Spanish Army (Peninsular War)
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Spanish Army (Peninsular War)
The Spanish Army of the Peninsular War refers to the Spanish military units that fought against France's Grande Armée during a period which coincided with what is also termed the Spanish War of Independence ( es, Guerra de la Independencia Española). These regular troops were supplemented throughout the country by the guerrilla actions of local militias which, in the case of Catalonia, ran to thousands of well-organised "miquelets", or "somatenes", who had already proved their worth in the Catalan revolt of 1640 and in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), while in Andalusia, they were more modest in number, and sometimes little more than brigands who were, in some cases, feared by French troops and the civilian population alike but which were nevertheless a constant source of harassment to the French army and its lines of communication, as were the numerous spontaneous popular uprisings. So much so, that by summer 1811, French commanders deployed 70,000 troops only ...
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Peninsular War
The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. The war started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, and it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation. It is also significant for the emergence of larg ...
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Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire ( pt, Império Português), also known as the Portuguese Overseas (''Ultramar Português'') or the Portuguese Colonial Empire (''Império Colonial Português''), was composed of the overseas colonies, factories, and the later overseas territories governed by Portugal. It was one of the longest-lived empires in European history, lasting almost six centuries from the conquest of Ceuta in North Africa, in 1415, to the transfer of sovereignty over Macau to China in 1999. The empire began in the 15th century, and from the early 16th century it stretched across the globe, with bases in North and South America, Africa, and various regions of Asia and Oceania. The Portuguese Empire originated at the beginning of the Age of Discovery, and the power and influence of the Kingdom of Portugal would eventually expand across the globe. In the wake of the Reconquista, Portuguese sailors began exploring the coast of Africa and the Atlantic archipelagos in 1418–1419, u ...
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Francisco Javier Castaños, 1st Duke Of Bailén
Francisco Javier Castaños Aragorri Urioste y Olavide, 1st Duke of Bailén (22 April 1758 – 24 September 1852) was a Spanish general and politician who excelled during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. From July to September 1834, he served as the first president of the Senate of Spain, at that time called House of Peers. Castaños was one of the most important military officers during the Peninsular War, reaching the position of Chair of the Regency Council of Spain and the Indies (''de facto'' head of state) in 1810. In 1833, Queen Regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, in the name of her daughter, Queen Isabella II, granted him with the title of Duke of Bailén, to honour his actions in the Peninsular War and, specially, in the Battle of Bailén, where the Napoleonic army was defeated at open field for the first time, which also caused the flight of Spain from King Joseph Bonaparte. Biography Castaños was born at Madrid. Castaños is rememb ...
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Espoz Y Mina
Francisco Espoz Ilundáin (17 June 1781 – 24 December 1836), being better known as Francisco Espoz y Mina, was a Spanish guerrilla leader and general. Biography He was born in Idocin in Navarre. His father, Juan Esteban Espoz y Mina, and his mother, Maria Teresa Hundain y Ardaiz, belonged to the class of yeomen, rural smallholders. Mina worked on the small family farm until 1808. When Napoleon endeavoured to seize Spain in that year he enlisted in the Doyle regiment, and then entered the guerrilla group commanded by his nephew Francisco Javier Mina. When Javier was captured by the French on 21 March 1810, seven men of the group chose to follow Francisco, and on 1 April 1810 the Junta of Aragon gave him the command of the guerrilleros of Navarre. His first act was to arrest and shoot at Estella a certain Echevarria, who, under pretence of being a guerrillero, was in fact a brigand. The national government in Cadiz gave him rank, and by 7 September 1812 he had been promote ...
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Francisco Xavier Mina
Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''. Nicknames In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed "Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father of the community) when he founded the Franciscan order, and "Paco" is a short form of ''Pater Comunitatis''. In areas of Spain where Basque is spoken, "Patxi" is the most common nickname; in the Catalan areas, "Cesc" (short for Francesc) is often used. In Spanish Latin America and in the Philippines, people with the name Francisco are frequently called "Pancho". " Kiko" is also used as a nickname, and "Chicho" is another possibility. In Portuguese, people named Francisco are commonly nicknamed " Chico" (''shíco''). This is also a less-common nickname for Francisco in Spanish. People with the given name * Pope Francis is rendered in the Spanish and Portuguese languages as Papa Francisco * Francisco Acebal (1866–1933), Spanish writer and ...
