The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War

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Summary: The book on this conflict
Review: As the other reviewers below have noted, David Gates' THE SPANISH ULCER is indeed the best book on the Peninsular War. It is well-researched and well-written. It does justice to the operations of the French, British, and Spanish armies. Unlike many other books, it does not focus solely on the campaigns of Wellington. Gates has also provided a wealth of data of size of armies and casualties. Plentiful maps make the narrative of military operations simple to follow. Numerous other military historians and publishers should follow the book's example.

That said, there are still problems with the book that prevent it from being a general history of the Peninsular War. The book focuses too much on the operations of military formations. Gates describes in detail what armies, corps, divisions, brigades, and battalions do. However, very little insight is provided to what soldiers were experiencing on the ground. Equally, the experiences of the Spanish and Portuguese people, who lived with 8 years of bitter war, are dealt with very briefly. Moreover, Gates writes very little on the guerrilla campaign, which was a major factor in the French defeat.

I do not mean to be overly critical. I enjoyed this book greatly. It is the best book out on the Peninsular War. Nevertheless, there is still no general book that covers the political, military, and social aspects of the Peninsular War.

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Summary: A one volume history of the Peninsular War
Review: David Gates' "The Spanish Ulcer" provides one of the very few single volume histories of the Peninsular War that attempts to address the entire conflict and not focus on, for example, the exploits of the Anglo-Portuguese Army. Gates addresses the actions of the Imperial French, the struggles of the Spanish politicians, armies and guerillas, and the fiasco of Portugal prior to the British intervention. That Gates manages to do in one volume what Charles Oman required seven volumes to cover is, however, both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, students of the era now have a single reasonably comprehensive summary of the Peninsular War phase. On the other hand, of necessity, much of the detail of a very complex conflict is compressed, while the narrative tends to jump from place to place. Some advance knowledge of the conflict is almost required to make sense of the many moving parts. Unfortunately, the maps provided in the text are not well designed and more confusing than helpful. Readers are advised to track the action on their own large map of the Iberian Peninsula. This book is strongly recommended to those with an interest in the Peninsular War but not the time or energy to work through the longer studies.

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Summary: Best strategic overview of the Spanish campaign
Review: David Gates' book is probably the best book on the subject of the eight year Spanish campaign that helped defeat Napoloen and his French Empire. The book proves to be superbly well written and very easy to read. Its a history book on general regular war in Spain, looking closely at battles and individual campaigns which made up this war. As one of the earlier reviewers wrote that it really doesn't go into that much details about politics, people or guerillas. I supposed for an one volume book, there probably isn't enough pages to due justice if Gates spread out too thinly. With this in mind, this book with its extremely readable writing, should be part of every Napoleonic library.

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Summary: The Standard
Review: David Gates' treatment of the Iberian conflict has no equal and remains the best single-volume history of Napoleon's unfortunate Spanish adventure. Far superior to Michael Glover's PENINSULAR WAR, Gates' work is comprehensive, well-researched and clearly written. I just finished my 6th reading and continue to enjoy it.
Unlike most British Peninsular authors Gates follows in the footsteps of Oman and gives a balanced objective account giving credit to both the conventional and irregular Spanish forces, and does a masterful job of dealing with the French as well. I find, happily, that he eschews the usual hero-worship of Wellington and does find the Iron Duke human after all (particularly some of his ill-advised sieges). He accompanies his solid research with a useful chronology, some short biographical details, and some very good order of battle work. The work is marred by execrable maps (perhaps drawn by a child) and the all too often use of "sullen." I am happy to see that it's coming soon to paperback. I was most pleased to see information on the little-known Marshal Suchet and his long-suffering Army of Aragon. Buy it & enjoy it!

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Summary: A stunning work of Military History
Review: Most military history books quickly become embedded in politics and economics, and in the process fail to complete their analysis of the military aspects of the history.

In this book Gates has maintained his focus all the way through the book, on the Military campaigns. Any politics or economics are introduced only to explain logistical difficulties or broad trends in strategic direction.

In most English focused histories Wellington is portrayed as some kind of superman who went out to Spain and roundly defeated one French army after another. Gates shows how far this is from the actual truth. He highlights the crucial role played by Peninsular forces, who fielded one army after another to keep the French busy. He demonstrates how the partisan guerilla war prevented the French from concentrating against Wellington to drive him out.

