Tema: Napoleon's Testimony to Christ at St. Helena.

Pardon my former error; I wasn't paying attention it seems and I won't edit it.

Martin,

I was going to say as a response to you that the situation in Espana during the war with France during the Napoleonic Period was a very complex situation that involved a variety of factors, i.e. the factors in Spain but also the British involvement for example. Britain and Spain had just fought a war before becoming allies against Napoleon's France.

You might like this, since you seem to be interested in the period as well as myself:

Napoleon Series: War of 1812 Issue 5

The Duke of Wellington, the Peninsular War and the War of 1812

Part I: North America and the Peninsular War -- Logistics

By John R. Grodzinski

To most British historians, the War of 1812, or the Second American War as it is sometimes known, is an obscure contest, a sideshow to the much larger conflict waged against Napoleon’s France. British soldiers who served in North America between 1812 and 1815, were regarded somewhat indifferently in contrast to the favouritism extended to the “P[eninsular] and W[aterloo]” boys who fought on the continent. Surgeon William Dunlop of the 2^nd Battalion, 89^th Foot, may have best summed up their sentiments; upon hearing of the victory at Waterloo, Dunlop quipped, “thank God he [Wellington] managed to do without us …”[1]

These same soldiers can easily be cast as an earlier version of Slims 14^th Army in Burma during the Second World War or with the famed D Day Dodgers that fought in Italy. With that in mind, one could possibly conclude there is little relationship between Burgos and Queenston Heights, the Crossing of the Bidossa and Stoney Creek or the Battle of Toulouse and Chippawa or Lundy’s Lane, or any event from the Peninsular War and the Second American War.

In truth they are interrelated and were incorporated into British strategic planning and more specifically, the Duke of Wellington’s strategic and operational thinking. As the commander of the only large field force employed in continuous operations, Wellington was uniquely interested in how events elsewhere might affect the financial, materiel, manpower and naval support he received.


The Duke never visited North America, but events on the western side of the Atlantic between 1807, when relations between Britain and America began spiralling towards war, and 1812, when war finally broke out, caused him concern over his supply of foodstuffs, while the demands of this distant operational theatre between 1812 and 1814 placed added strain on a military system already under duress.


Similarly, as will be discussed in the text, historians have examined the War of 1812 and the Peninsular War, but examinations of their interrelationship have been restricted to a single element, such as trade, and much of that has been general or even wrong. Indeed recent historians have repeated some of these errors in their work.[2]


This paper will examine the relationship between events in North America and the Peninsular War; it will focus on how Wellington, an operational level commander, dealt with four specific aspects of the two theatres: the effect of the War of 1812 on the supply of grain to the Peninsula; Wellington’s assessments of the conduct of operations in that theatre; the provision of reinforcements to North America and the matter of Wellington’s appointment as overall commander in British North America...

(More at the link.)