brought out in support of the rising, whereupon the Captain General, in this instance a naval officer (Cartagena being the capital of one of Spain's three naval departments), and the military governor were arrested. A provincial junta was established under a prominent admiral. In Zaragoza where José Palafox had been hiding out at a property belonging to his family outside the city, the conspirators' agents were able to steer the crowds into calling for him to lead them, whereupon a delegation was sent to bring him back to the city, the Captain General imprisoned, and the young guards officer installed as de facto dictator. That the whole affair was got up from the start is confirmed by the tone of Palafox’s memoirs. Written in the third person, these describe how he was meditating on what best to do, when he heard ‘a multitude of armed civilians’ coming towards his hiding-place. For a moment he believed all was lost, but ‘what was his surprise when, surrounding the house, the crowd found out that Palafox was there, and began to fire their fowling pieces in the air at the joy of the discovery’. Very soon, all was well: Bathed in tears at the terrible fate of their king, the men declared their firm resolution to avenge that atrocious perfidy and… sacrifice everything they had rather than recognise the usurper. Unable to speak for the emotion, joy and love that he felt, Palafox could not withstand these honourable patriots' demands for him to place himself at their head and lead them in their noble attempt to… free the fatherland. Most towns of any size now had emergency administrations (two exceptions were Cádiz, where the town council still held sway, and Zaragoza, which was in the sole charge of José Palafox), but the resultant juntas constituted the bourgeois revolution of Marxist legend.

The Spanish government, including the Council of Castile, accepted Napoleon's decision to grant the Spanish crown to his brother Joseph. The Spanish population rejected Napoleon's plans and expressed this opposition through the local municipal and provincial governments. Following traditional Spanish political theories, which held that the monarchy was a contract between the monarch and the people (see the legal philosophy of Francisco Suárez), local governments responded to the crisis by transforming themselves into ad hoc governmental juntas (Spanish for "council", "committee", or "board"). The tiny province of Asturias rose up in arms, cast out its French governor on 25 May, and "declared war on Napoleon at the height of his greatness." Within weeks, all the Spanish provinces followed this course. Mobs butchered 338 French citizens in Valencia.

The deteriorating strategic situation forced France to increase its military commitments: in February, Napoleon had boasted that 12,000 men could conquer Spain; by 1 June, over 65,000 troops were rushing into the country in an effort to control the crisis. The main French army of 80,000 men held a narrow strip of central Spain, stretching from Pamplona and San Sebastián in the north to Madrid and Toledo in the south. The French in Madrid took shelter behind an additional 30,000 troops under Marshal Bon Adrien Jeannot de Moncey. Jean-Andoche Junot's corps were stranded in Portugal, cut off by 300 miles (480 km) of hostile territory.

Napoleon had lost none of his vigour. As he wrote to Marshal Bessières: Once you have made yourself master of Santander by brute force, you should impose a contribution of 2,000,000 [francs], sequester the property of the bishop, disarm the town and the countryside, and make some severe examples. And with Santander and Zaragoza taken, you should march on León and Asturias… Retrograde movements… must never be adopted in people’s wars. Within a matter of days of the outbreak of revolt, in Old Castile, New Castile, Aragón and Catalonia, French columns were striking out for the nearest insurgent forces. In the event it was the Spaniards who fired the first shots. On 5 June 1808, two squadrons of French dragoons under a Captain Bouzat were attacked by insurgents at the northern entrance to the pass of Despeñaperros in the Sierra Morena and forced to retreat to the nearby town of Almuradiel, leaving behind a number of dead. Spain was at war.

Spain in revolt

Agustina de Aragón fires a gun on the French invaders at Saragossa

Valencians prepare to resist the invaders in this 1884 painting by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.

The Spanish Army's triumph at Bailén gave the French Empire its first major defeat

Popular risings were expected, indeed, they were almost to be welcomed - but it had throughout remained Napoleon's conviction that the Spanish army would either remain neutral or put itself under his command. From Murat's optimistic reports, Napoleon believed the uprisings would die down and the country become peaceful if his brother held on to the throne while French flying columns seized and pacified Spain's major cities. As a result of these delusions, having no respect for the "insolent" Spanish militias which everywhere opposed him, the first Army of Spain was weak in numerical terms - at 90,000 men it was outnumbered by the 114,000 regular troops available to the insurgents, let alone anything else that they might raise — whilst it was composed of second-line forces of an unimpressive character. To this end, Pierre-Antoine, comte Dupont de l'Étang led 24,430 men south toward Seville and Cádiz; Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières moved into Aragón and Old Castile with 25,000 men, aiming to capture Santander and Saragossa; Moncey marched toward Valencia with 29,350 men; and Guillaume Philibert Duhesme marshalled 12,710 troops in Catalonia and moved against Gerona.

On the sixth of June troops of Bessieres' corps stormed Logroño and Torquemada, whose defenders were a few civilians. On the seventh of June it was the turn of Segovia, even though the inhabitants were supported by the ordnance and cadets of the artillery academy based in the castle. On the seventh of June Dupont defeated a small force of regulars, supported by a mass of levies, before storming and sacking Córdoba. On the twelfth of June Antoine Lasalle's cavalry trampled Gregorio de la Cuesta's small, improvised army at the Battle of Cabezón and opened the road to Valladolid, and on 13 and 14 June Palafox was defeated at Mallen and then again at Alagon, where he was wounded. Delayed by the fact that some of the forces involved were recalled so as to assist in the defeat of Cuesta, on 21 June two more French columns stormed the passes of the Cantabrian mountains that led to Santander. The raw levies that formed the bulk of the Spanish forces proved incapable of manoeuvring in the face of the enemy, whilst many of them knew how to use their weapons, having sometimes been issued with muskets the day before they went into action. These untrained recruits broke ranks when assaulted by the French regulars, to flee in panic, throwing away their arms, accusing their commanders of treason and leaving the few regulars involved to fend for themselves as best they could. Having run away the levies exposed themselves to the French cavalry, which were unleashed amongst them with terrible effect, sabring them and taking hundreds of them prisoner. French casualties in no case numbered more than a few dozen.

Catalan militia (somatén) overrunning Barcelona and French units attempting to break the ring were turned back at the Battle of El Bruc with heavy casualties. Gerona repulsed one attack, then, Duhesme, leaving Chabran's brigade to hold Mataro, retraced his steps to Barcelona. In Aragon the commander of the 6,000-strong French force bearing down on Saragossa, Charles, comte Lefebvre-Desnouettes, had decided to rush the city. French overtures for an honourable capitulation met with the laconic reply "War to the knife." José de Palafox y Melzi and the Spaniards defied the French for three months, fighting inch by inch, corps à corps in the streets; Moncey's push toward the coast ended in defeat outside the walls of Valencia, where 1,000 French recruits fell trying to storm a city whipped into a frenzy by the clergy. Making short work of Spanish counterattacks, Moncey began a long retreat, harried at every step.

In the north did the French find a measure of success. When Bessières's march on Santander was checked by a string of partisan attacks in July, the French turned back and encountered Blake and Cuesta with their combined army. In the Battle of Medina del Rio Seco the Spanish generals, at Cuesta's insistence, made a dash toward the vulnerable French supply lines at Valladolid. The two armies deployed on 14 July, Cuesta leaving a gap between his troops and Blake's. The French poured into the hole and, after a sharp fight against Cuesta, swept the Spanish army from the field, putting Old Castile back in Napoleon's hands. Blake, too, escaped, but the Spaniards had lost at least one thousand dead or wounded, twelve hundred prisoners and thirteen guns. French losses had been minimal — perhaps 400 men — whilst it was still early in the day.

Bessières's victory salvaged the strategic position of the French army in northern Spain. The road to Madrid lay open to Joseph, and the failures at Gerona, Valencia, and Saragossa were forgotten; all that remained was to reinforce Dupont and allow him to force his way south through Andalusia. With the Spanish threat scattered, Joseph entered Madrid on 20 July; and on 25 July Joseph was acclaimed King of Spain. A delighted Napoleon asserted that “If Marshal Bessiéres has been able to beat the Army of Galicia with few casualties and small effort, less than 8,000 troops being engaged, there can be no doubt that with 20,000 men General Dupont will be able to overthrow everybody he meets.” On 10 June every French ship of the line anchored at Cádiz was seized in the Capture of the Rosily Squadron. Much alarmed, Dupont was disturbed enough first to curtail his march at Cordoba, and then on 16 June to fall back as far as Andujar. Dupont, cowed by the mass hostility of the Andalusians, broke off his offensive and was defeated at the Battle of Bailén and surrendered his entire Army Corps to Castaños.

The catastrophe was total. With the loss of 24,000 troops, Napoleon's military machine in Spain collapsed. Stunned by what had occurred, on 1 August Joseph, who had no more than 23,000 troops with him in Madrid and was labouring under the impression that thousands of vengeful Spaniards were about to fall on him, evacuated the capital and fell back on Old Castile, whilst ordering Verdier to abandon the siege of Zaragoza and Bessieres to retire from Leon, the entire French army taking shelter behind the Ebro. As if all this was not bad enough, by this time Gerona resisted a second siege. Europe cheered at this first check to the hitherto unbeatable Imperial armies – a Bonaparte had been chased from his throne; tales of Spanish heroism inspired Austria and showed the force of national resistance. Bailén set in motion the rise of the Fifth Coalition against Napoleon.

British intervention

Further information: British Army during the Napoleonic Wars

The Spanish Division of the North sent to fight the British in Denmark pledging to turn against France and side with the British

If through happenstance, Britain could now play the part of a great military power as well as a great naval one, and evade charges that she was acting in her own selfish interests and fighting to the death of the last Austrian. Both at home and abroad the British government was presented with major advantages. Their revolt’s complex origins being understood, it seemed that the Spanish people had rejected Napoleon and all his works. As the emperor had continued to use the rhetoric of the French Revolution, domestic radicals and foreign ‘Jacobins’ alike had been inclined to rally to his cause, but now Britain found herself in the camp of freedom. Opposition from such sources was never silenced but Britain, and with her all Napoleon’s opponents, had acquired a new moral legitimacy. Nor was this the limit to the Portland administration's enthusiasm. The Asturian delegation, which was soon joined by others from Galicia and Seville, had not asked for troops, but the dispatch of a British army was soon under consideration. So far as this was concerned, there were fewer constraints than normal. Recent reforms in the army's recruitment, the authorisation of embodied members of the militia to volunteer for service in the line, offered the hope of a steady supply of fresh men; the need to provide against French invasion had been much reduced; and forces were available for immediate action in the shape of Spencer's troops, the division that had been assembled at Cork, and a couple of brigades that had been about to raid the invasion port of Boulogne. As vital, the necessary transports were available, whilst the last few years had seen a process of reform that promised to improve the army's combat reputation. Although the troops continued to be recruited from the 'scum of the earth'.

In August 1808, a British army (including the King's German Legion) landed in Portugal under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Wellesley drove back Henri François Delaborde's forces at the Battle of Roliça on 17 August, as the Portuguese Observation Army of Bernardim Freire de Andrade shadowed Louis Henri Loison's division. On 21 August, Wellesley, who had turned to the mouth of the Maceira river to protect landing reinforcements, came under attack by Jean-Andoche Junot at Vimeiro Hill. The Battle of Vimeiro was the first occasion on which Napoleonic offensive tactics combining skirmishers, columns, and supporting artillery fire failed against the British infantry line and Wellesley's superb defensive skills. Considered too junior an officer to command the reinforced expedition to Portugal, Wellesley was replaced first by Sir Harry Burrard and then Sir Hew Dalrymple. The new British commander granted Junot favourable armistice terms, allowing for his unmolested evacuation from Portugal – courtesy of the Royal Navy – in the controversial Convention of Sintra in August. In early October 1808, following the scandal in Britain over the Convention of Sintra and the recall of the generals Dalrymple, Burrard and Wellesley, Sir John Moore took command of the 30,000 man British force in Portugal. In addition, Sir David Baird in command of an expedition of reinforcements out of Falmouth consisting of 150 transports carrying between 12,000 and 13,000 men, convoyed by H.M.S. Louie, Amelia and Champion, entered Corunna Harbour on the 13 October.

