At the time, he was merely Arthur Wellesley (sp?!
Yea, verily!
I'd submit that Wellesley and the British were nowhere near as critical to the defeat of the French in Spain as the Spanish and Portuguese insurgents, and that British victories in Spain were largely made possible because of the actions of the insurgency.
The g's did tie up a lot of French troops who would otherwise have been fighting the allies. The allies did tie up a lot of French troops who would otherwise have been suppressing the g's. The French would, IMO, have been successful against either alone, but failed against the combination. Thus, the author's generality, that the g's won outright by themselves, struck me as false.
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
The Peninsula campaign is a classic example of Great Power support to partisans in a secodary theater of war. In this respect, it is not dissimilar to the anti-Japanese guerrillas in the Philippines supported by the US.Another example is the partisans in Yugoslavia supported by the UK, US, and USSR or the maquis in France before D-Day. In any event, if Great Powers are involved on opposite sides, the case is much more complex than a simple insurgency with carefully limited support from one Great Power or another. It is for this reason that I noted that someone else might break out the winners and losers among the Western Power supporters/participants differently than I did among out 43 cases.
John, Tom Odom posted this paper on compound warfare awhile back and it has a great section on this subject and the theory of compund warfare in general.
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/downlo...nd_warfare.pdf
Thanks Slapout. Tom Huber is an old friend from Leavenworth days but I didn't know about that book.
To Tom Odom: thanks for the other cases.
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