Peninsular War

For six years, from 1808 to 1814, Spain and Portugal, backed by Britain, fought to drive Napoleon's armies out of the Iberian Peninsula. Known in Spain as part of its War of Independence, the struggle combined regular campaigns, sieges and a fierce popular insurgency that made it one of the first great guerrilla wars. It tied down hundreds of thousands of French troops, helped bring about Napoleon's downfall in the Napoleonic Wars, and left both Iberian countries devastated, with more than a million soldiers and civilians dead.

After making peace with Russia at Tilsit in 1807, Napoleon demanded that Portugal, Britain's old ally, close its ports to British ships. When it refused to go far enough, a French corps under Junot crossed Spain with Spanish support and occupied Lisbon on 30 November 1807. The Portuguese royal family had sailed for Brazil the day before.

Spain itself was nominally France's ally, but early in 1808 French troops occupied key fortresses in the north. In March the unpopular minister Manuel Godoy fell and King Charles IV abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand VII. Napoleon summoned both to Bayonne, where in May they gave up their claims, and he made his brother Joseph king of Spain.

On 2 May 1808 the people of Madrid rose against the occupiers; the rising was crushed, and the next day French troops shot hundreds of citizens, a scene later painted by Francisco Goya. Revolts spread across Spain, and local juntas took power in the name of Ferdinand. That summer a Spanish army at Bailén forced an entire French corps to surrender, the first open-field defeat of Napoleon's army in Europe, and Joseph fled Madrid. In August a British force under Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, landed in Portugal and beat Junot at Vimeiro, though the Convention of Cintra then allowed the French to leave by sea.

In November 1808 Napoleon himself led a huge army into Spain, scattered the Spanish forces and restored Joseph in Madrid in December. A British army under John Moore advanced into Spain, then retreated through the winter mountains to Corunna, where it held off the French and was evacuated, though Moore was killed. Napoleon left for France in January 1809 to prepare for war with Austria, handing command back to his marshals.

In 1809 British and Portuguese forces drove Marshal Soult out of Porto in May, and Wellesley fought a costly battle at Talavera on 27 July. In 1810 Marshal Masséna invaded Portugal with about 65,000 men, but after the battle of Bussaco the British fell back behind the Lines of Torres Vedras, a belt of forts protecting Lisbon. Unable to break through and short of food, Masséna withdrew from Portugal in March 1811. Meanwhile the French overran most of southern Spain, but the Spanish government held out in besieged Cádiz, where the Cortes produced the liberal Constitution of 1812. Across the country, guerrilla bands harassed French supply lines and isolated garrisons. Napoleon called the war his "Spanish ulcer".

In 1812, as Napoleon prepared his invasion of Russia, Wellington stormed Ciudad Rodrigo, defeated Marmont at Salamanca on 22 July and entered Madrid. On 21 June 1813 his British, Portuguese and Spanish army decisively beat Joseph's forces at Vitoria, and the French were driven back over the Pyrenees. Wellington pursued Soult into southern France and attacked him at Toulouse on 10 April 1814. News of Napoleon's abdication reached the armies a few days later, and a convention ended the fighting.

Under the Treaty of Valençay of December 1813, Napoleon had already recognised Ferdinand VII as king. Once restored, Ferdinand revoked the Constitution of 1812 in May 1814, opening decades of conflict between liberals and absolutists. War and occupation had wrecked the economies of both Spain and Portugal, and the crisis of the Spanish monarchy encouraged the revolts that led to the independence of Spain's American colonies.

Our 1800 map shows Spain and Portugal with their empires before the war, and our 1815 map the peninsula after Napoleon's fall.