How far British pressure was instrumental in the formation of the body - the Junta Suprema Central - that supplied this want is unclear, but in one respect at least the British did succeed in making a substantial contribution to the Spanish cause. In 1807 a sizeable Spanish force had been sent to assist the grande armée. In August, the British Baltic fleet and the Spanish officers of the Division of the North orchestrated the evacuation of the La Romana Division. In this escape, 9,000 Spanish soldiers seized Danish ports and shipping in order to make their way to a rendezvous with Admiral Richard Goodwin Keats' British squadron on Langeland island. The soldiers were then transferred to Gothenburg, Sweden, before setting sail for Santander, where they arrived in October.

There were serious problems with the Spaniards: inherent in the sudden Spanish interest in British troops lay the desire to receive assistance and to obtain command over them. A desire was beginning to emerge amongst the British to further their influence in Spain or even to impose their own political solutions. With the British army in the hands of an officer who was ambitious and frustrated, at odds with the ministry, suspicious of the government's representatives abroad, and possessed of a disposition, trouble was certain, and all the more so given the thunderbolt that was in preparations across the river Ebro.

Napoleon's invasion of Spain

The Battle of Tudela by January Suchodolski. Oil on canvas, 1895

Somosierra: Polish cavalry assail Spanish gunners on a mountain pass

La bataille de Somosierra by Louis-François, Baron Lejeune (1775–1848). Oil on canvas, 1810

Spanish officials surrender Madrid to Napoleon. Antoine-Jean Gros, 1810

The Spanish social fabric, unsettled by rebellion, gave way to its crippling social and political tensions; the patriots stood divided on every question and their nascent war effort suffered. With the fall of the monarchy, constitutional power devolved to local juntas. These institutions interfered with the army and the business of war, undermined the tentative central government taking shape in Madrid, and in some cases proved almost as dangerous to each other as to the French. The British army in Portugal was itself immobilized by logistical problems and bogged down in administrative disputes, and did not budge.

Months of inaction passed at the front, the revolution having "crippled Patriot Spain at the very moment when decisive action could have changed the whole course of the war." The French, all but masters of Spain in June, stood with their backs to the Pyrenees, clutching at Navarre and Catalonia. It was not known if even these two footholds could be maintained in the face of a Spanish attack. By October French strength in Spain, including garrisons, was about 75,000 soldiers. They were facing 86,000 Spanish troops with Spain's 35,000 British allies en route.

No attack was forthcoming. The Supreme Central Junta grew out of political confusion that followed the abdication of the House of Bourbon. This transformation, nevertheless, led to more confusion, since there was no central authority and most juntas did not recognize the presumptuous claim of some to represent the monarchy as a whole. The Junta of Seville, in particular, claimed authority over the overseas empire, because of the province's historic role as the exclusive entrepôt of the empire. Realizing that unity was needed to coordinate efforts against the French and to deal with British aid, several Supreme Juntas (Murcia, Valencia, Seville, and Castile and León) called for the formation of a central junta. After a series of negotiations between the juntas and the discredited Council of Castile, which had supported Joseph I, a "Supreme Central and Governmental Junta of Spain and the Indies" met in Aranjuez on 25 September 1808, with the Conde de Floridablanca as its president. Serving as surrogate for the absent king and royal government, it called on representatives from the Iberian provinces and the overseas possessions to meet in an "Extraordinary and General Cortes of the Spanish Nation", so called because it would be both the single legislative body for the whole empire and the body which would write a constitution for it. As agreed to in the negotiations, the Supreme Central Junta was composed of two representatives chosen by the juntas of the capitals of the peninsular kingdoms of the Spanish Monarchy. Early on, the Junta rejected the idea of establishing a regency, which would have meant the concentration of executive power in a small number of persons, and assumed that role itself, claiming the style of "Majesty".

After the surrender of a French army corps at Bailén and the loss of Portugal Napoleon was convinced of the peril he faced in Spain. Disturbed by news of Sintra, the Emperor remarked,

I see that everybody has lost their head since the infamous capitulation of Bailén. I realise that I must go there myself to get the machine working again.

While the allies inched forward, a vast consolidation of bodies and bayonets from the far reaches of the French Empire brought 100,000 veterans of the Grande Armée into Spain, led in person by Napoleon and his marshals. With his Armée d'Espagne of 278,670 men drawn up on the Ebro, facing a scant 80,000 raw, disorganized Spanish troops, the Emperor announced to the Spanish deputies:

I am here with the soldiers who conquered at Austerlitz, at Jena, at Eylau. Who can withstand them? Not your wretched Spanish troops who do not know how to fight. I shall conquer Spain in two months and acquire the rights of a conqueror.

Napoleon led the French on a brilliant offensive involving a massive double envelopment of the Spanish lines. The attack began in November and has been described as "an avalanche of fire and steel".

In the west one Spanish wing slipped the noose when Lefebvre failed to encircle the Army of Galicia after a premature and indecisive attack at the Battle of Pancorbo; Blake drew his artillery back to safety, and the bloodied Spanish infantry followed in good order. Lefebvre and Marshal Claude Victor-Perrin offered a careless chase that ended in humiliation at the Battle of Valmaseda, where their scattered troops were handled by La Romana's repatriated Spanish veterans and escaped to safety.

The campaign raced to a swift conclusion in the south, where Napoleon's main army overran the unprotected Spanish centre in a devastating attack near Burgos. The Spanish militias, untrained and unable to form infantry squares, scattered in the face of massed French cavalry, while the Spanish Royal Guard and Walloon Guards stood their ground in vain and were overcome by Antoine Charles Louis Lasalle and his sabreurs. Marshal Jean Lannes with a powerful force then smashed through the tottering Spanish right wing at the Battle of Tudela on 23 November, routing Castaños and prompting a new inscription on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Blake's isolated army about-faced on 17 November and dug in at the Battle of Espinosa. His lines shook off French attacks over a day and night of vicious fighting, before giving up the next day. Blake again managed to outmarch Soult and escaped with a rump army to Santander, but the Spanish front had been torn apart, and the Imperial armies raced forward over undefended provinces. Napoleon flung 45,000 men south into the Sierra de Guadarrama, which shielded Madrid.

The mountains slowed Napoleon: at the Battle of Somosierra on 30 November, his Polish and Guard cavalry squadrons charged up a narrow gorge through raking fire to overrun Benito de San Juan's artillery. San Juan's militias then gave way before the relentless French infantry, while the Spanish royal artillerymen held their positions and fought to the last. French patrols reached Madrid on 1 December and entered the city in triumph on 4 December. Joseph Bonaparte was restored to his throne. San Juan retreated west to Talavera, where his mutinous conscripts shot him before dispersing. The Junta was forced to abandon Madrid in November 1808, and resided in the Alcázar of Seville from 16 December 1808 until 23 January 1810. (Hence the appellation of "Junta of Seville", not to be confused with the earlier provincial junta.)

In Catalonia, Napoleon fed his faltering army strong reinforcements as early as October 1808, ordering Laurent Gouvion Saint-Cyr with 17,000 men to the relief of Duhesme in Barcelona. The presence of the Royal Navy along the coast of France and Spain slowed the French entry into eastern and southern Spain and drained their military resources in the area. Frigates commanded the strategic Gulf of Roses north of Barcelona, close to the French border, and were involved in the Siege of Roses. Lord Thomas Cochrane held a cliff-top fortress against the French for a month, destroying it when the main citadel capitulated to a superior French force. The successful Siege of Roses opened the path south for Saint-Cyr, who bypassed Gerona and, after a forced march, fell upon and destroyed part of Juan Miguel de Vives y Feliu's Spanish army at the Battle of Cardadeu near Barcelona on 16 December. Five days later, Saint-Cyr beat the Spaniards under Conde de Caldagues and Theodor von Reding, capturing 1,200 men at the Battle of Molins de Rey.

Moore's failed campaign

Death of Sir John Moore (1761-1809) 17th January 1809.

Saragossa: The assault on the Santa Engracia monastery. Oil on canvas, 1827

By November 1808 the British army, led by Moore, advanced into Spain with orders to assist the Spanish armies in their struggle against the invading forces of Napoleon. For a time the British army was dispersed with Baird's arrived contingent at Astorga to the north, Moore at Salamanca and Hope 70 miles (110 km) to the east near Madrid with all Moore's cavalry and artillery. The main army, under Moore, had advanced to Salamanca. By the last days of November he was receiving desperate appeals from both the British ambassador - a protege of Canning's named John Hookham Frere who shared the ministers' general dislike of Moore and placed unbounded trust in Spanish enthusiasm - and the Junta Central itself to do something to help the Patriot cause. Yet everything Moore knew suggested that the optimistic bombast in which Frere and the Junta were wont to cloak their appeals had no basis in fact, whilst his capacity to do anything remained as limited as ever: as late as 28 November none of Baird's troops had passed Astorga, whilst Sir John Hope was still some seventy miles to the east.

The main army was joined by Hope's detachment on 3 December when Moore received news that the Spanish forces had suffered several defeats. He considered that to avoid disaster he must give up and retreat back to Portugal.

Moore, before retreating, received intelligence of Soult's 16,000 man corps' scattered and isolated position at Carrión and that the French were unaware of the British army's position. On 15 December he seized at this opportunity to advance on the French near Madrid hoping that he might defeat Soult and divert Napoleon’s forces. A junction with Baird on 20 December, advancing from Corunna, raised Moore's strength to 23,500 infantry, 2,400 cavalry and 60 guns and he opened his attack with a successful raid by Lieutenant-General Paget's cavalry on the French picquets at Sahagún on 21 December. Moore failed to follow up against a surprised Soult, halting for two days and allowing Soult to concentrate his corps.

No sooner had the orders for the advance been dispatched than dramatic news arrived from the south in the form of a report that masses of French troops were debouching from the Sierra de Guadarrama into the plains of Old Castile. In short, the game was up: Napoleon had discovered the presence of the British army and was heading north to wipe it out. The time having come to cut and run, fresh orders were sent out and to their complete consternation the British forces found themselves being stopped and turned around. Though the astonished troops were not to know it, their goal was now the sea. If Moore's operations were being conducted with a sure grasp of the positions and intentions of the enemy, it was in large part due to the guerrillas' capture of large numbers of French couriers.

Setting the weather aside, Moore was so far to the north that it was that a force coming from Madrid would ever have been able to cut him off. The emperor's chance, indeed, was that his opponent would be caught unawares, but Moore was well aware of the danger and fled westwards as soon as he got news that Napoleon was on the march, whilst he had long since requested that his transports should be sent round from Lisbon to La Coruna. Vigorous action on the part of Soult, it is true, might have slowed Moore down enough to allow Napoleon's forces to get behind him, but the marshal elected to wait for the first of the reinforcements that were being sent up to him from Burgos and then was slowed down by pouring rain. The retreat was punctuated by stubborn rearguard actions at Benavente and Cacabelos. La Romana marched his tattered army to cover his ally's retreat, but was defeated by Soult at the Battle of Mansilla. Yet no stand was attempted, both armies rather, on 30 December, getting under way for Galicia. Alerted to his whereabouts, the Imperial army forced Moore into a harrowing retreat marked by a breakdown in the discipline of many regiments. In military terms, Moore's decision to retreat was therefore sensible enough, but in other respects it was a disaster. Having first failed to appear in time to meet Napoleon's counter-offensive and then allowed Madrid to fall without firing a shot, the British now seemed to be abandoning Spain altogether. Each time the British army turned to fight, the discipline of the troops showed a marked – but temporary – improvement. The British troops managed to escape to the sea at A Coruña, after fending off a strong French attack at the Battle of Corunna. Some 26,000 troops reached Britain, 7,000 men having been lost over the course of the expedition.

