The literature of the Peninsular War is rich with vivid source material -letters, diaries, memoirs, and dispatches -but most of it was written by British soldiers or by the French and their allies. As a result the history and experience of the Portuguese forces -which by 1812 composed close to half of Wellington’s Army -have been seriously under-represented. That is why this pioneering book, which publishes for the first time in English the after-action reports written by the commanders of Portuguese battalions, regiments and brigades, is so important. For these detailed, graphic firsthand accounts give us a fascinating insight into the vital contribution the Portuguese made to the allied army and shed new light on the struggle against the French in the Iberian Peninsula. The authors provide an introduction tracing the history of the Portuguese Army prior to the Salamanca campaign of 1812, while tracking its organisational changes and assignment of commanders from 1808 to 1814. They include detailed notes on the after-action reports which set them in the context of each stage of the conflict. AUTHORS: Moises Gaudencio was born in Lorvao, Portugal and was raised very near the Bussaco mountain. He became fascinated by the stories told by his grandparents about the French, who were lost in the mountains and were chased by the peasants, after the battle. This led to his lifelong interest in the subject of the Portuguese role in the Peninsular War. He is a contributor to the Napoleon Series website and published some posts on the cooperative blog Do Douro a Toulouse (http://18131814.blogspot.com/).
Robert Burnham recently retired as the editor of the largest Napoleonic history site on the internet (www.napoleon-series.org) and is the author of Charging against Wellington: The French Cavalry in the Peninsular War and co-author of Wellington’s Brigade Commanders and Inside Wellington’s Peninsular Army.
30 b/w illustrations