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Napoleonic Spain was the part of Spain loyal to Joseph I during the Peninsular War (1808–1813), forming a Bonapartist client state officially known as the Kingdom of Spain after the country was partially occupied by forces of the First French Empire.
1 dzień temu · Relying on their support, Napoleon entirely underestimated the possibility of popular resistance to the occupation of Spain by French armies. Although the uprising of May 2, 1808, in Madrid was suppressed, local uprisings against the French were successful wherever French military power was weak.
Although there were a few Spaniards who supported Napoleon's seizure of power in Spain, many regional centers rose up and formed juntas to rule in the name of the ousted Bourbon king, Ferdinand VII. Spanish America also created juntas to rule in the name of the king, since Joseph I was considered an illegitimate sovereign.
The month of May, 1808 marked the commencement of a terrible tragedy for the peoples and nations of Spain, Portugal, and France. Six months earlier French armies of the Napoleonic Empire had begun their invasion and occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.
When Emperor Napoleon made his eldest brother Joseph King of Spain on 15 June 1808, he seriously underestimated the degree of opposition which his announcement would create. Instead of a peaceful transition to a Bonaparte monarch as was the case with Louis in Holland (1806) or Jerome in Westphalia (1807) Napoleon s gamble in the Iberian ...
The Spanish rose as a people against Napoleon's invasion and backed King Ferdinand VII when he returned as an absolute ruler. But he was a bad king, and persecuted anyone with liberal ideas, and was linked—unjustly—to the loss of the American empire.
The guerrilla, fought through interactive military planning i.e. geo-strategical modalities and phases of open resistance to the French host and following the exhortatory slogan por la Religion, por la Patria y por el Rey, found the principal support of the clergy, a preponderant force in a country where the centuries old prestige of the Church ...
