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Approaching the 200th anniversary of the Peninsular War , a war which ushered in the century of Pax Britannica, Hugh Bicheno takes on one of the most mythologized episodes in British history. It will be an accessible synthesis of recent scholarship for a modern readership and will follow the successful model of Rebels & Redcoats, the author’s revisionist and best-selling account of the American War of Independence. The author’s ability to mine new content and to present new interpretations was commented by Sir John Keegan in his review of Razor’s Edge: ‘It may seem impossible for anything original to appear about the Falklands War of 1982, so much has been written about it, but Hugh Bicheno’s book is that thing.’
The book will draw on a wide range of published memoirs and on previously untapped material – only two previous books in English have used Spanish memoirs and archives, and none has accessed equivalent Portuguese sources. The author has the languages to consult French, Spanish and Portuguese sources, while his USP of creating descriptive maps of areas of operations and battlefields frees the word-count to explore personal experiences and to highlight evocative episodes.
The subject has topical echoes – French operational brilliance and strategic blindness, and the venomous nationalist and religious resistance to invasion in Portugal and Spain, have parallels with today’s situation in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is also highly comparable to World War II – Britain played the same role in the downfall of Napoleon as the USA did in bringing down Hitler.
Popular interest in the war has been encouraged and educated by Bernard Cornwell’s novels about Rifleman Sharpe and the spin-off television series starring Sean Bean. An extraordinary number of reprints, in particular of Sir Charles Oman’s epic seven-volume history of the war, indicate strong demand for an up-to-date account. Many memoirs have been published and as many books on the battles of the war, but none have captured how savage and colourful it was. The word ‘guerrilla’ was born of this war, which was characterised by acts of appalling destruction and cruelty; yet it was also a war of flamboyant men in gorgeous uniforms, splendid scenery and profound cultural contrasts. Weaving through the book will be the colourful experiences of representative British, French Imperial, Portuguese and Spanish individuals such as the great Victorian soldier Harry Smith and the Spanish bride he rescued at the appalling siege of Badajoz, Napoleon’s most competent subordinate Marshal Nicolas Jean-de Dieu Soult, guerrilla leader Juan Martín Diez ‘El Empecinado’ and the luckless General Bernardim Freire, murdered by a crazed mob who suspected him of treachery when he was one of the few senior Portuguese officers still loyal to his country and king.
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