At first sight, then, British intervention had ended in humiliation and disaster. At La Coruna, true, a reverse had been inflicted on the French. Sir John Moore was dead, over one fifth of his army were missing, and several thousand more sick or wounded, whilst the retreat had had all the appearances of a rout; if the army had saved all its guns, it had lost much of its baggage and been forced to destroy almost all the horses that had managed to reach La Coruna. Hundreds more men were lost in winter storms in the Bay of Biscay and the Channel. Added to all this must be the loss or destruction of immense quantities of materiel, including 4,000 barrels of powder blown up on the thirteenth of January, as well as the occupation of the most populated region in the whole of Spain, including important towns such as Lugo and La Coruna. Even worse than the physical losses suffered by the Allies was the immense damage that had been done to Anglo-Spanish relations. Misled by journalists who had claimed that Moore's army was much larger than it was and represented Sahagun as a great victory, the Spanish were shocked by the British departure, whilst fuel was added to the flames by the angry accounts of the Marques de la Romana and other observers, the marquess accusing Moore of betrayal and bad faith.

Saragossa, still scarred from Lefebvre's bombardments that summer, was invested by the French on 20 December. Lannes and Moncey committed two army corps (45,000 men) and considerable materiel to a second siege of the city, but their numbers and guns made no impression on the Spanish citizen-soldiers, who proved unmovable behind the walls. Palafox's second defence brought the city enduring national and international fame. The Spaniards fought with a determination which never faltered; street by street, building by building, through pestilence and starvation, at times entrenching themselves in convents, even putting their own homes to the torch. All who stood with Palafox met their deaths, but for two months the Grande Armée did not set foot beyond the Ebro's shore. On 20 February 1809, the French left behind burnt-out ruins filled with 64,000 corpses. After a little more than two months in Spain, Napoleon returned command to his marshals and went back to France.

Second invasion of Portugal

Marshal Nicolas Soult at the battle of Oporto

After the Battle of Corunna and the British evacuation of Spain, Marshal Nicolas Soult turned his attention to the invasion of Portugal. In the grand strategy he had drawn up in late 1808, Napoleon had envisaged a three-pronged offensive into that country, consisting of Soult's corps from the north, Lapisse's 9,000 men from the east and Claude Victor's forces from the south. With peace restored to the northern half of the Peninsula, Andalucia and the Levante would be invaded and the conflict brought to a close. In the emperor's mind, there was no reason why the war should not be over by the summer, and such was the disarray in the Patriot camp in both Spain and Portugal that it is hard to question his confidence altogether.

The Junta took over direction of the war effort and established war taxes, organized an Army of La Mancha, and signed a treaty of alliance with the United Kingdom on the fourteenth of January 1809. The Junta agreed that the "overseas kingdoms" would send one representative. As it became apparent that the war would last longer than thought, the Junta again took up the issue of convening a Cortes in April 1809, issuing a royal decree to the effect on 22 May. A committee presided by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos organized the legal and logistical efforts to carry this out.

On paper Soult had 40,000 men at his disposal, but after the rigorous campaign in Galicia thousands of his troops were sick and he could muster some 20,000 men. Although he experienced great difficulties in equipping all of these, and a chronic shortage of horses and transport vehicles compounded his problems, the Duke of Dalmatia persevered. As an opening move he took the Spanish naval base at Ferrol on 26 January, capturing eight ships of the lines, three frigates and several thousand prisoners. Of more immediate value were enormous equipment stockpiles, including 20,000 Brown Bess muskets. This windfall enabled Soult to make good some of his army's material deficiencies and to proceed with the projected invasion of Portugal.

In March Marshal Soult initiated the second invasion of Portugal through the northern corridor. Soult's forces faced the 12,000 men represented by the line regiments, militia and ordenança of the province of Tras-os-Montes. Commanded by Francisco da Silveira, these forces were soon in full retreat amidst scenes of riot and disorder, and within two days of crossing the frontier Soult had taken the border fortress of Chaves. Swinging west, the French found themselves confronted by 25,000 armed and disciplined Portuguese. While waiting for Soult's army to arrive, the Portuguese militia lynched their own commander, Bernardim Freire de Andrade, who wished to retreat. On 20 March 1809, 16,000 of Soult's professional troops of the II Corps advanced and butchered 4,000 of their amateur opponents in the Battle of Braga. A similar mismatch occurred when the French reached Porto (Oporto). In the First Battle of Porto on 29 March 1809, the Portuguese defenders panicked, and thousands drowned trying to flee across the Douro River. It was a major French victory. At a cost of fewer than 500 casualties, Soult had secured Portugal's second city with its valuable dockyards and arsenals intact. Moreover, the Portuguese had sustained appalling losses; some 200 guns had been taken and between 6,000 and 20,000 men had been slain, wounded or captured, whilst the booty included immense stocks of food and munitions, and 30 shiploads of wine. Soult occupied northern Portugal, but halted at Oporto to refit his army before advancing on Lisbon.

By May 1809, the French armies were victorious almost everywhere in Spain. Victor advanced on Badajoz, defeating Cuesta at Medellín. The whole Spanish army now fled south across the plain in hopeless disorder and the French cavalry raced after them, inflicting appalling casualties. Lasalle claimed that the 'disgusting Spaniards' lost 14,000 men at Medellín. By the time a thunder-storm brought an end to the carnage, at least 8,000 Spanish lay dead, with another 2,000 taken prisoner. Victor's soldiers carried off nine standards and twenty guns. Estimates of the French losses range between 300 and 2,000 men, although 1,000 would seem to be more credible.

On 27 March the Spanish forces defeated the French at Vigo, and the French troops at Marín and Pontevedra were forced to retreat to Santiago de Compostela for fear of being outflanked. In view of the assumptions that tend to be made with regard to the nature of the so-called ‘little war’, it is important to note the identity of the forces that besieged Vigo. Whilst not troops of the old regular army, they were not crowds of armed peasants either. On the contrary, at their heart was the División del Miño, which was a force consisting of five regiments of new levies organised by regular officers acting at the behest of La Romana and the Junta Central. Raised by conscription, dressed in uniform and trained to fight in the usual formations of the period, these men were soldiers if not, at the beginning, ones that were good. Nor could it be otherwise: lacking any means of subsistence, armed civilians could not be away from their homes for more than a few days. Yet even had this not been the case, there is still room to doubt the idea of a Galician people’s war. The French could count on opposition wherever they appeared, but they had to leave a district alone for it to remain quiet for weeks. Crowds of peasants might be induced by the hope of pay to put in a few hours of drill every week, but of fighting most of the time there was no thought. As Hall writes, for example: On reaching the camp… we found the patriot army exercising by divisions… When we approached a general halt was ordered, and those who had muskets presented them as well they might, while those who had none went through the motions well with their pikes or staves formed out of scythes and reaping hooks… Under our auspices the peasantry continued to flock in from the adjacent country… although we could supply a twentieth part of these patriots with arms… And that small fraction not being supplied with officers, or disciplined, or organised in any way, it was like children playing at soldiers. Spanish forces took the initiative and most of the cities in the province of Pontevedra were recaptured.

In February 1809, Reding led a reconstituted army against the French right wing and, after vigorous marching and countermarching, took a stand at the Battle of Valls, to be ridden down and wounded by French cavalry.

Fall of the Junta Central

In Catalonia were the French still on the attack, and even here they had run into difficulties, for their first goal - Gerona - was possessed of impressive defences, a large garrison of regular troops, and a governor of great professionalism, courage and resourcefulness in the person of the sixty-year-old Mariano Alvarez del Castro. Much to the ire of Napoleon, who responded by replacing Saint-Cyr with Marshal Augereau and Reille with Palafox's old opponent, General Verdier, for a variety of reasons operations did not even begin against the fortress until 24 May, and when they did progress was slow.

Wellesley returned to Portugal in April 1809 to command the Anglo-Portuguese forces. He strengthened the British army with the formed Portuguese regiments trained by General Beresford and helped them adapt to the British campaign style. These new forces turned Soult out of Portugal at the Battle of Grijó (10–11 May) and the Second Battle of Porto (12 May). All other northern cities were recaptured by General Silveira. With Portugal in revolt all around him, Soult seemed doomed, but escaped by a daring march through the mountains to Orense. On 7 June, the French army of Marshal Michel Ney was defeated at the Battle of Puente Sanpayo by Spanish forces under the command of Colonel Pablo Morillo, and Ney and his forces retreated to Lugo on 9 June while being harassed by Spanish guerrillas. In Lugo, Ney's troops joined up with those of Soult, who had to leave Portugal, and these forces withdrew from Galicia in July 1809. This marked the final evacuation of Galicia by the French army and the creation of a new front.

With Portugal secured, Wellesley advanced into Spain to unite with General Cuesta's forces. The combined Allied force prepared for an assault on Victor's I Corps at Talavera on 23 July. Cuesta was reluctant to agree, and was persuaded to advance on the following day. This delay gave the French time to withdraw. Cuesta sent his army headlong after Victor, to find himself faced by the entire French army in New Castile, Victor having in the meantime been reinforced by the Toledo and Madrid garrisons. The Spanish retreated, while two British divisions advanced to cover their retreat.

On 27 July, at the Battle of Talavera, the French advanced in three columns and were repulsed several times, but at a heavy cost to the British force. Wellesley, ignoring the urgings of Cuesta to proceed to a general attack, decided on a gradual retreat, leaving Talavera on 4 August. He was concerned about the imminent arrival of Soult with his army and was afraid of being cut off from his base in Portugal. The British commander sent the Light Brigade on a dash to hold the bridge over the Tagus River at Almaraz and, on 8 August, Soult's army faced the Spanish army at Puente del Arzobispo. With communications and supply from Lisbon secured, Wellesley considered rejoining Cuesta, but considerable friction had developed between the British and the Spanish (after Talevera the Spanish had abandoned the British wounded to the French), and actions taken by the Spanish forces resulted in Wellesley's strategic position being compromised. The Spanish had promised to provide supplies for the British if they advanced into Spain, but this was not done. The ensuing lack of supplies, coupled with the threat of French reinforcement (including Napoleon himself) in the spring, led to the British decision to retreat into Portugal.

By the summer of 1809, the Spanish Supreme Central and Governing Junta of the Kingdom was coming under harsh criticism over its handling of the war effort. The Spanish people demanded that the ancient Cortes be summoned and the Junta agreed. But it was difficult to restore the old assembly and bring it into session. The Cádiz Cortes would be set up, but until that day arrived the Junta exercised power. Anxious to justify its continued existence, the Junta came up with what it hoped would be a war-winning strategy.

Undeterred by the fact that Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington refused to contribute any British soldiers, the Junta planned to launch a two-pronged offensive aimed at recapturing Madrid. They replaced Pedro Caro, 3rd Marquis of la Romana with Diego de Cañas y Portocarrero, Duke del Parque as commander of the troops in Galicia and Asturias. Del Parque soon massed 30,000 troops at Ciudad Rodrigo with more on the way. South of Madrid, Juan Carlos de Aréizaga assembled over 50,000 well-equipped men in the Army of La Mancha. The main efforts of Del Parque and Aréizaga would be aided by a third force that operated near Talavera de la Reina under José Miguel de la Cueva y de la Cerda, Duke of Albuquerque. The 10,000-man Talavera force was designed to hold some French units in place while the main armies thrust at Madrid.

