Traces the decline of the American trade in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars. Discusses the downfall of many American merchants in the region and the need to shift to new economic stragegies.

The various Atlantic and European entanglements of the age of Latin American independence make it difficult to establish solely “Iberian” perspectives of the events culminating in the independences. Nevertheless, this essay proposes four distinct periods, mostly based on developments in Iberian politics, including the Peninsular War and its aftermath, when elites in Spain and Portugal advanced distinct views and solutions to the crises unfolding in the Americas. Certainly, the situation was not the same in Spain and Portugal. Still, the many cross-pollinations in Spanish and Portuguese politics in the first quarter of the nineteenth century permit the use of shared chronological benchmarks. Indeed, the years of the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula between 1808 and 1814, and the distinct challenges that the events in this six-year period created, loomed large in subsequent debates about imperial preservation, sovereignty, rights, and relations within the Iberian Empires. Large-scale, multisited, unrest in Spanish America since 1810, prompted the proposal of political and military solutions to guarantee the integrity of the empire and of what some viewed as a trans-Atlantic “Spanish nation.” In Portugal, the debates revolved around the lasting consequences of the royal family’s relocation to Rio de Janeiro in 1808, and anxieties about the status of Portugal itself within the reconfigured empire.

The British Army took part in numerous operations, ranging from small expeditions to the West Indies, Africa and along the European littoral to major operations in Portugal, Spain and Belgium. Initial struggles with these responsibilities, together with those of imperial policing and maintaining order in Ireland would oblige the Army to implement extensive reforms, particularly in tactics and unit organisation, even while the system of purchase for officers remained intact. While British infantry produced mixed results in the field during the French Revolutionary Wars, in time it became noteworthy for its musketry and remarkable doggedness in battle. Chronically understrength and notoriously difficult to control, the cavalry tended to play only a minor part on campaign, while shortages of artillery and engineers plagued the Army throughout this period. Albeit comparatively small, in creating an Iberian foothold which soon developed into a major theatre of operations, the instrument forged in the battles and sieges of the Peninsula and southern France helped drain Napoleon’s resources over a substantial period and established the high standard of battlefield performance which was to reach its apogee on the field of Waterloo, from which would emerge one of history’s greatest commanders – the Duke of Wellington.

This chapter examines siege surrender rituals and the obstinate defence of practicable breaches during the Napoleonic Wars, with a particular focus on French obstinacy in the Peninsular War, which triggered the British general storms of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz and San Sebastian. Whereas a century earlier Louis XIV’s fortress governors had surrendered at the point of a practicable breach or beforehand, Napoleon’s now fought on. This chapter explores how this had come to pass, the extent to which eighteenth-century siege surrender conventions were disrupted during the Peninsular War and Napoleonic Wars more generally, and British attitudes and practices towards siege defences taken to the last extremity. On the one hand, French garrison commanders were adhering to Napoleon’s orders to defend practicable breaches, which became the subject of an instructional treatise by Lazare Carnot. On the other hand, this was the culmination of a much broader and long-term evolution in cultures of war and honour codes – that encouraged a cult of obstinacy. The chapter concludes by comparing siege surrender in Spain with siege defences and capitulation throughout other regional theatres of war and campaigns during the Napoleonic Wars.

This book 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 British soldiers’ letters, diaries and memoirs, Gavin Daly compares and contrasts military practices and attitudes across sieges spanning three continents, from the Peninsular War in Spain, to India and South America. He focuses on siege rituals and laws of war, storm and sack of towns. The 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. Storm and Sack reveals a multi-faceted story of not only rage, enmity, plunder and atrocity but also of mercy, honour, humanity and moral outrage.

This book 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 British soldiers’ letters, diaries and memoirs, Gavin Daly compares and contrasts military practices and attitudes across sieges spanning three continents, from the Peninsular War in Spain, to India and South America. He focuses on siege rituals and laws of war, storm and sack of towns. The 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. Storm and Sack reveals a multi-faceted story of not only rage, enmity, plunder and atrocity but also of mercy, honour, humanity and moral outrage.

This chapter spans the history of European siege warfare across the long eighteenth century, from the age of Louis XIV to the Napoleonic Wars. It lays out the key thematic groundwork and siege case studies explored in later chapters. The first half outlines the nature of ‘the siege’ as the classic form of old-regime positional warfare – its operational forms, temporal and spatial dimensions, and rituals and customary laws of war – and charts the relative historic decline of breach assaults and siege related massacres of garrisons and civilians in the eighteenth century. The second half shifts to the Revolutionary-Napoleonic era. It identifies the continuing importance of siege operations beyond their earlier high point in European military affairs; the regional and chronological shifts in sieges across the Napoleonic Wars; the nature of British siege operations in Continental Europe and the colonial sphere (India and South America); and ends with an overview of British and French sieges in the Peninsular War – the epicentre of Napoleonic siege warfare and of the storming and sack of besieged towns.

At the heart of most sacks – in terms of motivation, behaviour and the broad participation of common soldiers – lay plunder. This chapter explores British sack plunder in the Napoleonic era from multiple perspectives: the broad campaign and siege contexts in which it occurred; the dynamics and rituals of plunder on the ground; and the attitudes and practices of officers. Most British rank and file participated in the plunder of stormed towns, borne of customary right, the catharsis of passing through the breaches, and opportunism. Despite the seeming chaos, this plunder had its own distinct rituals, conventions and carnivalesque dimensions. Some officers were complicit, too, in tolerating plunder, or indulging themselves; and in India, given the traditions of Company plunder and profit-taking, officers were only too eager to enjoy the official spoils of distributed prize. Yet, whilst there was a general resignation that it was next to impossible to prevent the plunder of stormed towns, most officers, and some men from the ranks, were highly critical of troops doing so, on military and moral grounds, drawing particular attention to the drunkenness, destruction and violence that accompanied it.