Peninsular War: After a three-week siege, the Anglo-Portuguese Army, under the Earl of Wellington, captured Badajoz, Spain, and forced the surrender of the French garrison.

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Portugal, Spain 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.

In the siege of Badajoz, also called the third siege of Badajoz, an Anglo-Portuguese Army under the command of the Arthur Wellesley, the Earl of Wellington besieged Badajoz, Spain, and forced the surrender of the French garrison. The siege was one of the bloodiest in the Napoleonic Wars and was considered a costly victory by the British, with some 4,800 Allied soldiers killed or wounded in a few short hours of intense fighting during the storming of the breaches as the siege drew to an end. Enraged at the huge number of casualties they suffered in seizing the city, the troops broke into houses and stores consuming vast quantities of alcohol with many of them then going on a rampage, threatening their officers and ignoring their commands to desist, and even killing several. It took three days before the men were brought back into order. When order was restored, an estimated 200–300 civilians had been killed or injured.

The Anglo-Portuguese Army was the combined British and Portuguese army that participated in the Peninsular War, under the command of Arthur Wellesley. The Army is also referred to as the British-Portuguese Army and, in Portuguese, as the Exército Anglo-Luso or the Exército Anglo-Português.

Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was a British Army officer and statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures in Britain during the early 19th century, twice serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was one of the British commanders who ended the Anglo-Mysore wars by defeating Tipu Sultan in 1799 and among those who ended the Napoleonic Wars in a Coalition victory when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.