Academic literature on the topic 'Baylen, Battle of, 1808'

AbstractFollowing the failure of the French maritime force at the Battle of Trafalgar, Napoleon sought to dominate Europe through his ‘Continental System’, using large, conscripted, land forces to control nation states and close European ports to British trade. To counter this denial of economic opportunity Britain deployed a large force to the Iberian Peninsula in 1808. Thus ensued the Peninsular War of 1808–14. This article discusses some of the medical advances identified from the war, including force health protection measures, surgical techniques and medical evacuation.

This paper examines “Don Juan; or the Battle of Tolosa”, an anonymous poem published inLondonin 1816. This metrical tale set in medievalIberiaat the time of the so-called “reconquista” recreates the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), in which the Muslim forces were defeated by a Christian coalition near Sierra Morena. The poet clearly sides with the Christians, who are depicted as brave warriors struggling to recover their land and their freedom. The emphasis on their patriotic heroism against foreign usurpation creates an implicit analogy between the medieval battle and the recent events of the Peninsular War (1808-1814). The representation ofSpainas a land of war and romance echoes the Romantic figurations of this country appearing in British print culture in the early nineteenth century.

At first glance, it may seem strange that Java, an island situated half a world away from France Revolutionary, should the end up being one of the key battle grounds in the global conflict which followed with the fateful Girondin decision to declare war on Austria in the spring of 1792. Yet, in the compass of less than a decade, Java’s own ancient regime that was violently overturned as in quick succession of a Franco-Dutch regime (1808-11) under Napoleon’s only non-French marshal, Herman Willem Daendels (1762-1818), and a five-year British occupation (1811-1816) under the equally dictatorial Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), transformed the colony. This paved the way for the restoration of Dutch rule in 1816 under the terms of the Treaty of Vienna by which time the commercial dealings of the Company had been replaced by the beginnings of a modern colonial state, the post-January 1818 Netherlands Indies. Over the next century, this would reduce the power of the local rulers and establish Dutch authority in nearly every corner of the archipelago. The boundaries of present-day Indonesia were determined at this time.

Southey's 2000-line poem, The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo, was published two centuries ago, in 1816. It does not offer a narrative of the battle, but rather reflections on war – prompted by a visit to the battlefield. Yet in another sense, Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth all made a pilgrimage to Waterloo in their changing assessment of Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, starting with his involvement in Spain's Guerra de la Independencia – Britain's Peninsular War. Elsewhere I have addressed the Lake Poets’ enduring commitment to the libertarian cause of the Spanish and Portuguese peoples – a decade after all three had supposedly abandoned their youthful liberal principles. This article draws on the Lake Poets’ poetry, polemical prose and correspondence in order to trace their shifting judgments on the Duke from his part in the notorious Convention of Cintra (1808) to his victory at Waterloo seven years later.

At the end of the Spanish Civil War in the spring of 1939, General Franco celebrated his victory by decreeing that full military honours be accorded to two statues of the Virgin Mary. The first was Our Lady of Covadonga, patron of the first great reconquest of Spain through the expulsion of Islam in the middle ages. Now, after removal by her enemies ‘the Reds’ during the Civil War, she had been restored to her northern shrine in Asturias, marking the completion of what the decree described as the second reconquest. The other statue was of Our Lady of the Kings (de los Reyes) in Seville, invoked—so the decree ran—during the battle of Lepanto against the Turks in 1571 and the battle of Bailén agaínst the French in 1808, and invoked once more in the first desperate days of the military rising in July 1936, when a victory for the ‘Red hordes’ in Seville might have changed the whole course of the war. In Covadonga and Seville, in the undefeated stronghold of the Virgin of the Pillar in Zaragoza, and across the length and breadth of the country, the Virgin Mary had saved Spain and deserved every honour and tribute. It was equally true that from far north to far south, Franco and his armies and his Nazi, Fascist, and Islamic allies had made Spain safe for the Virgin Mary. There would be no more desecrated churches, no more burned statues, no more banned processions, just as there would be no more socialists, anarchists, communists or democrats. Spain would be Catholic and authoritarian, and Spanish women could concentrate their energies on emulating Mary, and being good wives and mothers or nuns.

