The Spanish Army in the Peninsular War

246 Pages·1988·4.909 MB·English

by  Charles J. Esdaile

The Spanish army
in the Peninsular War
War, Armed Forces and Society
General Editor: Ian F. W. Beckett
Editorial Board
Ian F. W. Beckett Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst
John Childs University of Leeds
John Gooch University of Lancaster
Douglas Porch The Citadel Military College of South Carolina
Geoffrey Till Royal Naval College, Greenwich
John A. Lynn University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Peter Dennis
The politics of manpower, 1914-18
Keith Grieves
The Commonwealth armies in the Korean War
Jeffrey Grey
The Commonwealth armies: manpower and organisation in two world wars
F. W. Perry
Kitchener’s army: the raising of the New Armies, 1914-16
Peter Simkins
Charles J. Esdaile
The Spanish army
in the
Peninsular War
Manchester University Press
Manchester and New York
Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada
by St. Martin's Press
Copyright ® Imperial War Museum 1988
Published by Manchester University Press
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and Room 400,175 Fifth Avenue,
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Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada
by St. Martin’s Press, Inc.,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
British Library cataloguing in publication data
Esdaile, Charles
The Spanish army in the Peninsular War.—(War, armed forces and
society).
1. Napoleonic Wars. Peninsular campaign. Army operations during
Peninsular campaign of Napoleonic Wars. Spain. Ejército.
I. Title II. Series
940.2'7
Library of Congress cataloging in publication data
Esdaile, Charles J.
The Spanish army in the Peninsular War / Charles J. Esdaile.
p. cm. — (War, armed forces, and society)
Bibliography: p. 212.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7190-2538-9: $40.00 (U.S. : est.)
1. Spain—History—Napoleonic Conquest, 1808-1813. 2. Spain-
—History—Charles IV, 1788—1808. 3. Spain. Ejército—History—19th
century. 4. Spain. Ejército—History—18th century. 5. Spain-
-History, Military. 6. Sociology, Military—Spain. I. Title.
II. Series.
DP208.E82 1988
946'.06—dcl9 88-10274
ISBN 0-7190-2538-9 hardback
Phototypeset in Great Britain
by Northern Phototypesetting Co., Bolton
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Anchor Brendon Ltd, Tiptree, Essex
Contents
List of maps page vi
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
Chapter 1 The Spanish army under the ancien régime 1
2 The era of Godoy, 1792-1808 36
3 The army and the revolution, May-
September 1808 75
4 The war of the Junta Central 115
5 The army and the liberals, 1810-14 154
Epilogue 1814 and after 194
Appendix 1 Order of battle of the Spanish army, 1788 201
2 Order of battle of the Spanish army, 1808 203
3 Regiments of new creation, 1808 205
4 Order of battle of the Spanish army, 1814 209
Select bibliography 212
Index 223
Maps
1 The Iberian peninsula xiv
2 The Spanish national uprising, May 1808 80
3 The campaign of Bailén 99
4 The military situation in northern Spain, October 1808 128
5 The Spanish War of Independence, 1808-14 160
For Alison, with love
Preface
The period from 1788 to 1814 is of immense importance in the
history of the Spanish army, and thus, by extension, of Spain herself.
Under the impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the
army was transformed from being the loyal servant of Bourbon
absolutism to the intensely political ‘king-maker’ of the nineteenth
century. Whereas a military coup would have been unthinkable
before 1808, after 1814 Spain was never short of soldiers who were
ready to intervene in politics, and to overthrow régimes which did
not meet with their approval. The era of absolute monarchy had thus
been effectively brought to an end, despite the efforts of Fernando
VII to sustain it after 1814, for its chief prerequisite had been a
reliable army. If Spain thereafter embarked upon a century of libera­
lism, it was to be characterised as much by the coup as by the
constitution. The bourgeoisie may indeed have become revolu­
tionary, but their revolutions in the last resort were made or unmade
by the officer corps.
Considering that it was the wars of the Revolutionary Era that
launched the army upon the interventionist course that has bede­
villed Spanish politics almost until the present day, it is surprising
that historians have not paid them more attention. Yet works dealing
specifically with the political history of the army, such as those of
Payne, Christiansen, Busquets, Fernandez Bastarreche, and Seco, do
no more than skim the surface of its involvement in the Revolu­
tionary and Napoleonic Wars. Casado Burbano does treat the
subject in more depth, but the chief emphasis of his work is on
ideology and legislation. None of these historians has analysed the
impact of the army’s experience of war upon its composition, organi­
sation or general outlook. Their reluctance to commit themselves to
Preface ix
the years before 1814 may in pajt be a reflection of their approach,
for their aim has been to produce studies covering a very broad
