To regard the guerrillas who provided Spain's most famous contribution to the eventual Allied victory in the Peninsular War of 1808-14 as being in any sense a problem might at first sight appear to be a little perverse. The very fact that the word 'guerrilla' was first taken into common usage as a result of this conflict stands witness to the impact which the 'little war' had upon contemporaries, whilst paying tribute to its importance has become a commonplace. Many historians have even found a role-model for twentieth-century warfare in the partidas. According to Read, for example, 'In Vietnam, Africa, the Middle East and South America the guerrillas of today ... owe their methods to the guerrillas of the Peninsular War.' (1)

Indeed, so impressed have some authors been with their prowess that they have written as if the Spanish war against Napoleon was entirely the work of El Empecinado, Espoz y Mina and the other irregular leaders. For Lady Longford, 'Spain was to be saved ... not by grape-shot, graybeards and grandees, but by hardy guerrillas and the sudden flash of the knife', whilst Richard Humble replied that the battle of Bailen, which was actually won by the much-maligned Spanish regular army, was the work of the armed people - 'Dupont's soldiers had been on the receiving end against an enemy who did not bother to attack them when they formed square, but only when they were least ready.' (2)

This particular myth was refurbished by the events of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, and the subsequent debate concerning 'the armed people that won the revolution' and 'the people's army that lost the war'. Visiting the scene of Bailen in 1936, Franz Borkenau wrote, 'The Spanish general Castanos claimed the glory of the day. But in really one look at the battlefield, a large open plain of olive groves, is convincing as to the real situation. It was impossible to surround the French there with a small army. Only a rising of all the villages could and did bar the way'. (3)

Such thoughts naturally provided comfort for those who thought that Franco could somehow have been beaten if the Republican government had turned to guerrilla warfare. Nor was this the only controversy for which the Peninsular War was pressed into service. Engrossed in his personal crusade to demonstrate that the horrors of the Frrst World War's Western Front could have been avoided, the British strategic commentator, Basil Liddell Hart, seized upon it as one of the prime examples for his theory of the 'redirect approach', arguing that Wellington's battles were 'the least effective part of his operations', and that the French defeat was essentially the result of his use of guerrilla warfare. (4)

Popular Resentment

Put at its most simple, current thinking on the guerrillas holds that they were the product of a combination of deeply felt popular resentment of the French invaders, long traditions of banditry, smuggling and general resistance to authority, local 'homeguards', such as the Catalan somatenes, official encouragement of resistance movements through such devices as the Junta Central's legitimisation of 'land piracy', and the mountainous and inaccessible character of much of the Iberian Peninsula.

As the French forces spread across the face of Spain so groups of armed civilians took to the hills and harassed the invaders, their ranks being stiffened by fugitives from the beaten Spanish armies. Under the leadership of former army officers, popular heroes or local notables, the bands grew ever bolder and gained more and more recruits until the entire countryside was in a state of war.

According to the traditional version the effects were manifold. Spanish resistance was kept alive, and the crimes of afrancesamiento and collaboration met with terrible punishment, making it impossible for the regime of the hapless Joseph Bonaparte to attain any semblance of political stability. The French generals were kept in absolute ignorance of one another's situation, and prevented from carrying out proper recconaissance, whilst Wellington, by contrast, was kept fully informed of their strength, position and movements. Immense casualties were inflicted on the French, one recent paper attributing no fewer than fifty per cent of their losses to the guerrillas, the invaders also being prevented from living off the country in the same manner that they had done in the rest of Europe.

Demoralization

The result was demoralisation and growing indiscipline, as well as an increax in violence towards the civilian population that served to fan the flames of popuhr revolt still further.

Outside Spain, meanwhile, Europe was provided with an example of resistance that kept hope alive amongst patriots of many nations. Above all else, however, the French were prevented from concentrating their numerically superior armies against the AngloPortuguese. Forced to deploy large quantities of troops in 'penny packets' to suppress the guerrillas, from 1810 onwards the most that Napoleon's commanders could do was to contain the Allied army in Portugal whilst they made the ultimately fruitless attempt to overcome the Spaniards - fruitless because Wellington's presence in Portugal made it impossible for them to dispatch all their forces against the Patriots.

