Sipsey Street Irregulars: 2 May 1808 -- The beginning of Spanish popular resistance to Napoleon.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

2 May 1808 -- The beginning of Spanish popular resistance to Napoleon.

The Second of May 1808 (The Charge of the Mamelukes) by Goya.

Today is the 205th anniversary of the Charge of the Mamelukes which began the popular uprising of ordinary Spaniards to Napoleon's replacement of their king with his brother Joseph. This is turn provoked the Peninsular War, which began as a guerrilla war of the people. Indeed, that is where the term was originated.

From Wikipedia:

A puppet Spanish council approved the new king, but the usurpation provoked a popular uprising that eventually spread throughout the country. Led largely by priests and nobles who stood for the conservative values of the old regime, the Spanish revolt was the first example of nationalism turning a country against Napoleon. On 2 May, the citizens of Madrid rose up in rebellion against the French occupation, killing some 150 French soldiers before the uprising was put down by Joachim Murat's elite Imperial Guard and Mamluk cavalry, which crashed into the city, trampling the rioters.

The next day, as immortalized by Francisco Goya in his painting The Third of May 1808, the French army shot hundreds of Madrid citizens in retaliation. Similar reprisals were repeated in other cities and continued for days, the military effect being to strengthen the resistance. Soon afterward, bloody spontaneous fighting known as guerrilla ("little war") erupted in much of Spain; the term "guerrilla" has been used ever since to describe such combat.

The Third of May 1808 by Francisco Goya, showing Spanish resisters being executed by Napoleon's troops

The guerrilla war was so destructive of French military fortunes that a single courier carrying a message from Spain to France would have to be escorted by an entire regiment of French hussars to make it through.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Second of May, which happened at the apex of Napoleon's success and power, marked the beginning of the end for him and his regime.

1 comment:

rexxhead said...: "It is no exaggeration to say that the Second of May, which happened at the apex of Napoleon's success and power, marked the beginning of the end for him and his regime."

May it ever be thus.; May 2, 2013 at 9:20 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, May 2, 2013

2 May 1808 -- The beginning of Spanish popular resistance to Napoleon.

1 comment:

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