Napoleon's War in Spain

Napoleon's War in Spain PDF Author: J. Tranié
Publisher: Arms & Armour Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description

Napoleon's War in Spain

Napoleon's War in Spain PDF Author: J. Tranié
Publisher: Arms & Armour Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description


Napoleon’s Cursed War

Napoleon’s Cursed War PDF Author: Ronald Fraser
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 183976788X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 657

Get Book Here

Book Description
A magisterial history of “Napoleon’s Vietnam”, by the highly acclaimed historian of Spain In this definitive account of the Peninsular War (1808–14), Napoleon’s six-year war against Spain, Ronald Fraser examines what led to the emperor’s devastating defeat against the popular opposition—the guerrillas—and their British and Portuguese allies. As well as relating the histories of the great political and military figures of the war, Fraser brings to life the anonymous masses—the artisans, peasants and women who fought, suffered and died—and restores their role in this barbaric war to its rightful place while overturning the view that this was a straightforward military campaign. This vivid, meticulously researched book offers a distinct and profound vision of “Napoleon’s Vietnam” and shows the reality of the disasters of war: the suffering, discontents and social upheaval that accompanied the fighting. With a new Introduction by Tariq Ali.

Napoleon's Peninsular War

Napoleon's Peninsular War PDF Author: Paul L Dawson
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 152675410X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 463

Get Book Here

Book Description
A renowned historian captures the French experience of the Peninsular War through soldiers’ unpublished memoirs and eyewitness accounts. While much has been written about the British campaigns of the Peninsular War, surprisingly little has been published in English on their opponents, the French. Now, using previously unseen material from the French army archives in Paris, Paul Dawson tells the story of the early years of the Peninsular War as never before. Eyewitness accounts of the Siege of Zaragoza and the Spanish defeats at Medellin and Ocaña are interspersed with details of campaign life and of struggling through the Galician mountains in pursuit of the British army. Dawson captures the perspectives of ordinary French soldiers and their beliefs about the war they were fighting for their Emperor. Napoleon’s Peninsular War is a vital and unprecedented addition to our understanding of the war in Iberia.

Peninsular Eyewitnesses

Peninsular Eyewitnesses PDF Author: Charles Esdaile
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473817153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 612

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many books have been written about the British struggle against Napoleon in the Peninsula. A few recent studies have given a broader view of the ebb and flow of a long war that had a shattering impact on Spain and Portugal and marked the history of all the nations involved. But none of these books has concentrated on how these momentous events were perceived and understood by the people who experienced them. Charles Esdaile has brought together a vivid selection of contemporary accounts of every aspect of the war to create a panoramic yet minutely detailed picture of those years of turmoil. The story is told through memoirs, letters and eyewitness testimony from all sides. Instead of generals and statesmen, we mostly hear from less-well-known figures - junior officers and ordinary soldiers and civilians who recorded their immediate experience of the conflict.

Outpost of Empire

Outpost of Empire PDF Author: Charles J. Esdaile
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806187999
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 522

Get Book Here

Book Description
Napoleon’s forces invaded Spain in 1808, but two years went by before they overran the southern region of Andalucía. Situated at the farthest frontier of Napoleon’s “outer empire,” Andalucía remained under French control only briefly—for two-and-a-half years—and never experienced the normal functions of French rule. In this groundbreaking examination of the Peninsular War, Charles J. Esdaile moves beyond traditional military history to examine the French occupation of Andalucía and the origins and results of the region’s complex and chaotic response. Disillusioned by the Spanish provisional government and largely unprotected, Andalucía scarcely fired a shot in its defense when Joseph Bonaparte’s army invaded the region in 1810. The subsequent French occupation, however, broke down in the face of multiple difficulties, the most important of which were geography and the continued presence in the region of substantial forces of regular troops. Drawing on British, French, and Spanish sources that are all but unknown, Esdaile describes the social, cultural, geographical, political, and military conditions that combined to make Andalucía particularly resistant to French rule. Esdaile’s study is a significant contribution to the new field sometimes known as occupation studies, which focuses on the ways a victorious army attempts to reconcile a conquered populace to the new political order. Combining military history with political and social history, Outpost of Empire delineates what we now call the cultural terrain of war. This is history that moves from battles between armies to battles for hearts and minds.

The Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars PDF Author: Alexander Mikaberidze
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199394067
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 977

Get Book Here

Book Description
Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the places most closely associated with the era of the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous conflict affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread throughout the world. In this ambitious and far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood in an international perspective. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In Egypt, the wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the global history of the period, one that expands our view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world.

The Fatal Knot

The Fatal Knot PDF Author: John Lawrence Tone
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469616920
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
John Tone recounts the dramatic story of how, between 1808 and 1814, Spanish peasants created and sustained the world's first guerrilla insurgency movement, thereby playing a major role in Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsula War. Focusing on the army of Francisco Mina, Tone offers new insights into the origins, motives, and successes of these first guerrilla forces by interpreting the conflict from the long-ignored perspective of the guerrillas themselves. Only months after Napoleon's invasion in 1807, Spain seemed ready to fall: its rulers were in prison or in exile, its armies were in complete disarray, and Madrid had been occupied. However, the Spanish people themselves, particularly the peasants of Navarre, proved unexpectedly resilient. In response to impending defeat, they formed makeshift governing juntas, raised new armies, and initiated a new kind of people's war of national liberation that came to be known as guerrilla warfare. Key to the peasants' success, says Tone, was the fact that they possessed both the material means and the motives to resist. The guerrillas were neither bandits nor selfless patriots but landowning peasants who fought to protect the old regime in Navarre and their established position within it. from the book: "That unfortunate war destroyed me; it divided my forces, multiplied my obligations, undermined my morale. . . . All the circumstances of my disasters are bound up in that fatal knot.--Napoleon Bonaparte on the Spanish war

Wellington's History of the Peninsular War

Wellington's History of the Peninsular War PDF Author: Stuart Reid
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526737647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Get Book Here

Book Description
An historic account of the Peninsula War written by the man leading forces against the French, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Though pressed many times to write about his battles and campaigns, the Duke of Wellington always replied that people should refer to his published dispatches. Yet Wellington did, in effect, write a history of the Peninsular War in the form of four lengthy memoranda, summarizing the conduct of the war in 1809, 1810, and 1811 respectively. These lengthy accounts demonstrate Wellington’s unmatched appreciation of the nature of the war in Spain and Portugal, and relate to the operations of the French and Spanish forces as well as the Anglo-Portuguese army under his command. Unlike personal diaries or journals written by individual soldiers, with their inevitably limited knowledge, Wellington was in an unparalleled position to provide a comprehensive overview of the war. Equally, the memoranda were written as the war unfolded, not tainted with the knowledge of hindsight, providing a unique contemporaneous commentary. Brought together by renowned historian Stuart Reid with reports and key dispatches from the other years of the campaign, the result is the story of the Peninsular War told through the writings of the man who knew and understood the conflict in Iberia better than any other. These memoranda and dispatches have never been published before in a single connected narrative. Therefore, Wellington’s History of the Peninsular War 1808-1814 offers a uniquely accessible perspective on the conflict in the own words of Britain’s greatest general.

Napoleon's Wars

Napoleon's Wars PDF Author: Charles Esdaile
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101464372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 884

Get Book Here

Book Description
A glorious and conclusive chronicle of the wars waged by one of the most polarizing figures in military history Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as a new standard on the subject, this sweeping, boldly written history of the Napoleonic era reveals its central protagonist as a man driven by an insatiable desire for fame, and determined to push matters to extremes. More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, it offers a panoramic view of the armed conflicts that spread so quickly out of revolutionary France to countries as remote as Sweden and Egypt. As it expertly moves through conflicts from Russia to Spain, Napoleon's Wars proves to be history writing equal to its subject—grand and ambitious—that will reframe the way this tumultuous era is understood.

Spanish Guerrillas in the Peninsular War 1808–14

Spanish Guerrillas in the Peninsular War 1808–14 PDF Author: René Chartrand
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472803167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
Constant Spanish guerrilla activity so drained the resources and diverted the attention of the French military that Wellington was able to advance against and overcome a numerically superior enemy. So many French soldiers were being used to counter the guerrillas and the threat that they posed that less than a third of the French army could be tasked with confronting Wellington. This book brings to life, for the first time, the formation, tactics and experiences of the Spanish guerrilla forces that fought Napoleon's army. Using much previously unpublished material, it offers a vivid description of the guerrilla and his lifestyle.