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Legacy of Glory: The Bonaparte Kingdom of Spain 1808-1813.
The Bonaparte Kingdom of Spain..Hardback,Ex-Library,with usual stamps markings, ,in good all-round condition,dust jacket in good condition,353pages.
- GenresHistory
353 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1971
10 people want to read
About the author
Michael Glover
92 books7 followersMichael Glover served in the British army during the Second World War, after which he joined the British Council and became a professional author. He wrote many articles and books on Napoleonic and Victorian warfare.
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August 4, 2025
This book is difficult for me to review. I had a lot of trouble finishing it because it was awfully monotonous and repetitive, and I was mislead as to its content. After about a hundred pages in I seriously considered giving it up, and even began another book in this direction but decided that I had already read so far so I might as well keep going. I'm not sure that I'm happy with that choice.
To start off, I had believed that this book was about Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain. I find Joseph a sympathetic figure and his elevation to the Spanish throne has always fascinated me. I see similarities between him and Philip V, Napoleon even draw this analogy when he told his brother that Philip had to win his crown and so might Joseph.
But events went quite different from those during the Spanish Succession. The Spanish people did not accept Joseph, at least not enthusiastically. Many scholars criticizing the nationalist narrative of uprisings during the Napoleonic Wars suggest that they were not really nationalist in origin, but simply a reaction against the depredations of the French armies.
As these behaved quite differently from the ancien regime armies, 'living off the land' as every student of Napoleon knows, this provoked resistance in varying degrees throughout Europe. Blanning even wrote that the German peasantry harried the French retreat in the campaign of 1796.
I feel this is a much more convincing explanation than the idea of lofty nationalist ideals, and in Spain it is particularly apt because, as Wellington observed, the country was so poor that it could not sustain both the people and the huge French forces. This would inevitably drive them into competition, and it might be said that the presence of the French was a liability for Joseph because it drove the Spanish people against him.
Yet he was caught on the horns of a dilemma because the French Army was his only security. He could not do without it, but it constantly undermined his popularity by its very existence.
I am a fan of Michael Glover as an historian and a writer. But I felt this book was rather superfluous, as he already has works detailing the Peninsular War such as Wellington's Victories and Wellington as Military Commander. Perhaps he intended this to be an examination of the war from the French side, which I suppose it achieves to an extent.
But even there I feel it falls short. The focus is on Joseph, but nothing much is said about his administration, about his reforms, about his government, who he chose to do what, it is briefly mentioned that he intended to divide Spain into departments along the French model, but nothing about this is elaborated upon.
Instead we get a rather tiresome narrative where it is endlessly repeated that Joseph had no money, no military ability, that he enjoyed the luxuries and the women associated with kingship, we are told over and over and over that Joseph requested the supreme command in Spain but was denied, that he requested to abdicate but was denied, that Napoleon did not know the conditions in Spain, that he had little opinion of his brother and so on.
We do not learn much about the marshals of France apart from some vignettes, like Suchet's eagerness for glory. Though I formed the impression that Jourdan was the hero of the story and Soult the villain.
Some interesting facts of note that we learn are that Wellington exposed himself to possible defeat on two occasions, in both of which Soult was in command of the French and had succeeded in uniting two or more armies, for example he united with Marmont to face Wellington at the siege of Badajoz, but on both occasions did nothing.
I do not know how accurate Glover's appraisal of Soult is, but he comes off as arrogant, incompetent, and even cowardly. He set himself up as the virtual satrap of Andalusia. When he finally showed some initiative after Vitoria, in the so-called Battles of the Pyrenees, he was handily defeated by Wellington.
We can find it even more easy to sympathize with Joseph when we learn that Napoleon was so abusive and domineering to his siblings that two of his other brothers abandoned ship. Lucien Bonaparte set sail from France and was intercepted by the Royal Navy, afterwards living in comfortable exile. Perhaps this is why Napoleon thought the British would let him live in England after his defeat at Waterloo, and ironically enough it would be true for Napoleon III who ended his days in the land of his uncle's bitterest enemies. Louis Bonaparte, the erstwhile King of Holland, for his part fled to Austria, another one of Napoleon's most consistent adversaries.