In the fall of 1809, Del Parque's Army of the Left numbered 52,192 men in one cavalry and six infantry divisions. Martin de la Carrera's Vanguard Division counted 7,413 soldiers, Francisco Xavier Losada's 1st Division had 8,336 troops, Conde de Belveder's 2nd Division was made up of 6,759 men, Francisco Ballesteros's 3rd Division numbered 9,991 soldiers, Nicolás de Mahy's 4th Division comprised 7,100 troops, and Conde de Castrofuerte's 5th Division counted 6,157 men. All infantry divisions included 14 battalions except the 3rd with 15 and the 5th with seven. The Prince of Anglona's Cavalry Division included 1,682 horsemen in six regiments. Ciudad Rodrigo was provided with a garrison of 3,817 troops and there was an unattached 937-man battalion.

With Marshal Michel Ney on leave, Jean Gabriel Marchand assumed command of the VI Corps, based at Salamanca. The corps had been forced to quit Galicia earlier in 1809 and had been involved in the operations in the aftermath of the Battle of Talavera in July. After hard campaigning and a lack of reinforcements, VI Corps was not in a good condition to fight. Furthermore, Marchand's talents were not equal to those of his absent chief. Del Parque advanced from Ciudad Rodrigo in late September with the divisions of La Carrera, Losada, Belveder, and Anglona. Filled with scorn for his Spanish adversaries, an overconfident Marchand advanced on the village of Tamames, 56 kilometres (35 mi) southwest of Salamanca. In the Battle of Tamames on 18 October 1809, the French suffered an embarrassing defeat. The French lost 1,400 killed and wounded out of 14,000 soldiers and 14 guns. Spanish casualties were 700 out of 21,500 men and 18 cannons. After the battle, Del Parque was joined by Ballesteros' division, giving him 30,000 troops. As the Spanish advanced, Marchand abandoned Salamanca and Del Parque's men occupied the city on 25 October.

Marchand retreated north to the town of Toro on the Duero River. Here he was joined by François Étienne de Kellermann with 1,500 infantry in three battalions and a 3,000-trooper dragoon division. Kellermann took command of the French force and marched upstream, crossing to the south bank at Tordesillas. Reinforced by General of Brigade Nicolas Godinot's force, Kellermann challenged Del Parque by marching on Salamanca. The Spaniard backpedaled, giving up Salamanca and retreating to the south. In the meantime, the guerrillas in Province of León became very active. Kellermann left the VI Corps holding Salamanca and raced back to León to stamp out the uprising.

Albuquerque managed to pin down some French troops near Talavera as planned, but when he found out that Aréizaga's army had been cut to pieces at the Battle of Ocaña on 19 November, he withdrew out of reach of the French. Del Parque heard of the march of Godinot's and General of Brigade Pierre-Louis Binet de Marcognet's brigades toward Madrid. Though he had been instructed to join Albuquerque, he instead moved on Salamanca again, hustling one of the VI Corps brigades out of Alba de Tormes. Del Parque occupied Salamanca on 20 November. The French general withdrew behind the Duero and again rendezvoused with Kellermann. Hoping to get between Kellermann and Madrid, Del Parque thrust toward Medina del Campo. On 23 November at that town, Marcognet's brigade returned from Segovia while General of Brigade Mathieu Delabassée's brigade arrived from Tordesillas. At this moment, Del Parque's columns hove into view and there was a skirmish at El Carpio. The French horsemen drove back the Spanish cavalry but were repulsed by Ballesteros' steady foot soldiers fighting in squares. This event prompted Marcognet and Delabassée to retreat.

On 24 November, Kellermann massed 16,000 French troops on the Duero near Valdestillas. Outnumbered, the French prepared to defend themselves. But on this day the Army of the Left received news of the Ocaña disaster. Understanding that this dire event meant that the French could spare plenty of soldiers to track down his army, Del Parque bolted to the south, intending to shelter in the mountains of central Spain. On 25 November, Del Parque slipped away so that Kellermann did not even begin his pursuit until the next day. For two days, the French were unable to catch up with their adversaries. But on the afternoon of 28 November, their light cavalry found the Army of the Left camped at Alba de Tormes.

By the end of November, then, Patriot Spain was in a bad shape. In Catalonia, Gerona was in its last moments; Spain's two largest armies had been shattered; and the British army was preparing to leave the Guadiana (disgusted by what he regarded as the Junta's stupidity, Wellington was convinced that a French march on Lisbon could not be long delayed). To make matters worse, intelligence reports were received of large masses of fresh enemy troops crossing the frontier from France. Scattered as they were along the length of the Sierra Morena, the defenders had no way of stopping the flood that burst upon them on 19 January 1810. In all, some 60,000 French troops – the corps of Victor, Mortier and Sebastiani together with a number of other formations – poured southwards to assault the Spanish positions. Overwhelmed at every point, Aréizaga's men fled eastwards and southwards, leaving town after town to fall into the hands of the enemy. The result was revolution. Abandoning last-minute efforts to turn Seville into another Zaragossa, on 23 January the Junta Central decided to flee to the safety of Cádiz. In light of this situation, the Central Junta dissolved itself on 29 January 1810 and set up a five-person Regency Council of Spain and the Indies, charged with convening the Cortes. Soult cleared all of southern Spain except Cádiz, which he left Victor to blockade. The system of juntas was replaced by a regency and the Cádiz Cortes, which established a permanent government under the Constitution of 1812.

Josefino régime

Main article: Kingdom of Spain (Napoleonic)

Joseph I of Spain

Joseph contented himself with working within the apparatus that he had antiguo régimen whilst at the same time placing responsibility for local government in many provinces in the hands of a variety of royal commissioners. After much preparation and debate, on 2 July 1809 Spain was divided into thirty-eight new provinces, each of which was headed by an Intendent appointed by King Joseph, whilst on 17 April 1810 these intendencies were converted into French-style prefectures and sub-prefectures. Named after their chief towns rather than, as in France, after their dominant geographical features, the new territorial divisions, which were all more or less equal in size, bore little relation to historic units of any sort. The decision to retain the historic names of many old provinces in this fashion was nonetheless a significant concession. In France the départements boasted such names as Loire Inférieure, Manche and Bouches du Rhône.

At the same time, even in the early days so much influence was possessed by the local military commanders that Joseph's agents were able to exercise no power whatsoever, whilst consideration must be given to the impact of territorial alienation. On 8 February 1810, growing irritation with his brother led Napoleon to order that the Basque provinces, Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia should be turned into military 'governments' whose authorities would be independent of those appointed by King Joseph. Two months later, two more such units were created out of Burgos on the one hand and Valladolid, Toro, Palencia and, albeit, Avila on the other, whilst on 14 July Napoleon took the whole of Andalucia out of Joseph's hands and gave it to Soult, who was at the same time given the command of almost all the troops that had taken part in the offensive of January 1810. And mooted as early as October 1810 in an attempt to frighten Joseph into greater ferocity, in February 1812 Catalonia was to all intents and purposes annexed to the French empire (the decree concerned did not use the term 'annexation', but its provisions were such as to leave no doubt as to its implications). In all these cases, the result was the intensification of reform, the French commanders being convinced that the privileged orders were the motor of popular resistance, but, in the trans-ebrine regions at least, under orders from Napoleon to prepare the way for annexation. Reform, then, cannot be analysed from a consideration of the decrees that emanated from King Joseph's Council of State. In the Basque señorios and Navarre, the establishment of military 'governments' led to a full-scale assault on the fueros. A hard-liner with little respect for local sensibilities, the governor of the Basque provinces, General Thouvenot, swept away the three señorios' traditional forms of self-government and gave each of them a small appointed council modelled on that of a French département.

Typical of another is the proclamation on 25 March 1812 which described the gaditano régime as an 'infamous and illegitimate government . . . composed,of the very scum of Spain, dependent on the caprice of an ignorant mob, dominated by British influence, and possessed of no more territory than the prison in which it resides . . . that has deceived the foolish Spaniards who submit to its tyranny by promising them an illusory liberty'. Punished as it was by sequestration of property, escape to the Patriot zone was not a practical possibility except for, say, officials with a secure position in government service, notables with property in the Patriot zone, or young men with a career to make and no family responsibilities. It was therefore inevitable that the French should have been able to obtain at least a measure of acquiescence amongst the propertied classes. Whilst often drawing the line at taking service with the French, and in some instances serving as spies or couriers, they accepted the presence of the occupying forces, and on occasion even struck up friendships with them. Typical of this coexistence is the case of Francisco de Goya, who remained in Madrid throughout the French occupation, painted Joseph's picture and documented the war in the masterpiece of studied ambiguity known as the Desastres de la Guerra. For many imperial officers, indeed, life could be comfortable. The case of the German, Heinrich von Brandt, who was an officer in one of Napoleon’s Polish régiments. Stationed in Aragón after the fall of Zaragoza, he remarks that the French ‘were not as hated as has since been alleged’. With matters made still worse by atrocity and anti-clericalism, many bishops fled their dioceses for the Patriot zone, as many priests and friars preached holy war and on occasion took up arms against the French.

Amongst the liberal, republican, and radical segments of the Spanish and Portuguese populations there was much support for a potential French invasion, despite Napoleon's having by 1807 abandoned many liberal and republican ideals. Even before the invasion, the term afrancesado ("turned French") was used to denote those who supported the Enlightenment, secular ideals, and the French Revolution. Napoleon was to rely on the support of these afrancesados both in the conduct of the war and administration of the country. But while Napoleon – through his brother Joseph, installed as king – made good on his promises to "sweep away" all feudal and clerical privileges, most Spanish liberals soon came to oppose the occupation because of the violence and brutality it brought. Marxian claims that it represents a positive identification on the part of the people with the Napoleonic revolution are impossible to substantiate, the reasons for collaboration being practical rather than ideological.

Emergence of the guerrilla

Juan Martín Díez, El Empecinado

El sometent del Bruc by Ramon Marti i Alsina depicts Catalan guerrillas

The Peninsular War is regarded as one of the first people's war, significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare. It is from this conflict that the English language borrowed the word. The Spanish War of Independence was one of the most successful partisan wars in history. This guerrilla warfare was costly for both sides: did the guerrillas trouble the French troops, but they petrified their own countrymen with a combination of forced conscription and looting. Many of the partisans were either fleeing the law or trying to get rich. Later in the war the authorities tried to make the guerrillas reliable, and many of them formed such regular army units as Espoz y Mina's "Cazadores de Navarra".

The idea of turning the guerrillas into an armed force had both positive and negative effects. Uniform and strict military discipline would stop men from running off into the streets and disappearing from the band; the more disciplined the unit, the easier it was for French troops to catch them when they sprang an ambush. A few partisan leaders joined up with the military authorities; most did so to avoid criminal charges, to retain their effective status of an officer in the Spanish army, or to receive weaponry, clothes, and food.

The guerrilla style of fighting was the Spanish military's single most effective tactic. Most organized attempts on the part of regular Spanish forces to take on the French led to their defeat. Once a battle was lost and the soldiers reverted to their guerrilla roles, they tied down large numbers of French troops over a wide area with a much lower expenditure of men, energy, and supplies.

It was these obscure triumphs – a platoon shot down in an ambush, a courier and his message captured as he galloped across the plain – which made possible the orthodox victories of Wellington and his Anglo-Portuguese army and the liberation of Portugal and Spain.

