ABSTRACT
Victory in Spain seemed a very distant prospect in December 1812. Nine months later the French were largely forced from that country. What proved to be the final phase of the fighting in Spain then carried over into a successful British invasion of south-western France. In an unremitting sequence of often very hard fighting from May 1813 to April 1814, the British army fought the toughest and longest campaign against a strong enemy army in its history to that date. Victory depended upon a number of developments: the depletion of French forces, Napoleon’s relative lack of interest in the peninsula, the Spanish contribution to France’s defeat, the role of British sea power, the effectiveness of the British army, the development of British generalship and wider military leadership, the geopolitical strategies pursued by Britain. It also hinged on the military balance of power in all its dimensions, including the dynamic and unstable relationship between the British concentration on the military efficiency of the Anglo-Portuguese army and the wider interaction between the British and Spanish authorities.