Much of the narrative is taken up with Wellington's maneuvers and operations, most of which hardly involved Joseph at all. One feels sorry for Joseph that he did not win at Talavera, but otherwise I feel that Wellington's campaign is only indirectly concerned with Joseph as King and it has been covered by Glover in other works. So why include two hundred pages of it in this one?
Two useful insights emerged from reading this book that I was grateful for, however. The first one is Glover's suggestion that Napoleon was afraid to take command himself because he feared that he would lose. I had written a short essay about this myself, concluding that even had Napoleon been in command in Portugal instead of Massena, the French would still have failed.
But Napoleon could use the excuse of what-ifs so long as he did not go to Spain himself. He could berate his subordinates about how he 'would have' taken Lisbon, or Cadiz was one he said specifically, 'had I been there.' An unfalsifiable statement, and an unconvincing one. One wonders what Napoleon could have done differently.
One is reminded of Lehwaldts's protests to Frederick the Great during the Pomeranian War. The former told the Prussian King that he could not take Stralsund and Rugen in the teeth of the Swedish Navy. Frederick replied that the channel separating Rugen from the mainland was a 'mere river crossing' and asked if he had to come take it himself. He never tried, and so much the better for his reputation, because Frederick could have none no more than Lehwaldt.
In the same manner I do not think that even Napoleon himself could have taken Cadiz or forced the lines of Torres Vedras. I suspect that he had the same conclusion, which is why he avoided doing it. Glover notes that after Wagram Napoleon claimed that he intended to return to Spain and finish the business, but Glover is unsure whether Napoleon ever really meant it, or if he was just using it as cover for other moves. Cover, for example, for another proposed invasion of England.
I was surprised to learn about the Treaty of Valencay. In an episode of the Sharpe series, Sharpe's old antagonist Ducos drafts a treaty with Ferdinand VII proposing to restore the Bourbon to the Spanish throne in exchange for expelling the British from Spain. It struck me as a far-fetched piece of fiction.
But it was quite true. Ferdinand even signed it. But the Cortes would not ratify it and the Spanish people would have nothing to do with it. It's unclear whether the slippery and unscrupulous Ferdinand ever took it seriously, but Napoleon evidently did because he was desperately banking on it as a way to withdraw his soldiers from Spain to defend France.
The second great insight provided by Glover was his description of the conquests of Andalusia and Valencia. At all times Napoleon insisted that the true objective was Wellington and said only the British are a danger in Spain. Yet the French were constantly deflected from them.
Napoleon himself was deflected from Lisbon by Moore, and we get a good description of the fog of war which blinded the Emperor and prevented him from crushing the British as he intended in that campaign.
But after Ocana and Talavera, when Wellington had withdrawn back into Portugal, the large confident forces of the French invaded Andalusia instead of striking for Lisbon. Napoleon was ambivalent on this, neither approving or rejecting it. Why?
I had once read a paper by John Shean about Hannibal's logistics in Italy, which was a real eye-opener and provided me with a model here. Shean said that Hannibal's erratic movements were dictated by his logistical requirements. He did not march on Rome because he could not, he needed to find sustenance for his army and this drew him to Apulia and Cannae, for example.
The same situation, I think, prevailed in Spain. Soult overran Andalusia because it was the only way the French could feed and pay their army. The region was practically undefended and would do nothing to harm Wellington. So it seems strategically pointless, but it was logistically imperative.
In the same way we see that Suchet later gathers a French force to take Valencia, one of the last untouched areas of Spain, which provided Wellington with his opportunity to take Ciudad Rodrigo while the French forces on the Portuguese border were temporarily reduced.
Again, what was the point of taking Valencia? I would suggest the same as that of Andalusia, for the French were running out of places to loot. They must have milked Spain dry and Valencia was the last place that they had yet to pillage.
