On the Plains of Spain

This time, we are doing something a little different. WDS designer and historian Andrew Bamford takes us into the field rather than the archive, following a March 2026 battlefield study with the British Army’s Royal Dragoon Guards through some of the key ground of the Peninsular War. Combining battlefield photographs, historical narrative, and screenshots from Bonaparte’s Peninsular War and Wellington’s Peninsular War, Andrew looks at how the same terrain can be understood through the eyes of Wellington’s soldiers, a modern armoured reconnaissance regiment, and a wargame designer.

One of my freelance jobs in the past year, when not working on new projects for WDS, has been as an historian with the UK Ministry of Defence. Most of that was desk-based, but the team that I was attached to also exists to support the British Army’s programme of battlefield studies (or staff rides, as I believe they’re called on the other side of the Atlantic). For anyone not familiar with the concept, the idea is to visit an historical battlefield or battlefields, and consider the military situation as it was back in the day but also how modern forces might react when operating on the same ground or when faced with a similar military challenge. Part of the problem, indeed, is working out what the ‘similar military challenge’ might be: for example, ‘shock’, on the horse-and-musket era battlefields that I study as an historian and work on as a WDS scenario designer, might be a cavalry charge or a bayonet assault, but what is the modern equivalent? Questions like that get soldiers thinking about their own jobs, while also hopefully giving them some inspiration from seeing the sites made famous by their regimental ancestors.

A trip in March 2026, supporting a study by the Royal Dragoon Guards (RDG), gave me a chance to return to some of my favourite sites from the Peninsular War, as recreated in Rich White’s two WDS titles Bonaparte’s Peninsular War and Wellington’s Peninsular War (BPW and WPW for short) for which I did the bulk of the order of battle research. Our focal point was the Battle of Salamanca, fought on 22 July 1812 and arguably (at least, I would argue!) Wellington’s masterpiece as a battlefield commander. There the 5th Dragoon Guards, an ancestor-unit of the modern regiment, took part in the decisive charge by Le Marchant’s Brigade of heavy cavalry. However, today the RDG is trained and equipped as an armoured reconnaissance regiment, so their battlefield role is very different to that of their heavy cavalry ancestors. In order to give them a chance to review some historical scenarios that might have relevance to their modern role, even if no antecedent unit was present, we therefore also visited a series of locations along the Spanish-Portuguese border where the outposts of the French and allied armies sparred with each other during the fighting of 1810-1811 around the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida.

It was an enjoyable week, made all the better by excellent weather, food, and company, but I would be at pains to point out, in this era of tight defence budgets, this was no jolly at the tax-payer’s expense and it was clear to see that the participants were drawing a lot of useful lessons from the history and from their subsequent discussions. Equally, I learned a great deal about modern warfare that was new and fascinating to me. What follows is a selection of my photographs from the trip, paired where appropriate with screenshots that show how these actions are portrayed in BPW and WPW. I’ve tried to provide enough history for the images to make sense even to someone not familiar with the ebb and flow of the Peninsular War, but this is by no means intended to be an exhaustive account of these campaigns.

Barba Del Puerco

Our first location, having flown into Madrid the night before and settled into our accommodation in Salamanca, was an action that is really too small to make a viable scenario for a WDS Napoleonic game. Indeed, it reads more like something from one of Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe novels, pitting an outnumbered contingent of riflemen against a larger French force. The historical context here, and for the rest of the sites that we visited on the first day of the study, relates to the delaying actions fought in 1810 around the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida that barred French access to the northernmost of the two main routes leading from Spain into Portugal, drawing out lessons for the RDG’s modern role as part of a reconnaissance or screening force. In order to complete his defensive preparations around Lisbon, Wellington needed to use this key terrain to delay the advance of Marshal Massena’s Armée de Portugal.

