Portuguese at the Battle of Albuera (1811) (original) (raw)
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THE BATTLE OF PORTO (DOURO) -12 th May 1809
Sir John Moore, the great developer of the English light infantry, was killed on the 16th January 1809 at the Battle of Coruña, where he was facing the French force under Marshall Soult. The British corps was evacuated to Britain, and Soult found it an easier task to invade the north of Portugal, where only a disorganized Portuguese army was opposing him. On the 28th March he beat it at the first Battle of Porto, and occupied the city and the north western country until he was expelled by Sir Arthur Wellesley - now commander in chief of the allied armies in the Peninsula - in the 2nd Battle of Porto (Douro), on the 12th May. Soult’s defeat meant a rout, where he lost all his artillery and transport vehicles, but could nevertheless escape into Galicia.
Counterpoints to Anglocentric Narratives about the Portuguese during the Peninsular War
Portuguese Studies Review, 2022
Anglocentric military narratives about the Portuguese during the Peninsular War are paradoxical. They accuse Portuguese officials and officers of incompetence, but Wellington regarded most British officers as inept. They criticize Portuguese soldiers for indiscipline, but Wellington wrote scathingly about disorders and outrages committed by British soldiers. And the narratives exult in the allegedly remarkable feat of shaping the Portuguese army into a reliable force. Such accounts appear to be founded upon British cultural prejudices. British officers refused to believe that a purportedly inferior people could contribute meaningfully to Britain’s war efforts without their tutelage, and military authors have interpreted their biases as fact. It appears that these stories were written to bolster British self-worth, rather than to critically analyze historical events. This article challenges Anglocentric narratives about the war by pointing to distortions that pervade them. It also offers a more balanced assessment of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance in a context of coalition warfare.
European History Quarterly 47 (2017), pp. 342-4.
Battlefield Tour to Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca 1812: The Decisive Year of the Peninsular War
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.