…. and violence to civilians in British officers' writings on the Peninsular War – the case of Badajoz.
"For all its notoriety, the 1812 British sack of Badajoz during the Peninsular War has been surprisingly overlooked as a subject of historical investigation, symptomatic of a broader neglect of European sieges and sacks for this period. This article explores British officers' reactions to the sack through their letters and memoirs. It suggests rethinking Badajoz as a site not only of excess and atrocity, but also one of constraint, outrage, shame and censure. In so doing, it investigates sieges as an important place for examining changes and continuities in customary laws of war, cultures of war, and moral, humanitarian and sentimental discourses over the long eighteenth century.
At 10 p.m. on 6 April 1812, at the height of the Peninsular War, British troops under the duke of Wellington stormed the French‐held Spanish fortress city of Badajoz, situated on the left bank of the Guadiana River in Spanish Extremadura. By 2 a.m. the city had fallen, and shortly after dawn the French governor, General Armand Philippon, formally offered his sword. The French garrison were spared, but the Spanish inhabitants were not. Wellington's troops sacked Badajoz over a three‐day period, not only plundering, but killing and raping Spanish civilians – civilians they were meant to be liberating. This was not the first time that Wellington's troops had sacked a city in the Peninsula – less than three months earlier, they had stormed and sacked Ciudad Rodrigo, although the sack lasted only through the night, with few if any civilian deaths. Nor was Badajoz to be the last British sack: the following year San Sebastian was stormed, becoming another scene of plunder and atrocity…"
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