Napoleon's Cursed War

Reviews / Votes

Fraser has re-created a world, barely glimpsed by previous historians, of the Spanish popular resistance and suffering during the anti-Napoleonic war ... An excellent work. -- Carlos Martinez Shaw * El Pais * Napoleon's Cursed War marks a fundamental milestone in the war's historiography, both past and future. It is a superb complement to Fraser's classic Blood of Spain, of 'history from below.' -- Ricardo Garcia Carcel * ABC * Fraser has breathed life into a historic era... The real protagonist of his work is the people and their tragedy. -- Luis Ribot * El Mundo * Like Goya in The Disasters of War, Fraser has engraved in the written word the spirit and sacrifices of the popular anti-Napoleonic resistance, a precursor of the anti-fascist resistance of the [Spanish] Civil War. -- Andreu Mayayo * El Periodico de Catalunya * This scholarly work investigates those who waged Spain's popular struggle between 1808 and 1814, and why. It's history from the ground up: momentous events lived by those whose voice is rarely heard...Fraser builds a mosaic from "shard-like" fragments, a labour of detection that would have swamped anyone with a less sure grip on the sweep of Spanish history. -- Elizabeth Nash * Independent *