The Peninsular War
1808–1814 · Six Years That Broke Napoleon
What Was the Peninsular War?
In 1808, Napoleon invaded Spain and Portugal, deposing the Spanish Bourbons and placing his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. The Spanish people rose in revolt. Britain, already at war with France, sent an army to Portugal under Sir Arthur Wellesley. What followed was six years of brutal, attritional warfare across the Iberian Peninsula: the longest continuous campaign of the Napoleonic Wars.
The war combined three distinct conflicts: a conventional campaign between the British and French armies, a savage guerrilla war waged by Spanish irregulars, and a Portuguese national resistance. Together they created the strategic drain that Napoleon himself called his “Spanish ulcer.”
Why It Mattered to Napoleon
At any given time during the Peninsular War, approximately 300,000 French troops were tied down in Spain and Portugal. These were troops Napoleon desperately needed elsewhere: in Germany, in Russia, in the defence of France itself. The Peninsula became a running sore that never healed, draining French manpower, money and morale year after year.
The Guerrilla War
The Spanish guerrillas, irregular fighters operating in the mountains and countryside, made French occupation impossible. The word “guerrilla” (little war) entered the English language from this conflict. Guerrilla bands ambushed supply convoys, assassinated French couriers, cut communications, and made every road in Spain dangerous for French soldiers. The guerrillas could not defeat the French in battle, but they could make the occupation ungovernable.
Wellington’s Campaign
Wellington’s genius in the Peninsula was logistical as much as tactical. He built the Lines of Torres Vedras, a vast fortified barrier protecting Lisbon, and used the Portuguese countryside to deny the French food. He advanced methodically, securing his supply lines, never risking a battle he could not win, and wearing down the French through attrition and manoeuvre.
The great sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz opened the road into Spain. The victory at Salamanca broke the French hold on central Spain. Vitoria in 1813 expelled Joseph from Madrid for good.
Key Battles
The End
In 1813, Wellington crossed the Pyrenees and invaded France itself. The battle of Toulouse on 10 April 1814 was the Peninsular veterans’ final fight, fought four days after Napoleon’s abdication. Six years of war in Iberia were over. The army that emerged from the Peninsula was the most experienced and battle-hardened in Europe, and it would fight again at Waterloo.
In Sharpe’s World
The Peninsular War is the heart of the Sharpe series. Books 6 through 20, from Sharpe’s Rifles to Sharpe’s Revenge, cover the entire campaign from the retreat to Corunna in 1809 to the invasion of France in 1814.
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