At the same time he demonstrates just why Wellington was the greatest soldier of his age. How he used intelligence and patience as his weapons. How he always selected his preferred battleground to gain maximum advantage against the French, who were after all, masterful foes. Wellington was the master of Soult, Ney and Massena, but not by much. He admitted that he would have lost if Napolean had been there himself.

Gates lavishes praise on the abilities of the French to survive in the harsh environment of the Peninsula, and at the same time extolls the mastery of the British use of naval support to outflank their gallic rivals.

From an Irish perspective it is interesting to note the large number of Irish named Generals fighting for the Spanish, the English and the French. Blake, Clarke, O'Donnell, Lacy and O'Neill to name only a few.

If I had any criticism of this book it would be on the way maps are presented. You always have to check which way is north. I prefer when North is the top of the page! Otherwise the large numbers of maps of all scales are a very useful tool in interpretation of the movements in the battles.

Gates is also helpful in giving the reader a brief introduction to the tactics of Napoleonic armies, explaining the purpose of line, column and square, the flanking manoevre, use of the reverse slope, the use of Cavalry V Infantry etc. A really wonderful book!

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Summary: Very Good
Review: Text, narrative, facts and readability all rate very high, 5 star level actually, but, and I just refuse to understand how, after pouring himself into researching and writing an excellent piece on a topic that is not, lets say, especially overwhelmed with offerings, he can allow the third grade drawings he includes to be foisted off as maps.

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Summary: You can't miss it !!! (From a Spanish point of wiew)
Review: This book is the first one I've read on the Peninsular War that don't tell the whole history purely from the British point of View. You can't stop to be astonished before the resiliance and doggedness of the various spanish armies, that defeat after defeat raises again and again to fight another battles, never asking for peace terms.It's impossible not to be amazed before these lot of patriots, conscripts, mauled veterans, badly trained, armed and feed that lost their lifes in uncountables battlefields to re-form again and again to, finally, expell the french from their fatherland. Wellington and the british troops are essential for the final Victory, of course, but If you only read Sir Charles Oman's work you can think that they fight alone against Napoleon...A book imprescidible to have a balanced view of the Peninsular War, very detailed battles with, sadly, very poor maps. recommended if you wants to have a balanced view of the Peninsular war.

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Summary: Somewhat Revisionist Account
Review: This is a well constructed book on the Peninsular War. Indeed, to find any single, readable volume on this subject that attempts to cover all its aspects is great. Many books tend to concentrate on just Wellington's campaigns and the activities of the Anglo-Portugease army. Mr. Gates has noted that tendency and has tried to correct it. In doing so however, he has taken a rather highly critical approach. Whereas many earlier books were lavish in their praise of Wellington, Gates goes the opposite way. While it is good to provide a fair perspective, and this subject has certainly required that in English, Gates leans too much toward the revisionist set with his heavy criticism of Wellington. At times it seems that he almost wants to go out of his way to find fault with the Iron Duke.

That aside, this is still a worthwhile work if the reader takes understands the bias here. Gates descriptions of what the Spanish armies were doing fills in a lot of gaps on the subject. While often seen as imcompetent in most earlier English sources, the Spanish none the less kept the French off balance. Time and again the French would defeat them, and time and again, the Spanish would return to the fight with new armies. This was a major factor in preventing the French from concentrating against Wellington.

The battles themselves are crisply done, but often a little too heavy on single vollies taking down hundreds if not thousands of men during some of the actions. I think Gates gets a little carried away with himself there at times. Single vollies rarely accomplished this, but a series of them could over time. There are workable maps provided for most of the actions and campaigns, and while some of these are wanting in professional look, they do at least allow one to follow the action somewhat.

The main stength of this work is its wider perspective. We get to see what the numerous Spainish arimes were doing, as well as get a better understanding of what the French were up against in Iberia. I agree with Gates when he states that under the harsh circumstances of the French losing roughly a 100 men a day during the occupation, it is remarkable that they lasted as long as they did. This the book helps us to understand.

Overall this is a workmanlike study, easy to read, and with nice details of aspects not often covered in the numerous works on this subject. If one allows for the often blatant anti-Wellington revisionist slant, then there is much good that can come out of reading this work and comparing it to Weller's and Glover's books.