period in the history of the army. However, even authors who are
concerned specifically with the military aspects of the Peninsular
War have done little to broaden our knowledge of the subject. A
particularly graphic example may be found in works dealing with the
uniforms of the participants, which almost always spend far more
time on the dress of the Spanish army as it was on the outbreak of
war in 1808 than they do on the miscellany of costume actually worn
during the war itself. As soon as the war begins, narrative is allowed
to take the place of analysis, for reasons which were pinpointed by
John Keegan in The Face of Battle:
Action is essentially destructive of all institutional studies... it damages the
integrity of structures, upsets the balance of relationships, interrupts the
network of communication which the institutional historian struggles to
identify and, having identified, to crystallise. War ... is the institutional
military historian’s irritant. It forces him... to qualify and particularise and
above all to combine analysis with narrative - the most difficult of the
historian’s arts. Hence his preference for the study of armed forces in
peacetime.1
Keegan’s words are especially apposite in the case of the Spanish
War of Independence of 1808-14, for the disruption normally atten­
dant upon warfare was magnified a hundredfold by the total
breakdown of central authority. With power in the hands of
numerous provincial juntas and petty military dictators, for a time
the army actually ceased to exist as a single entity. The formation of a
new central government in September 1808 could do little to change
matters, for one of the chief characteristics of the War of Indepen­
dence was to be the complete inability of successive régimes to
impose their authority upon the chaos which beset patriot Spain.
Large parts of the armed forces therefore remained a law unto
themselves. In view of these circumstances, the tendency of his­
torians engaged in general studies of the Spanish army to shy away
from detailed research into this period is entirely understandable. As
Francisco Fernandez Bastarreche has admitted, the Spanish army of
the period before 1814 still awaits its historian.2
Ilie failure of political historians to pay much attention to the
military history of the War of Independence is equally glaring. The
works of Artola, Anes, Domínguez Ortiz and most of their fellows
display little interest in the military dimension of the struggle against
X Preface
the French. It has been suggested that this was in large part due to the
difficulty of carrying out serious research into the army’s history
during the franquist era. Problematical though such investigations
may have been, their lack of interest is also a reflection of the deep gulf
that has separated the army from the rest of society — the general
reaction of the author’s Spanish friends to his interest in matters
military was one of complete astonishment. However, if it is only to
be expected that Spanish intellectuals would steer clear of affairs that
could be held to be strictly military, the omission has not been
rectified by foreign historians. Although both Lovett and Hamnett
are more comprehensive in their coverage of the war, even they are
somewhat conventional in their approach to many of its problems.
Unfortunately, the latter’s work, which has only been published in a
limited edition in Mexico City, was unknown to the author until this
study was in its final stages. It is of the first importance, however, and
readers are urged to refer to it for a far more detailed examination of
many of the social and political issues which form the context rather
than the central concern of the present study.
Further justification for a study of the Spanish army may be found
in the anglocentric approach which most British writers, with the
exception of Sir Charles Oman, and, more recently, David Gates,
have adopted with regard to the Peninsular campaigns. Basing their
work solely on sources relating to the operations of Wellington’s
Anglo-Portuguese army, they have tended to present a distorted
picture of the struggle, and to perpetuate the anti-Spanish prejudice
evinced by so many of its British participants. Yet the object of the
present work is not to pretend that British dissatisfaction with the
Spaniards was unmerited, nor to minimise the role of Wellington’s
army. It is rather to suggest why the Spaniards were unable to satisfy
their allies even in an auxiliary capacity, let alone to liberate them­
selves from foreign domination, and to examine the impact of that
failure upon the later course of Spanish history. In reaching for those
goals the author has striven for objectivity and accuracy in the firm
belief that they cannot be allowed to take second place to rhetoric and
myth. Yet he is all too well aware that what follows can only be a
beginning, whose faults he is the first to acknowledge.
Notes
1 J. Keegan, The Face of Battle (London, 1979), p. 28.
2 F. Fernandez Bastarreche, El ejército español en el siglo XIX (Madrid,
1978), p. 110.