Joseph Bonaparte in the context of "Charles XIV John of Sweden"

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by the Iberian nations Spain and Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. It overlapped with the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) and the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812-1814).

The war can be said to have started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, but it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation. It is also significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare.

The Mexican War of Independence (Spanish: Guerra de Independencia de México, 16 September 1810 – 27 September 1821) was an armed conflict and political process resulting in Mexico's independence from the Spanish Empire. It was not a single, coherent event, but local and regional struggles that occurred within the same period, and can be considered a revolutionary civil war. It culminated with the drafting of the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire in Mexico City on September 28, 1821, following the collapse of royal government and the military triumph of forces for independence.

Mexican independence from Spain was not an inevitable outcome of the relationship between the Spanish Empire and its most valuable overseas possession, but events in Spain had a direct impact on the outbreak of the armed insurgency in 1810 and the course of warfare through the end of the conflict. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Spain in 1808 touched off a crisis of legitimacy of crown rule, since he had placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne after forcing the abdication of the Spanish monarch Charles IV. In Spain and many of its overseas possessions, the local response was to set up juntas, ruling in the name of the Bourbon monarchy. Delegates in Spain and overseas territories met in Cádiz—a small corner of the Iberian Peninsula still under Spanish control—as the Cortes of Cádiz, and drafted the Spanish Constitution of 1812. That constitution sought to create a new governing framework in the absence of the legitimate Spanish monarch. It tried to accommodate the aspirations of American-born Spaniards (criollos) for more local control and equal standing with Peninsular-born Spaniards, known locally as peninsulares. This political process had far-reaching impacts in New Spain during the independence war and beyond. Pre-existing cultural, religious, and racial divides in Mexico played a major role in not only the development of the independence movement but also the development of the conflict as it progressed.

The abdications of Bayonne took place on May 5, 6, and 7 of 1808 in the castle of Marracq in Bayonne when the French emperor Napoleon I forced two Spanish kings—Charles IV and his son, Ferdinand VII—to renounce the throne in his favour. The move was Napoleon's response to the Tumult of Aranjuez (17–19 March), when Ferdinand VII forced his father's first abdication, and the uprising of 2 May against French troops in Spain (present in accordance with the Treaty of Fontainebleau). Napoleon in his turn handed the crown of Spain to his brother Joseph Bonaparte. The result of the abdications was further resistance to the French presence, resulting in the Peninsular War (1808–1814), a contributing factor to Napoleon's final defeat. Napoleon was eventually forced to release Ferdinand. On 11 December 1813, he reinstalled him as King of Spain (Treaty of Valençay).

The abdications were widely regarded as coerced. However, some historians have noted that neither Charles IV nor Ferdinand VII were adequately equipped to resist Napoleon's pressures and threats. Some authors have claimed they were "kidnapped" by Napoleon, though others avoid using this term to describe the events in Bayonne.

Charles IV (Spanish: Carlos Antonio Pascual Francisco Javier Juan Nepomuceno José Januario Serafín Diego de Borbón y Sajonia; 11 November 1748 – 20 January 1819) was King of Spain and ruler of the Spanish Empire from 1788 to 1808.

The Spain inherited by Charles IV gave few indications of instability, but during his reign, Spain entered a series of disadvantageous alliances and his regime constantly sought cash to deal with the exigencies of war. He detested his son and heir Ferdinand, who led the unsuccessful El Escorial Conspiracy and later forced Charles's abdication after the Tumult of Aranjuez in March 1808, along with ousting Charles's widely hated first minister Manuel Godoy. Summoned to Bayonne by Napoleon Bonaparte, who forced Ferdinand VII to abdicate, Charles IV also abdicated, paving the way for Napoleon to place his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain. The reign of Charles IV turned out to be a major negative turning point in Spanish history.