AbstractThe nucleus of the collection of paintings in the Mauritshuis around 130 pictures - came from the hereditary stadholder Prince William v. It is widely believed to have become, the property of the State at the beginning of the 19th century, but how this happened is still. unclear. A hand-written notebook on this subject, compiled in 1876 by - the director Jonkheer J. K. L. de Jonge is in the archives of the Mauritshuis Note 4). On this basis a clnsor systematic and chronological investigation has been carried out into the stadholder's. property rights in respect of his collectcons and the changes these underwent between 1795 and 1816. Royal decrees and other documents of the period 1814- 16 in particular giae a clearer picture of whal look place. 0n 18 January 1795 William V (Fig. 2) left the Netherlands and fled to England. On 22 January the Dutch Republic was occupied by French armies. Since France had declared war on the stadholder, the ownership of all his propergy in the Netherlands, passed to France, in accordance with the laws of war of the time. His famous art collections on the Builerth of in. The Hague were taken to Paris, but the remaining art objects, distributed over his various houses, remained in the Netherlands. On 16 May 1795 the French concluded a treaty with the Batavian Republic, recognizing it as an independent power. All the properties of William v in the Netehrlands but not those taken to France, were made over to the Republic (Note 14), which proceeded to sell objects from the collections, at least seven sales taking place until 1798 (Note 15). A plan was then evolved to bring the remaining treasures together in a museum in emulation of the French. On the initiative of J. A. Gogel, the Nationale Konst-Galerij', the first national museum in the .Netherlands, was estahlished in The Hague and opened to the public on ,31 May 1800. Nothing was ever sold from lhe former stadholder's library and in 1798 a Nationale Bibliotheek was founded as well. In 1796, quite soon after the French had carried off the Stadholder, possessions to Paris or made them over to the Batavian Republic, indemnification was already mentioned (Note 19). However, only in the Trealy of Amiens of 180 and a subaequent agreement, between France ararl Prussia of 1 802, in which the Prince of Orarage renounced his and his heirs' rights in the Netherlands, did Prussia provide a certain compensation in the form of l.artds in Weslphalia and Swabia (Note 24) - William v left the management of these areas to the hereditary prince , who had already been involved in the problems oncerning his father's former possessions. In 1804 the Balavian Republic offered a sum of five million guilders 10 plenipotentiaries of the prince as compensation for the sequestrated titles and goods, including furniture, paintings, books and rarities'. This was accepted (Notes 27, 28), but the agreement was never carried out as the Batavian Republic failed to ratify the payment. In the meantime the Nationale Bibliolkeek and the Nationale Konst-Galerij had begun to develop, albeit at first on a small scale. The advent of Louis Napoleon as King of Hollarad in 1806 brought great changes. He made a start on a structured art policy. In 1806 the library, now called `Royal', was moved to the Mauritshuis and in 1808 the collectiorts in The Hague were transferred to Amsterdam, where a Koninklijk Museum was founded, which was housed in the former town hall. This collection was subsequertly to remain in Amsterdam, forming the nucleus of the later Rijksmuseum. The library too was intended to be transferred to Amsterdam, but this never happened and it remained in the Mauritshuis until 1819. Both institutions underwent a great expansion in the period 1806-10, the library's holdings increasing from around 10,000 to over 45,000 books and objects, while the museum acquired a number of paintings, the most important being Rembrandt's Night Watch and Syndics, which were placed in the new museum by the City of Amsterdam in 1808 (Note 44). In 1810 the Netherlands was incorporated into France. In the art field there was now a complete standstill and in 1812 books and in particular prints (around 11,000 of them) were again taken from The Hague to Paris. In November 1813 the French dominion was ended and on 2 December the hereditary prince, William Frederick, was declared sovereign ruler. He was inaugurated as constitutional monarch on 30 March 1814. On January 3rd the provisional council of The Hague had already declared that the city was in (unlawful' possession of a library, a collection of paintings, prints and other objects of art and science and requested the king tot take them back. The war was over and what had been confiscated from William under the laws of war could now be given back, but this never happened. By Royal Decree of 14 January 1814 Mr. ( later Baron) A. J. C. Lampsins (Fig. I ) was commissioned to come to an understanding with the burgomaster of The Hague over this transfer, to bring out a report on the condition of the objects and to formulate a proposal on the measures to be taken (Note 48). On 17 January Lampsins submitted a memorandum on the taking over of the Library as the private property of His Royal Highness the Sovereign of the United Netherlartds'. Although Lampsins was granted the right to bear the title 'Interim Director of the Royal Library' by a Royal Decree of 9 February 1814, William I did not propose to pay The costs himself ; they were to be carried by the Home Office (Note 52). Thus he left the question of ownership undecided. On 18 April Lampsins brought out a detailed report on all the measures to be taken (Appendix IIa ) . His suggestion was that the objects, formerly belonging to the stadholder should be removed from the former royal museum, now the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam and to return the 'Library', as the collectiort of books, paintings and prints in The Hague was called, to the place where they had been in 1795. Once again the king's reaction was not very clear. Among other things, he said that he wanted to wait until it was known how extensive the restitution of objects from Paris would be and to consider in zvhich scholarly context the collections would best, fit (Note 54) . While the ownership of the former collections of Prince William I was thus left undecided, a ruling had already been enacted in respect of the immovable property. By the Constitution of 1814, which came into effect on 30 March, the king was granted a high income, partly to make up for the losses he had sulfered. A Royal Decree of 22 January 1815 does, however, imply that William had renounced the right to his, father's collections, for he let it be known that he had not only accepted the situation that had developed in the