Mass resistance by the people of Spain prefigured the total wars of the 20th century and inspired parallel struggles by the Russians and Prussians. Tsar Alexander, when threatened with war, rebuked the French ambassador:

If the Emperor Napoleon decides to make war, it is possible, even probable, that we shall be defeated ... But ... the Spaniards have been defeated; and they are not beaten, nor have they surrendered.

In both Spain and Portugal, too, the populace were inured to hardship, suspicious of foreigners and well versed in ways of life - above all, banditry and smuggling - that were characterised by violence and involved constant skirmishes with the security forces. It was, indeed, the conviction of General Bigarre that the bedrock of the entire phenomenon was the 'customs guards and smugglers who covered the whole of the country under the Prince of the Peace', Captain Blaze noting that, as the Spaniards were 'accustomed to extol the exploits of the robbers and smugglers', the chieftains 'have always been in readiness to become chiefs of the guerrillas'. In the same way, it has been claimed that enlightened absolutism had made less progress in Spain and Portugal than elsewhere with the result that the reforms of the new régime grated on them far more than would have been the case. Tantamount to suggesting that resistance was the product of backwardness - or, as the French would have put it, of savagery, ignorance and want of civilisation - this latter argument could be supplemented by arguing that Spain was Catholic and therefore given over ipso facto to obscurantism, superstition and counter-revolution. One here returns, of course, to common French complaints emanating from the French as they grappled with occupying such an independent and spirited Spanish citizen was that with regard to knowledge and the progress of social habits, Spain was at least a century behind the other nations of the continent. The insular situation of the country and the severity of its religious institutions had prevented the Spaniards from taking part in the disputes and controversies which had agitated and enlightened Europe.

But even such bands as fitted the stereotype could not long maintain it. Both Martin Javier Mina and El Empecinado, for example, are supposed to have started with twelve men. Backed by followings of this sort, they could indeed live and fight amongst the populace. Once the twelve men had become several hundred, though, this became impossible, the guerrilla bands tending to assume a semi-permanent status and live off the populace. According to the traditional view, this ought to have posed no problems, but in fact the people as a whole were for the most part not interested in fighting, as witness, for example, the picture presented by the Condado de Niebla at the moment of its occupation early in 1810: All energy and patriotism was gone. The egoism of many landowners… the fear and ignorance of the mass of the people, and the sagacity of the enemy, who had been both buying the hearts of the rich and… terrifying the spirits of the poor, ensured that many pueblos submitted to the yoke of el rey intruso. As for those places that remained free, they suffered from the same egoism, their justices acting in an arbitrary manner that did not recognise… any other law than that of their caprice… From this it followed that in every pueblo many stragglers and deserters were hidden without either the justices or, much less, their parents… making any attempt to get them to return to their regiments.

The existence of such factors is impossible to prove or disprove, but in view of the widespread disaffection which we have already noted the influence of dios, rey y patria must at the very least be doubted. The traditional view, of course, is that they rushed to take up arms in defence of dios, rey y patria – in short, that they were engaged in an ideological struggle – but, setting aside the ecclesiastics, in such exceptional cases as the district of northern Navarre known as La Montaña is there any evidence that this was the case. On the other hand, hatred of the French and devotion to dios, rey y patria were by no means the reason to join the partidas. With the French imposing strict limits on movement and clamping down on many traditional aspects of street life, opportunities to find alternative sources of income were limited, and all the more so as industry was at a standstill and many señores unable to pay their existing retainers and domestic servants, let alone take fresh hands. In short, hunger and despair reigned on all sides. Yet, if because the military record was so dismal in other respects, many Spanish politicians and publicists took exaggerated comfort from the activities of the guerrillas and elevated them to the role of national heroes, whilst the issue was exploited by the important faction determined to argue that the struggle against Napoleon was a veritable ‘people’s war’.

Revolution under siege

Further information: Siege of Cádiz

Cadiz was built at the end of a sand spit five miles long jutting out from a triangular piece of land known as the Isla de Leon. To reach the island an attacker would have to fight his way across a wide strip of creeks and salt marshes known as the Rio Sancti Petri which could be traversed by means of a narrow causeway-cum-bridge known as the Puente de Suazo. As for bombardment, the possible site for a siege battery - a peninsula that half closed the mouth of the great harbour protected by the Isla - was held by troops ensconced at its seaward end in the fort of Matagorda. Batteries and redoubts commanded the entire length of the Sancti Petri; the Puente de Suazo had been blown up; the isthmus was studded with defences; and Cadiz itself protected by massive walls. In the face of these resources, the French had had to confess themselves thwarted. Once a forlorn effort to persuade the garrison to surrender had been rejected, all that could be done was for the French troops that had reached the shoreline (the corps commanded by Marshal Victor) to make camp and embark on an attempt to bombard the city into surrender (in addition, Joseph wrote to Napoleon appealing for naval assistance, but this was never forthcoming, the emperor knowing better than to risk a second Trafalgar). Large numbers of troops and guns were therefore pushed forward to attack Matagorda and this was subjected to so much punishment that the garrison was evacuated on 22 April. With Matagorda in their hands, the French could harass the harbour and isthmus and even shell Cadiz itself. Special mortars of an enormous size were constructed for this purpose at Seville, and the city was thereafter bombarded. The gunners' efforts proved ineffectual and the result was to swell the confidence of the gaditanos and persuade them that they were heroes. With food abundant and even falling in price, there was in fact no hope of success, and that despite both hurricane and epidemic - a great storm destroyed many ships in the spring of 1810, whilst the city was for much of the time ravaged by yellow fever.

Once Cádiz was secured, all eyes could focus on the political situation. In essence, it was dominated by three factors: the instructions that had been left by the Junta Suprema Central y Gubernativa del Reino concerning the convocation of the Cortes Generales; the installation of a new Consejo de Regencia de España e Indias; and the emergence of Cádiz itself as a major player in the political process. Insofar as the first is concerned, on 28 October 1809 the Junta Central had announced that, after a three-month electoral process beginning on the first day of the new year, the cortes would open on 1 March on 1 January 1810 instructions had appeared that the suffrage was to be extended to all male house-houders over the age of twenty-five. Voting was to be public, whilst the electors were to choose not deputies but parish representatives whose job it was to attend district-level assemblies. These would then choose deputies to send to the provincial meetings that would be the bodies from which the members of the cortes would emerge, the number involved being determined by a ratio of one deputy to every fifty thousand inhabitants. Allowed to elect deputies (one in each case) were the provincial juntas and all those towns and cities that had been represented in the cortes of the antiguo régimen. From 1 February 1810 - the date when it first met - the implementation of these various decrees had been in the hands of the new council of regency selected in its death throes by the Junta Central. Composed of General Castaños; the erstwhile minister and president of the Junta of Seville, Francisco Saavedra; Admiral Antonio Escaño; an official of the Ministry of State named Miguel de Lardizábal who had represented his native Mexico in the Junta Central; and the Bishop of Orense (who was then still in Galicia and did not appear in Cádiz until 29 May), this was a conservative body which in theory enjoyed absolute power. As the leading reformer, Argilelles, complained: Its authority was as absolute and arbitrary as that of the governments of the past. There was no remedy against the use of power. The freedoms of speech and of publication… were as chained up as they were before the insurrection.

Nor was this surprising, for the new body was in large part a creation of the amalgam of all the old councils of the Bourbon state set up by the Junta Central known as the Consejo Reunido, were opposed to all forms of political progress. The Junta's leading figure, Francisco Javier Castaños, was much given to dissemblance and compromise, and forswore a second chamber in favour of restoring the various councils brought together in the Consejo Reunido, in the hope that such a move would clip the wings of the new assembly in a fashion that, whilst more subtle, was no less effective. With this matter out of the way, the Consejo de Regencia reserved its energies for matters more related to the war effort. Over the course of the next few months, a series of decrees appeared that limited the power of the Juntas Provinciales still further, established a permanent general staff, formed a new artillery academy in place of an earlier one that had been destroyed when the French captured Seville, and gave the Spanish infantry a new organisational structure that would have eliminated many surplus regiments. At the same time, such aid as was possible was funnelled to the struggling Spanish armies, whilst a conscious attempt was made to improve relations with the British, whose interests in Patriot Spain were now represented (after a brief interregnum in which the embassy had been occupied by Frere's brother Bartholomew Frere) by Wellington's youngest brother, Henry Wellesley.

The Junta agreed that the "overseas kingdoms" would send one representative. These "kingdoms" were defined as "the viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, New Kingdom of Granada, and Buenos Aires, and the independent captaincies general of the island of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Chile, Province of Venezuela, and Philippines" in the Junta's royal order of 22 January 1809. This scheme was criticized in America for providing unequal representation to the overseas territories. Several important and large cities were left without direct representation in the Supreme Central Junta. In particular Quito and Charcas, which saw themselves as the capitals of kingdoms, resented being subsumed in the larger "kingdom" of Peru. This unrest led to the establishment of juntas in these cities in 1809, which were quashed by the authorities within the year. (See Luz de América and Bolivian War of Independence.) Nevertheless, throughout early 1809 the governments of the capitals of the viceroyalties and captaincies general elected representatives to the Junta, although none arrived in time to serve on it.

The French took the Spanish fortified town of Ciudad Rodrigo after a siege lasting from 26 April to 9 July 1810.

For liberal and Marxist historians, by contrast, the picture is very different: far from being an unrepresentative minority who had gained power by foul means, the political movement that became known as the liberals were rather a group who were backed by the full weight of public opinion and a Spanish bourgeois revolution. Traditionalist pamphleteers began to publish newspapers that opposed the liberals, whilst producing a series of biting critiques of Spain’s military performance that rubbished notions of ‘people’s war’ and pressed the idea that the cortes should not waste time on political reform but rather dedicate itself to the war effort. Committed to the fiction that the struggle against Napoleon was a people’s war, they had sought to justify their revolution in military terms.

Third invasion of Portugal

The Battle of Chiclana, 5th March 1811 (1824) captures the fight between British redcoats and the French troops for Barosa Ridge.

Fearing a new French assault on Portugal, Wellesley created a powerful defensive position near Lisbon, to which he could fall back if necessary. To protect the city, he ordered the construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras – three strong lines of forts, blockhouses, redoubts, and ravelins with numerous fortified artillery positions – under the supervision of Sir Richard Fletcher. The various parts of the lines communicated with each other by semaphore, allowing immediate response to any threat. The work began in the autumn of 1809 and the first line was finished one year later. To further hamper the enemy, the areas in front of the lines were subjected to a scorched earth policy: they were denuded of food, forage, and shelter. Some 200,000 inhabitants of neighbouring districts were relocated inside the lines. Thus, making use of the facts, first, that the French could conquer Portugal by conquering Lisbon, and, second, that they could in practice reach Lisbon from the north, it exploited both the Portuguese capital’s geographical situation and the poverty of the Portuguese countryside to the full, whilst at the same time bringing into play traditional responses to invasion in the form of the ordenança and the devastation of the countryside in a scorched-earth policy (a similar tactic had been employed against the Spaniards as 1762). In consequence, despite serious worries about his army, Wellington was confident. As he wrote to Lord Liverpool on 14 November 1809: From all I have learned of the state of the enemy’s force at present in the Peninsula, I am of opinion that unless the Spanish armies should meet with some great misfortune, the enemy could not make an attack upon Portugal; and [that] if events in Spain should enable the enemy to make such an attack, the force at present in Portugal is able to defend that country. If in consequence of the peace in Germany the enemy’s army in the Peninsula should be reinforced, it is obvious that the enemy will acquire the means of attacking Portugal… Even in this case I conceive that till Spain shall have been conquered… the enemy will find it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain possession of Portugal. Until these changes occurred the Portuguese administration was free to resist British influence more or less as it wished, Beresford's position being rendered tolerable by the firm support of the Minister of War, Miguel de Pereira Forjaz. Wellington held him to be the ablest man in Portugal.

