Estimated Population of Spain and Portugal in 1808

One of the more difficult tasks to historians of the Peninsula War is determining the population of Spain and Portugal. Even Charles Oman in his magnificent History of the Peninsular War makes few estimates on the size of cities or provinces. The main reason behind this is the lack of a contemporary census of either country. (Spain had not conducted a census since the 1780s and I can find no record of Portugal having done one in the previous 100 years.) This paper is attempts to redress problem, however it is specifically limited to the population of the two countries before the war that would soon engulf them. I deliberately chose the year 1808 because the Peninsula War was so cataclysmic that within a few years after the beginning of it, major cities would be destroyed and hundreds of villages would cease to exist. To attempt to estimate the population during any particular year of the war would therefore be extremely difficult.

The following estimates are based on a variety of sources, mostly memoirs and diaries of French and British officers who fought throughout the Peninsula. Surprisingly many of the sources confirm each other in their estimates of various towns and cities that they visited and fought over during the seven years of the war. A particularly valuable source was Alexander Dickson, a British artillery officer who made extensive entries in his diaries about the places he passed through during the six years he served in the Peninsula. These notes often listed either the number of dwellings in a particular place or an estimate of its population or how many troops could be billeted in the town. Unfortunately, Dickson did not state how he derived his estimates for the figures, however he did give a clue in his diary when he states that the official Portuguese method of estimating the size of a household is that each house has an average of five residents. Therefore a village of 200 houses would have an estimated population of about 1,000 people.

S.G.P. Ward in his book Wellington's Headquarters: A Study of the Administrative Problems in the Peninsula 1809 - 1814 provided additional information that allowed me to make my own estimates. He states that for billeting purposes, the British used a figure of 6-8 soldiers for each house, although at times the number was often twice this. If this is correct, then we can extrapolate from Dickson the population of some of the towns and villages by dividing the figure he gives for the number of troops that can be billeted in a village by eight to get the estimated number of houses and then multiply this figure by the five - the average size of a Portuguese household. For example, Dickson states that there are about 8,000 troops billeted in Castello Branco in 1809. Therefore, we can deduce that the population of Castello Branco was about 5000 people.

Using these sources and making a few calculations, the following is an estimation of the population of a variety of cities and villages in Spain and Portugal. The reader should be cautioned that these figures can not be verified by any published census.

Spain

Estimated Population of Spain: 10 million

Population Density: 7 people per square mile

Population of Select Spanish Provinces

Aragon	650,000
Asturias	370,000
Estremadura	420,000
Navarre	250,000
New Castille	1,200,000
Valencia	770,000

Population of Key Spanish Cities (circa 1808)

Madrid	175,000
Alcantara	5,000
Arevalo	4,000
Badajoz	16,000
Barcelona	180,000
Burgos	9,000
Cadiz	75,000 (Estimate)
Ciudad Rodrigo	3,000
Cordoba	30,000
Corella	3,900
Ecija	10,000
Gerona	14,000
Granada	60,000
Lerdia	18,000
Lograno	7,700
Martaro	20,000
Murcia	20,000
Olivenca	5,000
Pamplona	3,000
Saragossa	40,000
Seville	100,000
Tafalla	3,000
Toledo	33,000
Totosa	10,000
Tudela	7,500
Valencia	100,000
Valladolid	20,000

Portugal

Estimated Population of Portugal: 1,838,000

Population Density: 67 People per Square Mile

Population of Key Portuguese Cities (circa 1808)

Abrantes	2,500
Guarda	2,300
Lisbon	200,000
Alcobaca	1,200
Almeida	2,000
Arronches	1,200
Azambaja	5,000
Caldas	3,000
Cartaxo	5,000
Castello Branco	5,000
Certaa	1,500
Coimbra	20,000
Elvas	12,000
Figueiro dos Vinhos	2,000
Leiria	5,000
Marvao	1,000
Obidos	3,000
Oporto	30,000
Portalegre	7,000
Sabugal	1,500
Setuval	12,000
Tavora	5,000
Torres Vedras	3,000
Villa Vicoza	2,500
Viseu	3,000

Bibliography

Alexander, Don. Rod of Iron: French Counterinsurgency Policy in Arazgon during the Peninsular War Wilmington: Scholarly Resources; 1985.

Dickson, Alexander. The Dickson Manuscripts: Being Diaries, Letters, Maps, Account Books with Various Other Papers 5 Vols; Cambridge: Ken Trotman 1987.

Fletcher, Ian. In Hell Before Daylight Staplehurs: Spellmount; 1994.

Jones, John. Journal of the Sieges Carried on by the Army Under the Duke of Wellington, in Spain, between the Years 1811 & 14 with an Account of the Lines of Torres Vedras 3 vols. London: John Weale; 1856.

Mayne, William. A Narrative of Campaigns of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion during the Years 1809, 1810 & 1811 Cambridge: Ken Trotman; 1986.

Oman, Charles. A History of the Peninsula War 7 Vols. Oxford : Clarendon Press; 1980.

Pelet, Jean Jacques. The French Campaign in Portugal: 1810 &endash; 1811Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; 1973.

Rudorff, Raymond. War to the Death: The Sieges of Saragosa, 1808 &endash; 1809 New York: MacMillan; 1974.

Suchet, Louis-Garbriel. Suchet's Memoirs of the War in Spain 2 Vols. Tyneside: Worley; 1986.

Tone, John. The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; 1994.

Ward, S.G.P. Wellington's Headquarters: A Study of the Administrative Problems in the Peninsula 1809 &endash; 1814 Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1957.

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