Netherlands since 1795, but also wished it to be continued (Note 62). The restitution of the collections carried off to France could only be considered in its entirety after the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815- This was no simple matter, but in the end most, though not all, of the former possessions of William V were returned to the Netherlands. What was not or could not be recovered then (inc.uding 66 paintings, for example) is still in France today (Note 71)- On 20 November 1815 127 paintings, including Paulus Potter's Young Bull (Fig. 15), made a ceremonial entry into The Hague. But on 6 October, before anything had actually been returned, it had already been stipulated by Royal Decree that the control of the objects would hence forlh be in the hands of the State (Note 72). Thus William I no longer regarded his father's collections as the private property of the House of Orange, but he did retain the right to decide on the fulure destiny of the... painting.s and objects of art and science'. For the time being the paintings were replaced in the Gallery on the Buitenhof, from which they had been removed in 1795 (Note 73). In November 1815 the natural history collection was made the property of Leiden University (Note 74), becoming the basis for the Rijksmuseum voor Natuurlijke Historie, The print collection, part of the Royal Library in The Hague, was exchanged in May 1816 for the national collectiort of coins and medals, part of the Rijksmuseum. As of 1 Jufy 1816 directors were appointed for four different institutions in The Hague, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (with the Koninklijk Penningkabinet ) , the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Yoninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 80) . From that time these institutions led independenl lives. The king continued to lake a keen interest in them and not merely in respect of collecting Their accommodation in The Hague was already too cramped in 1816. By a Royal Decree of 18 May 1819 the Hotel Huguetan, the former palace of the. crown prince on Lange Voorhout, was earmarked for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the Koninklijk Penningkabinet (Note 87) . while at the king's behest the Mauritshuis, which had been rented up to then, was bought by the State on 27 March 1820 and on IO July allotted to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 88). Only the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen is still in the place assigned to it by William and the collection has meanwhile become so identified with its home that it is generally known as the Mauritshui.s'. William i's most important gift was made in July 1816,just after the foundation of the four royal institutions, when he had deposited most of the objects that his father had taken first to England and later to Oranienstein in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden. The rarities (Fig. 17), curios (Fig. 18) and paintings (Fig. 19), remained there (Note 84), while the other art objects were sorted and divided between the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the manuscripts and books) and the koninklijk Penningkabinet (the cameos and gems) (Note 85). In 1819 and 182 the king also gave the Koninklijke Bibliotheek an important part of the Nassau Library from the castle at Dillenburg. Clearly he is one of the European monarchs who in the second half of the 18th and the 19th century made their collectiorts accessible to the public, and thus laid the foundatinns of many of today's museums. But William 1 also made purchases on behalf of the institutions he had created. For the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, for example, he had the 'Tweede Historiebijbel', made in Utrecht around 1430, bought in Louvain in 1829 for 1, 134 guilders (Pigs.30,3 I, Note 92). For the Koninkijk Penningkabinet he bought a collection of 62 gems and four cameos , for ,50,000 guilders in 1819. This had belonged to the philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis, the keeper of his father's cabinet of antiquities (Note 95) . The most spectacular acquisition. for the Penninukabinet., however, was a cameo carved in onyx, a late Roman work with the Triumph of Claudius, which the king bought in 1823 for 50,000 guilders, an enormous sum in those days. The Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamhedert also received princely gifts. In 1821- the so-called doll's house of Tzar Peter was bought out of the king's special funds for 2.800 guilders (Figs.33, 34, ,Note 97) , while even in 1838, when no more money was available for art, unnecessary expenditure on luxury' the Von Siebold ethnographical collection was bought at the king's behest for over 55,000 guilders (Note 98). The Koninklijk Kabinel van Schilderyen must have been close to the hearl of the king, who regarded it as an extension of the palace (Notes 99, 100) . The old master paintings he acquzred for it are among the most important in the collection (the modern pictures, not dealt with here, were transferred to the Paviljoen Welgelegen in Haarlem in 1838, Note 104). For instance, in 1820 he bought a portrait of Johan Maurice of Nassau (Fig.35)., while in 1822, against the advice of the then director, he bought Vermeer' s View of Delft for 2,900 guilders (Fig.36, Note 105) and in 1827 it was made known, from Brussels that His Majesty had recommended the purchase of Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation (Fig.37) . The most spectacular example of the king's love for 'his' museum, however, is the purchase in 1828 of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp for 32,000 guilders. The director of the Rijksmuseum, C. Apostool, cortsidered this Rembrandt'sfinest painting and had already drawn attention to it in 1817, At the king'.s behest the picture, the purchase of which had been financed in part by the sale of a number of painlings from. the Rijksmuseum, was placed in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen in The Hague. On his accession King William I had left the art objects which had become state propery after being ceded by the French to the Batavian Republic in 1795 as they were. He reclaimed the collections carried off to France as his own property, but it can be deduced from the Royal Decrees of 1815 and 1816 that it Was his wish that they should be made over to the State, including those paintings that form the nucleus of the collection in the Mauritshuis. In addition, in 1816 he handed over many art objects which his father had taken with him into exile. His son, William II, later accepted this, after having the matter investigated (Note 107 and Appendix IV). Thus William I'S munificence proves to have been much more extensive than has ever been realized.

