Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet

1787–1860

Sir Harry Smith was a British army officer whose career ranged from the Napoleonic Wars to India and southern Africa. He met and married the Spanish teenager Juana María de los Dolores de León after the storming of Badajoz, and she accompanied him through campaigns. Smith later won distinction at Aliwal during the First Anglo-Sikh War and served as governor of the Cape Colony, where his policies contributed to frontier conflict. Ladysmith and other towns were named for the couple.

Georgette Heyer’s The Spanish Bride fictionalises Harry and Juana’s courtship and Peninsular War experiences. Smith also appears in military fiction about Wellington’s army and British imperial campaigns. Romantic treatments of the marriage should be balanced against his later role in aggressive colonial expansion and war in southern Africa.

Historical context

Historical periods linked to Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet

Peninsular War 1807–1814 CE

Series

Series featuring Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet (1 series)

Historical Romances in Order

by Georgette Heyer 9 books 4.3

This collection brings together Georgette Heyer’s historical novels set outside her main Regency-romance sequence. The settings range from medieval England and France to the Norman Conquest, Elizabethan maritime conflict, the escape of Charles II and the Peninsular War. The list follows the ordering supplied by the Fantastic Fiction…

All books in this series