1812 was the year of one of Wellington's greatest victories in the Peninsular War: Salamanca, the battle that proved Wellington as effective a commander on the offensive as on the defensive. Salamanca opened the road to Madrid and helped to set the conditions for the expulsion of the French from Spain. The Battle of Salamanca has also come to be the Regimental Day of The Rifles, the British Army's largest infantry regiment, given the number of antecedent units that fought on the day. I wrote this short book to complement battlefield tours to the town of Ciudad Rodrigo and to the field of Salamanca that took place in autumn, 2019. It offers a concise history of the Peninsular War interspersed with short, focused analyses of the two battle sites, and finally summarises the tactics of the age together with providing some additional vignettes and portraits of some notable commanders. My deep thanks are due to Professor Charles Esdaile, who accompanied the tour, leading the trip to Salamanca whilst I led on Ciudad Rodrigo.

The unfortunate Germans who were thrown into the mincing machine of Catalonia and, in particular, the worst-managed operations of the entire Peninsular War: the French sieges of Girona. This city became the grave of almost the entire German contingent and many others besides. Extracts from the diaries of participants in this grim fiasco give a totally chilling glimpse into the horrors of siege warfare. This is contrasted with reports of the mobile raids by Spanish regiments supported by the Royal Navy on the eastern coast of Spain. These operations into the French lines of communications helped tie down thousands of French troops, who should have been conquering the remaining free areas of southern and eastern Spain. The negative effects of Napoleon`s ill-founded operational dabbling in French military affairs in Spain from his ivory tower in Paris, hundreds of miles away from the reality on the ground is also examined. The 11 colour plates by Bob Marion are based on Ludwig Scharf’s interpretations from on the spot sketches made in Spain during the period 1808 - 1814.In addition there are over 50 B&W illustrations of uniforms, flags and details, 7 maps, 12 OOBs and 6 Tables.

It cannot be denied that the principles of manoeuvre pursued by Wellington in 1813, more closely resemble Napoleon’s approach, than it does the previously cautious, defensive stance the British had adopted in Portugal and Spain between 1808 and 1811. However, such a conclusion overlooks the fact that Wellington had never encountered Napoleon, or his particular style of manoeuvre warfare in Portugal or Spain, and was unlikely to have discussed the finer details of Napoleon’s operational and tactical techniques with anyone who had encountered them. Moreover, it also ignores Wellington’s experience of South Asian Warfare between 1798 and 1804. This paper will argue that for a true understanding of the doctrinal origins of Wellington’s 1813 offensive, we must look to his understanding and experience of warfare against the indigenous armies of India, for it is here that he developed operational doctrine that more closely resembled his plans and actions in 1813 than any other aspect of his career.

The regime established in America from the end of the 15th century to the 19th century can be explained by this relationship between institutional construction and the practice of violence. Like any empire of its time, the Spanish monarchy founded its authority, part of its legitimacy, its fiscal and administrative organization, its bureaucracy, its control systems, and its trade opportunities on the ground of warfare, and with these characteristics informed the slow and problematic processes of conquest, colonization, and subjection of the New World. Approaching Spanish America through both warfare and the military offers two major advantages: on the one hand, learning the history of its institutional, social, political, economic, and cultural development, and on the other, identifying the prolific historiography that has studied it. This bibliographical selection expresses both fields: the history of warfare in Spanish America and its changing historiography. The characteristics, pretensions, contradictions, and flaws of the Spanish institutional framework that for three centuries expanded from the Caribbean and came to dominate immense regions of North, Central, and South America until it entered into crisis and collapsed, leading to the emergence of national states, can be understood from its capacity to mobilize economic and human resources for warfare. Likewise, these very diverse armed forces involved in such processes were historical expressions of the societies that produced them. The studies in this bibliography express the historical complexity of Spanish America from the perspective of organization and experience of warfare.