Download or read book The Hunt for Moore s Gold written by John Grehan and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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?

Download or read book Douglas s Tale of the Peninsula Waterloo 1808 1815 written by Stanley Monick and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1997-03-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are the memoirs of Sergeant John Dougl as, 3rd Battalion, The Royal Scots, and his experiences as a soldier from 1809-1817. The book provides a narrative of the Peninsular Campaign, with a descriptions of Quatre Bras an d Waterloo '

Download or read book Peninsular Eyewitnesses written by Charles Esdaile and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Women in the Peninsular War written by Charles J. Esdaile and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Women in the Peninsular War, Esdaile looks beyond the iconography. While a handful of Spanish and Portuguese women became Agustina-like heroines, a multitude became victims, and here both of these groups receive their due. But Esdaile reveals a much more complicated picture in which women are discovered to have experienced, responded to, and participated in the conflict in various ways.

Download or read book Wellington s Wars written by Huw J. Davies and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, lives on in popular memory as the "Invincible General," loved by his men, admired by his peers, formidable to his opponents. This incisive book revises such a portrait, offering an accurate--and controversial--new analysis of Wellington's remarkable military career. Unlike his nemesis Napoleon, Wellington was by no means a man of innate military talent, Huw J. Davies argues. Instead, the key to Wellington's military success was an exceptionally keen understanding of the relationship between politics and war.Drawing on extensive primary research, Davies discusses Wellington's military apprenticeship in India, where he learned through mistakes as well as successes how to plan campaigns, organize and use intelligence, and negotiate with allies. In India Wellington encountered the constant political machinations of indigenous powers, and it was there that he apprenticed in the crucial skill of balancing conflicting political priorities. In later campaigns and battles, including the Peninsular War and Waterloo, Wellington's genius for strategy, operations, and tactics emerged. For his success in the art of war, he came to rely on his art as a politician and tactician. This strikingly original book shows how Wellington made even unlikely victories possible--with a well-honed political brilliance that underpinned all of his military achievements.

Download or read book Redcoats written by Philip Haythornthwaite and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2012-08-19 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was a British soldiers life like during the Napoleonic Wars? How was he recruited and trained? How did he live on home service and during service abroad? And what was his experience of battle? In this landmark book Philip Haythornthwaite traces the career of a British soldier from enlistment, through the key stages of his path through the military system, including combat, all the way to his eventual discharge. His fascinating account shows how varied the recruits of the day were, from urban dwellers and weavers to plowboys and laborers, and they came from all regions of the British Isles including Ireland and Scotland. Some of them may have justified the Duke of Wellingtons famous description of them as the scum of the earth. Yet these common soldiers were capable of extraordinary feats on campaign and on the battlefield that eventually turned the course of the war against Napoleon.

Download or read book The Peninsular War written by Charles Esdaile and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 945 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning look at Napoleon's campaign across the Iberian peninsula from historian Charles Esdaile. At the end of the 18th century Spain remained one of the world's most powerful empires. Portugal, too, was prosperous at the time. By 1808, everything had changed. Portugal was under occupation and ravaged by famine, disease, economic problems and political instability. Spain had imploded and worse was to come. For the next six years, the peninsula was the helpless victim of others, suffering perhaps over a million deaths while troops from all over Europe tore it to pieces. Charles Esdaile's brilliant new history of the conflict makes plain the scope of the tragedy and its far-reaching effects, especially the poisonous legacy that produced the Spanish civil war of 1936-39.

