Le héros de guerre, le militaire et la nation

Abstract

The Peninsular War is paradoxically a victorious struggle in which the Spanish armies only appear in a half-light. The figure that came to the fore in the war was the fighting patriot, while the military were dismissed, under suspicion or accusation of the worst sorts of incompetence. Certain military figures escaped opprobrium: the soldier killed in combat, a classic embodiment of Pro patria mori, and the besieged leader, the incarnation of the people in struggle. Nonetheless, from 1812 on certain military officers adopted these heroic figures and turned them into idols; and thenceforth the soldier seems to have eclipsed the guerrillero. The explanation for this volte-face lies in the fact that in the heat of war an army was born whose experience in combat forged new political identities drawing essentially on the charisma of the leader. Grown into a laboratory for new power relations and a melting-pot of elites, from then on a part of the army espoused the political values of liberalism. However, the process whereby the army came to be identified with the nation was a slow and uneven one which only culminated in 1820, with Riego. In short, the military eventually came to realise the positive value of the figure of the fighting patriot.

Keywords

• Army
• Guerrilla
• Nation
• Nationalism
• Patriotism
• Peninsular War