Ciudad Rodrigo, held by the Spanish, sits on the River Agueda, which flows south-north directly across the path of the French invasion route. Forty kilometres or so to the west, the River Coa runs on a parallel course, the main crossing covered by the Portuguese fortress of Almeida. In 1810, the area between the two rivers was covered by the newly formed Light Division of Wellington’s army, under Brigadier General Robert Craufurd. Other than the bridge at Ciudad Rodrigo itself, the only crossing of the Agueda was at Barba del Puerco, further to the north. The village of San Felices, on far side of Agueda from Barba del Puerco, was occupied by a brigade of around 3,000 men under Général de Brigade Claude Ferey. Multiple probes into Barba del Puerco led Craufurd to establish a post there, which from 11 March was composed of four companies of the 1/95th Rifles under Lieutenant Colonel Sydney Beckwith.

A system of picquets was established, with one company always on duty based in the old chapel at the end of the village overlooking the gorge. There were then 12 men under a sergeant at the top of the gorge, six more under a corporal halfway down, and two sentries on the bridge itself. There was a certain amount of contact with French sentries on the other side, using Spanish as a common language, which hinted that something was planned for the night of 19 March (although this either never reached Beckwith or wasn’t thought worth acting on).

On duty that night was Captain O’Hare’s company, but O’Hare was unwell and went back to the village leaving Lieutenant Mercer in charge. The French were indeed coming; Ferey sent a vanguard of 600 picked grenadiers and light infantry, with a further 900 in support, to drive Beckwith’s 360-or-so riflemen from the village.

By virtue of the darkness and the roar of the water, the French were able to surprise the two sentries on the bridge, but not before one of them managed to get a shot off. This alerted the other picquets, who began to delay the French advance up the path. Mercer sent word back to O’Hare and Beckwith, but was then shot dead leaving young 2nd Lieutenant Simmons, under fire for the first time, in command of the picquet. Simmons and his men held the line, helped by the cover offered by the rocks and darkness, until Beckwith brought up the rest of the force and drove the French back. Casualties were actually fairly light on both sides. Beckwith’s Rifles lost nine dead, 15 wounded, and the two sentries taken prisoner; the French admitted to the loss of 12 dead, 13 wounded and three prisoners. However, the effectiveness of Craufurd’s screening arrangements had been demonstrated. Only after Ciudad Rodrigo fell on 10 July did Craufurd abandon the west bank of the Agueda and fall back to cover Almeida.

Almeida and the Coa

We now moved on to the fortress of Almeida, with the view from the preserved ramparts providing an excellent perspective of the northern part of the field on which was fought the action of 24 July 1810 known as the Combat on the Coa.

After the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, Craufurd was now ordered to support the garrison of Almeida, but not to risk a major engagement. Wellington advised pulling back to the west bank of the Coa, but did not insist on it. Remaining on the east bank, Craufurd was taken by surprise by the advance by Marshal Ney’s VI Corps with three divisions of infantry and one of cavalry. Craufurd’s screening force comprised the Light Division with c.4,000 infantry and six guns, plus attached cavalry under Brigadier General Anson amounting to 1,000 horsemen with elements of the 1st KGL Hussars and the 14th and 16th Light Dragoons.

Ney’s cavalry opened the attack late in the morning by advancing under the cover of a rain squall to try and get between Craufurd and Almeida. This was checked, and at this point common sense indicates that Craufurd ought to have withdrawn his guns and baggage, and potentially his whole division, but he seems to have assumed that he was facing a reconnaissance-in-force and not a major attack. Accordingly, he stood his ground. Unfortunately, it was a major attack and Loison’s infantry division quickly pushed up to support the cavalry. Thankfully, the terrain is very rocky and was broken up by stone walls. This facilitated the allied defence, but meant that Craufurd swiftly lost control of the fighting as the component units of his command sought to break contact and reach safety on the far bank of the Coa

At length the cavalry and guns were successfully got away, though not before the artillery had done considerable damage with spherical case shot. The Portuguese 1° Cacadores also fell back across the Coa, and together with the gunners formed a supporting position on the far bank. The remaining infantry now had to break out, and key to this was control of the knoll overlooking the bridge over the Coa. This was held for a time and then given up as the troops fall back – however, it then became apparent that not everyone was off: several companies of the 1/52nd Light Infantry were discovered to have been cut off on the far right wing and the French needed to be driven from the knoll to allow them to rejoin the main body and make their escape.