The French reinvaded Portugal with an army of around 65,000, led by Marshal Masséna, and forced Wellington back through Almeida to Busaco. The first significant clash on Portuguese soil was at the Battle of the Côa, with the French driving back Robert Crauford's outnumbered Light Division. Masséna moved to attack the held British position on the heights of Bussaco (a 10-mile-long ridge), resulting in the Battle of Buçaco on 27 September. Suffering high casualties, the French failed to dislodge the Anglo-Portuguese army.

Masséna was now cut off from Spain by the militia and the ordenança, tied to one of the worst roads in the entire Peninsula, surrounded by towns and villages from which everyone had fled, and running short of food. A lesser man might well have given up the whole campaign at this point, but the marshal was a determined individual possessed of an outstanding reputation as a commander, and pride alone was therefore enough to keep him going. At all events, large cavalry patrols were soon riding out to examine the countryside, and within a matter of hours an unguarded track had been discovered that led northwards around the Allied line. The failure to block this road is puzzling. Trant’s militia had been sent to hold it, but Wellington’s correspondence makes it clear that the British commander did not believe that they could do so. The best answer would have been to blow it up, but no one had expected Masséna to come via Buçaco. A strong force of regular troops might have done the job, but such a move would have left Buçaco undermanned. In short, by doing the unexpected, Masséna had wrong-footed Wellington, and frustrated his plan to turn back the invasion before it reached Lisbon. The next day, Masséna turned Wellington's flank, and the latter thereupon retired – devastating the countryside as he went – into a fortified position called the "Lines of Torres Vedras".

By 10 October 1810, the British light division and some cavalry patrols remained outside the "Lines". Wellington manned the fortifications with "secondary troops"—25,000 Portuguese militia, 8,000 Spaniards and 2,500 British marines and artillerymen—keeping his main field army of British and Portuguese regulars dispersed in order to meet a French assault on any point of the Lines.

Masséna's Army of Portugal concentrated around Sobral, in preparation to attack. After a fierce skirmish on 14 October in which the strength of the Lines became apparent, the French dug themselves in rather than launch a full-scale assault. When obliged to live off the land the Imperial troops demonstrated a quite remarkable ability to do so, and in this sense were superior to their opponents. Staggered by the resilience of the French army in the desert-like conditions of Portugal, Wellington wrote to Lord Liverpool on 21 December 1810:

It is astonishing that the enemy have been able to remain in this country so long; and it is an extraordinary instance of what a French army can do. It is a fact that they brought no provisions with them, and they have not received even a letter since they entered Portugal. With all our money and having in our favour the good inclinations of the country, I assure you that I could not maintain one division in the district in which they have maintained not less than 60,000 men and 20,000 animals for more than two months.

In late October, after Massena held his starving army before Lisbon for a month, he fell back to a position between Santarém and Rio Maior., where Wellington did not choose to attack him. In March, with supplies exhausted, Massena managed a skillful retreat on Salamanca, with Ney again displaying a savage talent for rear-guard fighting. Following Masséna's withdrawal, Wellington moved the 2nd Division under Lieutenant General Hill, along with two Portuguese brigades and an attachment of Dragoons, across the Tagus to protect the plains of Alentejo—both from Masséna and a possible attack from Andalusia by the French Army of the South. The British suffered a setback at about the same time in the Battle of Fuengirola. On 15 October, a much smaller Polish garrison held off British troops under Lord Blayney, who was taken captive and held by the French until 1814.

During 1811, Victor's force was diminished because of requests for reinforcement from Soult to aid his siege of Badajoz. This reduction in men, which brought the French numbers down to between 20,000 and 15,000, encouraged the defenders of Cádiz to attempt a breakout, in conjunction with the arrival of an Anglo-Spanish relief army of around 16,000 troops under the overall command of Spanish General Manuel La Peña, with the British contingent being led by Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Graham. Marching towards Cádiz on February 28, this force met a French detachment of two French divisions under Victor at Barrosa. Indecisive, the Battle of Barrosa on 5 March was part of an unsuccessful manoeuvre to break the siege of Cádiz, but the cowardice of La Peña made it a fruitless success, and Victor soon renewed the blockade.

Soult came from the south to threaten Extremadura. He captured the fortress town of Badajoz before returning to Andalusia with most of his army. This timid surrender contrasted with the resistance mounted at Girona and Zaragoza: Badadoz's garrison still numbered 8,000 effectives, had a month's ammunition and food, and was expecting a relief column under Beresford. The city's fall crowned a campaign in which, with 20,000 men, Soult had seized two fortress, taken 16,000 prisoners and annihilated the Spanish army in Estremadura. Above all, he was relieved at the operation's speedy conclusion, for three pieces of disturbing information had reached him on 8 March and his presence was required elsewhere.

Stalemate

Spanish commander Joaquín Blake y Joyes.

In March 1811 such a prospect would have been hard to envisage. In Cadiz, true, there had been fresh trouble in that, beguiled by serviles eager to engineer British discontent with the Regency, Henry Wellesley had been tricked into putting forward a plan much favoured by both himself and his eldest brother, the marquess, whereby Wellington would be given the command of the Spanish army and British officers posts in its ranks, in exchange for which Britain would grant the enormous loan which the Spaniards had for some time since seen as the way out of their penury. In political and financial terms alike, this was impractical - gaditano opinion was hostile, whilst Lord Wellesley's enthusiasm failed to win over his Cabinet colleagues. Less maladroit was a follow-up suggestion that the provinces bordering on Portugal should be placed under British authority, this idea, too, being rejected out of hand. With the French still ensconced in Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, the problems which the measures were designed to combat - a repetition of the troubles of the Talavera campaign - remained academic.

An Anglo-Portuguese army led by the British Marshal William Beresford and a Spanish army led by the Spanish generals Joaquín Blake and Francisco Castaños, attempted to retake Badajoz, laying siege to the French garrison Soult had left behind. Soult regathered his army and marched to relieve the siege. Beresford lifted the siege and his army intercepted the marching French. Part of Wellington's army had besieged Badajoz, until Soult forced it to retire on Albuera, where was fought the Battle of Albuera. Soult outmaneuvered Beresford, but could not win the battle, writing later that he had never seen "so desperate and bloody a conflict" and commenting on the steadfastness of the British troops: "There is no beating these troops ... I had turned their right, pierced their centre and everywhere victory was mine – but they did not know how to run!" He then retired his army to Seville.

The allies, reinforced by the arrival of fresh British troops in early 1811, began an offensive. In April, Wellington besieged Almeida. Massena advanced to its relief, attacking Wellington at Fuentes de Oñoro. The French claimed victory, because they won the passage at Poco Velho, cleared the wood, turned the British right flank, obliged the cavalry to retire, and forced Wellington to relinquish three miles of ground. The British claimed victory, because the village of Fuentes was in their hands and their object (covering the blockade of Almeida) was attained. The French, without being in any manner molested, retired. The innate toughness of Wellington's troops and Bessières's failure to support Masséna assisted the Allied effort more than any grand plan. Bessières led the cavalry of the Imperial Guard and refused to obey orders from Massena. After this battle, the Almeida garrison escaped through the British lines by a night march. An infuriated Wellington wrote, "I have never been so much distressed by any military event as by the escape of even a man of them." Napier writes of the events of the events that: "In the battle of Fuentes Onoro, more errors than skill were observable on both sides, and the train of accidents did not stop there. The prize contended for was still to present another example of the uncertainty of war." Masséna, forced to withdraw after an allied victory at the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro (3–5 May), had lost a total of 25,000 men in Portugal and was replaced by Auguste Marmont. Wellington joined Beresford and renewed the siege of Badajoz. Marmont (who had replaced Masséna) joined Soult, and Wellington retired.

The greatest coup of all pulled off by the Spaniards at this time was the work of the Catalans. Thus, aided by three young clerks who were employed by the garrison, on the night of 9–10 April the erstwhile cleric, Francisco Rovira, was able to let himself into the very strong fortress of Figueras at the head of 2,000 men. Because it commanded the main road from Barcelona to the frontier, its loss was not to be tolerated, and, after confused fighting in which Rovira and his men received some rather ineffectual support from troops of the First Army brought up by its latest commander, the Conde de Campoverde, the fortress was besieged (or, to be more precise, blockaded: reckoning that relief was unlikely, the commander of the French Army of Catalonia, who was now Marshal Macdonald, eschewed formal siege operations in favour of starving the defenders into surrender). Defended by irregulars though it was, the fortress hung on for much longer than expected, but on 17 August, with every scrap of food gone, it was forced to capitulate after a desperate attempt at a break-out was foiled. As Macdonald wrote: The unevenness of the ground caused the head of the columns to waver and made their weapons jingle, and this attracted the attention of our advanced outposts… We awaited their approach, and as soon as they opened the attack we threw some hand grenades amongst them… The Spaniards lost a large number of killed, wounded and… prisoners; on our side no one had a scratch. Next day the enemy ran up the white flag… I accorded them the honours of war. The garrison laid down their arms and remained prisoners; out of respect for their bravery the officers retained their swords. The fighting had not even prevented the French from seizing still more ground. Next to feel the weight of the emperor’s armies was the vital city of Tarragona. The chief reason why the Spaniards had for so long been able to maintain a regular army of small a size in southern and central Catalonia, Tarragona was at one and the same time a great port, a major fortress, and the key to the Levante – the last region whose resources remained intact as far as the Patriot cause was concerned, and a very wealthy one at that. The emperor had deemed that it should be taken. Told off for this task was the Army of Aragón under its commander, General Suchet, the latter being given a third of the Army of Catalonia so as to ensure that his operations could not be marred by friction with Macdonald.

Wellington soon appeared before Ciudad Rodrigo. In September, Marmont crowded him back and re-provisioned that fortress. Sorties continued to be made out of Cádiz from April to August 1811, and British naval gunboats destroyed French positions at St. Mary's. An attempt by Victor to crush the small Anglo-Spanish garrison at Tarifa over the winter of 1811–1812 was frustrated by torrential rains and an obstinate defence, marking an end to French operations against the city's outer works. The war now fell into a temporary lull, with the vast, superior French unable to find an advantage and coming under increasing pressure from Spanish guerrilla activity. The French had upwards of 350,000 soldiers in L'Armée de l'Espagne, but the vast majority, over 200,000, were deployed to protect the French lines of supply, rather than as substantial fighting units.

