Moisés Gaudêncio and Robert Burnham, In The Words of Wellington’s Fighting Cocks (Pen & Sword, 2021)
The Anglo-centric view of Britain’s involvement in the Napoleonic Wars has been waning for many years now. Waterloo, for example, is framed in terms of an Anglo-Dutch victory by many students of the wars. And a greater spotlight has been shone on the Spanish and Portuguese contributions in the Peninsular War. But we still don’t know all that much about them, at least in the Anglophone world. For the Portuguese, though, now we do thanks to this book of collected source material capably handled by Moisés Gaudêncio and Robert Burnham.
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Gaudêncio and Burnham note that by 1812, forty percent of Wellington’s army was Portuguese, and that their accounts of the war alter the traditional perception of events. It was the authors’ mission, therefore, to describe what the Portuguese did from the Portuguese perspective. They begin with a history and overview of the Portuguese army leading into 1812 followed by a survey of the British officers that, for the most part, commanded the army. Then we are into the narrative, beginning with an overview of the annual campaign of 1812 then the major events of that campaign – this sets the pattern for subsequent chapters. In 1812, for example, we have the Battle of Salamanca, the Siege of Burgos Castle, and the Retreat to Portugal. Within each event, the authors outline what happened before gathering together all the reports with brief introductions and some added source material from different vantages to add colour. The chapter for 1813 includes Vitoria and the Siege of San Sebastian, while in 1814, the Battle of Toulouse is covered. Those major events are linked by a host of smaller engagements. The authors also include casualty tables but, unfortunately, no maps, which can be found on a linked website. Two appendices contain biographies of many of the officers whose reports we have read in the main text.
There is a prodigious amount of source material in this book that will certainly change future histories of the many events under examination. Gaudêncio put the effort in, spending three years in the Portuguese military archive to bring his sources to light. That in itself should tell you how valuable his work is to our understanding of the Peninsular War. I’m not sure that this is a book to read in one sitting unless you are deep into the Peninsular War; the reports are sometimes a wee bit dry and dusty, and they can become repetitive. Nevertheless, dipping in and out of particular events, perhaps in combination with the maps on the website, is illuminating. I would like to have seen more ‘ground level’ contributions, but there are some mixed in, and I read this more as a source book that future historians will build on, so I’m not complaining. Military history students, and particularly those who study the Peninsular War, will greatly appreciate this addition to their library.