At length, Craufurd regrouped his command on the west bank, having taken 300 casualties and with others still cut off on the far bank who eventually got away by other crossing points. As this stood, it was a debacle that could well have ended Craufurd’s career. Had the French pushed home with all their infantry, rather than just Loison’s division, they could well have destroyed the Light Division which had been left exposed by Craufurd’s overconfidence. However, it was then the French turn to become overconfident. The assumption seems to have been that the allies were on the run and that they could take the bridge as well, which would enable them to completely cut off Almeida. Two attacks by the 66e and 82e Ligne were, however, turned back with heavy losses: ‘The bridge was literally piled with their dead and they made breastworks of the bodies’, wrote Harry Smith of the 1/95th. The soldiers of the 66e were then asked to have another go, a prospect about which the men were, understandably, not keen, and that attack petered out around 4.00 p.m. With these unnecessary extra casualties, as well as heavy losses in the fighting on the east bank, French losses for the day ended up pushing 1,000, turning their initial success into a British tactical victory.

Operationally, however, the French had set the scene for their siege of Almeida. A strong modern fortress, well-designed, Almeida should have held out longer even than Ciudad Rodrigo. The garrison of five Portuguese battalions and 400 gunners were under a British officer, Brigadier General William Cox. The French opened their bombardment on 26 August, having brought up guns from Ciudad Rodrigo. This caused damage and fires, but was met with a resolute response. Then, around 7.00 p.m., disaster struck. What seems most likely is that French mortar bombs landed outside the fortress magazine – situated under the castle and adjacent cathedral – while the doors were open and powder was being moved up to the guns. Some accounts suggest a leaky barrel had left a powder train, but since no-one close enough to be certain lived to tell the story we don’t know for sure.

Whatever the cause, 150,000lbs of gunpowder and over a million rounds of musket ammunition went up in a colossal explosion – ‘a violent shock similar to an earthquake’, said Cox. From the French perspective, Ney’s chief of staff wrote that ‘The explosion was dreadful but the effect was even greater. Massive blocks of stone were thrown into our trenches, killing and wounding some men there. Cannon of large calibre were blown off the ramparts and thrown far across the countryside’.

Much of the town was in rubble, and the garrison badly demoralised: 800 of them were dead, along with 500 civilians, and the castle and cathedral had disappeared. With them had gone all the reserves of ammunition needed to defend the fortress. Had the French not been equally shocked, they could likely have stormed the place in the immediate aftermath.

The following day, with the situation clear, Cox had no choice but to surrender. To his horror, many of the Portuguese troops promptly agreed to serve under the French rather than be taken prisoner, but it soon transpired that this was for the most part a ruse as the men, once released, deserted from the French and made their way to join the main army under Wellington. Only 200 or so actually remained with the French.

Fuentes de Oñoro

For the second day of the study, we turned to events of 1811. After the fall of Almeida, the allies had fallen back on Lisbon, giving the French a bloody nose along the way at Bussaco. This was too long a drive into Portugal to cover on the current trip, however, so we picked the story up after the French had been foiled in their invasion plans and fallen back into Spain. Massena took his army back to Salamanca to refit, but left garrisons to hold the captured fortresses of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo. Whereas the previous year Wellington had used the fortresses to delay the French, now the French were using them to delay the allies. Lacking sufficient cavalry to venture out into the open country around Ciudad Rodrigo, or the siege guns to take either fortress, Wellington set down to blockade Almeida, hoping to starve out the garrison. Massena, reinforced by cavalry from the Armée du Nord under Marshal Bessières, set out to relieve the Almeida garrison thereby precipitating the three-day Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, 3-5 May 1811.

