Peninsular Eyewitnesses

Peninsular Eyewitnesses

Author: Charles Esdaile

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2008-09-30

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1844151913

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Many books have been written about the British struggle against Napoleon in the Peninsula. A few recent studies have given a broader view of the ebb and flow of a long war that had a shattering impact on Spain and Portugal and marked the history of all the nations involved. But none of these books has concentrated on how these momentous events were perceived and understood by the people who experienced them. Charles Esdaile has brought together a vivid selection of contemporary accounts of every aspect of the war to create a panoramic yet minutely detailed picture of those years of turmoil. The story is told through memoirs, letters and eyewitness testimony from all sides. Instead of generals and statesmen, we mostly hear from less-well-known figures - junior officers and ordinary soldiers and civilians who recorded their immediate experience of the conflict.


Peninsular Eyewitnesses

Peninsular Eyewitnesses

Author: Charles Esdaile

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2008-09-30

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 1473817153

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Many books have been written about the British struggle against Napoleon in the Peninsula. A few recent studies have given a broader view of the ebb and flow of a long war that had a shattering impact on Spain and Portugal and marked the history of all the nations involved. But none of these books has concentrated on how these momentous events were perceived and understood by the people who experienced them. Charles Esdaile has brought together a vivid selection of contemporary accounts of every aspect of the war to create a panoramic yet minutely detailed picture of those years of turmoil. The story is told through memoirs, letters and eyewitness testimony from all sides. Instead of generals and statesmen, we mostly hear from less-well-known figures - junior officers and ordinary soldiers and civilians who recorded their immediate experience of the conflict.


Eyewitness to the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo

Eyewitness to the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo

Author: Gareth Glover

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2011-06-13

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1844684423

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The journals of the Honourable James Stanhope are among the most remarkable eyewitness accounts of the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo, and yet they have never been published before. The long fight against the French in Portugal and Spain, the campaign in Holland, then the Battle of Waterloo James Stanhope lived through all these extraordinary events and recorded them in vivid detail.Stanhope served as an aide de camp to the major commanders of the day Wellington, General Graham, Lord Paget, the Duke of York among them. And he described his experiences and observations in a lucid and candid prose that makes his journals of great historical value and of compelling interest to us today. His writing gives a graphic inside view of the military and political situation of the time as it was perceived at the top levels of the British army, and he depicts the daily experience of campaigning during the Napoleonic Wars in an unforgettable way.


Peninsular and Waterloo General

Peninsular and Waterloo General

Author: Marcus de la Poer Beresford

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2022-05-05

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 139908321X

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Denis Pack was one of a phalanx of senior Anglo-Irish officers who served with great distinction in the British army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, earning a reputation as one of the Duke of Wellington’s most able brigade commanders. Despite his remarkable and varied military career, he hasn’t received the individual attention he deserves, but this omission has now been remedied by Marcus de la Poer Beresford’s full biography. Pack, who was born in 1774, served extensively in Europe as well as in Africa and South America. He was one of the few brigade commanders to serve first with the Portuguese army, and then with Wellington, in the Peninsula, at Quatre Bras, Waterloo and afterwards in the occupation of France. His life was cut short by an early death in 1823, which may have been the result of the many wounds he received in his thirty years as a soldier. This perceptive and meticulously researched study draws on previously unpublished material from archives in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Ireland. It complements other works on notable officers of the period, as Pack served with Cornwallis, Baird, Beresford, Whitelocke, Chatham, Picton, Henry Clinton, and others as well as Wellington. In addition it offers an absorbing portrait of Pack himself and gives the reader a fascinating insight into the many campaigns he took part in and the military life of his day.


Burgos in the Peninsular War, 1808-1814

Burgos in the Peninsular War, 1808-1814

Author: C. Esdaile

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 113743290X

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For a full month in the autumn of 1812 the 2,000-strong garrison of the fortress the French had constructed to overawe the city of Burgos defied the Duke of Wellington. In this work a leading historian of the Peninsular teams up with a leading conflict archaeologist to examine the reasons for Wellington's failure.


Eighteen Hundred and Eleven

Eighteen Hundred and Eleven

Author: E. J. Clery

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-09

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1108101429

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In 1811 England was on the brink of economic collapse and revolution. The veteran poet and campaigner Anna Letitia Barbauld published a prophecy of the British nation reduced to ruins by its refusal to end the interminable war with France, titled Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. Combining ground-breaking historical research with incisive textual analysis, this new study dispels the myth surrounding the hostile reception of the poem and takes a striking episode in Romantic-era culture as the basis for exploring poetry as a medium of political protest. Clery examines the issues at stake, from the nature of patriotism to the threat to public credit, and throws new light on the views and activities of a wide range of writers, including radical, loyalist and dissenting journalists, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, and Barbauld herself. Putting a woman writer at the centre of the enquiry opens up a revised perspective on the politics of Romanticism.


