The Peninsular War

A stunning look at Napoleon's early nineteenth-century campaign across the Iberian Peninsula from historian Charles Esdaile.
"Drawing on first-hand accounts of the conflict, Esdaile paints an indelible picture of the cruelties of Napoleonic warfare. His vigorous writing, comprehensive analysis and even-handed judgments make this an indispensable treatment of one of the watersheds of European history." —Publishers Weekly

At the end of the eighteenth century, Spain remained one of the world's most powerful empires. Thanks to a long period of enlightened absolutism, Portugal, too, was prosperous. But by 1808, everything had changed. Portugal was under occupation and ravaged by famine, disease, economic problems and political instability. Spain had imploded and worse was to come. For the next six years, the Iberian Peninsula, for three centuries a byword for religious and military aggression, became itself the helpless victim of others, suffering perhaps over a million deaths while troops from all over Europe tore it to pieces.


Charles Esdaile's brilliant new history of the Peninsular War makes plain the scope of the tragedy and its far-reaching effects, especially the poisonous legacy that produced the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939. Portugal suffered unparalleled disaster, with casualties that have no comparison in its history. For Britain, the Peninsular War became the arena in which the redcoats of first Moore and then Wellington created one of her great national epics. For Britain, it was also the war that established a dazzlingly powerful military machine that both never lost a battle and became the first invading army to set foot on the soil of Napoleonic France.

The Peninsular War tells this compelling, terrible story for a new generation with all the detail, color, and painstaking research for which Charles Esdaile has become famous. It is a monumental work of military history that has all the great military set pieces but never loses sight of the people of Spain and Portugal and the suffering they endured. This is a classic work of history that will set the standard for all that will come after it.

"I found myself consuming it like a devouring flame. It is brilliant, indispensable and challenging. I suspect this will become the standard work on the Peninsula War and it certainly deserves to be." —Bernard Cornwell
"Well written and featuring rational conclusions based on solid research, it is highly recommended." —Lt. Col. Charles M. Minyard, Library Journal