Of all Wellington’s Peninsular victories, this was the closest-run. Indeed, even Wellington himself later admitted, ‘If Boney had been there, we should have been beat’. With 34,000 infantry and 1,900 cavalry, the allies had to cover an extended defensive line along the Dos Casas stream, blocking the various routes by which the French might advance from Ciudad Rodrigo to Almeida. The Coa, only a few miles to his rear, formed a dangerous obstacle if the allies had to retreat, with only a handful of bridges. Reinforced by Bessières, Massena could field 42,000 infantry and 4,500 cavalry but for once the French were outgunned, bringing only 38 cannon as opposed to the allied 48 – his army still recovering from its sojourn in Portugal, Massena simply lacked the draught horses to move the rest of his guns.

Having located Wellington’s positions on the morning of 3 May, Massena deployed Reynier’s II Corps on a feint attack in the north while making a more concerted drive against the village of Fuentes de Oñoro towards what was at this point the southern portion of the allied line. A maze of tight streets and walled gardens, the village was – and is – a natural fortress and was held by a combined force of detached light companies from the 1st and 3rd Divisions. After several hours of fighting, during which Wellington fed in additional battalions but the French committed the best part of two divisions, the village remained in allied hands.

The following day, 4 May, saw no serious fighting as both commanders regrouped. Wellington, keen to keep open a potential line of retreat to the bridge at Sabugal, well to the right-rear of his line, extended his right flank by pushing out the newly-formed 7th Division to hold the village of Poco Velho, with a force of Spanish irregulars even further out at Nave de Haver. There was a sizeable gap between these troops and the main position at Fuentes de Oñoro, but Wellington lacked the manpower to hold a continuous line. Unfortunately for the allies, Massena was also interested in this flank, and planned to employ a strong left-hook by his cavalry, backed up by the infantry of VI Corps under Loison, to roll up the allied line. Once this had been achieved, the fresh IX Corps under d’Erlon would join the attack around Fuentes de Oñoro itself.

Beginning on the morning of 5 May, the French attack initially made good progress, catching the Spaniards by surprise and placing the 7th Division under considerable pressure. Here, our modern British soldiers were learning from a successful French precedent! Only by committing Craufurd’s Light Division and two brigades of cavalry under Sir Stapleton Cotton to cover the retreat was Wellington able to rescue his threatened right flank, and establish a new line hinging back from an angle at Fuentes de Oñoro village. From the French perspective, the village now took on greater importance as taking it had the potential to crack the allied line; it remained, however, as strong a position as it had been two days previously, with a fresh garrison, and the French attacks were again repulsed. Unable to break through to Almeida, Massena was obliged to give up the fight, withdrawing to Salamanca after losing some 2,100 men to Wellington’s 1,450 casualties. The only bright spot for the French was that their Almeida garrison was able to break out and rejoin the main army, making a daring night-time march that ultimately took them across the bridge at Barba del Puerco that we had visited on the previous day of the study. This, however, was of little comfort to Massena who was relieved of his command and replaced by Marshal Marmont.

Ciudad Rodrigo

Having spent the morning at Fuentes de Oñoro, the afternoon of the second day was spent exploring the fortress town of Ciudad Rodrigo, to consider its recapture by allied forces in January 1812. Siege warfare doesn’t really fit either the contemporary or historic roles of the RDG, but it enabled us to complete our story of the border operations and to pay our respect to Robert Craufurd, whose adventures with the Light Division we had been following for the first two days of the study.

