The British Soldier in the Peninsular War

Daly, Gavin

doi:10.1057/9781137323835

Cited by 33 publications

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“…It enjoyed a second, larger peak during the Peninsular War, when thousands of Britons saw Spain and Portugal in Wellington's army. The letters and journals of these 'travellers in uniform' have received plenty of attention in recent years (Kennedy, 2013: 92-113;Daly, 2013), but the British military presence on the peninsula also offered logistical assistance, networking opportunities and excitement to unheralded numbers of civilian travellers. War with Spain made travel there more difficult either side of the 1770s but war in Iberia encouraged and facilitated journeys, Gell's and Craven's among them.…”

Section: Richard Ansellmentioning

confidence: 99%

William Gell's Encounters With Islamic Spain, 1808–36

Ansell

2024

Pap. Br. Sch. Rome

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The British antiquary William Gell (1777–1836) is known for his work on ancient Greece and Rome, which he based on a lifetime of Mediterranean travel and two decades of residence in Italy. This article uses a remarkable notebook held at the British School at Rome to explore his unheralded interest in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus), which emerged from his Iberian travels of 1808–11 and took up much of his energy in the early 1830s, the final years of his life. As such, the notebook shows how engagement with other cultures might continue well beyond an initial encounter through travel. It brings together Gell's on-the-spot sketches and descriptions of the Alhambra, his copious later reading on the Emirate of Granada and evidence that he was teaching himself Arabic, offering a case study of early nineteenth-century scholarship that straddles the transition between eighteenth-century antiquarianism and Romantic, Orientalist approaches. The materiality and the contents of Gell's notebook chart the changing ways in which British travellers and writers incorporated al-Andalus into their understandings of Europe and the Mediterranean.

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Section: Richard Ansellmentioning

confidence: 99%

William Gell's Encounters With Islamic Spain, 1808–36

Ansell

2024

Pap. Br. Sch. Rome

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“…The French, by contrast, were fellow professionals, whom they admired for their urbanity and gallantry. 39 Indeed, whereas studies of civilian national identity tend to emphasise national differences, soldiers from opposing nations could share a common sense of professionalism and common ways of doing things. 40 A further reference point for the British national identity was the German.…”

Section: IImentioning

confidence: 99%

Wellington's Men: The British Soldier of the Napoleonic Wars

Linch

McCormack

2015

History Compass

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The bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo offers an opportunity to think critically about the historiography of the Napoleonic Wars. This article argues that orthodox military histories of the period have tended to neglect the experience of the common soldier. By contrast, the article offers an overview of recent work on the history of war, which applies techniques from social and cultural history in order to explore the perspective of the combatant. By thinking about the social origins and experiences of soldiers and how those experiences were handled in cultural terms, this work sheds new light on the humble redcoat who fought under Wellington at Waterloo.

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“…Framed by the long standing anti-Catholic and anti-Hispanic traditions of the 'Black Legend' on the one hand, and Enlightenment discourses on 'civilization' and progress on the other, British officers and soldiers alike often perceived the Spanish people in a negative and hostile light: as backward, cruel, treacherous and cowardly. 90 Arriving as self-styled liberators, the British complained in the early years of the war of being unwelcomed and unappreciated by their Spanish hosts, and of the Spanish lacking a spirit of patriotism to drive the French from their lands. 91 This helped lower British restraint when it came to plundering the local inhabitants.…”

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“…90 Arriving as self-styled liberators, the British complained in the early years of the war of being unwelcomed and unappreciated by their Spanish hosts, and of the Spanish lacking a spirit of patriotism to drive the French from their lands. 91 This helped lower British restraint when it came to plundering the local inhabitants. When 'uncivil' Badajoz was sacked, Tomkinson went so far as to declare: 'It could not have happened to fall upon people who deserved it more, though it would have been as well had it not gone so far'.…”

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confidence: 99%

‘The sacking of a town is an abomination’: siege, sack and violence to civilians in British officers’ writings on the Peninsular War – the case of Badajoz

Daly

2018

Hist Res

Self Cite

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For all its notoriety, the 1812 British sack of Badajoz during the Peninsular War has been surprisingly overlooked as a subject of historical investigation, symptomatic of a broader neglect of European sieges and sacks for this period. This article explores British officers' reactions to the sack through their letters and memoirs. It suggests rethinking Badajoz as a site not only of excess and atrocity, but also one of constraint, outrage, shame and censure. In so doing, it investigates sieges as an important place for examining changes and continuities in customary laws of war, cultures of war, and moral, humanitarian and sentimental discourses over the long eighteenth century.At 10 p.m. on 6 April 1812, at the height of the Peninsular War, British troops under the duke of Wellington stormed the French-held Spanish fortress city of Badajoz, situated on the left bank of the Guadiana River in Spanish Extremadura. By 2 a.m. the city had fallen, and shortly after dawn the French governor, General Armand Philippon, formally offered his sword. The French garrison were spared, but the Spanish inhabitants were not. Wellington's troops sacked Badajoz over a three-day period, not only plundering, but killing and raping Spanish civilians -civilians they were meant to be liberating. This was not the first time that Wellington's troops had sacked a city in the Peninsula -less than three months earlier, they had stormed and sacked Ciudad Rodrigo, although the sack lasted only through the night, with few if any civilian deaths. Nor was Badajoz to be the last British sack: the following year San Sebastian was stormed, becoming another scene of plunder and atrocity.Within British military historiography these sackings are considered the most 'shameful' actions of the British army during the war, and helped establish the popular reputation of Wellington's redcoats as 'scum of the earth'.

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The British Soldier in the Peninsular War

Cited by 33 publications

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William Gell's Encounters With Islamic Spain, 1808–36

William Gell's Encounters With Islamic Spain, 1808–36

Wellington's Men: The British Soldier of the Napoleonic Wars

‘The sacking of a town is an abomination’: siege, sack and violence to civilians in British officers’ writings on the Peninsular War – the case of Badajoz

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