Napoleonic Wars – Elizabeth Hawksley

Souvenir Mugs and Jugs from the Napoleonic Wars

To set the scene: 206 years ago today, on 28^th February, 1815, the ex-emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, having escaped from exile on the Island of Elba, landed in France and immediately set about reclaiming his throne. His luck was to hold for 100 days. By the beginning of June he had raised 200,000 men, more than enough to match the combined armies of the Britain and her Allies. On 18^th June, 1815 he would face his enemies at Waterloo.

‘British Voluntary Infantry raised 1797’, earthenware plaque, Bristol Water Lane Pottery c. 1801.

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The Battle of Albuera: ‘Field of Grief’, 16th May, 1811

In this post, I am remembering the battle of Albuera, on 16th May, 1811 – as I do every year, ever since I visited the battlefield and learnt what happened on that ‘Field of Grief‘ as Lord Byron put it, 208 years ago.

The battle of Albuera in 1811 and the storming of Badajoz in 1812 were among the bloodiest engagements of the Spanish Peninsular War (1808-1813). Almost forgotten today, the battles fought between the British, under Wellington, and their Portuguese and Spanish allies, against the might of the Napoleon’s army were once household names.

The town’s own memorial to the Battle of Albuera

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Jane Austen and the Napoleonic Wars

I have been re-reading Jenny Uglow’s In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon’s Wars, 1793-1815 in which she demonstrates very clearly how the Napoleonic Wars permeated every aspect of life for twenty-two long years and affected everybody – including Jane Austen’s characters – as the country faced the urgent need for men for the armed forces, military supplies, ships, a modern transport system, efficient banking, and so on.

Captured Napoleonic Eagle of the 105^th by the Royal Dragoons at the Battle of Waterloo,1815, in the Household Cavalry Museum (copy)

This post is a refutation of those critics who assert that Jane Austen’s novels concentrate only on domestic everyday life as lived by the English upper-middle classes.Jane Austen, they say, ignores the wider picture and fails to mention the Napoleonic Wars. This, in my opinion, is simply not true. In fact, the war is a constant, and important, background to her novels; the problem is that most modern readers fail to recognize her references to it.

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