has been portrayed too often solely in terms of his peerless military talent.
Supplied by sea by the Royal Navy, he could manoeuvre in Spain when
and where he wished; the French troops had no regular supply and were
too numerous to live off the land. Foraging parties, unless in brigade
strength, would be taken out by the guerrillas, while a wholesale effort to
supply the army frpm France would mean that Napoleon had no
resources left over for adventures elsewhere in Europe.
Since the guerrillas were the rock on which Napoleon's Spanish
adventure foundered, they merit more attention than they have received
in most histories of the Peninsular War. Who were they, what were their
aims and why were they so successful? Unfortunately, historians disagree
on almost every aspect of the Spanish irregulars. Some say there were as
many as so,ooo, others that the figure may be as low as 30,000 -in
contrast to an English army of 40,000 and 25,000 Spanish regulars. As for
the casualties they inflicted, this too divides commentators. Although we
may discount King Joseph's figure of 18o,ooo guerrilla-caused deaths out
of a total French mortality of 240,000 in the years 1808-1813 as being
absurdly high, some scholars opt for a high of 145,000. Others claim that
many deaths through wounds and disease were attributed to the
guerrillas, so that the true figure is in the region of 76,ooo deaths. But at
the very least the guerrillas must have accounted for thirty French deaths
every day.
Another problem is that the Spanish guerrillas have been hopelessly
romanticized as freedom fighters. There were a few idealists but mostly
they were old-style bandit chiefs whose activities were legitimated by the
struggle for Ferdinand, the 'desired one'. Spanish guerrilla warfare was
overwhelmingly a rural affair, with undertones of social war, poor against
rich, but it always tended to shade into tax-resistant brigandage. It was in
almost every respect a retrograde and reactionary phenomenon which,
with its ethos of partisan warfare, the cult of the leader, xenophobia and
mindless hatred and atrocity, left Spain a baneful legacy which some say
would eventually surface in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. By
encouraging contempt for social norms, it encouraged Spaniards to live
outside the law and accept the doctrine that power comes out of the
barrel of a gun. By romanticizing revolution, glorifying insubordination
and deifying violence and atrocity, it laid the foundations for a sea of
troubles in later Spanish history.
No service is done to history by endorsing the legend of the Spanish
'guerrilla patriots'. But of their power of attrition there can be no doubt.
Although difficult to use strategically in planned campaigns, they were
invaluable in preventing French armies appearing in overwhelming force.
marcin
(Marcin)
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