A History of the Peninsular War, Vol. 1, 1807-1809: From the Treaty of Fontainbleau to the Battle of Corunna

The Peninsular War was Napoleon's first great failure, the conflict that broke his aura of invincibility and drained his finest troops for years. Charles Oman's landmark 1902 study traces the war from its origins in the Treaty of Fontainebleau through the French occupation of Spain, the dramatic Dos de Mayo Uprising in Madrid, and concludes with the British retreat to Corunna. Oman meticulously reconstructs the political collapse of the Spanish Bourbon monarchy, the scheming of Manuel Godoy, and the emergence of the young Ferdinand as a figurehead for resistance. He captures the chaos of a kingdom torn between occupation and uprising, French calculation and Spanish fury. This is military history at its most granular and authoritative: troop movements, battle tactics, diplomatic maneuvering, all rendered with the precision that made Oman the preeminent English-language authority on Napoleonic warfare. The first volume establishes the patterns that would define the entire conflict: French overreach, British persistence, and the birth of Spanish guerrilla resistance that would haunt Napoleon's armies for years to come.