Abstract
In the high summer of 1808, British troop ships rode anchor in Mondego Bay, Portugal, pitching in rough swells. On board were 11,000 British soldiers, the first contingent of an expeditionary army sent to aid Portugal and Spain in the struggle against Napoleon. They had set sail from Cork on 13 July under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. As they sailed southwards along the Portuguese coast, many had been struck by the view of the unknown country that rose before them. On board, Captain William Eliot of the Royal Artillery wrote to his wife, Harriet:
The country appears beautiful and just that kind of climate you have so much wished to live in. The hills are completely covered with vineyards and the white houses and distant mountains form the most beautiful landscape you can imagine. Should we be likely to stay in the country after driving the French out I should wish above all things for you to come out.1
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Notes
For an overview of New Military History, see Joanna Bourke, ‘New Militäry History’, in Modern Military History, ed. Matthew Hughes and William J. Philpott (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 258–280. On New Military History and the eighteenth-century British army, see William P. Tatum III, ‘Challenging the New Military History: The Case of Eighteenth-Century British Army Studies’, History Compass 5, no. 1 (2007): 72–84.
Yuval Noah Harari, ‘Military Memoirs: A Historical Overview of the Genre from the Middle Ages to the Late Modem Era’, War in History 14, no. 3 (2007): 299.
Ramsey, Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, p. 59; Tim Fulford, ‘Sighing for a Soldier: Jane Austen and Military Pride and Prejudice’, Nineteenth-Century Literature 57, no. 2 (2002): 153–178
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© 2013 Gavin Daly
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Daly, G. (2013). Introduction. In: The British Soldier in the Peninsular War. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137323835_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137323835_1
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