The Romance of War, or the Highlanders in Spain: la Guerra Peninsular y la novela británica

Abstract

Wellington's Peninsular campaigns aroused considerable interest among British historians and reading public throughout the nineteenth century and even into the present decade of the twentieth century. The most recent historian of the war, David Gates, in The Spanish Ulcer (1986), counts some three hundred published personal memoirs and diaries, mainly British, in his bibliography. The war in the Iberian Peninsula was savagely fought by British, Spanish, Portuguese, and French troops, as well as by Spanish and Portuguese irregular forces (the guerrilleros). When not fighting, British and French troops at times fraternized and observed a chivalrous respect for each other. The sufferings caused by the war were immense, including the looting and devastation of French-occupied Spain, the starvation of many Spaniards and Portuguese, and a very high casualty rate among the troops involved. Indeed, British soldiers frequently collapsed and died under the excessive loads they were compelled to carry'.For the British, the campaign represented the success of a small and previously despised army, under the remarkable leadership of Wellington, over Napoleon's veterans. Spanish historians, on the other hand, stress the Spanish contribution to the successful outcome of the war.