As with Andalusia, this action might have allowed them to maintain themselves for a while longer, but it opened the road to ultimate defeat. Incidentally, this was the same cause of Hannibal's defeat. In both cases the French and the Carthaginians could not make logistics the servant of strategy, and actually experienced the reverse. Their precarious logistics imposed strategic limitations upon them and prevented them from doing what they wanted to, or ought to have done.
Lastly, I would say that Joseph Bonaparte was a missed opportunity for Spain. Hispanicists like Stanley Payne argue that Ferdinand VII was perhaps the worst monarch who ever lived. A small-minded, vindictive, cowardly, inept buffoon, fewer figures inspire more loathing.
Spain chose to go with this clown and she has paid the price for it. She lost her American empire, lost her navy, lost her prestige and position, and the last thing he did was leave Spain with a daughter whose succession was insecure, leading to a century of instability and civil war against the Carlists.
Joseph was a foreign imposition but it's hard to see how anybody could have done worse than this. This book provides a great deal of information on the Peninsular War, but for those who have read other works by Esdaile and Glover on the subject, this work strikes me as unnecessary. Almost everything in this book can be found in these other works.
To start off, I had believed that this book was about Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain. I find Joseph a sympathetic figure and his elevation to the Spanish throne has always fascinated me. I see similarities between him and Philip V, Napoleon even draw this analogy when he told his brother that Philip had to win his crown and so might Joseph.
But events went quite different from those during the Spanish Succession. The Spanish people did not accept Joseph, at least not enthusiastically. Many scholars criticizing the nationalist narrative of uprisings during the Napoleonic Wars suggest that they were not really nationalist in origin, but simply a reaction against the depredations of the French armies.
As these behaved quite differently from the ancien regime armies, 'living off the land' as every student of Napoleon knows, this provoked resistance in varying degrees throughout Europe. Blanning even wrote that the German peasantry harried the French retreat in the campaign of 1796.
I feel this is a much more convincing explanation than the idea of lofty nationalist ideals, and in Spain it is particularly apt because, as Wellington observed, the country was so poor that it could not sustain both the people and the huge French forces. This would inevitably drive them into competition, and it might be said that the presence of the French was a liability for Joseph because it drove the Spanish people against him.
Yet he was caught on the horns of a dilemma because the French Army was his only security. He could not do without it, but it constantly undermined his popularity by its very existence.
I am a fan of Michael Glover as an historian and a writer. But I felt this book was rather superfluous, as he already has works detailing the Peninsular War such as Wellington's Victories and Wellington as Military Commander. Perhaps he intended this to be an examination of the war from the French side, which I suppose it achieves to an extent.
But even there I feel it falls short. The focus is on Joseph, but nothing much is said about his administration, about his reforms, about his government, who he chose to do what, it is briefly mentioned that he intended to divide Spain into departments along the French model, but nothing about this is elaborated upon.
Instead we get a rather tiresome narrative where it is endlessly repeated that Joseph had no money, no military ability, that he enjoyed the luxuries and the women associated with kingship, we are told over and over and over that Joseph requested the supreme command in Spain but was denied, that he requested to abdicate but was denied, that Napoleon did not know the conditions in Spain, that he had little opinion of his brother and so on.
We do not learn much about the marshals of France apart from some vignettes, like Suchet's eagerness for glory. Though I formed the impression that Jourdan was the hero of the story and Soult the villain.
Some interesting facts of note that we learn are that Wellington exposed himself to possible defeat on two occasions, in both of which Soult was in command of the French and had succeeded in uniting two or more armies, for example he united with Marmont to face Wellington at the siege of Badajoz, but on both occasions did nothing.
I do not know how accurate Glover's appraisal of Soult is, but he comes off as arrogant, incompetent, and even cowardly. He set himself up as the virtual satrap of Andalusia. When he finally showed some initiative after Vitoria, in the so-called Battles of the Pyrenees, he was handily defeated by Wellington.
