The Peninsula Years is a thrilling and fast moving narrative of the bloody campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as showing insight into the everyday hardships common to the ordinary British redcoat. The contrary nature of the infantryman of that time is effectively illustrated in the long and arduous retreat to Corunna with its accompanying scenes of drunken and licencious behaviour yet, when the occasion called for it, he was capable of outstanding feats of suicidal bravery as demonstrated at Albuera or in the murderous assault against BadajozWellington may have referred to the men under his command as scum, but without their fortitude, bravery and endurance he knew that Spain would never have been swept clean of France's elite divisions, thus paving the way for Napoleon's eventual downfall and defeat.