Leaving the Pyrenees: France and Frenchmen as Perceived by British Soldiers in 1813–1814

Abstract

Under the command of Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, the future first Duke of Wellington, the British Army was one of the main participants of the military conflict on the Iberian Peninsula in 1808–1814. In the autumn of 1813, fighting on the side of the Spaniards and the Portuguese against the French Army, Wellington’s army ousted the enemy from the Spanish territories and launched an offensive on French lands. This article focuses on the reception of the image of France and the French in the diaries, letters, and memoirs of British soldiers and officers who participated in the war in France in 1813–1814. After leaving the Pyrenees, the British combatants believed they had returned to enlightened Europe from the “semi-civilized” Spain and Portugal. At the same time, the British image of the French combined elements of Gallophilia and Gallophobia that dominated in English society in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. On the one hand, British military narratives contained favourable characterisations of the locals whom King George III’s soldiers seemed to be freeing from Napoleon’s tyrannical rule. British officers noted such positive qualities of the French as politeness, gallantry, and friendliness. On the other hand, for the British military, the French Army became the personification of the “Other”. The texts of the English combatants described the soldiers of Soult’s army as cruel people capable of robbing and ruining their compatriots, and the French officers were perceived by the British military as self-interested careerists, ready to serve as a tool in the hands of Napoleon for the sake of promotion.