Abstract
Napoleon did not stay long in Burgos: within less than a fortnight, indeed, he had departed for Madrid at the head of his army. This did not mean, however, that the city was free of French soldiers. On the contrary, strategically situated as it was, it became home to a substantial garrison, not to mention several military hospitals, whilst large numbers of troops continued to pour through the city on their way to destinations further south or west. Meanwhile, of course, there was also the issue of the new fortress: from January 1809 onwards gangs of Spanish labourers were toiling to throw up the new defences that had been ordered by Napoleon. In short, though as yet far removed from any of the fighting, Burgos was very much a city at war.
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Notes
See P. Thiébault, Memoirs of General Thiébault, ed. A.J. Butler (London, 1896), II, pp. 248, 250.
Salvá, Burgos, p. 112. It is worth noting here that, such losses to its property aside, at a parochial level the Church was little affected by the occupation: few parish clergy appear to have left the city, while the only usual round of services survived intact, not least because the clergy at the very least made no attempt to stir up resistance to the invaders and participated in their ceremonies without demur; see A. Gonzalo Gozalo, ‘Desde la experiencia: el clero de Burgos ante la invasión francesa’, in C. Borreguero Beltrán, (ed.), La Guerra de la Independencia en el mosaico penínsular, 1808–1814 (Burgos, 2011), pp. 675–96.
See J.L. Tone, The Fatal Knot: the Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994), pp. 42–4.
C. Borreguero Beltrán, Burgos en la Guerra de la Independencia (Burgos, 2007), p. 118.
A.L.A. Fée, Souvenirs de la Guerre d’Espagne, dite de l’Independance, 1809–1813 (Paris, 1856), p. 22. Fée was, however, much impressed with the cathedral, of which he provides a detailed description, while he also noted seeing swarms of workmen labouring on the slopes of the Cerro de la Blanca.
For Amorós’ visit to Burgos and the misdeeds of General Thiébault, see R. Fernández Sirvent, Francisco Amorós y los inicios de la educación física mod-erna: biografía de un funcionario al servicio de España y Francia (Alicante, 2005), pp. 124–32.
P. Carasa Soto, ‘Burgos 1808–1814: ruina de la ilustración y vuelta de la tradi-ción’, in Instituto Municipal de Cultura y Turismo (ed.), Burgos en el camino de la invasion francesa, 1807–1813 (Burgos, 2008), p. 27.
R. Brindle (ed.), With Napoleon’s Guns: The Military Memoirs of an Officer of the First Empire (London, 2005), p. 81;
G. Gleig, The Light Dragoon (London, 1853), p. 96. Graphic testimony of the epidemics that ravaged Burgos in the course of the war is afforded by the recent discovery of a series of mass graves that were dug on a hillside above the suburb of the La Vega on the left bank of the River Arlanzón, this being a site that was within easy reach of several religious houses known to have been used as hospitals as well as in all probability the one described by Gleig. Only a relatively limited number of the 1,287 bodies, the vast majority of them those of men aged between 18 and 30, revealing any evidence of trauma wounds, it may be assumed that the remains belong to soldiers of the garrison and their dependents – there are also a small number of women and children – who died of disease, this being rendered all the more likely by the fact that Salvá specifically refers to dead bodies being taken from the hospitals concerned and interred at a spot ‘beyond the hermitage of Santa Cruz’, this being a description that fits the burial site extremely well. See C. Alonso Fernández, ‘Demografía del conflicto a través de la arquiología’, in Borreguero Beltrán, Guerra de la Independencia en el mosaico penínsular, pp. 635–48; Salvá, Burgos, p. 149. Meanwhile, for a good example of the French insistence on keeping the streets clear of rubbish and other detritus, see ‘Reglamento de policía para la ciudad de Burgos’, 22 May 1810, AMBu. C-22/180.
For an excellent description of these operations, see P. Haythornthwaite (ed.), In the Peninsula with a French Hussar (London, 1990), pp. 197–211.
The most recent study of Juan Martín Diéz is constituted by A. Cassinello Pérez, Juan Martín, ‘el Empecinado’, o el amor a la libertad (Madrid, 1995); meanwhile, for a fictionalised version of the life of Merino,
see J. Aranda Aznar, Merino, el guerrillero (Madrid, 2000). Barriolucio is a more shadowy figure, but a resumé of his services may be found in ‘Real Orden y Certificado sobre conducta del Marqués de Barriolucio en la Guerra de la Independencia’, n.d., AMBu. C-222.
Anchía y Urquiza is better known as Longa, this being a reference to his nom de guerre, Francisco de Longa. For a recent biography, see J. Pardo de Santayana, Francisco de Longa – de guerrilla a general en la Guerra de la Independencia: historia de una guerrilla (Madrid, 2007).
See C.J. Esdaile, Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits and Adventurers in Spain, 1808–1814 (London, 2004), pp. 140–1.
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© 2015 Charles J. Esdaile and Philip Freeman
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Esdaile, C.J., Freeman, P. (2015). Occupation. In: Burgos in the Peninsular War, 1808–1814. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137432902_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137432902_3
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