After regaining control of Almeida when the French evacuated it, Wellington had regained control of all the key fortifications in Portugal. However, the Spanish fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz remained in French hands, respectively blocking the northern and southern routes into Spain. Wellington could mass forces sufficient to outnumber either the French Armée du Midi, covering Badajoz but also responsible for the siege of Cadiz, or the French Armée du Nord covering Ciudad Rodrigo, but Marmont’s Armée de Portugal, operating from its central position at Salamanca, could reinforce either of the other two armies and thus thwart Wellington’s plans. The rest of 1811 therefore passed in a game of cat and mouse as each side sought to gain a local advantage, but it was not until January 1812 that Wellington finally got his break. Acting on orders from Napoleon in Paris, Marmont detached troops to help in the French conquest of Valencia; this left his army too weak to support Ciudad Rodrigo, and Wellington, who had been amassing his siege train for just such an opportunity, moved swiftly and invested the fortress. On 8 January a daring night attack captured the French outwork on the Grand Teson, a hill overlooking the town, and this enabled Wellington to establish his breaching batteries there. On 14 January the batteries were complete, and after five days two breaches had been blasted through the walls. Wellington set the night of 19 January 1812 for the storming of the fortress.

The plan for the storm involved the movement of a number of separate columns. The 3rd Division under Thomas Picton would storm the larger of the two breaches, and the Light Division under Craufurd the smaller one. Portuguese troops would mount diversionary attacks from the east of the town, and from the south across the Agueda bridge. The attack went in at 7.00 p.m., with just over 10,000 troops committed to the storm, and, although the fighting in the breaches was bloody, the troops successfully fought their way in. Craufurd, mortally wounded directing the Light Division’s attack, was one of over 500 allied casualties. In the aftermath, the victorious troops ran amok and sacked the town, prefiguring worse disorders at Badajoz later in the year and at San Sebastian in 1813.

Salamanca

The final day of the study moved on to look at Wellington’s masterpiece, and a famous day for the RDG ancestor regiment the 5th Dragoon Guards – the Battle of Salamanca. Devoting a whole day to one battle meant that we could go into much more detail than during the previous two days, looking at the big picture as well as the deeds of the British heavy cavalry in particular.

The allied advance on Salamanca took place after Wellington’s swift but bloody capture of Badajoz in April 1812. Wellington’s troops entered the Spanish city on 17 June, with Marmont falling back to the north rather than offer battle without all his forces at hand. Only after bringing in detached troops who had been away in the north fighting the Spanish guerilla insurgency did the French commander seek to bring on a battle, leading to a tense game of cat and mouse where each commander held his nerve waiting for the other to make a mistake. By mid-July the jockeying of the two armies had brought them back to the area around Salamanca, both marching southwards within sight of each other. Marmont, believing that Wellington was on the point of withdrawing to Portugal, began to become overconfident and allowed his army to get dangerously strung out, thus giving Wellington his opportunity on the morning of 22 July. Both armies were roughly equal in numbers; 51,900 allies to 49,600 French.

We began our study of the battle from the French perspective at the Ermita de la Peña, a small chapel on high ground near the village of Calvarrasa de Arriba on what would become the eastern edge of the battlefield. This position was held by a French division under Maximilien Foy, which would spend most of the day bickering with the outposts of the allied Light Division, now under the Hanoverian-born Karl von Alten who had replaced Craufurd. The location, however, is an excellent one for grasping the key terrain of the battlefield, which is part of a rolling plain. Two key heights, southwest of our location at the Ermita, dominate the field and would be important objectives in the fight: the Greater Arapile, which was occupied by the French, and the Lesser Arapile which was occupied by the allies. Less obvious heights stretch away to the west of these features, forming a shallow valley which holds the village of Arapiles.

Having oriented ourselves, we moved (by minibus; this is a huge battlefield) to a convenient carpark at the base of the Lesser Arapile. Here we reviewed one of the key moments in the battle, wherein British artillerymen firing from the Lesser Arapile successfully targeted the French command team on the opposite height. Marmont, who had belatedly realised how vulnerable his strung-out army had become, was badly wounded and so unable to set act to restore the situation. This left his exposed left wing without corrective orders, extending Wellington’s window of opportunity.

