.svg.html){kind=small}
.svg.html){kind=small}
The Peninsular War or Spanish War of Independence[3] was a contest 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 began when French armies invaded Portugal in 1807 and Spain in 1808 and lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814.
Spain's liberation struggle marked one of the first national wars[4] and large-scale guerrilla conflicts, from which the English language borrowed the word.[5] Its success was in part decided by the exploits of Spanish guerrilleros and the inability of Napoleon Bonaparte's large armies to pacify the people of Spain.[6]
Throughout the war, British and Portuguese armies defended Portugal and staged diversionary campaigns against French forces while guerrillas bled the occupiers. Together, the regular and irregular allied forces prevented Napoleon's marshals from subduing the rebellious Spanish provinces.[7] French units in Spain, though often victorious in battle, were always in danger of being cut off and overwhelmed by the partisans, and the Spanish army, though driven to the peripheries, could not be stamped out.[8] In the final years of war, with France gravely weakened following Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Wellington's allied army pushed across Spain from Portugal and liberated Madrid. Eventually, the exhausted French forces withdrew across the Pyrenees.
War and revolution against Napoleon's occupation led to the Spanish Constitution of 1812, later a cornerstone of European liberalism.[9] The burden of war destroyed the social and economic fabric of Portugal and Spain and ushered in an era of turbulence, instability, and economic crisis. 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 Spain's American colonies and the independence of Brazil from Portugal.
Contents
|
[edit] Background
-
For more details on this topic, see Enlightenment Spain.
In 1806, while in Berlin, Napoleon declared the Continental Blockade, forbidding British imports into continental Europe.[10] 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, now free from obligations in the east, Napoleon decided to capture the Iberian ports.[11]
On October 27, 1807, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, splitting Portugal into three kingdoms: the new Kingdom of Northern Lusitania, the Algarve (expanded to include Alentejo), and a rump Kingdom of Portugal.[12] 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. At the same time, General Dupont was sent in the direction of Cádiz and Marshal Soult towards Corunna.
Spain initially requested Portugal's alliance against the incoming French armies, but later secretly agreed with France that, in return for its 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.
The Portuguese army was positioned to defend the ports and the coast from a French attack, and on December 1 Lisbon was captured with no military opposition. The escape on November 29 of the Portuguese Queen Maria I 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), enabled John VI to continue to rule over his overseas possessions, including Brazil. This was a major setback for Napoleon, who wrote, C'est ça qui m'a perdu ("This was what defeated me.").[13]
[edit] Invasion by stealth (February–July 1808)
Under the pretext of reinforcing the Franco-Spanish army occupying Portugal, French Imperial troops began filing into Spain, where the populace greeted them with enthusiasm in spite of growing diplomatic unease. In February 1808, Napoleon ordered the French commanders to seize key Spanish fortresses, and in doing so he had officially turned on his ally.[14] A French column, disguised as a convoy of wounded, took Barcelona on February 29 by persuading the authorities to open the city's gates.[15] Many commanders were not particularly concerned about the fate of the ruling regime, nor were they in any position to fight. (When Brigadier Alvarez garrisoned the Barcelona citadel against the French, his own superiors ordered him to stand down.)[citation needed]
The Spanish Royal Army of 100,000 men found itself paralysed: under-equipped,[16] frequently leaderless, confused by the turmoil in Madrid, and scattered from Portugal to the Balearic Islands. Fifteen thousand of its finest troops, (General 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 Blake's troops, and Andalusia, under Castaños. The French were consequently able to seize much of north-eastern Spain by coups de main, and any hope of turning back the invasion was stillborn.
