This is a book about the ruination of Spain and Portugal during the
six years between 1808 and 1814, when those two countries were torn
apart by warring armies that descended on them from the rest of
Europe, and the way in which the British generals Moore and
Wellington used the wars as a rehearsal ground for a later attack
on Napoleonic France. The tales of the great battles of the
Peninsular War have been often told and re-told, and from every
point of view - Britain cheers on the Great Duke while France looks
at the scene from the point of view of Napoleon, and Spanish and
Portuguese historians have had almost as many points of view as
there have been writers. Liberals, Marxists and historians of every
shade of opinion in between have tugged this way and that with very
different theories. Esdaile has tried to impose some kind of order
on the picture, looking at the untidy conflict, with its guerrilla
warfare and the slaughter of over a million people, from a
viewpoint that comprehends every angle, and attempts to answer such
knotty problems as the real reason for Napoleon's intervention in
the war, the basis of the defeat of his highly trained and
competent army - and the way in which the campaign contributed to
his final subjugation in 1814. He deals also with the political and
social scene (religion, as usual, was largely responsible for the
worst atrocities of the campaigns), and with the social, political
and financial scene that not only forms a background to the
battles, but largely shapes them. Every great political and
military campaign profits from a re-examination every 50 years or
so; this book is an excellent example of how a modern historian,
with a little more distance from his subject than his predecessors,
can shed light on a confused scene, and make it comprehensible for
a new generation. (Kirkus UK)
The brutal conflict that raged across Spain and Portugal between 1808 and 1814 was one of the most devastating episodes of the Napoleonic Wars. It made Wellington and his redcoats heroes, crushed Napoleon’s army – and set the scene for his ultimate downfall. Yet the Peninsular War was, above all, an Iberian tragedy: where a once-invincible imperial power was plunged into terror and over a million were slaughtered, leaving a bitter legacy for years to come. This gripping book draws on the accounts of generals, soldiers and guerrilla fighters to take us into the heart of one of the bloodiest battles in European history.
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