Continuing now on foot, we made the 20-minute walk westwards to Wellington’s initial command position on the Teso de San Miguel. From here in 1812 he would have been able to see the French division of Maucune occupying the high ground south of Arapiles village, and another division, that of Thomières, continuing to march westwards. Looking to his right-rear, Wellington would also have been able to see the allied 3rd Division, under the temporary command of his brother-in-law Edward Pakenham, as Picton had been wounded at Badajoz, which had moved up through Salamanca independently of the rest of the army, and was now poised to intersect the French advance. Seizing the moment, Wellington gave orders for Pakenham to attack Thomières; once the 3rd Division was engaged the 5th Division, under Sir James Leith, would advance against Maucune, and then the attack would be picked up by Lowry Cole’s 4th Division and Pack’s Portuguese Brigade. Light cavalry screened and supported Pakenham’s move, and three regiments of heavy cavalry under Major General John Le Marchant waited behind the infantry to exploit any rupture in the French line.

The site of Pakenham’s attack on, and rout of, Thomières is cut off from the battlefield by a motorway, and since we were focussing on the subsequent cavalry action we didn’t make the extra detour, instead reviewing this phase of the battle from Wellington’s vantage point. Suffice it to say though, that the 3rd Division, with the 1/88th Connaught Rangers to the fore, not only broke the French infantry but set it tumbling back in rout, towards where Maucune’s Frenchmen were facing off against Leith’s 5th Division above Arapiles village. Wellington now not only sent Leith forward, but also committed Le Marchant’s Brigade, including the 5th Dragoon Guards, to an attack into the angle between the two infantry divisions. The British cavalry in the Peninsula gets a bad name, accused by Wellington himself in an angry moment of ‘galloping at everything’, but when well-led as it was on this day at Salamanca it could perform very effectively. Le Marchant’s charge, indeed, was one of the most effective by a single brigade in the whole of the Napoleonic era, with perhaps only Kellerman at Marengo running it close in terms of effect on the outcome of the wider action.

Although we speak of ‘Le Marchant’s charge’, what unfolded was in reality a combined-arms assault. As Leith’s 5th Division infantry advanced in two lines, ascending the heights south of Arapiles village, the heavy cavalry moved up on their right flank. This meant that Maucune’s defending Frenchmen could either form line to resist the infantry, leaving them vulnerable to the cavalry, or form square to resist the cavalry, leaving them vulnerable to the infantry. With the fugitives of Thomières’ division also flooding in from the west, this was a target-rich environment for Le Marchant’s three regiments of dragoons and dragoon guards. On the left of the line, the 5th Dragoon Guards attacked Maucune’s infantry; judging by the eyewitness account of Trooper Sam Gallagher, they actually passed through the right-most battalions of Leith’s division as they moved up. Meanwhile, Le Marchant led the other two regiments against Thomieres’ remnants and the French reserves that were now coming up to support them. Gallagher wrote that, ‘We then rushed to the charge, heedless of the mass of bristling bayonets in our front, cut down and trampled everything beneath us’. The regiment captured two cannon, and the drum-major’s staff of the 66e Ligne which is still in the possession of the RDG today and has pride of place in the officers’ mess. The brigade as a whole took in the region of 2,000 prisoners, for, relatively speaking, light losses of their own. Le Marchant, however, was killed by a musket shot to the groin in the closing stages of the charge leaving the 5th’s Colonel William Ponsonby to take over the brigade.

With the collapse of the French left, Marmont’s army was defeated. Wellington, it was later said, had defeated 40,000 men in 40 minutes. But the battle was not over. Cole’s 4th Division, moving up on Leith’s left to extend the attack, had only two of its three brigades up – the other was helping hold the Lesser Arapile – and its ranks were thinned with casualties at Badajoz. Its attack stalled, and the men were then driven back by the troops of the resurgent French centre. Meanwhile, when Pack’s Portuguese moved to attack the Greater Arapile they reached the top only to be met by a French volley that sent them reeling back down the slope with heavy casualties.