To secure his gains, Napoleon pursued a series of intrigues against the Spanish royal family. A coup d'état instigated by the Spanish aristocrats forced Charles IV from his throne and replaced him with his son Ferdinand. Napoleon removed the royals to Bayonne and forced them both to abdicate on May 5, handing the throne to his brother Joseph. A puppet Spanish council approved the new king, but the usurpation provoked a popular uprising that eventually spread throughout the country. Citizens of Madrid rose up in rebellion against the French occupation on May 2, slew 150 French soldiers, and were not put down until Murat's elite Guard and mameluk cavalry crashed into the city and trampled the crowds.[17]
The next day, immortalized by 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, with no military effect but to strengthen the resistance; soon afterwards, bloody, spontaneous fighting known as guerrilla ("little war") erupted in much of Spain; the term "guerrilla" has been used ever since to describe such combat.[18] The tiny province of Asturias rose up in arms, cast out its French governor on May 25 and "declared war on Napoleon at the height of his greatness."[19] Within weeks, all the Spanish provinces had followed its example.[20] Mobs butchered 338 French citizens in Valencia. Every French ship of the line anchored at Cádiz was bombarded and captured.[21] Napoleon had unwittingly provoked a total war against the Spaniards, a mistake from which the French Empire would never truly recover.[22]
The deteriorating strategic situation forced France to increase its military commitments – in February, Napoleon had boasted that 12,000 men could conquer Spain;[23] by June, 165,120 troops were rushing into the country in an effort to control the crisis.[24] The main French army of 80,000 men held only a narrow strip of central Spain stretching from Pamplona and San Sebastián in the north through to Madrid and Toledo to the south. The French in Madrid took shelter behind an additional 30,000 troops under Moncey. Junot, meanwhile, stood stranded in Portugal, cut off by 300 miles (480 km) of hostile territory.
From Murat's optimistic reports, Napoleon believed the uprisings would die down and the country settle into order if his brother held on to the throne in Madrid while French flying columns seized and pacified Spain's major cities. To this end, General Dupont led 24,430 men south toward Seville and Cádiz; Marshal Bessières moved into Aragón and Old Castile with 25,000 men, aiming to capture Santander with one hand and Saragossa with the other; General Moncey marched toward Valencia with 29,350 men; and General Duhesme marshalled 12,710 troops in Catalonia and put Gerona under siege.[25] Historians have concluded that Napoleon, having no respect for the "insolent" Spanish militias which everywhere opposed him,[26] tried to do too much with too little.
The signs of trouble came quickly: Catalan militia (somatén) virtually overran Barcelona, and French units attempting to break the ring were turned back at the Bruc with heavy casualties. Gerona twice resisted all efforts to conquer it.[27] At Saragossa, French overtures for an honorable capitulation met with the laconic reply, "War to the knife."[28] General Palafox and the Spaniards defied the French for three months, fighting inch by inch, corp à corp in the streets, and finally forcing Lefebvre to lift the siege in August and limp away in defeat. 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.[29] After storming and sacking Cordoba, Dupont, cowed by the mass hostility of the Andalusians, broke off his offensive and retired to Andujar.
Only in the north did the French find a measure of success. In June, General Lasalle's cavalry trampled General Cuesta's small, improvised army at Cabezón and unbarred the road to Valladolid. When Bessières' march on Santander was checked by a string of partisan attacks in July, the French turned back and found Blake and Cuesta with their combined army atop Medina del Rio Seco. The Spanish generals, at Cuesta's insistence, were making a dash towards the vulnerable French supply lines at Valladolid. The two armies deployed on July 14, Cuesta unwisely leaving a gap between his troops and Blake's. The French poured into the hole and, after a sharp fight against Blake, swept the motley Spanish army from the field, putting Old Castile firmly back in Napoleon's hands.
At a stroke, Bessières' victory salvaged the strategic position of the French army in northern Spain. The road to Madrid lay open to Joseph, and the failures at Girona, Valencia, and Saragossa were forgotten; all that remained was to reinforce Dupont and allow him to force his way south through Andalusia. A delighted Napoleon asserted that "if Marshal Bessières has been able to beat the Army of Galicia with few casualties and small effort, General Dupont will be able to overthrow everybody he meets."[30] Just a few days later however, Dupont was sorely defeated at Bailén and had to surrender his entire Army Corps to General Castaños.
The catastrophe was total. With the loss of 24,000 troops, Napoleon's military machine in Spain abruptly collapsed. Joseph and the French command panicked and ordered a general retreat to the Ebro, abandoning Madrid and undoing all of Bessières' hard-fought gains. Europe trembled 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.[31]
[edit] Retreat from Portugal (August 1808)
Before the Peninsular War, British military operations on mainland Europe had been marked by bungling half-measures and a series of failures (the 1809 Walcheren expedition being the last of these). The British Army was not large enough to operate on its own against the French, and without strong allies, Britain had been forced to withdraw from Europe. On 18 June, the Portuguese uprising broke out. The popular uprisings in Portugal and Spain encouraged the British to commit substantial forces once again and British propaganda was quick to capture the novelty of the situation; for the first time, peoples, not princes, were in rebellion against the "Great Disturber".
