Robert Southey, Poet Laureate of England, brings his literary gifts to this monumental history of the conflict that reshaped Europe. The Peninsular War (1807-1814) was Napoleon's grinding nightmare: a partisan insurgency, a military quagmire, and the proving ground for the British generalship that would finally defeat the French Emperor. This final volume chronicles the war's decisive conclusion, tracing the allied campaigns that drove French forces from Spain and Portugal. Southey writes with the eye of a poet and the rigor of a historian, interweaving battlefield tactics with the human cost borne by soldiers and civilians alike. The result is both a military history and a meditation on what it costs a nation to fight for its survival. For readers of military history, the Napoleonic era, or anyone seeking to understand how guerrilla warfare and perseverance forced the first great defeat of Napoleon's seemingly invincible army.