In this manner the guerrillas are claimed to have won the initiative for Wellington, and thus to have opened the way for the great offensives of 1812 and 1813 that brought the war to a successful conclusion. At the same time the Duke is claimed to have made the guerrillas an integral part of his operations when he finally attacked, using their commanders to tie down large parts of the enemy forces so as to enable his own troops to achieve superiority at the decisive point, whether it was Salamanca in 1812 or Vitoria in 1813. (5)

Fundamental Factor

We are therefore presented with a picture in which the guerrillas are viewed as a fundamental factor in Wellington's strategy, as well as as the chief foundation of Spanish resistance. Indeed, so strongly have some Anglo-Saxon authors made the point that the guerrillas have almost come to be seen as being synonymous with that resistance. The origins of such an implication are open to debate, but the fact is that their tendency is to distort our understanding of the conflict. Taken in the aggregate, the general view of the guerrillas as being one of the twin pillars of Allied victory has much to commend it.

In discussing the subject, it has been customary to cite the numerous French accounts of service in the Peninsula, but these sources are not necessarlly to be taken at face value: as representatives of the vanquished, their authors may well have been under a strong temptation to exculpate their defeat, or, even better, to show that victory had never been possible, and thereby that they themselves had no reason to feel any shame.

That said, however, it is clear that what took place in Spain between 1808 and 1814 was vastly different to what took place, say, in occupied Germany, whilst evidence may be found from British sources that sustain the traditional view. Let us take, for example, the views of tbe intelligence officer, Edward Charles Cocks, whose role undoubtedly made him one of the best informed of all British observers:

The character of the Spaniard and the nature of his country are well adapted for guerrillas ... and as long as there is a pretext such parties will exist, particularly if those who compose them are allowed to plunder and have an opportunity of boasting. Also, as they fight no pitched battles and only attack when superior in number and by surprise, they run no risk. The other qualities necessary for such partisans ... a Spaniard is generally provided with, and these parties are of great utility as long as there is also a regular army such as ours in the Peninsula ... If an army is unopposed, can march where it will and draw supplies from all parts, the country is militarily conquered, but not civilly unless the resources of every description are at the disposal of the governor and the individuals can pass freely.

The guerrillas prevent this. Individuals and even small parties are not safe, convoys require strong escorts, and the number of French required in Spain is inconceivably multiplied and Spaniards are kept out of the French service. If there was no regular army in the Peninsula, the French could afford sufficient men to root out two or three of the principal guerrillas and then the rest would get frightened. (6)

Problem, What Problem?

So where, then, lies the problem? Far from challenging the usual picture, Cocks' words seem rather to reinforce it, and all the more so as they specifically point out the importance of the connection between regular and irregular warfare. The answer is in part the tendency to equate the Anglo-Portuguese with the former and the Spaniards with the latter. On the Spanish side in particular, the picture is far more complicated.

Taking the partidas first of all, there was a strong tendency among even those guerrillas who had sprung entirely from the ranks of the civilian population towards the introduction of the conventional forms and structures of military life, if only because to do so brought recognition from the government, the status of regular commissions, and the much coveted benefits of membership of the military estate.

This process of militarization, which is obviously directly opposed to the general identification of the guerrillas with 'the people', was further accelerated by the fact that many of the most famous guerrilla commanders, such as Duron, Porlier, Longa and Villacampa, were actuary army officers who had sometimes even been detached with bodies of regular troops with the specific objective of fomenting popular resistance. (7)

In these instances the number of troops involved were very small, but in at least one case an entire division of the regular army became involved in guerrilla operations on a more-or-less permanent basis. Sent out from Badajoz to harass Marshal Soult's advance on Extremadura early in 1811, General Francisco Lopez Ballesteros' division of the Army of the Left became isolated behind enemy lines, and thereafter operated out of a series of mountain strongholds first in the southwest and then in the southeast of Andalucia until that province was evacuated by the French in August 1812.

Yet, though operating in a hit-and-run fashion and contributing materially to the 'little war', Ballesteros' forces retained their cohesion throughout and on occasion took their place in the battle line as a regular formation, as at La Albuera in May 1811. Whether there were ever guerrillas at all must therefore be regarded as a moot point. Chandler accepts that there were, describing them as such in a recent paper and remarking that they were among tbe regulars whom Wellington used to pin down the forces of Marshal Soult during the campaign of Salamanca in 1812. (8)

Yet Ballesteros' divison was not the only formation used in the diversionary operations to which Chandler refers. Amongst the other Spaniards employed in Andalucia on this occasion were the infantry division of Pablo Morillo and the cavalry brigade of the Conde de Penne Villemur, both of them wholly regular formations belonging to the Fifth Army. (9)

Were they guerrillas too? Then there is the case of Hill's raid on Arroyo Molinos de Montonchez of 28 October 1811 when the same two formations were employed in support of the Allied troops. (10)

Clearly, the action in question fitted in more with the 'little war' than with the clash of the 'big battalions', and yet the troops involved were not guerrillas but regulars. The danger of confusion is self-evident.