In August 1808, British forces (including the King's German Legion) landed in Portugal under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Wellesley checked Delaborde's forces at Roliça on August 17, while the Portuguese Observation Army of Bernardino Freire contained Loison. On August 20, the Anglo–Portuguese held their line at the Vimeiro and repulsed Junot. Wellesley, however, was considered too junior an officer to command the newly-reinforced expedition to Portugal and was replaced by Harry Burrard, who proceeded to grant Junot very favourable armistice terms, allowing for his unmolested evacuation from Portugal – courtesy of the Royal Navy – under the controversial Convention of Sintra in August. The British commanders were ordered back to England for an inquiry into Sintra, leaving Sir John Moore to head the 30,000-strong British force, supplied, convoyed, and protected by the Royal Navy.
Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood's Mediterranean Fleet bottled up the remaining French fleet, stationed at Toulon since the disaster of Trafalgar. In June, General La Romana orchestrated a remarkable escape from Denmark, via Gothenburg, by slipping the better part of his Division of the North aboard a British squadron, which set sail for Santander.[32] 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 conspicuously involved in the defence of Rosas; Lord Cochrane held a cliff-top fortress against the French for nearly a month, destroying it when the main citadel capitulated to a superior French force.[33]
[edit] Napoleon's campaign (October 1808–January 1809)
Bailén and the loss of Portugal convinced Napoleon of the peril he faced in Spain. Deeply 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."[34] 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.
However, no attack was forthcoming. The Spanish social fabric, shaken by the shock of rebellion, gave way to its crippling social and political tensions; the patriots stood divided on every question and their nascent war effort suffered accordingly. 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,[35] and in some cases proved almost as dangerous to each other as to the French.[36] The British army in Portugal, meanwhile, was itself immobilized by logistical problems and bogged down in administrative disputes, and did not budge.
Consequently, months of inaction passed at the front, the revolution having "temporarily crippled Patriot Spain at the very moment when decisive action could have changed the whole course of the war."[37] 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.[38] 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? Certainly 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 Bonaparte[39] |
||
Napoleon led the French on a brilliant[40] 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."[41]
In the west, however, one Spanish wing slipped the noose when Marshal Lefebvre failed to encircle the Army of Galicia after a premature and indecisive attack at Pancorbo; General Blake drew his artillery back to safety and the bloodied Spanish infantry followed in good order. Lefebvre and Victor offered a careless chase that ended in humiliation at Valmaseda where their scattered troops were roughly handled by La Romana's newly repatriated Spanish veterans and narrowly 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 and Walloon Guards stood their ground in vain and were chewed up by Lasalle and his sabreurs. Marshal Lannes with a powerful force then smashed through the tottering Spanish right wing at Tudela on November 23, routing Castaños and adding a new inscription to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Finally, Blake's isolated army did an about-face on November 17 and dug in at Espinosa. His lines shook off French attacks for a day and night of vicious fighting before cracking the next day. Blake again outmarched Soult and escaped with a rump of the 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 and what little remained of Spain's armies.
The mountains hardly slowed Napoleon at all: at Somosierra pass on November 30, his Polish and Guard cavalry squadrons made an heroic charge through raking fire to overrun General San Juan's artillery emplacements. Within hours, the Emperor had forced the pass: San Juan's militias gave way before the relentless French infantry, while the Spanish royal artillerymen stuck by their guns and fought to the last. French patrols reached Madrid on December 1 and entered the city in triumph on December 4. Joseph Bonaparte was restored to his throne. San Juan retreated west to Talavera, where his mutinous conscripts shot him before dispersing.
General John Moore's small British army appeared on the scene, surprising a body of French cavalry at Sahagun in a confused attempt to save Madrid. Alerted to his whereabouts, the Imperial army forced Moore into a precipitate, disorderly retreat punctuated by stubborn rearguard actions at Benavente and Cacabelos. La Romana dutifully marched his tattered army to cover his ally's retreat, but while the British troops managed to escape to the sea at A Coruña after fending off a strong French attack, the Spaniard had no escape and was defeated by Soult at Mansilla. Some 26,000 sickly troops eventually reached Britain, 7,000 men having been lost over the course of the expedition.[42] Moore, killed while directing the defence of Coruña, remains buried in Spain under a monument constructed by Soult.
