As insurgent power grew, security in Navarre and the rest of northern Spain deteriorated. In the end, the French in Navarre were virtual hostages, besieged and unable to leave the walls of Pamplona. As French power collapsed in the rest of Europe after Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, British and Spanish conventional forces finally pressed their attack and drove the French back across the Pyrenees.

It is surprising that Spain does not draw more attention from historians. During the ill-fated Russian Campaign of 1812, Napoleon lost over 700,000 people. However, only 300,000 of those were French (the remainder came from other subject countries of Napoleon’s empire). The Spanish ulcer, as the war came to be known, killed just as many Frenchman (at a rate of 50,000 per year). Yet, in many ways, it was even more costly than the Russian campaign. First, Spain required a huge commitment of manpower. At some points, as many as 350,000 French soldiers served in Spain–more than fought in Russia. Around 200,000 were required simply to secure supply lines.

However, Spain also took a moral and emotional toll on the French. It was impossible for even the most self-deluding Frenchman to claim he was spreading the French Revolutionary ideals–Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité–while quartering Spaniards and impaling them on trees. The persistent sense of insecurity in Spain also wore on the French Armée d’Espagne. As French clergymen Abbé de Pradt would write after the war, "It was, neither battles nor engagements which exhausted the French forces, but the incessant molestation of an invisible enemy, who, if pursued, became lost among the people, out of which he reappeared immediately afterward with renewed strength.”

The More Things Change…
Drawing lessons and analogies from history is always risky. Any event from history, especially in warfare, is unique to its age and dependent on the technology, tactics, and society in which it occurred. Yet the experiences of the French in Calabria and Navarre seem eerily familiar to anyone who has paid close attention to the headlines from Iraq and Afghanistan. Surely, these first guerilla wars in Western history tell us something about today’s counterinsurgencies.

When one looks more closely at these conflicts, patterns do begin to emerge.

Lesson 1: Motives Do Matter

Despite four years of loud protest from America, much of the Muslim world persists in believing that the US is in Iraq for its oil. The US military did little to allay this suspicion in the aftermath of the initial invasion in 2003 when it guarded the Iraqi Oil Ministry while it did nothing to prevent looting of the National Museum.

Spaniards were equally suspicious of Napoleon in 1808 when he proclaimed that he was freeing Spain from the chains of monarchy but then put his brother on the throne. If the French had been serious about trying to spread the revolution, then when the Spanish forged a surprisingly liberal new constitution and created a representative body, the war should have ended. But, of course, the French weren’t there to spread the revolution. Napoleon was engaged in a grand criminal enterprise to make Europe his personal possession. His pretense left the Spanish no course but to resist.

America’s motives in Iraq, however, are not sinister. With the tremendous strain the US military now bears, no one would argue that the United States wants to remain in Iraq forever. Yet, as long as some Iraqis continue to believe that America’s intentions are malign, they will continue to fight the Coalition. Moreover, as long as many in the Muslim world continue to believe the US is in the Middle East to plunder its wealth and destroy Islam, jihadis will continue to stream into Afghanistan and Iraq to kill infidels. The US can significantly improve its lot in both countries if it works harder to change this negative perception of its intentions.

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