Charles J. Esdaile - Peninsular eyewitnesses the experience of war in Spain and Portugal, 1808-1813

Antonio Paos (aged 40), Pascual Picapeu (aged 37), Mariano Ortega (aged 11), Pascual Vicente (aged 66), Tomasa Sevilla (aged 31), Antonio Lapiedra (aged 32), Francisco Fuertes (aged 60), Mara Sanz (aged 28), Mara Josefa Fray (aged 52), Francisco Alfayer (aged 38), Juan Pedradas (aged 64), Manuel Candao (aged 56), Tomasa Ibez (aged 50), Celestina Jordn (aged 23), Jos Fuertes (aged 38), Pablo Fernndez (aged 58), Jos Fuentes (aged 28), Manuel Castillo (aged 60), Juana Alfayed (aged 50), Javiera Navarro (aged 32), Antonio Pedrejas (aged 36), Simona Jordn (aged 54), Joaquina Fuertes (aged 19), Mara Pena (aged 67) and all the other forgotten victims of the Peninsular War. Requiescant in Pacem.

PENINSULAR
EYEWITNESSES

THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR
IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
18081813

CHARLES ESDAILE

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
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Copyright Charles Esdaile, 2008

Unless otherwise stated, all photographs in the plate section are

ISBN: 978 1 84415 191 2

The right of Charles Esdaile to be identified as Author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Sitting in Madrids Parque del Retiro on a warm summer morning one feels a long way from the horrors of war: the sun is shining, the flowers are in bloom, the trees are a mass of green, and there is little to be heard but the song of the birds. Some 200 years ago, however, the scene would have been a very different one. A few yards to the north of where I am sitting now would have stood the bastions and palisades of the great earthen citadel which Napoleon threw up to ensure his control of the Spanish capital, while all around me would have stretched a scene of devastation. At the beginning of the Peninsular War, the Retiro had been the gardens of the royal palace and as such had been characterised by beautiful avenues, extravagant fountains and a complex system of lakes and canals. Within a few years, however, all that had gone. As an English officer brought to Madrid in 1812 remembered, The gardens were entirely neglected: the jets deau no longer acted, and the basins. were entirely empty. The gardens were strewed with fragments of sculpture and mutilated statues, that of Narcissus alone remaining perfect, because it was out of the immediate reach of the destroyers. In short, the whole edifice presented the appearance of the devastations of the Goths and Vandals rather than the visit of the encouragers and protectors of the arts as the French style themselves. Two hundred years on, with Spain on the brink of her celebrations of the bicentenary of the uprising against Napoleon, it is important that such memories are not forgotten. What occurred in the Iberian Peninsula between 1808 and 1814 was the most devastating struggle to have been witnessed in Europe since the Thirty Years War. Out of a total population of no more than 16,000,000, at least 500,000 people died and possibly many more. Add to that the military losses those of the French alone may have amounted to as many as 500,000 men and one is confronted by a tragedy of epic proportions. What is more it is an experience whose scars continue to mark Spain, in particular, to this day: the bitter political divisions that make the country such a troubled place are in some ways as surely the legacy of the Peninsular War as the marks of Napoleons cannon balls that pepper the landmark triumphal arch known as the Puerto de Alcal.

Spain and Portugals struggle against Napoleon, then, is still very much a live issue. But what does this particular book have to offer the reader.? Over the past twenty-five years or more, I have written about the Peninsular War in many guises. I have studied its historiography, its campaigns and its diplomacy; I have looked at the impact it had on Spanish society and politics; I have sought to place it in the wider context of both the Napoleonic Wars and the history of Spain; I have analysed the armies which took part on either side and the irregular combatants who gave the English language the word guerrilla; and now I am even beginning to think about its archaeology But there is one aspect of the struggle that I have never looked at, and that is its humanity. Who were the men and women who peopled this extraordinary episode in Iberian history.? What were their experiences, their hopes, their fears.? And, above all, perhaps, what did they suffer? Aided by the great wealth of memoirs and other material bequeathed us by the conflict, in this book I try to answer these questions. To a certain extent this task has already been undertaken in respect of the British army, but Wellingtons soldiers were by no means the only participants in the Peninsular War, and, for all the privations and hardship which they endured, they were certainly by no means its chief victims. Though material is sometimes lacking, I have endeavoured to do my best to give a voice to those who previously have had none: the defenceless civilians who cowered under bombardment in towns such as Zaragoza and Tarragona, starved to death in the great famine of 1812 and were the universal prey of men in uniform, whether they were British, French, Spanish or Portuguese. It has been a humbling experience, and one that I have found deeply moving. To read, for example, the anguished words of a woman pleading for help the day before she, her husband and her young son were killed in a prison massacre is not a comfortable experience, while it is hard not to feel pain on coming across such stories as that of a little child of no more than two years old who was found by a police inspector in Madrids Calle del Carmen late one evening in 1811: abandoned by his parents or simply lost, he had been crying in the street all day and knew only that his name was Juan. To quote Wilfred Owen, in short, My subject is war and the pity of war; in addressing this theme, I have also constantly had in my mind the words of General Sherman, War is hell and I intend to make it so.

In part, then, this work is a reaction against those who have portrayed the Peninsular War simply as a catalogue of battles and campaigns in which Wellington and Castaos, Soult and Marmont, move this division here and that division there. But from all this it follows that Peninsular Eyewitnesses is also a contribution to the Napoleon debate. One may discuss the reasons why Napoleon decided to intervene in the Iberian Peninsula