In Catalonia, Napoleon fed his faltering army strong reinforcements as early as October 1808, ordering Marshal St. Cyr with 17,000 men to the relief of Duhesme in Barcelona. Rosas fell to the French at the end of November, opening the path south for St. Cyr, who bypassed Girona and, after a remarkable forced march, fell upon and destroyed part of the Spanish army at Cardedeu, near Barcelona (December 18). St. Cyr and Duhesme chased the retreating Spaniards under General Reding, capturing 1,200 men at Molins de Rey. In February 1809, Reding led a reconstituted army against the French right wing and, after vigorous marching and countermarching, took a stand at Valls only to be ridden down and killed by French cavalry.
Only at Saragossa, still scarred from Lefebvre's bombardments that summer, was the Imperial charge temporarily halted once again. The French invested the city on December 20. 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, behind the walls of Saragossa, proved unmovable.
Palafox's second epic defence brought the city enduring national and international fame.[43][44] 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, at others putting their own homes to the torch. Nearly all who stood with Palafox met their deaths,[45] but for two months, the Grande Armée did not set foot beyond the Ebro's shore. On February 20, 1809, the French left behind burnt-out ruins filled with 64,000 corpses.[46][47] After only a little more than two months in Spain, Napoleon returned command to his marshals and went back to France.
[edit] Portuguese frontier (1809)
In March, Marshal Soult initiated the second invasion of Portugal through the northern corridor. Initially repulsed in the Minho river by Portuguese militias, he then captured Chaves, Braga and, on March 29, 1809, Porto. However, the resistance of Silveira in Amarante and other northern cities isolated Soult in Porto. Miguel Pereira Forjaz, the Secretary of War, rebuilt and reformed the Portuguese army with British aid and arms. In a first phase some 20,000 were called to the regular army and 30,000 to militias.[48] Wellesley returned to Portugal in April 1809 to command the Anglo–Portuguese forces. He strengthened the British army with the recently formed Portuguese regiments organized by Forjaz and the Governors of the Realm and adapted by General Beresford to the British way of campaigning. These new forces turned Soult out of Portugal at the Battle of Grijo (May 10–May 11) and the Second Battle of Porto (May 12). All other northern cities were recaptured by Silveira.
With Portugal secured, Wellesley advanced into Spain to unite with the General Cuesta's forces. The combined allied force prepared for an assault on Victor's I Corps at Talavera, July 23. Cuesta, however, was reluctant to agree, and was only persuaded to advance on the following day.[49] The delay allowed the French to withdraw, but Cuesta sent his army headlong after Victor, and found himself faced by almost the entire French army in New Castile – Victor had been reinforced by the Toledo and Madrid garrisons. The Spanish retreated precipitously, necessitating two British divisions advancing to cover their retreat.[citation needed] The next day, July 27, the French advanced in three columns and were repulsed several times throughout the day by British infantry in line. The Battle of Talavera was a costly victory that left the allies precariously exposed, so they retreated westwards, abandoning several thousand of their own wounded to the Spanish who transferred them to the French. Although the Spanish had promised food to the British if they advanced into Spain, not only was no food forthcoming, but Spanish troops threatened to pillage any town that sold food to their allies, forcing the British to continue retreating back to Portugal.[citation needed]
After his disappointing experience, and fearing a new French attack, Wellesley made the decision to strengthen Portugal's defences. To protect Lisbon, he took a plan from Major Neves Costa and ordered the construction of a strong line of 162 forts along key roads and entrenchements and earthworks, the Lines of Torres Vedras.
[edit] Stalemate (1810–1811)
The French reinvaded Portugal in July 1810 with an army of around 60,000 led by Marshal Masséna. The first significant clash was at the Battle of Coa. Later on, Masséna took "the worst route in Portugal." At the Battle of Buçaco on September 27, he suffered a tactical defeat with a careless attack on a strong position, but he soon forced the allies to retreat to the Lines. The fortifications were so impressive that, after a small attack at Sobral on October 14, a stalemate ensued. As Charles Oman wrote, "On that misty October 14th morning, at Sobral, the Napoleonic tide attained its highest watermark, then it ebbed." The Portuguese population had subjected the area in front of the lines to a scorched earth policy and the French were eventually forced to withdraw due to disease and a lack of food and other supplies. The British suffered a setback just the next day in the Battle of Fuengirola. On October 15, a much smaller Polish garrison held off British troops under Lord Blayney, who was subsequently taken captive and held by the French until 1814.
