Peninsular War

Peninsular War
Part of the Napoleonic Wars
Clockwise from top left: The Third of May 1808 Battle of Somosierra Battle of Bayonne Disasters of War prints by Goya[1]
Date 2 May 1808 (sometimes 27 October 1807)[b] – 17 April 1814[c] (5 years, 11 months, 2 weeks and 1 day) Location Iberian Peninsula Southern France Result Coalition victory Treaty of Paris Collapse of the First French Empire Revolts break out in Spanish America
Belligerents
Portugal Spain  United Kingdom	France  Napoleonic Spain Kingdom of Italy Confederation of the Rhine  Duchy of Warsaw Kingdom of Holland[a]  Denmark-Norway (Evacuation of La Romana's division)
Commanders and leaders
Prince John Bernardim Freire de Andrade Francisco da Silveira Miguel Pereira Forjaz Miguel Ricardo de Álava Joaquín Blake Francisco Javier Castaños Gregorio García de la Cuesta Juan Martín Díez José de Palafox Spencer Perceval Robert Jenkinson Arthur Wellesley William Beresford Rowland Hill Sir Thomas Graham John Moore † John Hope Edward Pakenham	Napoleon I Joseph I Pierre Augereau Jean-Baptiste Bessières Jean-Baptiste Jourdan Jean-Andoche Junot Jean Lannes François Joseph Lefebvre Julien Augustin Joseph Mermet Jacques MacDonald Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr Auguste de Marmont André Masséna Bon-Adrien de Moncey Édouard Mortier Pierre Hugues Victoire Merle Joachim Murat Michel Ney Jean-de-Dieu Soult Louis-Gabriel Suchet Claude Victor-Perrin Horace Sébastiani Guillaume Duhesme
Strength
November 1808: 205,000[2] 31,000[2] 35,000[3] 1811: 55,000 guerrillas[4][d] April 1813: Wellington: 172,000[5] 160,000 regulars (1/3 fighting alongside Wellington)[6] Coalition 1813: 121,000 (53,749 British, 39,608 Spanish and 27,569 Portuguese)[7]	May 1808: 165,103[2] November 1808: 244,125[2] February 1809: 288,551[2] January 1810: 324,996[8] July 1811: 291,414[5] June 1812: 230,000[5] October 1812: 261,933[5] April 1813: 200,000[5]
Casualties and losses
215,000–375,000 military and civilian dead[9] 25,000 guerrillas killed[10] 35,630 dead[10] 24,053 died of disease[10] 32,429 wounded[10]	180,000–240,000 dead (91,000 killed in action)[10] 237,000 wounded[10]
1,000,000+ military and civilian dead[10]

Lisbon

Madrid

Valencia

Bailén

Tudela

Corunna

Talavera

Cádiz

Albuera

Ciudad Rodrigo

Salamanca

Burgos

Tordesillas

Vitoria

Toulouse

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1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814

The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence.^[e]

The war started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, and it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation. It is also significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare.

In 1808, the Spanish army in Andalusia defeated the French at the Battle of Bailén, considered the first open-field defeat of the Napoleonic army on a European battlefield. Besieged by 70,000 French troops, a reconstituted national government, the Cortes—in effect a government-in-exile—fortified itself in the secure port of Cádiz in 1810. The British army, under Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, guarded Portugal and campaigned against the French alongside the reformed Portuguese Army and provided whatever supplies they could get to the Spanish, while the Spanish armies and guerrillas tied down vast numbers of Napoleon's troops.^[f] In 1812, when Napoleon set out with a massive army on what proved to be a disastrous French invasion of Russia, a combined allied army defeated the French at Salamanca and took the capital Madrid. In the following year the Coalition scored a victory over King Joseph Bonaparte's army at the Battle of Vitoria paving the way for victory in the war in the Iberian Peninsula.

Pursued by the armies of Britain, Spain and Portugal, Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult, no longer getting sufficient support from a depleted France, led the exhausted and demoralized French forces in a fighting withdrawal across the Pyrenees during the winter of 1813–1814. The years of fighting in Spain were a heavy burden on France's Grande Armée. While the French enjoyed several victories in battle, they were eventually defeated, as their communications and supplies were severely tested and their units were frequently isolated, harassed or overwhelmed by Spanish partisans fighting an intense guerrilla war of raids and ambushes. The Spanish armies were repeatedly beaten and driven to the peripheries, but they would regroup and relentlessly hound and demoralize the French troops. This drain on French resources led Napoleon, who had unwittingly provoked a total war, to call the conflict the "Spanish Ulcer".^[12][13]

War and revolution against Napoleon's occupation led to the Spanish Constitution of 1812, promulgated by the Cortes of Cádiz, later a cornerstone of European liberalism.^[14] Though victorious in war, the burden of war destroyed the social and economic fabric of both Portugal and Spain; and the following civil wars between liberal and absolutist factions ushered in revolts in Spanish America and the beginning of an era of social turbulence, increased political instability, and economic stagnation.

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