Napoleon Invades Iberia — Trigger for Colonial Independence
French troops entered Spain in 1808 as allies and stayed as occupiers, beginning a war Napoleon later called the ulcer that destroyed him. The pretext was Portugal, which had refused to close its ports to British trade. Under the Treaty of Fontainebleau in October 1807, Spain agreed to let a French army cross its territory and to partition Portugal with France; Junot reached Lisbon in November, and the Portuguese court sailed for Brazil under British escort days ahead of him. French garrisons then quietly occupied Spanish fortresses along the route. The Spanish monarchy destroyed itself. Ferdinand forced his father Charles IV to abdicate in March 1808; Napoleon summoned both to Bayonne, made them renounce in his favour, and installed his brother Joseph. Madrid rose on 2 May and was suppressed with the executions Goya painted. What followed was not a campaign but a war of the whole country. Provincial juntas raised armies; a French corps surrendered at Bailén in July, the first capitulation of a Napoleonic army in the field, which electrified Europe; Zaragoza was besieged twice and fought street by street; and irregular bands gave the language the word guerrilla. Wellington landed in Portugal in August 1808 and used the Lines of Torres Vedras and a secure sea base to fight a six-year campaign. Napoleon came in person with 200,000 men that winter, won everything he fought, and left. The war held down 250,000 French troops that were not in Russia. The Spanish colonies in America, cut off from a monarchy that no longer existed, formed juntas in 1810 and never went back.
- Year: 1808 CE
- Category: Political