Problem of Identification

What we see, then, is first of all a problem of identification which makes it very difficult to speak purely in terms of Wellington seeking the co-operation of the guerrillas. Nor is this entirely borne out by the facts. The Duke was certainly aware of the depredations of the guerrillas whilst he was planning the campaigns of Salamanca and Vitoria, writing to Lord Liverpool on 13 May 1812, 'The guerrillas are very active in all parts of the country, some employed in forming and disciplining their troops, and others in enterprises against the enemy, in many of which they have lately been very successful.'! (11)

Yet with the exception of the guerrillas of Cantabria and the Basque provinces, who were successfully employed in conjunction with a naval landing force under the command of Sir Home Popham to tie down the French Army of the North, the chief thrust of Wellington's policy was always to rely on regular formations as being the only ones likely to be able to prevent the enemy forces facing them from marching against his own troops. In 1812, with the exception of the northern irregulars (and even these had by that time theoretically been unified into the so-called Seventh Army), he made most use of the far-flung forces of the Fifth and sixth Armies on the frontiers of Portugal, of Ballesteros' division (now a part of tbe Fourth Army, and of the Second and Third Armies in the Levante. In 1813, whilst it is true that the bands of Porlier, Longa and Mina were one by one incorporated in tbe army commanded by General Castanos, regular troops once again provided the backbone of the Spanish forces which he chose actually to employ under his command. (12)

The fact was that the Duke both disliked and distrusted the guerrillas, and, although certainly prepared to profit from their activities when these suited his purposes, he was unwilling to make them an integral part of his calculations; indeed, in the autumn of 1812 he on several occasions made the point that he could not rely on them to do anything to prevent the French from concentrating against his outnumbered and over-extended forces. Something of this mistrust is evident from his reply to the suggestion of one enthusiast that the entire Spanish army be formed into 'legions' organised with the specific purpose of carrying out guerrilla operations: 'Independent small bodies operating upon the enemy may be extremely useful when those operations are connected and carried on in concert with with those of a large body of troops which at the moment occupy the whole force of an enemy's attention. But when the enemy is relieved from the pressure of the operations of the larger body, the smaller body must discontinue its operations or be destroyed.' (13)

In making this comment, Wellington was alluding to a further aspect of the guerrilla struggle which has hitherto received little attention. The connection between regular and irregular warfare did notjust extend to the presence of Wellington's army in Portugal. Important though this was as a measure of preventing the French from concentrating all their forces against the insurgents, it is evident that the guerrillas were at their most effective when they were supported by regular troops. On their own they were simply incapable of either meeting the French in the open field or of taking the various strongholds with which the enemy studded their conquests. Towards the end of the war increased numbers and improved organisation allowed such forces as that of Espoz y Mina to conduct what amounted to regular operations, but by that stage the French garrisons facing them were often desperately short of numbers. There is even some suggestion that the organisation of the guerrillas into quasi-regular units reduced their efficiency by impairing their mobility, forcing them to depend upon proper bases, and generally making them a more vulnerable target. (14)

Given a modicum of troops, the invaders were therefore generally capable of keeping them at bay, and it was only when a force of regulars was in the vicinity that matters were likely to get out of hand. An example of this situation may be found in Aragon in 1809-10. Following the fall of Zaragoza in February 1809, the Aragonese took up the cause of guerrilla warfare, and a fierce struggle was soon in train in which the French suffered some difficulty. The situation would have remained under control, however, had not General Blake invaded eastern Aragon with a Spanish regular army. Forced to concentrate his troops in a defensive position at Zaragoza, Marshal Suchet was unable to pursue the struggle against the guerrillas, who now multiplied dramatically, having been encouraged by Blake's victory at Alcaniz on 23 May. Within a matter of days, the French hold on Aragon had been reduced to the cities of Zaragoza and Jaca, and even these positions were under threat, for having concentrated his forces, Suchet discovered that the guerrillas made it impossible for him to feed them.

The only way out was to attack Blake, and, that commander having obligingly laid himself open a French offensive, the Spaniards were soon pulling back in disorder after the disasterous defeats of Marla and Belchite of 15 and 18 June. With the Spanish regular forces in the region temporarily neutralised, Suchet was once more able to turn his attention to the guerrillas. Aided by timely reinforcements, he dispatched punitive columns in all directions, and by the beginning of 1810 had driven the insurgents from many of their strongholds into the mountains around the periphery of Aragon.

