ABSTRACT
From the very moment of the outbreak of the Spanish revolt against Napoleon in 1808 down to the present time, the dominant image in respect of Spain’s participation in the Napoleonic Wars has very much been that of people’s war. Thus, acting as one man, it is supposed, the people of Spain sprang to arms and for six years fought shoulder-to-shoulder in a bitter struggle against incorporation in the French imperium under the sceptre of Napoleon’s elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte. In more popular accounts, in particular, the chief picture that is conjured up here is that of guerrilla warfare: whilst the more active elements of the populace formed themselves into armed bands that waged an incessant irregular struggle against the invaders, a network of informers and other accomplices kept them supplied with food and information whilst at the same time providing them with shelter and medical care. To read some histories of the war – both British and Spanish – it might be thought that the guerrillas were the only elements in the Spanish struggle, but most accounts accept that in fact irregular bands were but a part of the war against Napoleon, and, what is more, a relatively small one in numerical terms. Important though they were in terms of their impact on the course of events, they were always outweighed by the Spanish regular army, this being the force in which most defensores de la patria actually bore arms. But, regulars though they might be, they did not, or so it was supposed, need anything so unromantic as coercion to get them into the ranks: like the guerrillas, they were men who had come forward freely to fight for Church, King, and Fatherland. In short, they were volunteers, and it is in this guise that the Spanish soldier was often portrayed. However, to write in this fashion is deeply naive: in Spain in 1808 as much as in France in 1793 – hitherto the only comparable example – mobilization was above all the work of compulsion. From 1808 till 1814, in fact, conscription was very much part of the experience of the people of Spain, and again, just as was the case in France, it may in this sense be said to have become an integral part of political revolution: when Spain acquired her first constitution on 19 March 1812, the idea that all male Spaniards were liable to military service on an equal basis irrespective of their birth or place of residence was one of the most immediately relevant of its clauses – the national
assembly that had been summoned to elaborate the constitution was meeting under the very muzzles of France’s cannon in the besieged city of Cádiz, whilst almost all of the country was under enemy occupation apart from Galicia and a few enclaves of territory in Catalonia, León, and the southern Levante. Indeed, as we shall see, the introduction of universal conscription was one of the very few genuinely revolutionary acts that may be ascribed to the new organs of political authority that sprang up when Spain went to war against Napoleon in 1808.