Download or read book Burgos in the Peninsular War 1808 1814 written by C. Esdaile and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Redcoats Against Napoleon written by Carole Divall and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2009-04-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military histories of the struggle against the French armies of the Revolution and Napoleon often focus on the exploits of elite units and famous individuals, ignoring the essential contribution made by the ordinary soldiers the bulk of the British army. Carole Divall, in this graphic and painstakingly researched account, tells the story of one such hitherto ignored group of fighting men, the 30th Regiment of the Line. She takes their story from one of the opening clashes of the long war, the Siege of Toulon in 1793, to the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815. She gives us a fresh perspective on key events the men took part in Massenas retreat from the Lines of Torres Vedras, the bloody storming of Badajoz, the retreat from Burgos, the ordeal of the troops holding the centre of Wellingtons Waterloo position. The regiments history which she describes using some hitherto unpublished and vivid memoirs left by the men themselves and those they fought alongside offers a fascinating insight into the life of British soldiers two centuries ago.

Download or read book Wellington written by Rory Muir and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The leading Wellington historian’s fascinating reassessment of the Iron Duke’s most famous victory and his role in the turbulent politics after Waterloo. For Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington, his momentous victory over Napoleon was the culminating point of a brilliant military career. Yet Wellington’s achievements were far from over: he commanded the allied army of occupation in France to the end of 1818, returned home to a seat in Lord Liverpool’s cabinet, and became prime minister in 1828. He later served as a senior minister in Peel’s government and remained commander-in-chief of the army for a decade until his death in 1852. In this richly detailed work, the second and concluding volume of Rory Muir’s definitive biography, the author offers a substantial reassessment of Wellington’s significance as a politician and a nuanced view of the private man behind the legend of the selfless hero. Muir presents new insights into Wellington’s determination to keep peace at home and abroad, achieved by maintaining good relations with the Continental powers and resisting radical agitation while granting political equality to the Catholics in Ireland rather than risk civil war. And countering one-dimensional pictures of Wellington as a national hero, Muir paints a portrait of a well-rounded man whose austere demeanor on the public stage belied his entertaining, gossipy, generous, and unpretentious private self. “[An] authoritative and enjoyable conclusion to a two-part biography.” —Lawrence James, Times (London) “Muir conveys the military, political, social and personal sides of Wellington’s career with equal brilliance. This will be the leading work on the subject for decades.” —Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon and Wellington: The Long Duel

Download or read book The British Soldier in the Peninsular War written by G. Daly and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining military and cultural history, the book explores British soldiers' travels and cross-cultural encounters in Spain and Portugal, 1808-1814. It is the story of how soldiers interacted with the local environment and culture, of their attitudes and behaviour towards the inhabitants, and how they wrote about all this in letters and memoirs.

Download or read book Napoleon s Wars written by Charles Esdaile and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A glorious and conclusive chronicle of the wars waged by one of the most polarizing figures in military history Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as a new standard on the subject, this sweeping, boldly written history of the Napoleonic era reveals its central protagonist as a man driven by an insatiable desire for fame, and determined to push matters to extremes. More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, it offers a panoramic view of the armed conflicts that spread so quickly out of revolutionary France to countries as remote as Sweden and Egypt. As it expertly moves through conflicts from Russia to Spain, Napoleon's Wars proves to be history writing equal to its subject—grand and ambitious—that will reframe the way this tumultuous era is understood.

Download or read book All for the King s Shilling written by Edward J. Coss and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British troops who fought so successfully under the Duke of Wellington during his Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon have long been branded by the duke’s own words—“scum of the earth”—and assumed to have been society’s ne’er-do-wells or criminals who enlisted to escape justice. Now Edward J. Coss shows to the contrary that most of these redcoats were respectable laborers and tradesmen and that it was mainly their working-class status that prompted the duke’s derision. Driven into the army by unemployment in the wake of Britain’s industrial revolution, they confronted wartime hardship with ethical values and became formidable soldiers in the bargain These men depended on the king’s shilling for survival, yet pay was erratic and provisions were scant. Fed worse even than sixteenth-century Spanish galley slaves, they often marched for days without adequate food; and if during the campaign they did steal from Portuguese and Spanish civilians, the theft was attributable not to any criminal leanings but to hunger and the paltry rations provided by the army. Coss draws on a comprehensive database on British soldiers as well as first-person accounts of Peninsular War participants to offer a better understanding of their backgrounds and daily lives. He describes how these neglected and abused soldiers came to rely increasingly on the emotional and physical support of comrades and developed their own moral and behavioral code. Their cohesiveness, Coss argues, was a major factor in their legendary triumphs over Napoleon’s battle-hardened troops. The first work to closely examine the social composition of Wellington’s rank and file through the lens of military psychology, All for the King’s Shilling transcends the Napoleonic battlefield to help explain the motivation and behavior of all soldiers under the stress of combat.

