Napoleon's Peninsular War: The French Experience of the War in Spain from Vimeiro to Corunna, 1808-1809

French soldiers’ memories illuminate the Peninsular War’s early years with vivid, unseen detail from Iberia’s mountains to Zaragoza

Memoirs of British soldiers who fought in the Peninsular War are commonplace and histories of the momentous campaigns and battles of Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, can be numbered by the score. Yet surprisingly little has been published in English on their opponents, the French.

Using previously unseen material from the Fr...