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The First Peninsular War, 1702-1713 PDF

444 Pages·1975·61.377 MB·English
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THE FIRST PENINSULAR WAR 1702 - 1713 The First War Peninsular - 1702 1713 DAVID FRANCIS ST. MARTIN'S PRESS NEW YORK 5 Copyright © DavidFrancis 19J Allrights reserved For information, write: St. Martin's Press, Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Printed in Great Britain Library ofCongress Catalog Card Number: 74-23033 Firstpublished in the United States ofAmerica in 1975 Preface THIS work describes the events ofthe Peninsular part ofthe War of the Spanish Succession and their background. The cost of the war in Spain and Portugal did not fall far short of that of Marlborough and Prince Eugene's war, particularly if one debits it as one must with a sizeable share of the cost of the fleet. It was an integral part of the war against the overweening power of France, but for the two maritime powers the hope of winning a larger share in the overseas trade with Spain was an additional powerful motive. Nevertheless, the English and Dutch undertook a land war in the Peninsula with misgivings; theywould have preferred to confine the western half of the war to the sea, and surprisingly enough neither the emperor nor the Archduke Charles, who were the claimants to the crown of Spain, had much interest in fighting there. They looked to the crown of Spain as a means towards the conquest of Italy, more than as end in itself. Consequently they as well as Britain and the United Provinces regarded the peninsular campaigns as secondary to those in Flanders, Germany, and Italy. Historians have tended to follow suit, though English ones have writtenagooddealaboutthedoingsofPeterboroughand Stanhope. Some ofthe gaps have been filled by German writers, but French works are comparativelyfew and there is notverymuch in Spanish or Portuguese. The original sources are also patchy; Spain was torn by civil war and such records as were kept by the short-lived Court of King Charles have tended to be lost or dispersed. Most of the fighting forces were far from home; communications were bad and conditions not conducive to the keeping of regular records. The contemporary records were written in six languages, two more ifone counts Italian and Catalan, and this does not make their co-ordination easy. The historian cannot go back to original sources for every fact; he must rely upon the standard works on his subject. But after the 5 6 THE FIRST PENINSULAR WAR 1702-1713 standard accounts have been repeated several times, they tend to diverge from the original and it is useful to check. When recent published works are numerous, the main task is to co-ordinate these, but when they are few or date from some time back, the value ofconsulting the original sources is increased. For the war in the Peninsula the principal English sources are the 3rd Earl Stanhope and Parnell, amplified by Trevelyan, who himself dates from thirty or forty years back; the principal German authors are oflike vintage. The time seems to be ripe for a fresh account based largely on the original sources. Fortunately the Stanhope papers are more accessible than they used to be. The German sources have largely been used by the Germans before, but I have gone back to them, and have found some fresh material in Vienna and Darmstadt, as also in the despatches of the Dutch and imperial ministers at Lisbon and in English log-books, etc. I have tried to build up a plain, coherent, and factual account of what happened, when, where, how, and why, and to inform the student as far as possible where the primary sources are to be found. I have also tried to give some local colour, but accounts of daily life by the rank-and-file are scarce, and most ofthe surviving records are written by protagonists. I have drawn on such sources by minor figures as I could find, but one would have to depart from strict adherence to the documents and to resort to a little fiction to give a fuller picture. This can be done, and has been done well, for instance, by Philip Woodruff (Mason) in Colonel of Dragoons, a fictional account of the 1705-06 campaigns in Spain, which is almost a documentary. I have not ventured to go so far. I have written from the English standpoint, but have worked in as far as possible the allied points ofview, and particularly that of Portugal and of the Court of King Charles. In so doing I have moved the focus a little from Stanhope and Peterborough, I have not attempted to give an equally full account of the French and Bourbon Spanish point of view; this would have been hard to co-ordinate. French works on the subject are fewer than one would expect and one must lean heavily on Baudrillart's Philippe V et sa com. No doubt more original sources could eventually be found in Paris or at Simancas, but they must be sparse, for hitherto they have been little quoted. Inthemany quotationsfrom contemporarylettersordocuments, many of them translated from foreign languages, I have not kept the original spelling or punctuation, but have modernized and PREFACE 7 sometimes abbreviated when this seemed called for; on the other hand, I have preserved contemporary idiom, when this seemed required, for the flavour. All dates are in new style unless otherwise designated. London, A.D.F. April 1974

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