Dr Charles Esdaile is probably Britain's leading expert on the Spanish Army of the War of Independence (Peninsular War) and was kind enough to lend the editor and co-author Richard Partridge considerable help in setting up research for our book "Battle Studies in the Peninsula" (Constable & Co. - I 998). We had provided Dr Esdaile with a pre-publication manuscript but it was impossible for Dr Esdaile to respond prior to the book's publication. Thus it was with some pleasure that we later received a letter from him with two corrections to our manuscript that he had identified as necessary. His overall impression with "Battle Studies" was, he said, broadly favourable but there were corrections related to Medina de Rioseco and Bailen that would throw yet more light on topography and deployments. Our own researches had not elicited the data which Dr Esdaile provided but he was very definite in his remarks that the information given will set right our inadvertent errors - incidentally, both earlier made by no less an authority than Sir Charles Oman. He kindly allows us to reproduce that information here and in "Age of Napoleon" (our sister journal).

Napoleonic Peninsular War

Introduction
Medina De Rioseco: 14th July 1808
Bailen: 19th July 1808