Le peintre, soldat et mémorialiste Louis-François Lejeune (1775-1848) entendait faire de son corpus de peintures de bataille et de ses Souvenirs d’un officier de l’Empire (1851) des témoignages historiques de la période napoléonienne, destinés à la postérité. Or, cette conjugaison entre peintures et mémoires renvoie aussi à la dualité médiale de la propagande napoléonienne, qui diffuse un récit unique des événements militaires à l’aide d’organes d’information inédits tels que les Bulletins de la Grande Armée. Ce récit, déjà médiatisé comme étant historique, est repris en images par le mécénat impérial. Ce mémoire vise à démontrer comment Lejeune contribue à ce récit historicisant, d’abord à un niveau individuel en construisant son identité par rapport à sa participation aux guerres napoléoniennes, puis aussi à un niveau étatique. Son Bivouac d’Austerlitz, présenté au Salon de 1808, est une commande du gouvernement. Il sera question de la façon dont ce tableau de Lejeune s’insère d’abord dans sa carrière, ensuite dans son corpus de peintures de bataille, puis finalement dans le récit napoléonien sur Austerlitz. La forme épisodique du tableau, empruntée à la ligne narrative du 30e bulletin de la Grande Armée, où Napoléon rapporte la victoire d’Austerlitz, peut s’expliquer par la complémentarité voulue entre récit textuel et visuel. Ce tableau contribue ainsi à la construction historique de la bataille. Au milieu des transformations profondes du monde académique et de la hiérarchie des genres, la dualité peintre-soldat de Lejeune répond en tous points à la vocation historique attribuée à la peinture sous Napoléon.
Painter, soldier, and memorialist Louis-François Lejeune (1775-1848) conceived his battle paintings and his memoirs, Souvenirs d’un officier de l’Empire (1851), as historical testimonies of the Napoleonic period, destined for posterity. This twinning of paintings and memoirs mirrors the duality of Napoleonic propaganda as a whole, which disseminates a single version of military events with the help of unprecedented information tools such as the Bulletins de la Grande Armée. This written narrative, already thought of as historical, is picked up again in the paintings commissioned by the government. This master’s thesis argues that Lejeune contributes in a unique way to this historical narrative, first at an individual level by constructing his identity from his participation in the Napoleonic wars, and also at a state level. His Bivouac d’Austerlitz, presented at the 1808 Salon, was commissioned by the government as part of a larger order. It is shown that this painting fits first into Lejeune’s career, then into his cycle of battle paintings, and finally into the narrative of Austerlitz that Napoleon himself promoted. The episodic form of this painting can be explained by the deliberate pairing of written and pictorial narratives, which borrows from the 30th bulletin de la Grande Armée where Napoleon recounts the victory at Austerlitz. This painting thus contributes to the historical construction of the battle. As deep transformations threatened the academic genre hierarchy at the turn of the nineteenth century, the duality of Lejeune’s persona as soldier and painter helped promote the historical function given to paintings under Napoleon.

