The História da Guerra Civil is the most important work in his life as a writer. Discounting the two hundred introductory pages dedicated to recounting the history of the territory that would later become Portugal from the time of Lusitania to Pombal’s consulship - a very common practice for 19th century historians - Soriano devotes the rest of the book to narrating events from the year 1777 to 1834.

He divides the study into three periods. The first takes us from the time of the mythical Lusitania up to the departure of the royal family for Brazil in 1807. The second is devoted to the “Peninsula War”, covering the chronological period from 1807 to 1813. The third covers the years between 1814 and 1834 with the title “Establishment of parliamentary government”. This last part takes up seven volumes in addition to two volumes of documents. From the year 1826 on, the author enters that phase of his own life when he was an actual participant in the central events surrounding the implantation of the liberal regime.

His aim, already expressed in História do Cerco…, was “to pass from the oral tradition to the written the universal proclamation of the illustrious actions and glorious victories with which the liberating army crowned itself” (História do Cerco…,1846, p.122). The fundamental truth that Soriano wanted to leave for the readers and for posterity was this: the civil war was won thanks to the courage, dedication and spirit of sacrifice of the soldiers of the liberal army – “it was a small army that resisted all the might of an army of forty thousand men”(Op. Cit., p.122) – despite the character flaws of its elite. The episode of the May 1828 defeat served to reveal the nature of the liberal leaders. While the liberal soldiers fled on foot to Galicia, facing the adversities of the climate and pursuit by the Miguelist forces, the elites showed their lack of courage and dignity by fleeing on the British ship “Belfast” to England. The upshot of this was that the soldiers, including the group of students from Coimbra University, were billeted in the Plymouth “warehouse”. The “impartiality”, the “correctness” and the “pure zeal of truth” (Op. Cit., p.282) that the author proposes constitute a mere declaration of intent in the context of this view of the civil war wherein the legitimate hero was the whole collective group of liberal soldiers. This was a very different view to that of Herculano for whom the liberating army was intimately linked in both action and spirit to the tutelary figure of their foremost leader, the Emperor D. Pedro.

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