Download or read book Salamanca 1812 written by Yale University Press and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In separate commentary sections he evaluates the sources and indicates the inevitable contradictions and gaps in evidence that have emerged during his research. Complete with maps, battleground plans, line drawings and photographs, this compelling book provides acute analysis of a single day in Salamanca that changed European history."--Jacket.

Download or read book Storm and Sack written by Gavin Daly and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-06 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Peninsular War, Wellington's army stormed and sacked three French-held Spanish towns: Ciudad Rodrigo (1812), Badajoz (1812) and San Sebastian (1813). Storm and Sack is the first major study of British soldiers' violence and restraint towards enemy combatants and civilians in the siege warfare of the Napoleonic era. Using soldiers' letters, diaries and memoirs, Gavin Daly compares and contrasts military practices and attitudes across British sieges spanning three continents, from the Peninsular War in Spain to India and South America. He focuses on siege rituals and laws of war, and uncovering the cultural and emotional history of the storm and sack of towns. This book challenges conventional understandings of the place and nature of sieges in the Napoleonic Wars. It encourages a rethinking of the notorious reputations of the British sacks of this period and their place within the long-term history of customary laws of war and siege violence. Daly reveals a multifaceted story not only of rage, enmity, plunder and atrocity but also of mercy, honour, humanity and moral outrage.

Download or read book Britain s Rise to Global Superpower in the Age of Napoleon written by William Nester and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2020-12-14 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study to explore all Britain’s key land and sea campaigns from 179–1815 and the two military geniuses who vanquished France. The art of power consists of getting what one wants. That is never more challenging than when a nation is at war. Britain fought a nearly nonstop war against first revolutionary then Napoleonic France from 1793 to 1815. During those twenty-two years, the government formed, financed, and led seven coalitions against France. The French inflicted humiliating defeats on the first five. Eventually Britain and its allies prevailed, not once but twice, by vanquishing Napoleon temporarily in 1814 and definitively in 1815. French revolutionaries had created a new form of warfare, which Napoleon perfected. Never before had a government mobilized so much of a realm’s manpower, industry, finance, and patriotism, nor, under Napoleon, wielded it more effectively and ruthlessly to pulverize and conquer one’s enemies. Britain struggled up a blood-soaked learning curve to master this new form of warfare. With time the British made the most of their natural strategic and economic advantages. Britons were relatively secure and prosperous in their island realm. British merchants, manufacturers, and financiers dominated global markets. The Royal Navy not only ruled the waves that lapped against the nation’s shores but those plowed by international commerce around the world. Yet even with those assets victory was not inevitable. Two military geniuses are the most vital reasons why Britain and its allies vanquished France when and how they did. General Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Horatio Nelson respectively mastered warfare on land and at sea. Of the hundreds of books on the era, none before has explored all of Britain’s land and sea campaigns from the first in 1793 to the last in 1815. This vividly written, meticulously researched book lets readers experience each level of war from the debates over grand strategy in London to the horrors of combat engulfing soldiers and sailors in distant lands and seas. Haunting voices of participants echo from two centuries ago, culled from speeches, diaries, and letters. Britain's Rise to Global Superpower in the Age of Napoleon reveals how decisively or disastrously the British army and navy wielded the art of military power during the Age of Revolution and Napoleon.

Download or read book The army list written by and published by . This book was released on 1880 with total page 1460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: