Napoleon lived to regret his 'accursed Spanish war'. In exile on St Helena, he went so far as to identify it as the original source of his misfortunes. Napoleons Cursed War gives the definitive account of the resistance to his military campaign on the Iberian Peninsula. The 1808-14 war ended in the Emperor's devastating defeat by the popular opposition - the first 'guerrillas' - and their British and Portuguese allies. A curse for Napoleon, it was also a catastrophe for Spain, pinning it to the retrograde tyranny of the Bourbon monarchy. Ronald Eraser restores to history the anonymous fighting masses too long hidden in the Duke of Wellington's shadow. This vivid, meticulously researched book shows the reality of 'Napoleon's Vietnam': the discontents and social upheaval that accompanied the fighting. Book jacket.