Abstract
Reviewed by: Leighton S. James, Swansea University, UK
The bicentenary of the Napoleonic Wars has witnessed the publication of a large number of works dealing with a wide range of aspects. Esdaile argues that the role of women has been overlooked in many of these monographs and articles. There were, however, some notable examples for the period between 1793 and 1815. Karen Hagemann, Ute Planert and Katherine Aalestaad have explored issues of gender and women’s experiences in Germany. David Hopkin has looked at the experience and representation of French women in the Revolutionary Wars, while Catriona Kennedy has examined British women. These remain just a few examples among the flood of histories of the Napoleonic period.
Esdaile’s study of the experience of women during the Peninsular war is, therefore, a welcome addition to the literature. The book encompasses the experience of British and French soldiers’ wives and camp followers, as well as that of the native Portuguese and Spanish. In the thematically organized chapters Esdaile examines the women’s interaction with the various military forces, the reaction to conquest and occupation, the experience of violence and survival strategies. He also highlights specific groups, such as the sutlers and the female religious orders. The relative paucity of female accounts, however, means that much of the female experience is explored through the accounts of the officers and soldiers of the various armies, particularly memoirs. Esdaile indicates the preconceptions that these soldiers brought to the Peninsular war, but, since many accounts were published decades later, more consideration could have been given to how they were influenced by changing literary trends and the development of the military memoir as a genre. Neil Ramsey and Yuval Harari have both explored the way literary trends, such as sentimentalism, Gothicism and Romanticism, influenced soldiers’ narratives from the eighteenth century onwards, but how did they influence the depiction of women?
Esdaile does, however, explore the representation of women in Spanish iconography, theatre, novels and cinema, particularly in the opening chapter, ‘Images’. Prominent here is the figure of Augustina Domenech. The war threw up several heroines, but nationalist writers transfigured Domenech, who fired a canon at the attacking French during the first Siege of Zaragoza, into a cipher for Spanish virtue during and after the war. She has been recently claimed as a prototype feminist, challenging established gender roles. A salon culture had emerged in Spain prior to the war, as had some notable female intellectuals, but Esdaile describes the cultural and legal subordination of Spanish and Portuguese women as greater than their French, German and British counterparts. The war might have expanded opportunities for female activity and allowed a few to climb the social ladder or become more engaged in politics, but Esdaile nevertheless challenges the description of Domenech and others as feminist pioneers on two levels. First, he points out that feminist readings of the conflict implicitly share older assumptions that the war was a popular crusade, a ‘people’s war’, that united the nation. This is an image of the war that Esdaile has challenged repeatedly in his other works. As part of this critique, Esdaile has downplayed the military utility of the guerrilla war and in many respects this volume can be seen as an extension of that argument to encompass the role of women. Secondly, he argues that similar examples of women engaged in fighting can be found within Spanish history prior to the Peninsular War. In Esdaile’s reading, Domenech was simply reacting to circumstance and there is little evidence that she sought to challenge the established gendered hierarchy. Instead, Domenech’s image as a heroine was assiduously cultivated by José Palafox, commander of Zaragoza, and formed part of his political struggle for authority. She was also used to shame men into military service against the French. Domenech became an icon, but for the majority of women ‘all the trauma, anguish and suffering off the years that passed since 1808 had produced almost no change in the situation of the women of Spain and Portugal’ (217). This return to the status quo ante bellum was compounded by the conservative restoration following the return of Ferdinand VII and the demands of the Catholic Church for the re-establishment of traditional gender relations.
Esdaile’s work fills in important details about the role of women in the Peninsular War. Ultimately, however, he diminishes their agency and suggests their role was not significant. Where they acted it was usually in self-defence. Even the redoubtable Domenech becomes a heroine, not because of her actions, but due to the machinations of Palafox.