As Pack was being defeated, the French divisions of Clausel and Bonnet followed up the repulse of Cole’s men with a counterattack, directed by Clausel who had taken command of the entire Armée de Portugal after Marmont’s wounding. This dangerous threat was checked by the allied 6th Division moving up from reserve. Under the command of Henry Clinton, the 6th anchored its left flank on the Lesser Arapile and let its right slowly fall back under French pressure until the line was restored. Meanwhile, Sir William Beresford, the British officer seconded to act as commander of the Portuguese army, took Spry’s Portuguese brigade of the 5th Division and used it to seal off the other flank of the French penetration. Beresford himself was badly wounded around this point.

The French now had no option but to withdraw. Foy’s division, out on the flank at Ermita de la Peña where we had started the day, was able to disengage without too much trouble but the main body was hard-pressed. The French were saved by the gallant stand of Ferey’s division, which fought until night fall to check the allied pursuit, Ferey – who we had previously encountered on this study as a brigade commander at Barba del Puerco and Fuentes de Oñoro – was killed by a cannonball towards the end of the fighting. So effective was this check that, with night falling, the allies could advance only another few hundred yards once the French had fallen back. The French had lost in the region of 12,500 killed, wounded, and prisoners. Two Imperial Eagle standards were taken, and 12 cannon. Like 5th Dragoon Guards, the 1/40th Foot also captured a drum-major’s staff, and the 1/88th a ‘Jingling Johnny’ instrument. Allied losses amounted to 694 killed, 4,270 wounded, 256 missing; total 5,220.

On our study, we reviewed the closing stages of the action from the summit of the Greater Arapile, which also allowed us to end our three days following Wellington’s army by paying our respects to those who fell. On top of this vantage point is a memorial to the battle, which in French and Spanish is known as the Battle of Arapiles. As well as the 5th Dragoon Guards, the RDG also perpetuates the history of the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons, so we had Irish Pipes sounding out before a wreath was laid at the monument – all very moving, and helping bring home the realities of warfare to young men and women who are training to do it for real.

It is always a pleasure to visit these historic battlefields, but it felt like a particular privilege to do so in the company of soldiers from today’s British Army and to take a part in educating them about the deeds of their ancestors. At the same time, they also taught me a great deal about how they would approach the same sorts of problems today, and the very different opportunities and challenges that the same terrain affords in modern warfare as opposed to in Wellington’s time – no point tucking yourself behind a reverse slope these days when a drone can see exactly what’s on ‘the other side of the hill’. All ranks also went out of their way to make me feel like part of the regimental family for the time that I was with them, for which I remain extremely grateful.

Suggested Further Reading

Bamford, Andrew, Gallantry and Discipline: The 12th Light Dragoons at War with Wellington (Frontline)

Bamford, Andrew, Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword: The British Regiment on Campaign 1808-1815 (University of Oklahoma)

Burnham, Robert, Charging Against Wellington: The French Cavalry in the Peninsular War (Frontline)

Burnham, Robert, Wellington’s Light Division in the Peninsular War: The Formation, Campaigns and Battles of Wellington’s Famous Fighting Force 1810 (Frontline)

Esdaile, Charles, Battles and Battlefields of the Peninsular War (Helion)

Fletcher, Ian, Galloping at Everything: The British Cavalry in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, 1808-15 (Spellmount)

Gallagher, Samuel (ed. Gareth Glover) The Journal of Trooper Samuel Gallagher 5th Dragoon Guards in Spain, Portugal & France 1810-15 (Ken Trotman)

Linch, Kevin, The British Army: 1783-1815 (Pen and Sword)

Lipscombe, Nick, The Peninsular War Atlas (Osprey)

Muir, Rory, Salamanca 1812 (Yale)

Muir, Rory, Wellington: The Path to Victory 1769-1814 (Yale)

Saunders, Tim, The Sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo 1810 and 1812 (Pen and Sword)

Thompson, Mark S., Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering in the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (Pen and Sword)

White, Kenton, Fuentes de Oñoro: Massena’s Last Battle and the Campaign of 1811 (Helion)