Anglo-Portuguese army

British officials, officers, and authors-past and present-penned the Anglophone narrative of the Peninsular War. This narrative describes British officers as capable leaders, and portrays campaigns and battles won as British victories.[1] Conversely, it overlooks the roles of Portuguese statesmen, often portraying them as corrupt, incapable without British tutelage, and indifferent to the fate of their nation.[2] Similarly, the narrative depicts the Portuguese army "as a negligible force," built on cronyism, and fated to fail.[3] The Anglophone narrative appears to flow from an outlook of intellectual, cultural, moral, and, indeed, racial superiority over the Portuguese.[4] One British officer, for example, depicted Portuguese as "naturally indolent," "slovenly," and must be "forced to exert himself." Another portrayed them as, "naturally dirty," "careless," and lacking "fortitude."[5] Moreover, references to creating a "system of order" for the Portuguese, their need to be "managed with intelligence," and thinly veiled validations of contemporaneous chauvinism, such as, "to [Wellington's] mind, the average Portuguese was neither capable nor willing to serve in the military," appear throughout the literature.[6] Were these stories written to critically analyze events, or to bolster British self-worth? The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was the cornerstone of the Portuguese nation and empire.[7] During the 17th century, Portugal offered the English government largely unrestricted access to its ports around the globe, in return for guaranteeing Portugal's sovereignty, primarily against Spanish aggression.[8] When France invaded Iberia, Britain needed to prevent France-and its erstwhile Spanish client state-from annexing Portugal, thereby closing Portugal's ports to British navy and commerce vessels. Thus, the British government chose to engage in a land war against French armies in Iberia.[9]

«O Regimento 14 de Infantaria de Linha foi incorporado em Tavira, no Algarve, e é, creio eu, em termos gerais, o melhor Regimento do Exército. Quando eu observei este regimento na Chamusca, em Fevereiro de 1811, reunia cerca de dois mil e quinhentos homens em parada. O 14 era comandado, e excelentemente disciplinado, pelo tenente-coronel Le Mesurier, ex-oficial do Regimento 21 de Sua Majestade Britânica, que é actualmente governador da vila de Almeida (…) constitui com o Regimento 2 a Brigada do Algarve (…) O Regimento 14 encontra-se actualmente sob o comando do coronel Alexandre Magno d'Oliveira.» (The present state of Portugal and of the Portuguese Army, Andrew HALLIDAY, 1812, p. 189) «Os granadeiros da Brigada do Algarve atraíram particularmente a minha atenção: eram todos robustos e corpulentos e a sua tez escura, com bigodes pretos e grandes olhos escuros, dava-lhes um aspecto verdadeiramente marcial.» (Moyle Sherer, Recollections of the Peninsula, 1824, ed. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, p.104)

The Battle of Albuera (16 May 1811) was one of the most bloody and obstinate battles of the Peninsular War.
An allied British, Spanish and Portuguese corps, commanded by Marshal William Carr Beresford, engaged elements of the French Armée du Midi (Army of the South), commanded by Marshal Soult, at the small Spanish village of Albuera, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of the frontier fortress town of Badajoz, Spain.
The role of the Portuguese units was overshadowed by the bloodbath suffered by the British units and the consequences of the Spanish dispatch read in the Spanish Cortes implying that the British had played only a minor role in the battle, despite their much higher losses. Anglo-Spanish political relations suffered following the battle and Wellington placed most of the blame for the losses on Blake.

Tomás Guilherme Stubbs was born in England, named as Thomas William Stubbs, and having joined the British Army as a young officer saw action against the French revolutionary republic in the last decade of the 1700s, in the Mediterranean. His Regiment was sent in a deployment to Portugal in 1797, an event that transformed his life. In the year 1800, he resigned from the British Army. He joined the Portuguese Army, converted to Catholicism and married a Portuguese lady, Joana Candida. Later Tomás became a Portuguese citizen, a lieutenant general of the Army, and Viscount Vila Nova de Gaia. From 1800 to 1844 he was at the forefront of military and political events related to the history of Portugal: he was involved in the “Guerra das Laranjas”, fought bravely in the Peninsular War, had a prominent role after the 1820 liberal revolution, and was a key liberal commander in the Civil War (1828–1834). Trying to bring to life his story, forgotten from Portuguese and British books alike, is a way to understand an era of revolutions and the Anglo-Portuguese political and military relations of the first half of the 1800s, where we saw the shift from absolute power to a parliamentary system, through a sequence of wars that shaped modern-day Portugal.
The paper challenges the view that English officers were in the Portuguese Army only in the period of the Peninsular War and during Beresford’s tenure as Chief of the Army, and that the Civil War was merely an internal affair without foreign involvement. It proves that foreign-born officers were in the Portuguese Service before the arrival of Beresford and after his departure, and that the political positions of the European monarchies impacted the Portuguese Civil War. 
The sources consulted include archives and libraries in Portugal and England, as well as primary and secondary publications relevant to the topic. The Portuguese Military Archive and the Army Library were fundamental in this endeavour, but scarce family documents and memories were also consulted. Research has been greatly restricted by the Covid-19 pandemic but enormously supported on a network of connections in Portugal, England, and Ireland, resulting in that making it possible to bring to life unknown and unpublished facts of the story of Tomás Stubbs. The paper is designed to provoke further research and discussion, it does not pretend to offer a definite Memoir.