In February 1810, however, Suchet received orders to concentrate his forces for an attack on Valencia. No sooner had he departed for that city, however, when the partisans reappeared from their mountain refuges, attacked a number of French strongpoints, and cut the Marshal's communications with his base. (15)

Before taking this line of argument any further, it is but fair to point out that it may be stood upon its head. Whilst it is certainly true as we shall see - that the guerrillas caused numerous problems for the Spanish generals, it is also the case that the partidas helped preserve the beleaguered regular armies from destruction during the years of French triumph between 1810 and 1812. Taking the case of Ballesteros once again, his division might on several occasions have been destroyed but for the fact that the French were forced to abandon its pursuit by an upsurge of irregular activity in their rear.

Regular Success for Irreggulars

Accepting this contribution, however, there is still no gainsaying the vital part played by Spanish regulars in the success of the guerrilla struggle. Should that be the case, then it is also misleading to speak in terms of a direct connection between regular and irregular warfare, when by the former is meant Wellington's army and the latter the Spanish guerrillas. The partidas were, in fact, but one facet of the Patriot war effort, and it was that war effort as a whole, rather than any particular part of it, which was vital to Wellington's eventual triumph. Indeed, there is even evidence to suggest that the guernllas may have inflicted a certain amount of damage on the Allied cause.

The problem was outlined by the British diplomat, Thomas Sydenham, who remarked: 'It is very difficult to know what to say about the guerrillas.' After outlining the numerous advantages which he admitted had been brought by the partidas, he continued:

On the other hand, they doubled the calamities inflicted by the French. The inhabitants were compelled to feed the enemy with one hand and the guerrillas with the other. They plundered many towns with as little mercy as the French, and where the French preceded them, they generally carried off all which the French left. Many of them under the pretext of patriotism and of serving against the enemy became regular freebooters and ... they prevented the recruiting of the regular armies, for every Spanish peasant would naturally prefer rioting and plunder and living in free quarters with the guerrillas to being drilled and starved in the regular army.

While some of them kept alive the spirit of resistance others compelled the inhabitants to look to the French to protection, for the inhabitants would at length prefer the systematized pillage of the enemy to the wasteful, capricious, uncertain and merciless plundering of their own countrymen.

The best that Sydenham could bring himself to say about the guerrillas was that they 'did as much mischief to the country as they did to the French, but inasmuch as they certainly did considerable damage to the enemy, they were on the whole useful to the common cause'. (16)

Lest it be thought that Sydenham's view was the fruit of personal jaundice, it should be noted that the problems he outlined can be sustained by a considerable weight of primary evidence. Complaints of brutality and arbitrary conduct (17) on the part of the guerrillas and the petty juntas to which they gave rise were legion, and there were frequent calls for them to be subjected to military discipline. (18)

Depredations

So bad did the depredations of some bands become that they were. In some cases, entire bands' defeat by the French was actually welcomed by their own side. (19)

Meanwhile, the existence of the partidas acted as a constant encouragement to desertion, and thus sapped the strength of the regular army. (20) As the tide of French conquest receded, moreover, the problem became more serious, or, at least, more apparent. Military opinion had expressed the hope that the guerrilla would act as a training school for thousands of Spaniards who could later be inducted into the regular armies. (21)

Such a view was based on the premise that the partidas were wholly altruistic in their motivation, but this was a false premise: thanks to the Junta Central's decree of the so-called corso terrestre, plunder had always been a strong attraction for service with the guerrillas - hence the contemporary catchphrase, 'Long live Ferdinand - let's go robbingl! (22)

And the French retreat revealed those of the guerrillas who were mere bandits for what turned to all-out brigandage, whilst many of those which did allow themselves to be incorporated into the regular army suffered a haemorrhage of men who preferred highway robbery to discipline. (23)

All too often, even those guerrillas who stayed loyal made little further contribution to the war, but rather settled back to enjoy the fruits of victory in their own domains. The result was that large areas of the country dissolved into chaos, making it all but impossible for the Patriot authorities to raise money and supplies for the regular armies. (24)

Given the widespread nature of this evidence, it is impossible not to call into question the usual view that the guerrillas were both the salvation of Spain and the foundation of Wellington's victories. Many of the partisans were undoubtedly sincere in their detestation of the French and were motivated by patriotism rather than greed. Furthermore, in the aggregate, it is clear that the partidas inflicted immense damage on the French armies. For all that, however, the coordination of regular and irregular warfare in the Peninsula is by no means as clear as Liddell Hart and others have maintained, just as the guerrillas were by no means the only Spanish element in the eventual Allied victory. If that much is obvious, many questions remain as to the identity and motivation of the guerrillas and the nature of their struggle which have only been touched upon in the present paper, and can only be answered in the pages of a full-length study whose appearance the author would be the first to welcome and applaud.

Footnotes