1808
Dos de Mayo Uprising
Madrid rose against the French troops occupying it, and Murat's cavalry cut them down in the Puerta del Sol. Goya would paint the reprisals of the next dawn - huddled men, a lantern, a firing squad. The war became Spain's war, and from it came a new word: guerrilla. Goya's paintings of the second and third of May remain among the most powerful anti-war images ever created.
Wellesley Lands in Portugal
Arthur Wellesley stepped ashore at Mondego Bay with thirteen thousand men and orders to help the Portuguese. Six years of Peninsular War followed - a grinding, vicious campaign of sieges, guerrillas and retreats that taught a generation of British officers how to beat Napoleon's marshals. The campaign consumed 300,000 French casualties and became, as Napoleon himself admitted from St. Helena, the ulcer that destroyed his empire.
Goya's Third of May
Francisco Goya, court painter to the doomed Spanish Bourbons, began sketching the scenes he would paint years later: a firing squad of faceless French soldiers, a peasant with his arms up in a bright white shirt. The Third of May would become the most searing image ever made of war's cruelty, and the birth certificate of modern political art.
Bayonne Abdications
At the French border town of Bayonne, Napoleon persuaded the Spanish Bourbons - Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII - to renounce the throne and accept a comfortable gilded retirement. He then installed his brother Joseph in Madrid. The scheme looked clever and was disastrous: all Spain rose, and the Peninsular War began.