Excellent post. Thanks for the history lesson. Wellington was known as a master of terrain. I don’t know if he got that reputation from Spain or from Waterloo, but you look at some of those wonderful defensive positions he held in Spain and you wonder what the French Marshalls were thinking to even attack the British. Then there was all the infighting between them. I think Napoleon would have quickly rid Iberia of the British if Napoleon had stayed and taken personal command.
Every consideration of Napoleon ends with wondering if he could have held Europe indefinitely had he never invaded Russia. Britain would have opposed him forever, but if he just sat back and consolidated power on the Continent, only squelching whatever attacks were mustered against him, you have to wonder if he would have held that place forever making a defacto US of Europe and eliminating both world wars.
I will always wonder.
Everyone wonders.
I am sure the Empire was already rotting when Napoleon I lost power.
Anyway, Wellington did wonderfully well in Spain Portugal because HIS communication and supply lines WERE assured by the British navy. No one and nothing interfered with what he needed in the field. He was supplied totally by sea at secure Portuguese and Spanish ports.
Also, Spain (Iberia) was called Napoleon’s ‘ulcer’. He led then SENT a jaded and discordant force into that country and the population took full advantage of everything that kind of confusion and discord does to an army.
The Church was instrumental in organizing the population into destructive mobs and insanely courageous individuals. Even the women waged war. The people were your friends in the daytime and enemies after dark. Some of the worst atrocities ever known in modern fighting were begun in that fight. It was the first truly guerilla fight in recorded history.
Worse still, many of the Marshals sent there DID NOT want to be there, didn’t agree with or comprehend the politics, etc. Many were long-standing rivals and enemies to one another. They never got along and this was such a problem that some even outright sabotaged the plans and efforts of others.
I think it was Marshal Soult who even wanted to set up a separate kingdom for himself, there. Crazy!
The stand out Marshals and the real star performers in the French military, who were unlucky enough to be deployed there, got in and back out of that place with AT LEAST their reputations intact. Not so for most of them ... and in the end it was a disastrous failure.
Reading all that is better than any fake Hollywood drama!