Charles Esdaile - The Peninsular War: A New History

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

For Martin Blinkhorn, who first put me on the road, and Pilar Bravo Lled, without whom I would still be on it.

At first sight a new history of the Peninsular War the great struggle that convulsed the Iberian Peninsula between 1808 and 1814 following its invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte may appear superfluous. After all, in Britain, France, Portugal and Spain alike, a series of imposing histories of the war have been published that appear to leave little room for anything other than derivative pot-boilers. In fact a fresh work is sorely needed. Part of the problem is that this great weight of historiography now shows its age very badly. As old history written very much in terms of battles, campaigns and great men, it is blind to the fresh currents of historical work that for at least the last fifty years have been revolutionising our understanding of the past. At the same time, it is disfigured by a combination of national myth, cultural prejudice and political partisanry. In Britain, for example, the Duke of Wellington so dominates the scene that many English-language histories of the Peninsular War turn out to be mere recitations of his victories. In France we find a deep desire to explain the conflict in terms of the Napoleonic legend. And in Spain and Portugal a succession of liberals, neo-absolutists, authoritarian nationalists and Marxists have all sought to hijack the war for their own purposes.

Viewed as a subject in its own right, then, the Peninsular War deserves fresh consideration. But the conflict cannot just be viewed in this fashion. A vital episode in the history of modern Spain and Portugal, it was also a part of the wider Napoleonic Wars. If this aspect of the question is considered, a fresh history of the struggle can be seen to be still more justified. With the publication of a succession of new works that have redefined our understanding of Napoleon and his wars, there is clearly room for a reevaluation of the part played by the Peninsular War. Why, for example, did the emperor intervene in Spain and Portugal? Why was he defeated there? And, above all, to what extent did the Iberian struggle contribute to the formation of the great coalition that overthrew Napoleon in 1814? As for Spain and Portugal, meanwhile, a serious gap remains in their historiography. Whilst a massive growth of interest in local history has greatly enriched our understanding of such subjects as conscription, la guerrilla, the nature of political authority and the impact of French reform, little of this material has been synthesised even for the benefit of Iberian audiences, let alone made available to readers lacking the benefits of Spanish and Portuguese. Still worse, perhaps, the few general works that exist on the subject are now increasingly dated, being dominated by a fascination with concepts whose validity is at the very least open to serious question. If the idea of 1789 as a bourgeois revolution has been comprehensively demolished, for example, is it really possible to go on making use of the same language when it comes to 1808?

Last but not least, a review of the historiography of the Peninsular War suggests that there is a strong need to pull military and political treatments of the subject together. If historians such as Oman were woefully ignorant of the political context of battle, so historians such as Artola have been just as ignorant of the military context of reform. War and politics go hand in hand. Britains predominance, for example, cannot be understood without a discussion of the nature of the uprising of 1808, the response of the Iberian peoples to the war against Napoleon, and the social and economic background against which the struggle took place. Yet, by the same token, neither the triumph of the Spanish liberals, nor the restoration of Spanish absolutism, nor the place of the Peninsular War in the history of Iberia as a whole, can be understood without a grasp of the conflicts battles and campaigns, or, more broadly, the military experience which they afforded. Self-evident as all this is, the failure of generations of historians to blend the military with the civil may seem somewhat surprising. In fact, it was all but inevitable. Deeply hostile to, and, indeed, prejudiced against, military history, the academic community has on the whole surrendered its study to writers who lack the sources, languages, institutional support and intellectual formation necessary to see beyond the smoke and dust of battle. In recent years things have begun to change a succession of academics have, for example, transformed our knowledge of peoples war in France but with regard to Spain and Portugal the process has as yet hardly begun. Hence the need for a new general history. Whether this will be any more successful than its predecessors is, however, another matter.

* * *

A book that has been some twenty years in the making incurs far more debts of gratitude than any author can ever repay, not least to the various sources of research funding in this case, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the University of Southampton and the University of Liverpool that have made it possible. At the head of the list of people, perhaps, comes Simon Winder and Ellah Allfrey at Penguin, without whom it would not have seen the light of day, and Martin Blinkhorn at the University of Lancaster, who first pointed me in the direction of the Peninsular War. Great encouragement, too, came from Christopher Allmand, whose years as my Head of Department at the University of Liverpool were marked by much patience and sympathy. The staff of all the libraries and archives at which I have worked have without exception been kindness and helpfulness themselves, but in this context I should particularly like to thank Christopher Woolgar, Karen Robson, Sue Donnelly and Mary Cockerill at the University of Southampton; Ian Jackson at the University of Liverpool; Nieves Snchez Hidalgo, Estrella Valentn-Fernndez Fernndez, Inmaculada Martn Moz, Amalia Jimnez Morales, Ana Sanz Robles, Jesus Rodrguez Izquierdo, Maribel Baenas Prez, Paqui Mateo Macias, and Yolanda Ruiz Estebn at the Biblioteca Nacional; and, above all, the gracious Pilar Bravo Lled of the Archivo Histrico Nacional, whose matchless generosity at a moment of total technological failure not only far surpassed the call of duty, but stands as the very acme of the warmth that I have experienced at the hands of so many people in Spain. Others whom I should like to remember in this context include Leopoldo Stampa of the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Marta Requena, Concha Bocos, Rafael Agasagasti, William and Sonia Chislett, Emilio de Castro, Dolores Schilling, Jo Klepka, Enrique Mardones, Fernando Fanjul, Antonia Rodrguez, Jesus Maroto, Jos Mara Espinosa de los Monteros, Santiago Nistal and Maribel Piqueras. Also worthy of note here are my fellow researchers, Azucena Pdraz Marcos, Nuria Carmena Jimnez, Leonor Hernndez Enviz, Grahame Harrison, Susan Lord, Mari-Cruz de Carlos (to whom I am indebted not just for much friendship and hospitality, but for her assistance with the illustrations) and Satoko Nakajima, whose company has provided me with insight and relaxation alike. And, in the publishing world, I owe many thanks to Lionel Leventhal of Greenhill Books, not just for his great personal generosity, but also for his sterling efforts to bring the memoir literature of the Napoleonic Age to the attention of a wider public.