Albuera 1811: The Bloodiest Battle of the Peninsular War (review)

The Napoleonic Wars ended on the field of Waterloo in 1815. Ever since, a handful of topics —the Waterloo campaign, Napoleon's invasion of Russia —have dominated English language printed material about those wars. The Peninsular War, 1807-1814, narrowly trails those dominant topics. Then and thereafter, British writers published accounts celebrating an unbroken string of battlefield successes against the heretofore seemingly invincible French legions. In particular, readers were treated to the exploits of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, the general whose conduct of affairs in Portugal and Spain did so much to turn the Iberian Peninsula into 'the Spanish Ulcer', a disease that ate away at the vitals of the Napoleonic Empire.

Wellington's towering presence overshadowed most everything else. Some protested that he received too much credit. Among them was an elderly Viscount Montgomery, who explained to a young Sandhurst instructor, David Chandler, "Marlboro and Montgomery, M, very good. Wellington and Wavell, upside down M. No good!" Montgomery excepted, few could gainsay Wellesley's tactical genius and ultimate strategic success.

The Battle of Albuera, fought on May 16, 1811, was one of a handful of Peninsular battles involving British soldiers led by someone other than Wellington. Here an allied army commanded by William Beresford engaged a French army led by one of Napoleon's ablest marshals, Jean-de-Dieu Soult, and a general slaughter ensued. The bloodshed so shocked Beresford that his post-battle report to Wellington was gloomy in the extreme. With a keen eye as to how Beresford's whining account would be received by British politicians and the British public, Wellington rejected it with the words "this won't do, write me down a victory."

Guy Dempsey's account provides what surely must rank as the definitive history of British involvement in the Battle of Albuera. His opening four chapters succinctly relate the events preceding the battle and outline the battle's context. The next five, the core of the book, are devoted to a detailed account of the battle, followed by six chapters that consider its aftermath.

To compensate for his numerical inferiority, Soult planned a rapid approach march to surprise the allied forces laying siege to the fortress of Badajoz, located at a strategic place on the southern Spanish-Portuguese border. Dempsey thoroughly understands his period and explains how Soult's hoped for surprise was futile because of "the intelligence-gathering network put together by both Wellington and his brother"(p. 75). As Peninsular War buffs know, the most famous incident during the Battle of Albuera occurred when a surprise French cavalry charge featuring the Vistula Lancers destroyed Colborne's Brigade. Dempsey's text provides new details supplemented by informative, sometimes entertaining footnotes, like the story of how the Vistula Lancers in 1808 had to demonstrate their prowess with the lance to a skeptical Napoleon. When they conducted a mock charge, their waving lance pennons panicked the Emperor's horse, thereby persuading Napoleon that lances were potentially useful weapons. Three years later at Albuera, the lancers proved their potential by skewering scores of helpless British infantry in a dramatic and potentially battle-winning charge. Dempsey ably describes all of this.

However, the book's production partially undermines his efforts. Most notably the publisher has chosen a font size too small to be read comfortably. Indeed, today's publishers seem willing to do almost anything to cut costs, but reducing the font size in order to save on paper is wrongheaded. While the maps are good, the color contrast showing movements and units fails to register except under the best lighting. The author has performed commendable research, uncovering an exhaustive number of British sources, and consulted German, Spanish, and Portuguese sources. However, the repetitive nature of many of the extended quotations is bothersome. Some synthesis and/or cutting would seem to have been in order. The book's French perspective does not equal...