The Peninsula War 1808 to 1814

The Peninsula war is considered to have started in August 1808 when Sir Arthur Wellesley’s expeditionary force landed at Figueira in the bay of Montego near the city of Coimbra about 120 miles to the North of Lisbon. Why had this army of 8,000, including 1/IX sailed from Cork to Portugal?

As always the political background is complex and frequently confused. However the simplified situation is that Napoleon, who at this time controlled a large proportion of continental Europe, wanted to constrain British economic power by forcing a trade blockade so as to prevent Britain from using her massive wealth in order to pay for foreign mercenaries to oppose the Imperial eagles sweeping across Europe.

This he attempted by the threatened invasion of the south coast, Napoleon assembled a massive army of almost 150,000 men at Boulogne in the summer of 1804. When this failed for logistical reasons he set out to destroy Britain’s sea power, but again failed when Lord Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet off Cadiz in what we know as the great battle of Trafalgar.

Napoleon then changed his approach and tried to use diplomacy to enforce a commercial blockage against British trade, which at the time was far and away the strongest in the world primarily as a result of our outstanding naval strength. Following the Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807 Britain was almost isolated, and in November the Emperor (Napoleon) issued the Decrees of Berlin, by which he applied "the Continental System" and effectively closed all the posts in Europe to British ships, effectively attempting to strangle British trade with Europe and Europe’s trade with Britain and her empire.

The British retaliated and gradually the trade war escalated. Before long the only ports open to the British were in the Baltic and Portugal, who at this time was a major trading partner of Britain. There was also political friction between the Spanish government and the French. In July/ August 1807 The French ambassador in Lisbon demanded that the Portuguese government close its ports to British ships and declare war on London. In October 1807 Marshal Junot was ordered to occupy Lisbon by 1 December and was given an army of 28,000 men and a free passage though Spain. It is not clear whether the Spanish were given any say in the matter, remember at this time there was no army in Europe that had been able to contain, let alone defeat the French eagles.

At the beginning of 1808 Napoleon exceeded the terms of his agreement with the Spanish Cortez to pass through Spain and began to occupy large areas. Quickly there was a very hostile response from the Spanish people. As a result there was a very bloody insurrection which was brutally suppressed by Murat. The Spanish Royal family was kidnapped and interred in France. Napoleon’s elder brother Joseph was appointed King. Surprisingly one of the Spanish Generals managed to corner a significant French military force of 18,000 men, who were forced to surrender at Bailen in southern Spain. However such successes were rare.

In June 1807 the Spanish Cortez asked the British government for military aid. This was despite the fact that the Spanish forces had managed to restrict French access to the country to mainly north-east Spain.

The build up of British forces began, Sir John Moore was ordered from Sicily to Gibraltar with a force of about 7,000 men. General Brent Spencer returning from the ill-fated Buenos Aires expedition was diverted with 5,000 men (I bet that was a popular move with the men!) and Sir Arthur Wellesley was commanded to gather together a force of some 8,000 men in Cork ready to sail for Portugal.

In July 1808 Sir Arthur was commanded to embark and set off with orders to occupy Lisbon, presumably by forcibly moving out Junot’s troops who had been there for six months by this time.

On landing Sir Arthur learnt that he had already been replaced as the Commander, that Sir Harry Burrand was bringing another 16,000 troops, incidentally including 2/IX, and that Sir Dalrymple would be the Commander-in-Chief. By the time that Sir John Moore also got there Sir Arthur would be 4th in line. Not a very satisfactory situation for some one who thought that he was in Command.

We know that Wellesley’s force landed on 1 August 1808, the landing took nine days to complete and was totally unopposed. Presumably the disembarked troops spent a number of days waiting for all to come ashore and established their beachhead before setting off south, on or around 10 August, along the dusty ill kept coast road towards Lisbon. We do not know when the 1/IX came ashore, but assume as a senior regiment of the line and a part of Wellesley’s command they will have been ashore fairly early in the process.

According to Wellesley’s own letters 14,180 infantry and 372 cavalry (although only 215 had horses!) set off on the march with 18 horse drawn guns and the usual although unspecified baggage train complete with the camp followers.

At the first town of Leiria Wellesley had his first view of the Portuguese regular army and was not particularly impressed with them or their arms.

They had not been travelling long when at a small town of Obidos they began to be aware of French military skirmishers taking more than a passing interest in their progress.

Soon their own intelligence reports made them aware that the road ahead was held by a significant French force of 6,000 men commanded by General Delaborde. His orders were to slow down the British so that Loison’s force of 9,000 men could be brought into position and that Junot’s 12,000 men in Lisbon could be mobilised. The French assumed that the total force of 27,000 was sufficient to crush the small British force before London could get reinforcements into Portugal. Remember the French army basically feared no one.