The battle of Trafalgar left the Mediterranean open to British shipping, but Great Britain had not yet gained incontestable mastery over the sealanes. The bitter struggle for control of Sicily and southern Italy between Britain, acting in support of King Ferdinand of Naples, and Napoleon’s armies, acting in support of Marshal Murat, who was trying to usurp the Neapolitan throne, reached a high point in July 1806 at the battle of Maida (a British victory, deep in Calabria). Maida demonstrated that Napoleon had been foolish in allowing so many troops to be pinned down in miserable conditions far from the areas in northern and central Italy he most wished to control. Earlier dreams of using Taranto as a base for controlling southern Italy and the entrance to the Adriatic and Ionian seas evaporated. Yet the British fleet was far more stretched than the story of its victories suggests. The British needed to keep open the channel of communication linking Malta to Trieste, for Trieste had become an important source of supplies from the Austrian empire, now that routes through Germany were blocked by Napoleon’s armies. And by 1808 the French seemed to be clawing back their control of the Mediterranean; they had re-established their fleet at Toulon, and there were fears of a naval attack on Naples and Sicily. The British government wondered whether there was any point pursuing war in the Mediterranean. Other concerns intruded: the French were trying to take control of Spain, and with the outbreak of the Peninsular War attention shifted to formidably tough land campaigns in Iberia. How difficult conditions were can be seen from the size of the British fleet, which had plenty of other duties to perform close to England, in the Caribbean and elsewhere. On 8 March 1808 fifteen ships of the line lay under the control of Admiral Collingwood, Nelson’s capable successor; one at Syracuse, one at Messina and one off Corfu; twelve stood guard at Cádiz. These large warships were supported by thirty-eight frigates, sloops, brigs and bomb-vessels within the Mediterranean, most of which were patrolling and reconnoitring as far afield as Turkey and the Adriatic.

Historians of the Royal Navy in the age of sail have focused their attention on two groups of men: the commissioned officers and the lower deck. Few have bothered to study the men in the middle: the warrant officers, whose particular skills were necessary on board. Masters, pursers, chaplains, and surgeons—the warrant officers of wardroom rank—straddled the civilian and military worlds. They therefore provide a unique window into both the Royal Navy’s command structure and the continuing significance and evolution of social status boundaries in Georgian Britain. This paper focuses on warrant officers during the half-decade following the battle of Trafalgar, when British manpower resources were stretched thinly and exhausted from more than a decade of operations. Between 1805 and 1808, the Admiralty enacted a series of reforms designed to alleviate some of these problems. To make a career as a warrant officer more attractive, the reforms granted surgeons uniforms, increased surgeons’, pursers’, and masters’ pay, and gave all of them a larger share of the prize money spoils. The reforms acknowledged, both implicitly and explicitly, that warrant officers sat uncomfortably in the naval hierarchy. They were crucial to the Navy’s operations, but they lacked the social prestige and promotion prospects of commissioned officers. The reforms suggest that naval administrators were finally beginning to recognize the significance and social standing of warrant officers.