Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was a British statesman, soldier, and Tory politician who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is among the commanders who won and ended the Napoleonic Wars when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
1809 (MDCCCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1809th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 809th year of the 2nd millennium, the 9th year of the 19th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1800s decade. As of the start of 1809, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence.
Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, 1st Duke of Dalmatia was a French general and statesman. He was a Marshal of the Empire during the Napoleonic Wars, and served three times as President of the Council of Ministers of France.
The Battle of Toulouse was one of the final battles of the Napoleonic Wars, four days after Napoleon's surrender of the French Empire to the nations of the Sixth Coalition. Having pushed the demoralised and disintegrating French Imperial armies out of Spain in a difficult campaign the previous autumn, the Allied British-Portuguese and Spanish army under the Duke of Wellington pursued the war into southern France in the spring of 1814.
The Battle of Talavera was fought just outside the town of Talavera de la Reina, Spain some 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Madrid, during the Peninsular War. At Talavera, a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley combined with a Spanish army under General Cuesta fought in operations against French-occupied Madrid. At nightfall, the French army withdrew a short distance after several of its attacks had been repulsed; the allies, having suffered comparable casualties to the French, made no attempt to pursue.
General William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, 1st Marquis of Campo Maior, was an Anglo-Irish soldier and politician. A general in the British Army and a Marshal in the Portuguese Army, he fought alongside the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War and held the office of Master-General of the Ordnance in 1828 in the First Wellington ministry. He led the 1806 failed British invasion of Buenos Aires.
The Battle of Grijó ended in victory for the Anglo-Portuguese Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley over the French army commanded by Marshal Nicolas Soult during the Second French invasion of Portugal in the Peninsular War. The next day, Wellesley drove Soult from Porto in the Second Battle of Porto.
William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland,, known as William Cavendish-Bentinck until 1879, was a British landowner, courtier, and Conservative politician. He notably served as Master of the Horse between 1886 and 1892 and again between 1895 and 1905.
The Battle of Sorauren was part of a series of engagements in late July 1813 called the Battle of the Pyrenees in which a combined British and Portuguese force under Sir Arthur Wellesley held off Marshal Soult's French forces attempting to relieve Pamplona.
Lieutenant-General Sir William Stewart, GCB was a British military officer who was the first Commanding Officer of the Rifle Corps, a Division Commander in the Peninsular War and a Scottish Member of Parliament (MP) in the British Parliament.
The Second Battle of Porto, also known as the Battle of the Douro or the Crossing of the Douro, took place on 12 May 1809. General Arthur Wellesley's Anglo-Portuguese Army defeated Marshal Soult's French troops and took back the city of Porto. After taking command of the British troops in Portugal on 22 April, Wellesley immediately advanced on Porto and made a surprise crossing of the Douro River, approaching Porto where its defences were weak. Soult's late attempts to muster a defence were in vain. The French quickly abandoned the city in a disorderly retreat.
Events from the year 1808 in the United Kingdom.
The siege of Cádiz was a siege of the large Spanish naval base of Cádiz by a French army from 5 February 1810 to 24 August 1812 during the Peninsular War. Following the occupation of Seville, Cádiz became the Spanish seat of power, and was targeted by 70,000 French troops under the command of the Marshals Claude Victor and Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult for one of the most important sieges of the war. Defending the city were 2,000 Spanish troops who, as the siege progressed, received aid from 10,000 Spanish reinforcements as well as British and Portuguese troops.
The Battle of the Gebora took place during the Peninsular War between Spanish and French armies on 19 February 1811, northwest of Badajoz, Spain. An outnumbered French force routed and nearly destroyed the Spanish Army of Extremadura.
General Sir John Murray, 8th Baronet, was a British Army officer who led a brigade under Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsular War. Later in the war, he commanded an independent force that operated on the east coast of Spain.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington,, was one of the leading British military and political figures of the 19th century. Often referred to solely as "The Duke of Wellington", he led a successful military career in the Indian subcontinent during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1798–99) and the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–1805), and in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815).
In the Battle of Tordesillas, Battle of Villa Muriel or Battle of Palencia between 25 and 29 October 1812, a French army led by Joseph Souham pushed back an Anglo-Portuguese-Spanish army commanded by Arthur Wellesley, Marquess Wellington. After its failed Siege of Burgos, the 35,000-man Allied army withdrew to the west, pursued by Souham's 53,000 French soldiers. On 23 October, French cavalry defeated the Allied rear guard in the Battle of Venta del Pozo. The Allies pulled back behind the Pisuerga and Carrión Rivers and took up a defensive position.
Major-General Lord Frederick Cavendish-Bentinck known as Lord Frederick Bentinck was a British soldier and politician.
The Fort of Subserra, also known as the Fort of Alhandra, is situated at 142 metres above sea level close to Alhandra in the municipality of Vila Franca de Xira in the Lisbon District of Portugal. Together with other smaller redoubts and batteries that also had the Subserra name, it was built during the Peninsular War (1807–14) as part of the first line of defence of the Lines of Torres Vedras planned by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington to protect the Portuguese capital of Lisbon and, if necessary, his own retreat.
