War in the Peninsula

London: Faber & Faber. Very Good/Very Good. 1977. Hard Cover. 8vo 0571106455 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Illustrated, 256 pages clean and tight. In writing about the Peninsular War English traveller, Richard Ford, says that the military authorities 'are necessarily of three classes: and belong to the invader, the French; the invaded, the Spanish; and the deliverer, the English'. The difficulty is to strike a fair balance: most English accounts describe the war in terms of set battles between the British and the French. It was, after all, a war for the independence of Spain and Portugal and had far-reaching repercussions outside the Peninsula: notably the liberation of South America from foreign domination. Drawing upon contemporary documents and eyewitness accounts, Jan Read's book sets the conflict in its wider historical context and pays special attention to the activities of the guerillas, whose day-to-day attacks on the invader inflicted a terrible toll on the French and did as much to achieve ultimate victory as the more spectacular victories of Wellington. It is illustrated by little-known paintings and engravings, mainly from Spanish sources. Jan Read has written a vividly readable account, which brings to life the intrigues of the corrupt Bourbon court, the machinations of Napoleon, individual bravery on the battlefield, the horrors of a war so unforgettably depicted by Goya, and the attempts to forge a more liberal Spain. .