A History of the Peninsular War

The Spanish Ulcer

'The first brief and balanced account of the war to have appeared within our generation.  As the first work of a new young military historian it is a major achievement.'  Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford University

Dr David Gates is Lecturer at the Centre for Defence Studies, University of Aberdeen, and the leading British scholar on the Napoleonic Wars.

By July 1807, following his spectacular victories over Austria, Prussia and Russia, Napoleon dominated most of Europe.  The only significant gap in his continental system was the Iberian Peninsula.  He therefore begun a series of diplomatic and military moves aimed at forcing Spain and Portugal to toe the line, leading to a popular uprising against the French and the outbreak of war in May 1808. Napoleon considered the war in the Peninsula, which he ruefully called 'The Spanish Ulcer', so insignificant that he rarely bothered to bring to it his military genius, relying on his marshals instead, and simultaneously launching his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812.  Yet the war was to end with total defeat for the French.  In late 1813 Wellington's army crossed the Pyrenees into the mainland of France.  This is the first major military history of the war for half a century.  Combining scholarship with a vivid narrative, it reveals a war of unexpected savagery, of carnage at times so great as to be comparable to the First World War.  But it was also a guerilla war, fought on beautiful but difficult terrain, where problems of supply loomed large.  The British Navy, dominant at sea after Trafalgar, was able to provide crucial support to the hard-pressed, ill-equipped and often outnumbered forces fighting the French. Dr Gates' history can claim to be the first to provide a serious assessment of the opposing generals and their troops, as well as analysing in detail the social and political background.  The Peninsular war is particularly rich in varied and remarkable campaigns, and his book will fascinate all those who enjoy reading military history.

David Gates

This is a compact, stimulating, and at times surprisingly polemical account

Napoleon helped shape modern French politics, as much as he determined the nature of modern warfare... Dr Gates's book is a sure guide to the wars whose effects were felt well into the twentieth century

Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of the History of War, Oxford University

Known collectively as the 'Great War', for over a decade the Napoleonic Wars engulfed not only a whole continent but also the overseas possessions of the leading European states.  A war of unprecedented scale and intensity, it was in many ways a product of change that acted as a catalyst for upheaval and reform across much of Europe, with aspects of its legacy lingering to this very day. <br/>
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There is a mass of literature on Napoleon and his times, yet there are only a handful of scholarly works that seek to cover the Napoleonic Wars in their entirety, and fewer still that place the conflict in any broader framework. This study redresses the balance.  Drawing on recent findings and applying a 'total' history approach, it explores the causes and effects of the conflict, and places it in the context of the evolution of modern warfare.  It reappraises the most significant and controversial military ventures, including the war at sea and Napoleon's campaigns of 1805-9.  The study gives an insight into the factors that shaped the war, setting the struggle in its wider economic, cultural, political and intellectual dimensions.

The Napoleonic Wars 1803-1815

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Praise for The Napoleonic Wars 1803-1815

This is a compact, stimulating, and at times surprisingly polemical account

Napoleon helped shape modern French politics, as much as he determined the nature of modern warfare... Dr Gates's book is a sure guide to the wars whose effects were felt well into the twentieth century

Books by David Gates

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