"The Duke of Wellington“s Command of the Spanish Army" Topic

… IN THE PENINSULAR WAR

Of possible interest?

PDF link

Amicalement
Armand

No, it is not interesting. In fact, it is irrelevant. A bunch of stereotypes, misunderstandings and distortions about the Spanish army and institutions. The typical contempt for the Spanish army and denigration of the Spanish institutions and leaders, all based on ignorance.

Spanish sources, primary and secondary ones, are not used. They are absolutely necessary in order to know and understand any issue about the Spanish army and society. It is evident.

Without Spanish sources the author can only offer a handful of fake, outdated and biased conclusions.

Super Glup!!!!!!

Amicalement
Armand

Yet another one of the abysmal theses from the US military establishment that shoehorns present-day military jargon onto early 19th century military operations and muddles the entire mess.

As mentioned by the observant Ruchel, the author uses no Spanish language sources, so the thesis is woefully inadequate and generally worthless. All of these types of papers are useless because these American military types can't read a single foreign language, so their sourcing is limited to the usual collection of outdated secondary sources.

Armand, you can continue to post these papers from the Command and Staff College, but those of us with a clue will respond to them exactly like we have always done--they are a supreme waste of our time, and they are academically embarrassing.

Especially as the Esdaile works in the bibliography give some excellent pointers on where to find some!

Esdaile's sources are of no use when the author cannot read Spanish.

Fair comment Maggie.

It's a shame there isn't some an invention to help him, like a Google but with translation built in. Or even if he lived in a country where a sizeable portion of the population could read or speak Spanish.

I once tried to translate a set of Napoleonic rules from Spanish using an internet translation. At first I couldn't understand why the text referred repeatedly to 'persecution' – shades of the Spanish Inquisition! – but realised the author must have meant 'pursuit'.

It isn't that a "sizeable portion of the population" can't read or speak Spanish. It is a fact that the authors of these papers originating from the US Army Command and General Staff College, almost to a man, can't read--or speak--Spanish, French, or German. So they supposedly earn these Masters of Military Arts and Science degrees using only secondary sources in English.

The CGSC is a "ticket punching" exercise for promotion. The documents produced are of minimal value. They inevitably use only tertiary sources (I've seen Osprey cited more often than I can recall).

These are not truly academic production, and should generally be taken with a teaspoon of salt.