The Battle of Barrosa

The Battle of Barrosa

Author: John Grehan

Publisher: Skyhorse

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1629140732

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By the winter of 1810–11, the armies of Napoleon had overrun most of Spain and Joseph Bonaparte sat on the throne in Madrid. But the Spanish Government had found refuge in the fortress-port of Cadiz and the Spaniards refused to admit that they had been conquered. With a British army under Sir Thomas Graham helping to defend Cadiz, the Spanish cause seemed certain to prevail. But then the Spaniards wanted to throw Graham’s force into a reckless battle against the French. If the battle was won, the siege of Cadiz would be lifted; if the battle was lost Cadiz would be rendered defenseless and the Spanish government left at the mercy of the invaders. The opposing forces met on the heights of Barossa in one of the most savage encounters of the Peninsular War. At stake was the very survival of the Spanish nation and the future course of the war against Napoleon. The Battle of Barossa is the first book to examine this crucial campaign in detail and to reveal its true historical importance. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.


The Wars of the French Revolution

The Wars of the French Revolution

Author: Charles J Esdaile

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-08-30

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1351174525

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The Wars of the French Revolution, 1792–1801 offers a comprehensive and jargon-free coverage of this turbulent period and unites political, social, military and international history in one volume. Carefully designed for undergraduate students, through twelve chapters this book offers an introduction to the origins and international context of the French Revolution as well as an in-depth examination of the reasons why war began. Aspects unpicked within the book include how France acquired a de facto empire stretching from Holland to Naples; the impact of French conquest on the areas concerned; the spread of French ideas beyond the frontiers of the French imperium; the response of the powers of Europe to the sudden expansion in French military power; the experience of the conflicts unleashed by the French Revolution in such areas as the West Indies, Egypt and India; and the impact of war on the Revolution itself. Offering extensive geographical coverage and challenging many preconceived ideas, The Wars of the French Revolution, 1792–1801 is the perfect resource for students of the French Revolution and international military history more broadly.


The Arms-Bearing Woman and British Theatre in the Age of Revolution, 1789-1815

The Arms-Bearing Woman and British Theatre in the Age of Revolution, 1789-1815

Author: Sarah Burdett

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-05-20

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 3031154746

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This book explores shifting representations and receptions of the arms-bearing woman on the British stage during a period in which she comes to stand in Britain as a striking symbol of revolutionary chaos. The book makes a case for viewing the British Romantic theatre as an arena in which the significance of the armed woman is constantly remodelled and reappropriated to fulfil diverse ideological functions. Used to challenge as well as to enforce established notions of sex and gender difference, she is fashioned also as an allegorical tool, serving both to condemn and to champion political and social rebellion at home and abroad. Magnifying heroines who appear on stage wielding pistols, brandishing daggers, thrusting swords, and even firing explosives, the study spotlights the intricate and often surprising ways in which the stage amazon interacts with Anglo-French, Anglo-Irish, Anglo-German, and Anglo-Spanish debates at varying moments across the French revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns. At the same time, it foregrounds the extent to which new dramatic genres imported from Europe –notably, the German Sturm und Drang and the French-derived melodrama– facilitate possibilities at the turn of the nineteenth century for a refashioned female warrior, whose degree of agency, destructiveness, and heroism surpasses that of her tragic and sentimental predecessors.


The Hunt for Moore's Gold

The Hunt for Moore's Gold

Author: John Grehan

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1526730545

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The author of The Charge of the Light Brigade examines the history behind a treasure of military gold that disappeared during the Peninsula War. History abounds with unresolved puzzles and unanswered questions, none more so than that of the loss of the British Army’s military chest during the retreat to Corunna in 1809. Now, with a group of fellow historians, the author set off to search the archives and the mountains of Galicia in a bid to find Moore’s gold. Sir John Moore’s small force had dared to attack Marshal Soult’s II Corps isolated in the north of Spain. But before Moore could pounce on the unsuspecting French corps, he learned that the Emperor Napoleon, at the head of an overwhelming body of troops, was bearing down on the British force, hoping to cut it off from the sea and its only avenue of escape. A desperate race for the coast then began, with the French hard on Moore’s heels. In subzero temperatures, the troops were driven on through the snow-clad Galician mountains at a punishing pace. As the men trudged on in deteriorating conditions, the bullocks pulling the army’s military chest could no longer keep up. So, in order to prevent the money from falling into enemy hands, the entire military chest was thrown down a deep ravine. What then happened to all those dollars and doubloons? Some were snatched up by the pursuing French cavalry. Some, also, were retrieved by British soldiers who intentionally lagged behind, though their greed cost them their lives on the end of a French bayonet. But what of the rest of the money?