We can find it even more easy to sympathize with Joseph when we learn that Napoleon was so abusive and domineering to his siblings that two of his other brothers abandoned ship. Lucien Bonaparte set sail from France and was intercepted by the Royal Navy, afterwards living in comfortable exile. Perhaps this is why Napoleon thought the British would let him live in England after his defeat at Waterloo, and ironically enough it would be true for Napoleon III who ended his days in the land of his uncle's bitterest enemies. Louis Bonaparte, the erstwhile King of Holland, for his part fled to Austria, another one of Napoleon's most consistent adversaries.
Much of the narrative is taken up with Wellington's maneuvers and operations, most of which hardly involved Joseph at all. One feels sorry for Joseph that he did not win at Talavera, but otherwise I feel that Wellington's campaign is only indirectly concerned with Joseph as King and it has been covered by Glover in other works. So why include two hundred pages of it in this one?
Two useful insights emerged from reading this book that I was grateful for, however. The first one is Glover's suggestion that Napoleon was afraid to take command himself because he feared that he would lose. I had written a short essay about this myself, concluding that even had Napoleon been in command in Portugal instead of Massena, the French would still have failed.
But Napoleon could use the excuse of what-ifs so long as he did not go to Spain himself. He could berate his subordinates about how he 'would have' taken Lisbon, or Cadiz was one he said specifically, 'had I been there.' An unfalsifiable statement, and an unconvincing one. One wonders what Napoleon could have done differently.
One is reminded of Lehwaldts's protests to Frederick the Great during the Pomeranian War. The former told the Prussian King that he could not take Stralsund and Rugen in the teeth of the Swedish Navy. Frederick replied that the channel separating Rugen from the mainland was a 'mere river crossing' and asked if he had to come take it himself. He never tried, and so much the better for his reputation, because Frederick could have none no more than Lehwaldt.
In the same manner I do not think that even Napoleon himself could have taken Cadiz or forced the lines of Torres Vedras. I suspect that he had the same conclusion, which is why he avoided doing it. Glover notes that after Wagram Napoleon claimed that he intended to return to Spain and finish the business, but Glover is unsure whether Napoleon ever really meant it, or if he was just using it as cover for other moves. Cover, for example, for another proposed invasion of England.
I was surprised to learn about the Treaty of Valencay. In an episode of the Sharpe series, Sharpe's old antagonist Ducos drafts a treaty with Ferdinand VII proposing to restore the Bourbon to the Spanish throne in exchange for expelling the British from Spain. It struck me as a far-fetched piece of fiction.
But it was quite true. Ferdinand even signed it. But the Cortes would not ratify it and the Spanish people would have nothing to do with it. It's unclear whether the slippery and unscrupulous Ferdinand ever took it seriously, but Napoleon evidently did because he was desperately banking on it as a way to withdraw his soldiers from Spain to defend France.
The second great insight provided by Glover was his description of the conquests of Andalusia and Valencia. At all times Napoleon insisted that the true objective was Wellington and said only the British are a danger in Spain. Yet the French were constantly deflected from them.
Napoleon himself was deflected from Lisbon by Moore, and we get a good description of the fog of war which blinded the Emperor and prevented him from crushing the British as he intended in that campaign.
But after Ocana and Talavera, when Wellington had withdrawn back into Portugal, the large confident forces of the French invaded Andalusia instead of striking for Lisbon. Napoleon was ambivalent on this, neither approving or rejecting it. Why?
I had once read a paper by John Shean about Hannibal's logistics in Italy, which was a real eye-opener and provided me with a model here. Shean said that Hannibal's erratic movements were dictated by his logistical requirements. He did not march on Rome because he could not, he needed to find sustenance for his army and this drew him to Apulia and Cannae, for example.
The same situation, I think, prevailed in Spain. Soult overran Andalusia because it was the only way the French could feed and pay their army. The region was practically undefended and would do nothing to harm Wellington. So it seems strategically pointless, but it was logistically imperative.
In the same way we see that Suchet later gathers a French force to take Valencia, one of the last untouched areas of Spain, which provided Wellington with his opportunity to take Ciudad Rodrigo while the French forces on the Portuguese border were temporarily reduced.
Again, what was the point of taking Valencia? I would suggest the same as that of Andalusia, for the French were running out of places to loot. They must have milked Spain dry and Valencia was the last place that they had yet to pillage.
