Sources and Questions

Abstract

Occupying a key position in the geography of northern Spain, the city of Burgos played an eventful role in the history of the Peninsular War. Having already witnessed the passage of large numbers of French troops in the direction of Portugal in the autumn of 1807, in November of that year it was among the first of Spain’s cities to play host to a permanent French garrison, whilst in April 1808 it witnessed the fateful journey that took Spain’s rival monarchs to the conference with Napoleon at Bayonne that brought down the Bourbon monarchy, and contributed the very first of the quarter of a million or more lives that formed Spain’s share of the human cost of the attempt to incorporate Iberia into the Napoleonic imperium. In the war that followed, the presence of large numbers of French troops initially saved the city from experiencing the horrors of battle — the insurrection of May 1808, then, was not replicated in Burgos — and in consequence el rey intruso, Joseph Bonaparte, was able to pass through in safety en route to his triumphal entry into Madrid, and, for that matter, to travel back the other way when he abandoned the capital and fled for the safety of the River Ebro in the wake of the battle of Bailén. The liberation that followed, however, was short-lived. Spain’s armies proving incapable of holding back the punishment unleashed upon her by Napoleon in retribution for the loss of Dupont’s army, French forces swept back into the city following a brief battle at the suburban village of Gamonal, and the result was a sack that saw it both thoroughly pillaged and badly damaged by fire.