Napoleon Invades Spain
In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte's France seized control of Spain, deposing its Bourbon monarchy and placing his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. The move was meant to secure French dominance over the Iberian Peninsula, but it ignited a brutal six-year war and, far beyond Europe, set off the political crisis that led most of Spanish America toward independence.
The background lay in France's struggle with Britain. After failing to invade Britain, Napoleon tried to strangle its trade through the Continental System, a blockade of European ports. Portugal, a longtime British ally, refused to comply. In 1807 France and Spain agreed by treaty to cooperate in conquering Portugal, and French troops were allowed to cross Spanish territory. Spain itself was weakened and divided. King Charles IV was unpopular, his chief minister Manuel de Godoy was widely resented, and the king's son Ferdinand was plotting against both.
French forces, entering in large numbers, occupied key Spanish fortresses and cities under the guise of alliance. In March 1808 a popular uprising at Aranjuez forced Charles IV to abdicate in favor of Ferdinand VII. Napoleon then lured both men to Bayonne in southwestern France, where he pressured them into renouncing their claims, and he installed Joseph Bonaparte. On 2 May, an uprising against the French in Madrid was crushed, an episode later immortalized by the painter Francisco Goya. Resistance spread rapidly, and local juntas formed to govern in Ferdinand's name.
The war that followed combined conventional campaigns with widespread irregular fighting, for which the Spanish term guerrilla, "little war," entered other languages. Spanish forces suffered many defeats, but a surprising French surrender at Bailén in mid-1808 showed that Napoleon's armies could be beaten. Britain sent troops under the future Duke of Wellington, and the prolonged conflict drained French manpower and resources. Historians often regard it as a major factor in Napoleon's eventual downfall, though they debate how decisive it was compared with the Russian campaign of 1812.
The consequences reached across the Atlantic. With the legitimate king captive, Spanish Americans questioned who held rightful authority. Many colonial elites formed their own juntas, initially claiming loyalty to Ferdinand, but these bodies increasingly asserted autonomy. Over the following years, wars of independence erupted in Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, and elsewhere, and by the mid-1820s Spain had lost most of its mainland American empire. In Spain, the Cortes of Cádiz produced the liberal Constitution of 1812, though Ferdinand, restored in 1814, rejected it. The invasion thus transformed both the Iberian world and the Americas.