As with Andalusia, this action might have allowed them to maintain themselves for a while longer, but it opened the road to ultimate defeat. Incidentally, this was the same cause of Hannibal's defeat. In both cases the French and the Carthaginians could not make logistics the servant of strategy, and actually experienced the reverse. Their precarious logistics imposed strategic limitations upon them and prevented them from doing what they wanted to, or ought to have done.
Lastly, I would say that Joseph Bonaparte was a missed opportunity for Spain. Hispanicists like Stanley Payne argue that Ferdinand VII was perhaps the worst monarch who ever lived. A small-minded, vindictive, cowardly, inept buffoon, fewer figures inspire more loathing.
Spain chose to go with this clown and she has paid the price for it. She lost her American empire, lost her navy, lost her prestige and position, and the last thing he did was leave Spain with a daughter whose succession was insecure, leading to a century of instability and civil war against the Carlists.
Joseph was a foreign imposition but it's hard to see how anybody could have done worse than this. This book provides a great deal of information on the Peninsular War, but for those who have read other works by Esdaile and Glover on the subject, this work strikes me as unnecessary. Almost everything in this book can be found in these other works.
May 13, 2021
Updated May 2021: I didn't enjoy this as much second time around. Yes it's focus is Joseph, but for a book about Spain it spends an awful lot of time talking about Wellington and the British war effort. Reduced to 3 stars.
This is an interesting contribution to the history of the Peninsular War. The key difference to a "standard" history (at least those in English) is that Glover's reference point throughout is the King Joseph ("el rey intruso" to the patriot Spanish).
To my knowledge, this is the only book in English to take this viewpoint, and the approach is genuinely insightful. It exposes the French strategy across the peninsular and the extent to which that represented a coherent overall plan. Glover brings out clearly the tensions between Joseph, Napoleon, and the Marshals commanding in the peninsular, and the impact those tensions had on the French ability to effectively deploy the available resources to deliver that plan. In other words, this book allows you to get a sense of the French approach to the war - as well as it's flaws - in a way most books in English don't.
If anything is missing, it is some detail on the mechanics of the Bonaparte kingdom, how it did (and didn't) function, and the position of the afrancesados. Esdaile covers these aspects for just Andalusia in "Outpost of Empire", but it is something which is strikingly absent from Glover's work which concentrates almost exclusively on the military position.
For all that, it is a book worth reading for insight into the French strategic approach.
For a more standard modern overview of the Peninsular War, try those by Esdaile or Gates (my personal preference would be for Esdaile). For detailed coverage of the military campaigns you (still) cannot do better than Oman. But as a supplement to these works this book is well worth reading.
This is an interesting contribution to the history of the Peninsular War. The key difference to a "standard" history (at least those in English) is that Glover's reference point throughout is the King Joseph ("el rey intruso" to the patriot Spanish).
To my knowledge, this is the only book in English to take this viewpoint, and the approach is genuinely insightful. It exposes the French strategy across the peninsular and the extent to which that represented a coherent overall plan. Glover brings out clearly the tensions between Joseph, Napoleon, and the Marshals commanding in the peninsular, and the impact those tensions had on the French ability to effectively deploy the available resources to deliver that plan. In other words, this book allows you to get a sense of the French approach to the war - as well as it's flaws - in a way most books in English don't.
If anything is missing, it is some detail on the mechanics of the Bonaparte kingdom, how it did (and didn't) function, and the position of the afrancesados. Esdaile covers these aspects for just Andalusia in "Outpost of Empire", but it is something which is strikingly absent from Glover's work which concentrates almost exclusively on the military position.
For all that, it is a book worth reading for insight into the French strategic approach.
For a more standard modern overview of the Peninsular War, try those by Esdaile or Gates (my personal preference would be for Esdaile). For detailed coverage of the military campaigns you (still) cannot do better than Oman. But as a supplement to these works this book is well worth reading.
June 9, 2013
Mostly a list of battles fought. Good if you like military details.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews