British Soldiers, Sieges, and the Laws of War: The 1807 Siege of Montevideo

Whilst the British sieges of the Peninsular War (1808–14) have long been studied from an operational point of view, it is only in very recent years that historians have turned their attention to examining what occurred to garrisons and civilians in the aftermath of the British storms of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz and San Sebastian.¹ This traditional neglect of the infamous British sacks of the Peninsular War is part of a broader neglect of the history of sieges in the Revolutionary-Napoleonic era, and of the laws of war in which they were conducted.² Yet sieges played a crucial role in shaping the development of customary laws of war in early modern Europe. ³ Moreover, whilst battles had well and truly supplanted sieges as the principal form of operational warfare by the time of the Napoleonic Wars sieges nevertheless remained important to military and civilian experiences of war, not only within European theatres of war, but within the European colonial sphere.