Soldiers as Transmitters of Landscape Images

Abstract

At the turn from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century the aesthetic view of landscape had a romantic connotation. Until recently, examinations of the representation of landscape were focused mainly on art, landscape gardening, novels, poems and travelogues. However, little attention was paid to the accounts of soldiers. One occasion for such accounts was the Peninsula War. Young men from different backgrounds served voluntarily or compulsory under Napoleon, but also under the allies of Spain and Britain. The German-speaking soldiers were the first and largest group that ‘visited’ the Iberian Peninsula after a long period. Many of the publications were similar to travelogues, a very popular genre at the time. The authors, in fact, included a lot of ‘landscape’ into their narratives. This article will show that and how landscape imagery was used to characterize people, to describe emotions and daily life and to legitimize actions during the war.