The Bayonne Statute (Spanish: Estatuto de Bayona), also called the Bayonne Constitution (Constitución de Bayona) or the Bayonne Charter (Carta de Bayona), was a constitution or a royal charter (carta otorgada) approved in Bayonne, France, 6 July 1808, by Joseph Bonaparte as the intended basis for his rule as king of Spain.

The constitution was Bonapartist in overall conception, with some specific concessions made in an attempt to accommodate Spanish culture. Few of its provisions were ever put into effect: his reign as Joseph I of Spain was largely consumed by continuous conventional and guerrilla war as part of the Peninsular War.

Bonapartist Spain was a Napoleonic client state established in 1808 after Napoleon, who had stationed his Imperial Army in Spain under the pretense of a joint Franco–Spanish invasion of Portugal, forced the ruling Spanish Bourbons to abdicate, and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne, which ignited a people's revolt by Spanish citizens and led to the Peninsular War, where France was defeated and forced to retreat from Spain.

The kingdom was officially known as Kingdom of (the) Spain(s) and (the) Indies, with "the Indies" referring to the East and West Indies as well as Spain's colonial possessions more broadly. It never managed to exert control over these territories however, not only did the French invasion weaken Spain's grasp on its overseas empire, kickstarting the Spanish American wars of independence, but even on the Spanish mainland, the House of Bonaparte's grip was tenuous. Large parts of the country came under the control of juntas, which remained loyal to Ferdinand VII and the old Bourbon kingdom, allying with the Coalition forces of Britain and Portugal to undermine the French occupation.

The Kingdom of Naples (Italian: Regno di Napoli; Neapolitan: Regno 'e Napule) was a French client state in southern Italy that existed from 1806 to 1815. It was founded after the Bourbon Ferdinand IV & III of Naples and Sicily sided with the Third Coalition against Napoleon, and was in return ousted from his kingdom by a French invasion. Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, was installed in his stead: Joseph conferred the title "Prince of Naples" to be hereditary on his children and grandchildren. When Joseph became king of Spain in 1808, Napoleon appointed his brother-in-law Marshal Joachim Murat to take his place. Murat was later deposed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after striking at Austria in the Neapolitan War, in which he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tolentino.

Doña Carlota Joaquina Teresa Cayetana of Spain (25 April 1775 – 7 January 1830) was Queen of Portugal and Brazil as the wife of King Dom John VI. She was the daughter of King Don Charles IV of Spain and Maria Luisa of Parma.

Detested by the Portuguese court—where she was called "the Shrew of Queluz" (Portuguese: a Megera de Queluz)—Carlota Joaquina gradually incurred the antipathy of the people, who accused her of promiscuity and influencing her husband in favor of the interests of the Spanish crown. After the escape of the Portuguese court to Brazil, she began conspiring against her husband, claiming that he had no mental capacity to govern Portugal and its possessions, thus wanting to establish a regency. She also planned to usurp the Spanish crown that was in the hands of Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte. After the marriage in 1817 of her son Pedro with the Archduchess Leopoldina of Austria and the later return of the royal family to Portugal in 1821, Carlota Joaquina supported her son Miguel in his intrigues to gain the throne, but their relationship deteriorated and she ended up being confined in the Royal Palace of Queluz, where she died alone and abandoned by her children and political allies on 7 January, 1830.

The Treaty of Amiens (French: la paix d'Amiens, lit. 'the peace of Amiens') temporarily ended hostilities between France, the Spanish Empire, and the United Kingdom at the end of the War of the Second Coalition. It marked the end of the French Revolutionary Wars; after a short peace it set the stage for the Napoleonic Wars. Britain gave up most of its recent conquests; France was to evacuate Naples and Egypt. Britain retained Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Trinidad.

It was signed in the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) of Amiens on 25 March 1802 (4 Germinal X in the French Revolutionary calendar) by Joseph Bonaparte and Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace". The consequent peace lasted only one year (18 May 1803) and was the only period of general peace in Europe between 1793 and 1814.