The Peninsular War and British Power

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was, by a long margin, the longest and most demanding land campaign of the Napoleonic Wars for Britain. It cost some 40,000 British dead, very large sums of money, and the political capital of four successive governments. It also produced the military reputation of the Duke of Wellington, demonstrated that British land forces could match the best of the French army, and contributed to the eventual downfall of Napoleon. The war established a British military tradition that, in its essentials, would persist until 1914. As the historian Hew Strachan has argued, the Peninsular War was “the school of the British army”: the experience of operating a coalition force in a continental theatre shaped British military doctrine for the rest of the nineteenth century.

The Outbreak of the War

The Peninsular War began in 1807, when Napoleon’s forces invaded Portugal in response to Lisbon’s refusal to join the Continental System. French troops under General Junot occupied Lisbon in November 1807, and the Portuguese royal family — Prince Regent João and his court — fled to Brazil. In February 1808 French forces under Marshal Murat invaded Spain on their way to Portugal, and in March 1808 Napoleon forced the abdication of the Spanish royal family and installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne.

The Spanish response, beginning with the popular uprising of 2 May 1808 in Madrid — immortalised by Goya in The Third of May 1808 — transformed the war. Local juntas, claiming to govern in the name of the captive King Ferdinand VII, took control of much of Spain, and they appealed to Britain for assistance. The British government, under the Duke of Portland, decided to intervene. In July 1808 an expeditionary force of about 9,000 men under Sir Arthur Wellesley — later Duke of Wellington — landed in Portugal. Wellesley’s first campaign, including the Battle of Vimeiro on 21 August 1808, drove Junot’s forces from Portugal, but the subsequent Convention of Sintra, which permitted the French to evacuate Portugal in British transports, was deeply unpopular in Britain. Wellesley himself was recalled. The war continued under other commanders.

The Corunna Campaign and the Return of Wellesley

The first major British campaign of the war was the retreat to Corunna of Sir John Moore’s army in 1808–1809. Moore, an experienced and capable commander, advanced into northern Spain to assist the Spanish armies, but the Spanish collapse forced him to retreat through the winter mountains to the port of Corunna, where the British expedition was evacuated by the Royal Navy in January 1809. Moore was killed in the covering battle at Corunna on 16 January 1809, and his burial was commemorated by Charles Wolfe’s famous poem “The Burial of Sir John Moore,” with its haunting line: “We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone — But we left him alone with his glory.”

Wellesley’s assumption of command in April 1809 marked the beginning of a more sustained and successful British effort, supported by substantial Portuguese reforms of the army under William Beresford and by the British subsidy to the Spanish guerrillas and juntas. The British and Portuguese forces, after re-equipping and re-training, took the field against the French in the spring of 1809.

Wellington’s Campaigns

Wellington’s campaigns of 1809–1814 included some of the most famous battles in British military history. The Battle of Talavera in July 1809, in which Wellington defeated the French under Marshal Victor, established his reputation as a careful and effective general. The battles of the Lines of Torres Vedras (1809–1810), in which Wellington constructed a series of fortified lines north of Lisbon, halted a major French invasion of Portugal under Marshal Masséna and turned the strategic situation in the British favour. As Wellington said of the Lines, “I had them to make, and I made them.”

The sieges of Badajoz (March 1812) and Ciudad Rodrigo (January 1812) opened the Spanish fortresses to Wellington’s advance into Spain. The Battle of Salamanca in July 1812, in which Wellington destroyed a French army under Marshal Marmont, was the most decisive British victory of the war and forced the French back to the Ebro. The Battle of Vitoria in June 1813, in which Wellington defeated a French army under King Joseph Bonaparte, ended French rule in Spain and produced the capture of the French baggage train — including Joseph’s carriage, his plate, and a curious collection of erotic paintings, all of which were raffled off in the streets of Vitoria by the British soldiers.

The British Army in the Peninsular War

The British Army in the Peninsular War was a small but professional force, supplemented by Spanish and Portuguese allies and by the King’s German Legion. The British infantry, drawn from a militia system that had been reformed by the Duke of York in the 1790s, was well trained and reliable, and the British cavalry, although less effective, improved steadily during the war. The Royal Artillery, reformed by Sir Thomas Blomefield, was decisive in several sieges, and the Royal Staff Corps, the first army corps of staff officers, was created during the war.

The King’s German Legion, recruited from Hanoverian exiles in Britain, was one of the most effective units in the British army. The KGL fought with distinction in many of the Peninsular battles, including Talavera, Salamanca, and Vitoria, and it provided a substantial part of the cavalry. The Portuguese army, reformed by Beresford, also fought well, and the combined Anglo-Portuguese force was the basis of Wellington’s strategic position. The Spanish guerrillas tied down large numbers of French troops and contributed to the French logistical collapse. The war was, in this respect, a coalition war, and Wellington’s achievement was the management of a coalition as much as the winning of battles.

The End of the War and the Legacy

The Peninsular War ended with Wellington’s invasion of southern France in 1813–1814 and the abdication of Napoleon in April 1814. Wellington’s army crossed the Pyrenees in July 1813 and fought a series of battles in northern Spain, including the Battle of Sorauren and the Battle of San Marcial, before pushing into France. The Battle of Toulouse on 10 April 1814 was the last major engagement of the war, and it was fought two days after Napoleon had already abdicated — news of which had not yet reached the combatants.

The return of Wellington to Britain in 1814 was a national triumph. The Peninsular War had restored British military prestige, and Wellington’s reputation as a general was second to none. The Congress of Vienna, which met later in 1814, restored the Bourbon monarchy in Spain and the Braganza monarchy in Portugal, and the territorial settlement of the Peninsula was confirmed. The Peninsular War had also given British officers and officials extensive experience in dealing with European politics, and this experience would be important in the post-war period.

The war had a significant impact on British military doctrine and the reputation of the British Army. The experience of operating a coalition army in a continental theatre, the development of staff work, and the integration of infantry, cavalry, and artillery would all prove decisive in the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. The Royal Military College at Sandhurst was reformed on the lines of Wellington’s staff training. The post-war period also saw the development of military training based on Wellington’s experience, and the British army of 1854, when it took the field in the Crimea, was a recognisable descendant of the Peninsular force.

The war also produced a substantial body of British writing about Spain and Portugal, including the dispatches of William Napier and the histories of Robert Southey, and the Iberian campaigns became a central element of British military mythology. As Strachan has observed, the Peninsular War established the British military self-image for the rest of the nineteenth century: a small professional army, operating in coalition with European allies, fighting against a continental hegemon. It was an image that would be tested, in different conditions, in 1914 and 1939.

Historiographical Note

The Peninsular War has produced one of the richest military historiographies in the English-speaking tradition. The contemporary accounts — the dispatches of Wellington himself, the histories of William Napier (whose History of the War in the Peninsula appeared between 1828 and 1840), the memoirs of officers who served — were supplemented in the late nineteenth century by the more critical work of the professional military historians. The twentieth century saw the work of Charles Oman, whose three-volume History of the Peninsular War (1902–1930) remains the most comprehensive account in English. The more recent scholarship, of which David Gates, Charles Esdaile, and John Keegan are the most distinguished representatives, has produced a more nuanced picture: a coalition war of unusual complexity, in which Wellington’s strategic skill was as important as his tactical ability, and in which the Spanish and Portuguese contribution has been seriously underestimated by British historians. The Peninsular War, in this revisionist view, was a victory for the coalition as a whole, and Wellington was its indispensable but not its sufficient cause.

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