Allied Campaign in Western Spain

British infantry attempt to scale the walls of Badajoz, 1812

The Battle of Salamanca

The Proclamation of the Constitution of 1812 by Salvador Viniegra

Grievous blow as this was, it was made still more dreadful by the fact that the Peninsula had altered in the course of 1811. Wellington was stronger than ever before, possessed of a powerful siege train, and all but unbeatable on grounds of his choosing. The partidas had been reinforced by Spanish regulars and in many cases given a degree of military organisation. And, above all, the French armies were overstretched by occupying huge expanses of territory that had still been in the hands of their opponents in January 1811. But even this is not an end to the matter, for Napoleon compounded his errors by insisting on an offensive policy. Annoyed at the evacuation of Asturias, he directed that it should be reoccupied by the Army of the North, and, whilst Oviedo and Gijón were taken with ease, the result was that the unfortunate Dorsenne had to hold down yet more territory. Asturias was a mere mouthful. Thus, for Napoleon, ‘The great affair of the moment is the capture of Valencia’. No sooner, then, had Figueras fallen, than Suchet was ordered to march on the Levante post-haste: Everything… induces the belief that terror reigns within the walls of Valencia, and that, after… a defeat of the enemy in the open plain, the city will surrender to our arms… Happen what may, your headquarters will be within the territory of Valencia, and as near as possible to the gates of that city, on or about the fifteenth of September next. Any worries Suchet had were swamped by a flood of reassurances. ‘Send an officer to Marshal Suchet’, the emperor told Berthier. ‘Inform him… that the very day that he thought Mina had joined El Empecinado to assist Blake, the same Mina was in the vicinity of Mondragón, being pursued by General Bourke. Tell him that… General Decaen has left to relieve Barcelona… Advise him that the British have 18,000 sick… and are in no state to undertake anything… and that he should therefore launch a powerful attack on Valencia.’ Yet, as even Napoleon recognised, such orders had certain corollaries. In the current circumstances, each fresh advance created the necessity for a fresh garrison, whilst it had fallen to Suchet’s lot to have to deal with some of the most determined guerrilla forces in the entire Peninsula in the form of Espoz y Mina, Durán, El Empecinado and Villacampa. So many troops were needed to face these adversaries, to say nothing of the Catalans, that Suchet could demonstrate to his imperial master that, unless he received external support, Valencia could be gained by losing Aragón.

Wellington renewed the allied advance into Spain in early 1812, besieging and capturing the essential border fortress towns of Ciudad Rodrigo (on 19 January) and, after an assault, Badajoz (on 6 April). The allied army took Salamanca on 17 June, as Marshal Marmont approached. The two forces met on 22 July, when Wellington inflicted a severe defeat on the French in the Battle of Salamanca, during which Marmont himself was wounded.

The emperor wants me to take the offensive ... but his Majesty does not realize that the smallest movement in these parts expends great quantities of resources and of horses ... To make a requisition on even the poorest village we have to send a detachment of 200 men and, to be able to live, we have to scatter over great distances.

— Marshal August Marmont

French autumn counterattack

After the victory at Salamanca, on 22 July 1812 caused King Joseph Bonaparte to abandon Madrid on 11 August. Because Suchet had a secure base at Valencia, Joseph and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan retreated there. As a consequence of the Salamanca campaign, Soult, realising he was soon to be cut off from his supply, ordered a retreat from Cádiz set for August 24, the French were forced to end the near two and a half year long siege Siege of Cádiz. After a long artillery barrage, the French placed together the muzzles of over 600 cannons, to destroy them. While these guns were rendered unusable to the Spanish and British, the Allied forces captured 30 gunboats and a large quantity of vital stores. The French were then forced to abandon Andalusia, for fear of being cut off by the allied armies. In August Wellington entered Madrid (one of several acts that soured relations between the British and the Spanish during the Peninsular War was the destruction of the famous ceramic factory in Madrid, and the wool factory and Roman bridge at Alcantara, by Wellington's troops). Because Suchet had a secure base at Valencia, Joseph and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan retreated there and were joined by Marshals Suchet and Nicolas Soult. Spanish armies defeated the French garrisons at Astorga and Guadalajara.

As the French regrouped, the allies advanced towards Burgos. Between September 19 and October 21 Wellington besieged Burgos but failed to capture it. Together, Joseph and the three marshals worked out a plan to recapture Madrid and drive Wellington from central Spain. Their subsequent counteroffensive caused the British general to lift the Siege of Burgos and retreat to Portugal in the autumn of 1812, then retreating to Portugal pursued by the enemy, losing several thousands of men. Napier writes: The French gathered a good spoil of baggage ... According to muster-rolls, about 1,000 Anglo-Portuguese were killed, wounded and missing ... but this refers to loss in action; Hill's loss between the Tagus and the Tormes was, including stragglers, 400, and the defence of Alba de Tormes cost one hundred. If the Spanish regulars and partidas marching with the two armies be reckoned to have lost a 1,000 which considering their want of discipline is not exaggerated, the whole loss previous to the French passage of the Tormes will amount perhaps to 3,000 men. But the loss between the Tormes and the Agueda was greater, for 300 were killed and wounded at the Huebra; many stragglers died in the woods, and Jourdan said the prisoners, Spanish, Portuguese and English, brought to Salamanca up to the 20th Nov, were 3,520. The whole loss of the double retreat cannot therefore be set down at less than 9,000, including the loss in the siege. Some French writers have spoken of 10,000 being taken between the Tormes and the Agueda, and Souham estimated the previous loss, incl. the siege of Burgos, at 7,000. But the King in his dispatches called the whole loss 12,000, including therein the garrison of Chinchilla, and he observed that if the cavalry generals, Soult [not the marshal] and Tilley, had followed the allies from Salamanca the loss would have been much greater. ... On the other hand English authors have most reduced the British loss to as many hundreds.

As a consequence of the Salamanca campaign, the French were forced to evacuate the provinces of Andalusia and Asturias. For Napoleon losing in Spain in 1812 or 1813 would have meant little had there been a decisive victory in Germany or Russia.

Defeat of King Joseph

By the end of 1812 the Grande Armée that had invaded the Russian Empire had ceased to exist. Unable to resist the oncoming Russians, the French had to evacuate East Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. With both the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia to join his opponents, Napoleon responded by withdrawing more troops from Spain. Taken were a few more foreign units, together with three battalions of sailors who had been sent to assist with the Siege of Cádiz. At some 20,000 men, the numbers were not overwhelming, but even so the occupying forces were left in a difficult position. In much of the area that was under their control – the Basque provinces, Navarre, Aragon, Old Castile, La Mancha, the Levante, and parts of Catalonia and León – their presence was a few scattered garrisons, and even these forces were spread thin. Trying to hold a front line that stretched in a great arc from Bilbao to Valencia, they were as vulnerable to an assault as they had been in 1812, and, with hopes of victory abandoned, the best policy would therefore have been to have fallen back to the Ebro. But such a course of action was more than Napoleon could have stomached. If imperial prestige had always made retrenchment very difficult, in 1813 the political situation rendered it out of the question. With dozens of German princes eyeing the oncoming Russian armies and wondering whether they ought to change sides, the last thing that was needed was a confession of weakness. At the same time, of course, their prestige had suffered a great blow, for on 17 March el rey intruso left Madrid in the company of another vast caravan of refugees.

The following year, Wellington marched 121,000 troops (53,749 British, 39,608 Spanish, and 27,569 Portuguese) from northern Portugal across the mountains of northern Spain and the Esla River, around Marshal Jourdan's army of 68,000 strung out between the Douro and the Tagus. British and Portuguese forces swept northwards in late May and seized Burgos; they then outflanked the French army, forcing Joseph Bonaparte into the valley of the River Zadorra. At the Battle of Vitoria on 21 June, the 65,000 men of Joseph Bonaparte's army were routed by 52,000 British, 28,000 Portuguese, and 25,000 Spaniards. Wellington failed to pursue and the French recovered. Wellington then shortened his communications by shifting his base of operations to the northern Spanish coast, and began operations against San Sebastian and Pampeluna. Soult was given command of all French troops in Spain and advanced through the western Pyrenees, but was repulsed. The Spanish army of Enrique José O'Donnell took Pancorbo on 3 July, with the French troops capitulating. With 18,000 men, Wellington captured the French-garrisoned city of San Sebastián under Brigadier-General Louis Emmanuel Rey after a siege that lasted from 7 July to 8 September 1813 and incurred heavy British losses. The city was sacked and burnt to the ground by the Anglo-Portuguese, an event that infuriated the Spaniards.

The war was not over. For all practical purposes, the Bonaparte kingdom of Spain was dead and buried, but most of France’s troops had escaped intact, with the result that fresh armies were soon gathering beyond the Pyrenees. By themselves, of course, such forces were unlikely to secure more than one or two local victories, but, as Wellington saw all too well, the war in central and eastern Europe that had taken so many French troops could in no sense be taken for granted. Austria, Russia and Prussia might yet be beaten, whilst such were the divisions between the Allies that there was no guarantee that one power or another would not make a separate peace. By giving Britain somewhat more credibility on the Continent, Vitoria had helped a little (although it is not true, as is sometimes claimed, that it was news of the battle that in August brought Vienna into the war), but the thought of Napoleon descending on the Pyrenees with the grande armée was still not one to be regarded with equanimity. As the period 1808–1812 had seen French success in the Peninsula rest on the defeat of Austria, Prussia and Russia, so the period 1813–1814 was to see Allied success in the Peninsula rest on their victory.

Invasion of France

Though heartened by the news that Austria had entered the war and, further, that the Allied armies had at least succeeded in avoiding a decisive defeat in a major clash with Napoleon at Dresden the previous month, British headquarters was filled with misgiving with regard to the eastern powers. As Wellington's brother-in-law, Edward Pakenham, wrote, "I should think that much must depend upon proceedings in the north: I begin to apprehend ... that Boney may avail himself of the jealousy of the Allies to the material injury of the cause." But the defeat or defection of Austria, Russia and Prussia was not the only danger. It was by no means clear that Wellington could continue to count on Spanish support. Invasion seemed to be a rough ride even if Napoleon remained tied up in the east.

Things were not well in the British Army. Summer in the Basque provinces and Navarre is not the season of blazing heat to be found in the rest of the Peninsula, and in 1813 the weather appears to have been bad. With the army drenched by incessant rain, the decision to strip the men of their greatcoats was looking unwise. Sickness was widespread — at one point no fewer than one third of Wellington British troops had been hors de combat — whilst there were many fears as to the army's discipline and general reliability. Straggling had by 9 July become so general that Wellington reported that 12,500 men were absent without leave, whilst plundering had gone on without cease: "We paint the conduct of the French in this country in very ... harsh colours," said Major General Sir F.P Robinson, "but be assured we injure the people much more than they do ... Wherever we move devastation marks our steps." With the army established on the borders of France, desertion had became a problem. Had the units affected been those recruited from deserters and prisoners of war, this would have been bad enough: the French Chasseurs Britanniques, for example, lost 150 men in a single night. But the problem was much more general. Thus: "The desertion is terrible, and is quite unaccountable among the British troops. I am not astonished that the foreigners should go ... but, unless they entice away the British soldiers, there is no accounting for their going away in such numbers as they do."

The allies chased the retreating French, reaching the Pyrenees in early July. Soult, given command of the French forces, began a counter-offensive, dealing the allied generals two sharp defeats at the Battle of Maya and the Battle of Roncesvalles. Pushing on into Spain, the Roncesvalles wing of Soult's army, which was led by the marshal himself, had by 27 July got to within ten miles of Pamplona, to find its way blocked by a substantial Allied force that had taken post on a high ridge in between the villages of Sorauren and Zabaldica. Yet he was repulsed by the allies at the Battle of Sorauren, lost momentum, and was defeated by the Spanish army of Galicia under General Manuel Freire at the Battle of San Marcial (31 August 1813).

On 7 October, after Wellington received news of the reopening of hostilities in Germany, the allies crossed into France, fording the Bidasoa river. On 11 December, a beleaguered and desperate Napoleon agreed to a separate peace with Spain under the Treaty of Valençay, under which he would release and recognize Ferdinand in exchange for a complete cessation of hostilities. But the Spanish had no intention of trusting Napoleon, and the fighting continued.

