page_title: Peninsular War
section_title: Revolution under siege
hierarchical_section_title: Peninsular War / 1810 / Revolution under siege
caption_attribution_description: Español: Sitio de Cádiz, entre 1810 y 1812.
context_page_description: The Peninsular War is the military conflict fought by Spain and Portugal, assisted by Great Britain, against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. The war began when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807, transiting through Spain, and escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, previously its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte had forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne, also promulgating the Bayonne Constitution. Most Iberians rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation, significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare.
  The war began in Spain with the Dos de Mayo Uprising on 2 May 1808 and ended on 17 April 1814 with the restoration of Ferdinand VII to the monarchy.
context_section_description: The French invaded Andalusia on 19 January 1810. 60,000 French troops—the corps of Victor, Mortier and Sebastiani together with other formations—advanced southwards to assault the Spanish positions. Overwhelmed at every point, Aréizaga's men fled eastwards and southwards, leaving town after town to fall into the hands of the enemy. The result was revolution. On 23 January the Junta Central decided to flee to the safety of Cádiz. It then dissolved itself on 29 January 1810 and set up a five-person Regency Council of Spain and the Indies, charged with convening the Cortes. Soult cleared all of southern Spain except Cádiz, which he left Victor to blockade. The system of juntas was replaced by a regency and the Cortes of Cádiz, which established a permanent government under the Constitution of 1812.
  Cadiz was heavily fortified, while the harbour was full of British and Spanish warships. Alburquerque's army and the Voluntarios Distinguidos had been reinforced by 3,000 soldiers who had fled Seville, and a strong Anglo-Portuguese brigade commanded by General William Stewart. Shaken by their experiences, the Spaniards had abandoned their earlier scruples about a British garrison. Victor's French troops camped at the shoreline and tried to bombard the city into surrender. Thanks to British naval supremacy, a naval blockade of the city was impossible. The French bombardment was ineffectual and the confidence of the gaditanos grew and persuaded them that they were heroes. With food abundant and falling in price, the bombardment was hopeless despite both hurricane and epidemic—a storm destroyed many ships in the spring of 1810 and the city was ravaged by yellow fever.
  Once Cádiz was secured, attention turned to the political situation. The Junta Central announced that the cortes would open on 1 March 1810. Suffrage was to be extended to all male householders over 25. After public voting, representatives from district-level assemblies would choose deputies to send to the provincial meetings that would be the bodies from which the members of the cortes would emerge. From 1 February 1810, the implementation of these decrees had been in the hands of the new regency council selected by the Junta Central. The viceroyalties and independent captaincies general of the overseas territories would each send one representative. This scheme was resented in America for providing unequal representation to the overseas territories. Unrest erupted in Quito and Charcas, which saw themselves as the capitals of kingdoms and resented being subsumed in the larger "kingdom" of Peru. The revolts were suppressed (See Luz de América and Bolivian War of Independence). Throughout early 1809 the governments of the capitals of the viceroyalties and captaincies general elected representatives to the Junta, but none arrived in time to serve on it.
caption: Map of Cádiz in 1813
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