""Bleeding ulcer": the commencement and long-term ..." Topic

…consequences of guerilla warfare in Iberia.

"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. But the conservative, proud, religious, and xenophobic native populations had reacted initially to these foreign forces with a fear and loathing that exploded eventually into fury and violent opposition in the form of a spontaneous, general, leaderless, and massive insurrection. This uprising quickly coalesced into an armed popular movement that the French were never able to suppress over a period of nearly six years. Furthermore, these Peninsular Wars (1808-14), known also to the Spanish and Portuguese as the "War of National Independence", would become one of the two most important military causes for the rapid demise of Napoleon and the First Empire.

Several factors had motivated Napoleon in his ambitions to dominate and rule Spain and Portugal. To strike an indirect, economic blow against Britain, his most implacable enemy, the Emperor had embarked in 1807 on his campaign known as the Continental System to close all European ports to British trade. Also, he exceedingly overestimated the potential assets and wealth of Spanish material and natural resources, the possession of which could be valuable in his struggle against Britain. Moreover, his contacts with the Bourbon royal family of Spain inspired total contempt for their incompetence, corruption, and decadence. Thus Napoleon resolved cleverly to exploit a breach between the unpopular King Charles IV., stupid and tish Queen Maria Luisa, and detested chief minister Manuel Godoy on the one hand and the heir-to-the-throne Ferdinand on the other hand, to coerce the abdication of both. In their place, his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed as the next monarch of Spain.

These events were interpreted by the popular masses, however, as an intolerable attack on their traditional institutions and a national humiliation. Thereafter, a confrontation between French troops and Spanish civilians in Madrid on May 2, 1808 (Dos de Mayo) sparked rebellious conflagrations that spread like wildfire throughout the entire Peninsula. In almost every region and locality of Spain and Portugal, anti-French juntas asserted political control and organized formal militias to fight the enemy. Others on their own initiative recruited bands of partisans or insurgents also to oppose the foreigners by any means…"
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Amicalement
Armand

A divorce took care of my ulcer.

(smile)

I have hear must worst deseases my friend… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand