Illustrated with 9 maps and 2 portraits The 1807-14 war in the Iberian Peninsula was one of the most significant and influential campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Arising from Napoleon's strategic need to impose his rule over Portugal and Spain, it evolved into a constant drain on his resources. Sir Charles Oman's seven-volume history of the campaign is an unrivalled and essential work. His extensive use and analysis of French, Spanish, Portuguese and British participants' accounts and archival material, together with his own inspection of the battlefields, provides a comprehensive and balanced account of this most important episode in Napoleonic military history. The first part of this classic work provides the background to the war and its origins, and covers the early stages of the conflict. Introducing the subject and many of its main players, this volume recounts the French invasion of Portugal and the forcible deposition of the Spanish royal family, the beginning of Spanish popular resistance, the arrival of the British in the Iberian Peninsula, the first victories of Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), Napoleon's personal participation in the Spanish campaign, the French surrender at Baylen, and Sir John Moore's terrible retreat, ending with his death in the hour of victory at the Battle of Corunna.

It is many years since an attempt has been made in England to deal with the general history of the Peninsular War. Several interesting and valuable diaries or memoirs of officers who took part in the great struggle have been published of late, but no writer of the present generation has dared to grapple with the details of the whole of the seven years of campaigning that lie between the Dos Mayo and Toulouse. Napier’s splendid work has held the field for sixty years. Meanwhile an enormous bulk of valuable material has been accumulating in English, French, and Spanish, which has practically remained unutilized. Papers, public and private, are accessible whose existence was not suspected in the ’thirties; an infinite number of autobiographies and reminiscences which have seen the light after fifty or sixty years of repose in some forgotten drawer, have served to fill up many gaps in our knowledge. At least one formal history of the first importance, that of General Arteche y Moro, has been published. I fancy that its eleven volumes are practically unknown in England, yet it is almost as valuable as Toreño’s Guerra de la Independencia in enabling us to understand the purely Spanish side of the war. I trust therefore that it will not be considered presumptuous for one who has been working for some ten or fifteen years at the original sources to endeavour to summarize in print the results of his investigations; for I believe that even the reader who has already devoted a good deal of attention to the Peninsular War will find a considerable amount of new matter in these pages. My resolve to take in hand a general history of the struggle was largely influenced by the passing into the hands of All Souls College of the papers of one of its most distinguished fellows, the diplomatist Sir Charles Vaughan. Not only had Vaughan unique opportunities for observing the early years of the Peninsular War, but he turned them to the best account, and placed all his observations on record. I suppose that there was seldom a man who had a greater love for collecting and filing information. His papers contain not only his own diaries and correspondence, but an infinite number of notes made for him by Spanish friends on points which he desired to master, and a vast bulk of pamphlets, proclamations, newspapers, and tables of statistics, carefully bound together in bundles, which (as far as I can see) have not been opened between the day of his death and that on which they passed, by a legacy from his last surviving relative, into the possession of his old college. Vaughan landed at Corunna in September, 1808, in company with Charles Stuart, the first English emissary to the Central Junta. He rode with Stuart to Madrid and Aranjuez, noting everything that he saw, from Roman inscriptions to the views of local Alcaldes and priests on the politics of the day. He contrived to interview many persons of importance—for example, he heard from Cuesta’s own lips of his treasonable plot to overthrow the Junta, and he secured a long conversation with Castaños as to the Capitulation of Baylen, from which I have extracted some wholly new facts as to that event. He then went to Aragon, where he stayed three weeks in the company of the Captain-General Joseph Palafox. Not only did he cross-question Palafox as to all the details of his famous defence of Saragossa, but he induced San Genis (the colonel who conducted the engineering side of the operations) to write him a memorandum, twelve pages long, as to the character and system of his work. Vaughan accompanied Palafox to the front in November, but left the Army of Aragon a day before the battle of Tudela. Hearing of the disaster from the fugitives of Castaños’s army, he resolved to take the news to Madrid. To be continue in this ebook...

"Thomas Henry Browne obtained an ensign's commission in the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1805. Some twenty-one months later he began a long service overseas for most of nine years from 1807 to 1816. During this period Browne participated in the seizure of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1807, the Capture of Martinique from the French in 1809, and the ebb and flow of the campaign against Napoleon's army in the Iberian Peninsula, 1810 to 1814. During this latter period he served on Wellington's Headquarters staff in the Adjutant-General's office, and was privileged to observe the great commander from a close point of vantage." "During the period of his overseas service, Browne kept a journal in which he noted in a vivid and trenchant style the day-to-day events occurring in his own and other units, whether in camp, on the march, or in the heat of battle. His staff position enabled him to see the broad sweep of tactical decisions, while his remarkable gifts as an observer bring to life the officers and men who composed the armies of the day, depicting them in a succession of graphic images. Few military journals of any period have captured the soldier's life with such immediacy, like a first-rate war correspondent's report from the battle front." "After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Browne continued to rise in the military hierarchy, retiring with a knighthood and the rank of Lieutenant-General. He died in 1855 aged 68." "In this edition the Journal has been faithfully reproduced by Professor Roger Buckley, who has written a full introduction placing Thomas Henry Browne in the context of his times, evoking the customs and disciplines of the British regular army in the age of Wellington, and sketching in the historical background to the conflicts in which the army was engaged. Each section of the Journal is similarly introduced by the editor, who has also supplied a detailed biographical appendix, full notes and bibliography and a representative selection of illustrations."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved