Military history of Spain Portugal and engage French forces on the frontiers while Spanish "guerrilleros" wore down the occupiers. Acting in concert, regular and irregular allied forces prevented Napoleon's marshals from subduing the rebellious Spanish provinces. The Spanish navy, put to sea in support of France during the War of the Third Coalition in 1805, suffered terrible losses at the Battle of Trafalgar, having been weakened by yellow fever in the preceding years; in many ways this marked the nadir of Spanish naval history. The events in mainland Spain had extensive consequences for her empire. Spain's colonies in the Americas had shown an increasing
Coalition forces of the Napoleonic Wars as in Germany during the Battle of the Goerhde and the Battle of Leipzig, they were not viewed as being particularly effective. Mostly they effected terror in the enemy troops, who were unfamiliar with this kind of weapon. The French initially thought that the rocket troops were "lancers", as the firing device seemed from a distance to be a lance. At the beginning of the wars the tactics of the allied forces were different from the British tactics. For example, they tried to use the column, but as they almost always lost against the French, they had to develop another