Читать книгу The Story of a Peninsular Veteran. Sergeant in the Forty-Third Light Infantry, during the Peninsular War онлайн

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Without in the least entering into political detail connected with the causes and result of the memorable Peninsular campaign, which is not within my present design, it may be enough to state, that the expedition in which I had sailed was planned by the British government to act in concert with several simultaneous movements in favour of the Spanish constitutionalists, then contending with their French invaders. Our arrival in October, 1808, proved to be a momentous crisis; a few weeks previously Buonaparte had entered Spain, and taken the command of the hostile army, with the avowed purpose of driving the English into the sea. He advanced, as usual, by marches prodigiously rapid on Madrid, so that at the end of November his advanced guard reached the important pass of Somosierra. This pass was defended by 13,000 Spaniards, with sixteen pieces of cannon. They were attacked by the French under the Duke of Belluno, and after a vigorous resistance entirely defeated. On the 2nd of December Buonaparte arrived in the vicinity of Madrid, and in three days from that period was master of that capital. Dispirited and overwhelmed as the Spanish generally were by the presence of the hero of Jena and Austerlitz, it was evident they were unable, unless assisted by foreign allies, to resist the advances of such masses of troops as those now within their dominions. British co-operation was therefore sought and obtained. Its value and the fidelity of the army it employed had already been proved in Portugal, where, with a force decidedly inferior, the invaders were repulsed at Vimiera, with unusual loss.