[note 1] In 1808, the first year of the armed conflict against the French Army, at least two hundred new Spanish infantry regiments were created, most of which consisted of only one battalion.

[3] These regular troops and local militias which, in the case of Catalonia, ran to several thousand well-organised miquelets, or somatenes, who had already proved their worth in the Catalan revolt of 1640 and in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), were supplemented throughout the country by the guerrilla and were a constant source of harassment to the French army and its lines of communication.

So much so that, between the new year and the middle of February 1809, General St. Cyr calculated that his troops had used up 2,000,000 cartridges in petty skirmishes with the miqueletes between Tarragona and Barcelona.

[5] In volume 1 of his A History of the Peninsular War, 1807-1809 (1902), British military historian Charles Oman responds to many of the contemporary criticisms by Wellington and others regarding "the state and character of the Spanish army" as follows: "Only when we know its difficulties can we judge with fairness of its conduct, or decide upon its merits and shortcomings".

Due to the Anglo-Spanish War (1796–1808), these militias had been under arms since 1804 in the greater part of the garrisons of the seaports of Spain, to protect them against possible descents of English expeditions.

As Oman points out, "none of them showed much strategical skill, yet their constant readiness to fight, which no series of defeats could tame, contrasts very well with the spiritless behaviour of a good many of the Spanish generals.

Most of the militias formed part of the garrisons of the country's seaports, which at that early stage of the conflict had needed to be protected against English expeditions.

[9] Previously known as the Army of Catalonia (Ejército de Cataluña), the new army, under the orders of the newly appointed captain-general of Catalonia, Juan Miguel de Vives,[14] numbered 19,857 men and 800 horse[14] (although Napier[15] put the figure at 36,000 troops, of which 22,000 infantrymen and 1,200 horse were stationed near Barcelona or headed towards the city).

[19] Following on from other related decrees, on 17 April 1809, the Junta Central issued orders for all able-bodied patriots to join the Corso Terrestre (literally, "Land Corsairs").

[23] In volume 1 of his A History of the Peninsular War, 1807-1809 (1902), British military historian Charles Oman refers to the situation and circumstances of the Spanish Army as follows:[24] ...

The Duke of Wellington in his dispatches, and still more in his private letters and his table-talk, was always enlarging on the folly and arrogance of the Spanish generals with whom he had to co-operate, and on the untrustworthiness of their troops.

Napier, the one military classic whom most Englishmen have read, is still more emphatic and far more impressive, since he writes in a very judicial style, and with the most elaborate apparatus of references and authorities.

When the insurrection broke out, the vacant places had to be filled, and many regiments received at the same moment twenty or thirty subalterns taken from civil life and completely destitute of military training.

We need only mention the midnight panic in Cuesta's army on the eve of Talavera, when 10,000 men ran away without having had a shot fired at them, and the cowardly behaviour of Lapeña in 1811, when he refused to aid Graham at the bloody little battle of Barossa.

It chanced that our countrymen did not get a fair opportunity of observing their allies under favourable conditions; of the old regular army that fought at Baylen or Zornoza they never got a glimpse.

They made good soldiers enough in the past, and may do so in the future: but when, after centuries of intellectual and political torpor, they were called upon to fight for their national existence, they were just emerging from subjection to one of the most worthless adventurers and one of the most idiotic kings whom history has known.

It is more just to admire the constancy with which a nation so handicapped persisted in the hopeless struggle, than to condemn it for the incapacity of its generals, the ignorance of its officers, the unsteadiness of its raw levies.