PENINSULAR WAR (1808-1814). This term is applied to the operations conducted by the British, Spanish and Portuguese armies against the French in the Iberian Peninsula during the years above noted. The British make the most of it first, because they were, with one or two trifling exceptions, their only success ful military operations in the whole period 1794-1814 ; secondly, because they justly raised British military reputation to the highest point ; and thirdly, because they contributed very ma terially to the exhaustion of France and the downfall of Napoleon.
The immediate cause of the war was Napoleon's endeavor, since he was powerless at sea, to reduce England to submission by starving her trade. With this object he had on Nov. 21, 1806, issued his Berlin decrees, ordering all Continental ports to be closed to British subjects. The next thing was to enforce those decrees. The situation seemed so formidable in England that the British ministers thought seriously of abandoning all effort to trade with the Old World, and of seeking new markets in Spanish America. England had but two friends in Europe : Sweden and Portugal. Napoleon left it to Russia to deal with Sweden, and resolved to take Portugal in hand himself. In Aug. 1807 he called upon her to comply with his decrees, and being answered by a protest, overawed the weak king of Spain, Charles IV., and his corrupt minister, Godoy, into granting free passage for French troops through Spain to Portugal. Moreover, by a secret treaty signed at Fontainebleau, on Oct. 27, 1807, it was agreed that Spanish troops should assist the French, that Portugal should be divided between France and Spain, and that a principality should be carved out of it for Godoy. But already on Oct. 19, 30,00o bad French troops under Gen. Junot had crossed the Spanish frontier ; and, under eager orders from Napoleon, these hastened their march upon Lisbon. After long and painful vacil lation between the demands of England and France the Portu guese regent fled to Brazil with the Portuguese fleet; and Junot, with an army reduced by haste and hardship to a mob of undisci plined, half-starved and half-armed stragglers, occupied Lisbon.
Next, Napoleon turned his designs against Spain herself. First he persuaded the king to send 15,000 of his best soldiers to help the French in the Baltic. Next he massed French troops upon the Spanish frontier, the treaty of Fontainebleau allowing him to send 40,000 men through Spain to the support of Junot. In Jan. 1808 he ordered from 70,000 to 8o,000 men to cross the marches ; in Feb ruary and March the fortresses of San Sebastian, Pamplona, Figueras and Barcelona were treacherously occupied ; by the middle of March there were over 90,000 French troops in Spain, and on the 26th Murat occupied Madrid as Napoleon's vicegerent and commander-in-chief. The Spaniards, after a first outbreak of rage against Godoy and the king, accepted the situation in mute stupefaction. King Charles IV. abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand, who threw himself abjectly upon Napoleon's mercy ; but Napoleon, setting Ferdinand aside, resolved to substitute for him his own brother Joseph. Murat intimidated his Spanish coun cil at Madrid into requesting, on May 13, that Joseph might reign over them; but meanwhile the Spaniards had realized that they were subjected to France and on May 2 had risen in revolt.