Marshal Soult was not yet finished. On the contrary, 13 December saw him switch his troops to the right bank of the Nive and launch them against the forces of Sir Rowland Hill. There followed a furious battle. For a while the Allies were in some danger: rain in the Pyrenees had sent a torrent of floodwater down the Nive and swept away their pontoon bridges, whilst the French made considerable progress. As Bell wrote: Every point was attacked to weaken our force and keep us separate, their guns keeping up a terrific fire, knocking the dust out of Saint Pierre… ploughing up the side of the hill, thinning our ranks, and playing Old Harry, having no regard for life or limb… ‘Dead or alive,’ said our chief, ‘we must hold our ground.’ Known as the battle of the Nive, the fighting round Bayonne had been a bloody affair. In all, indeed, over 11,000 men had become casualties. The French losses outnumbered those of the Allies, whilst the gaps in Soult’s ranks were increased by the desertion on the evening of 10 December of three battalions of German troops in response to a secret message from the Duke of Nassau – one of the many German rulers who had switched sides following Leipzig – ordering them to go over to the Allies. In addition to the 1,400 troops who went in this fashion, Soult and Suchet lost the services of all the rest of their German units – another 3,000 men – as it was felt that they must in consequence be disbanded. The Adour’s defenders were depleted, but all incapable of further offensive action. Twice, indeed, the whole of their disposable strength had fallen on a single wing of the army opposed to them, and twice it had been repelled. All Soult could now hope for, in short, was to defend the line of the Adour. As Orthez and Toulouse were yet to show, the armée d’Espagne was still not broken, but all chance of carrying the fight beyond the Pyrenees had gone. By the end of 1813, then, although the French still held northern Catalonia and a series of outposts scattered from Santoña to Peñíscola, barring a stunning change of fortune in the rest of Europe, the Peninsular War had been decided in favour of the Allies. Soult was out of the fight and Suchet too weak to attempt anything, whilst the commands of both marshals were already being plundered for the cadres needed for the new armies that Napoleon was trying to form in place of the forces destroyed at Leipzig. Even had victory been achieved in the Pyrenees, it is hard to see how the French could have continued to maintain a foothold in Navarre and the Basque provinces, let alone reverse the verdict of Vitoria. By the autumn of 1813, indeed, their one hope on the Pyrenean front was that Britain, Spain and Portugal would fall out with one another. Herein lay the rub. Inter-Allied relations were not good, and it is possible that in time the French might have won a great deal. Yet in the event, the Alliance was not found wanting: though the British, Spaniards and Portuguese hated one another, in the end they hated Napoleon still more.

Peace and thereafter

Further information: Mid-nineteenth century Spain

Francisco de Goya’s painting, Tres de Mayo (1814), which depicts French soldiers executing civilians defending Madrid, would help make the uprising of May 2–3, 1808, a touchstone event of the Peninsular War. Notice how the painting emphasizes the man in white striking a Christ-like pose.

French victories of the Peninsular War inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe

King Joseph was cheered by Spanish afrancesados (Francophiles), who believed that collaboration with France would bring modernisation and liberty. An example was the abolition of the Spanish Inquisition. Priests and patriots stirred up agitation, which became widespread after the French army's first examples of repression (such as that in Madrid in 1808) were presented as fact to unite and enrage the people. The remaining afrancesados were exiled to France following the departure of French troops.

The pro-independence side included both traditionalists and liberals. After the war, they would clash in the Carlist Wars, as the new king Ferdinand VII, "the Desired One" (later "the Traitor king"), revoked all the changes made by the independent Cortes, which had been summoned in Cádiz to act on his behalf, coordinating the provincial Juntas and resisting the French. He restored absolute monarchy, prosecuted and put to death everyone suspected of liberalism, and altered the laws of royal succession in favour of his daughter Isabella II, thus starting a century of civil wars against the supporters of the former legal heir to the throne.

The liberal Cortes had approved the first Spanish Constitution on 19 March 1812, which was later nullified by the king. In Spanish America, the Spanish and Criollo officials formed Juntas that swore allegiance to King Ferdinand. This experience in self-government led the later Libertadores (Liberators) to promote the independence of Spain’s American colonies.

Had many officers perished in the uprising of May 1808, but the authority of the army had been reduced and the autonomy of the military estate invaded in an unprecedented manner. Following the uprising new officers and old had found themselves waging a desperate war against a powerful aggressor in the most unfavourable circumstances. Hostile to military discipline, the troops had been prone to riot and desertion, as the populace had done all that it could to resist the draft. Unscrupulous and irresponsible propagandists had created false expectations of victory, whilst unscrupulous and irresponsible politicians had interfered in the conduct of military operations, failed to supply the army with the sinews of war, fomented alternative structures of military organisation that hindered the war effort as much as they assisted it, and made general after general scapegoats for disasters which were often none of their making.

From this it followed that military strength was proportionate to freedom. Hence the decline of all the empires of the past and the prosperity enjoyed by Great Britain: whereas the former had all succumbed to despotism, the British had experienced a steady growth in their political freedom. Regular armies were no match for a free people. Regular soldiers would not fight because they could not hope to improve their lot, whilst the brutal discipline to which they were subjected meant that they could not be expected to show any fervour in the defence of freedom, the latter being a concept which was beyond them. In consequence, the liberal ideal was a citizens’ militia. Would such a force pose no threat to liberty, but it would be fighting for home and freedom. As for the soldiers themselves, they would be better prepared for war by a healthy life in the fields than by the boredom, discomfort and disease of the barracks. A further barrage of historical precedent was laid down to support this conclusion, the Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, the reconquista, the Swiss revolt against the Habsburgs, and the American War of Independence all being cited as proof of the superiority of citizen armies. As if all this was not enough, further testimony to the superiority of the Nation-in-Arms was found in the prodigies ascribed to the Spanish guerrillas and the Voluntarios Distinguidos de Cádiz (though in fact the latter had never done anything more than perform guard duty). To reinforce their argument the liberals drew a comparison between the French and Spanish revolutions. According to their version of events, at the start of the Revolutionary Wars France had possessed a powerful regular army, but she had nevertheless been beaten until she had instigated the levée en masse. In Spain, the opposite had occurred the armed people having everywhere defeated the French until they had been formed into regular armies. In the same way, defeat had been changed into victory in the Russian campaign of 1812 when 'the cabinet war waged by the Russians was converted into a national war by the people taking an interest in their own defence'. Reinforced by a distrust of the executive power that was almost paranoid in its intensity – it was held that the desire to find happiness and self-fulfilment ensured that rulers and governments could not but strive for absolute power – these views ensured that the liberals’ priorities for the armed forces were far more political than they were military. Thus, their objectives were two-fold: to ensure that the struggle against Napoleonic France should not be allowed to deteriorate into a mere cabinet war, and to neutralise the army as a factor in Spanish politics. In short, the liberals’ chief interest lay in making sure that the struggle against Napoleon was a national war waged by the Spanish people, the obvious conclusion in the eyes of the more exalted being that the army should be got rid of in favour of a militia. Thus: Who does not see that a militia composed of diligent and active men made strong by the constant labours of field and workshop, that is free of the corruption… of garrison life, [and] linked to the rest of the people… is more able to suffer the fatigues of war… and at least as capable of… learning the… mechanical science of a soldier? Nor can foreign invasion be avoided through the existence of a regular and permanent military… A daring… enemy will wait for an opportune moment, and then burst in like a torrent when he is least expected, but, if he is attacking a people whose soldiers have abandoned field and workshop to take up the sword, he will be somewhat less likely to succeed than if he were attacking multitudes of lined-up mercenaries. Amongst such men, honour is… the motive for their efforts, whereas… the militiaman is fighting for his liberty, for his laws, for the field that before he was watering with the sweat of his brow, for the beloved who waits to see him return triumphant to reward him with her loving arms.

The argument runs as follows. By intervening in Spain and Portugal, Napoleon involved himself in a struggle that would have been difficult to win at the best of times: so intense was the national spirit of these two countries, the French armies were confronted by a veritable people’s war. As the emperor alleged, "The system that I pursued in Spain… would have been for the good of that country, yet it was contrary to the opinion of the people, and therefore I failed." Two years later, heartened by French difficulties in Spain, both Russia and Prussia considered going to war against Napoleon, whilst in the latter case leaders of the reform movement such as August von Gneisenau added to the pressure by painting pictures of people’s war a la español. Once he had been beaten in Germany in 1813, Napoleon had one hope of survival short of accepting the compromise peace that at this point was still on offer, and that was to mobilise France herself for total war in a manner that had not been seen since the heroic days of 1793 in the hope that resistance might be prolonged long enough for the many fissures in the Allied camp to undermine its commitment to the common cause.

The countryside had been pillaged, subjected to destabilising social change, and plunged into anarchy. And, to cap it all, such means as existed of palliating the situation in humans terms — above all, the Church — had been stripped both of their resources and, in many cases, their very capacity to operate. The Peninsular War, then, gave birth to the violence and popular antagonism that, along with military intervention in politics, were to be nineteenth- century Spain's most pronounced characteristics. As for Portugal her position was more favorable. Revolt having failed to spread to Brazil, there was no colonial struggle to be waged, whilst there had been no attempt at political revolution. Exposing the limitations of eighteenth-century enlightened absolutism, it dealt a heavy blown to the pretensions of the Church and the nobility. Thus, the former had suffered appalling losses in terms of its personnel — as many as one third of the clergy may have died or been killed in the struggle — and been stripped of a considerable part of its physical presence in much of Spain, whilst desamortización, hostility to the tihes and the demands of French and Patriots alike for money had left it denuded of resources.

The Peninsular War signified the traumatic entry of Portugal into the modern age. The Portuguese Court's transfer to Rio de Janeiro initiated the process of Brazil's state-building that produced its independence in 1822. The skillful evacuation by the Portuguese Navy of more than 15,000 people from the court, administration, and army was a bonus for Brazil and a blessing in disguise for Portugal, as it liberated the energies of the country. The Governors of Portugal nominated by the absent king had scant influence because of the successive French invasions and British occupation.

At certain times and in certain places, the French did find themselves facing a people’s war of the sort that has so often been pictured, but the general picture that emerges is one of apathy and disaffection. What is less clear is the issue of whether or not the invaders could have ever won. Setting aside the sine qua non of peace in the rest of Europe, even had they been reduced to Cadiz and Lisbon alone, it is unclear that the Spanish and Portuguese governments would ever have surrendered, for, as Graham wrote, 'We never can have such allies again, bad as their conduct has often been, and . . . much as we have reason to complain of it.' In Wellington the Allies possessed a field commander of almost unequalled calibre. Thanks to his prescience, the French faced a very difficult task, as well as the constant risk that any error that they made would be exploited. But even Wellington was not operating in a vacuum. As many as half his forces were drawn from the remodelled Portuguese army, whilst it is doubtful that even the Lines of Torres Vedras could have saved the Allied cause from the consequences of the collapse of Spanish resistance or the rupture in Anglo-Spanish relations that so often seemed a possibility. Underlying everything, too, was the willingness of the politicians who made up the Portland, Perceval and Liverpool administrations to risk their reputations on a struggle that until quite late on seemed a dubious enterprise, not to mention the loyal support they gave a commander who underestimated their problems, rarely let them into his plans and was always quick to find fault with their efforts.

Notes

a. ^{^} Other names:

• Basque: Iberiar Penintsulako Gerra ("Iberian Peninsular War") or Espainiako Independentzia Gerra ("Spanish War of Independence")
• Catalan: Guerra del Francès ("War of the Frenchmen")
• French: Guerre d'Espagne et du Portugal ("War in Spain and in Portugal") or campagne d’Espagne ("Spanish Campaign")
• Galician: Guerra da Independencia española ("War of Spanish Independence")
• Portuguese: Invasões Francesas ("French Invasions")
• Spanish: Many names, including the francesada, Guerra Peninsular ("Peninsular War"), Guerra de España ("War of Spain"), Guerra del Francés ("War of the French"), Guerra de los Seis Años ("Six Years' War"), Levantamiento y revolución de los españoles ("Rising and Revolution of the Spaniards")

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