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Navarra
Navarre (; es, Navarra ; eu, Nafarroa ), officially the Chartered Community of Navarre ( es, Comunidad Foral de Navarra, links=no ; eu, Nafarroako Foru Komunitatea, links=no ), is a foral autonomous community and province in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Autonomous Community, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and Nouvelle-Aquitaine in France. The capital city is Pamplona ( eu, Iruña). The present-day province makes up the majority of the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Navarre, a long-standing Pyrenean kingdom that occupied lands on both sides of the western Pyrenees, with its northernmost part, Lower Navarre, located in the southwest corner of France. Navarre is in the transition zone between Green Spain and semi-arid interior areas, and thus its landscapes vary widely across the region. Being in a transition zone also produces a highly variable climate, with summers that are a mix of cooler spells and heat waves, and winters that are mild for the latitude. Navarre ...
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François Jean Baptiste Quesnel
François Jean Baptiste Quesnel du Torpt (18 January 1765 – 8 April 1819) became a division commander under the First French Empire of Napoleon. By the time the French Revolutionary Wars began, he had been a non-commissioned officer in the French army for nearly a decade. Within less than two years he rose to the rank of general officer while fighting against Spain. His career then stagnated until the War of the Second Coalition when he led a brigade in Italy at Battle of Verona (1799), Verona, Battle of Magnano, Magnano, Battle of Cassano (1799), Cassano, Battle of Bassignana (1799), Bassignana where he was wounded, and Battle of Novi (1799), Novi. Promoted to division command in 1805, he filled non-combat posts in the interior. He was captured in 1808 after participating in the Invasion of Portugal (1807), 1807 Invasion of Portugal. After being released, he served in the 1809 Invasion of Portugal but was later detached to lead a column of dismounted cavalrymen back to France ...
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Domingo Belestá
Domingo Belestá y Pared (Alicante, 4 March 1741 – Cádiz, 7 December 1819) was a Spanish military engineer who served in the American Revolutionary, French Revolutionary and Peninsular wars. His surname also appears in the literature of the Peninsular War misspelt as Bellesta Foy, Maximilien (1829)''History of the War in the Peninsula, Under Napoleon'', pp. 432-433. Treuttel and Würtz, Treuttel, jun. and Richter.''Google Books''. Retrieved 26 January 2023. or Ballesta.Rama Patiño, Luz; José Manuel Vázquez Lijó"Francisco Taranco y Llano". ''Diccionario Biográfico electrónico''. Real Academia de la Historia. Retrieved 26 January 2023. After enlisting as a Cadet in 1761 in Spain's Regimiento de Infantería de Flandes, where he was promoted to second lieutenant, in 1765 Belestá went on to study Mathematics at Spain's military engineering school, the Real Academia Militar de Matemáticas y Fortificación, in Barcelona. Promoted to captain in 1778, he stayed on at the Ac ...
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Porto
Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropolitan area, with an estimated population of just 231,800 people in a municipality with only 41.42 km2. Porto's metropolitan area has around 1.7 million people (2021) in an area of ,Demographia: World Urban Areas
March 2010
making it the second-largest urban area in Portugal. It is recognized as a global city with a Gamma + rating from the
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Francisco Taranco Y Llano
Francisco Taranco y Llano (date of birth unknown – January or March 1808) was a Spanish military officer and Captain-General of Galicia. After serving in the Americas, including, in 1769, as a cadet under Alejandro O'Reilly, the second Spanish governor of colonial Louisiana, Taranco returned to peninsular Spain in 1783 and was given the command of the Regiment of Soria, with which he later served under the orders of General Ricardos in the War of the Pyrenees. He saw further military actions against French Imperial troops in Catalonia.Rama Patiño, Luz; José Manuel Vázquez Lijó"Francisco Taranco y Llano". ''Diccionario Biográfico electrónico''. Real Academia de la Historia. Retrieved 25 January 2023. Following his participation in the War of the Oranges, in which French and Spanish forces invaded Portugal, Taranco was appointed Captain-General of Galicia (around 1802). He was promoted, in October 1802, to lieutenant general in the same promotion as other notable Spanish ...
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Garrison Border Town Of Elvas And Its Fortifications
Elvas () is a Portuguese municipality, former episcopal city and frontier fortress of easternmost central Portugal, located in the district of Portalegre in Alentejo. It is situated about east of Lisbon, and about west of the Spanish fortress of Badajoz, by the Madrid-Badajoz- Lisbon railway. The municipality population was 23,078, in an area of . The city itself had a population of 16,640 . Elvas is among the finest examples of intensive usage of the ''trace italienne'' ( star fort) in military architecture, and has been a World Heritage Site since 30June 2012. The inscribed site name is Garrison Border Town of Elvas and its Fortifications. History Elvas lies on a hill northwest of the Guadiana river. The Amoreira Aqueduct long supplies the city with pure water; it was begun early in the 15th century and completed in 1622. For some distance it includes four tiers of superimposed arches, with a total height of . It was wrested from the Moors by Afonso I of Portugal in ...
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