A forgotten hero

Two hundred years ago today, on January 16th, 1809, one of the most crucial battles of the Napoleonic Wars took place at Corunna, Spain. The outcome of the Battle of Corunna would help to determine the ultimate fate of Napoleon. If it had gone the other way, the history of Europe might have been very different.

The British forces at Corunna were commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore. This remarkable soldier had seen action in North America during the Revolutionary War, in Corsica, in Ireland (where his humanity and refusal to permit atrocities by his men distinguished him from other commanders during the Irish Rebellion), in Holland (where he was severely injured in 1799), and in Egypt against Napoleon's invading forces. After a period in command of home defenses, he returned to the Mediterranean theater in 1806, and thence to the Baltic. In 1808 he was ordered to Portugal to take command of British forces in the opening stages of the Peninsular War (which would drag on until 1814).




Moore took command of an army of 20,000 British soldiers, with a further 12,500 promised to follow in due course. This represented the only standing British army in existence anywhere - the only reserves were territorial and auxiliary units in England, not regular army battalions.

Moore was plagued by difficulties from the start. To mention only a few:

• • His instructions from the British Government, in the person of the Secretary of War, Lord Castlereagh, were vague and imprecise. He was ordered to 'co-operate' with the Spanish authorities against Napoleon's invaders, but the nature of this co-operation, or the overall command structure, was not spelt out.
• • He was not given enough money to buy essential supplies, and did not have enough wagons and carts for the army's baggage. This meant that much had to be left behind in Portugal when they marched into Spain.
• • The Commissariat (the civilian agency in charge of procuring rations and supplies for the troops) was inexperienced and incompetent, resulting in many essential requirements running short.
• • Many of his soldiers (mostly illiterate and uneducated, the norm for the time) had become indisciplined and drunken during weeks of inactivity in Portugal.
• • His intelligence service was unreliable and the maps at his disposal were inaccurate. He had conflicting information about his French enemies and Spanish allies, not knowing where either of them were, in what numbers, or what they intended to do.
• • He had been promised that Spanish 'resistance fighters' would help his army to fight the French forces, but the former were nowhere to be found. He said of them, "If the British Army were in an enemy's country, it could not be more completely left to itself."

Despite these difficulties, Moore led his army into Spain in December 1808 to oppose the advance of the French forces under Marshal Soult. However, unknown to him, Napoleon himself heard of Moore's advance, and made plans to destroy his forces. Napoleon said that Moore was "the only general now worthy to contend with me", and realized that if he could destroy his army, England would be left demoralized and largely defenseless. "If only these 20,000 were 100,000!" he was heard to exclaim. "If only more English mothers could feel the horrors of war!" He immediately advanced with 40,000 men, over and above the 25,000 waiting with Soult to receive Moore's attack.

Moore received news of Napoleon's advance on Christmas Eve, 1808, in the town of Sahagun. He immediately realized his danger, and knew that he had to preserve his army at all costs. If he lost it to Napoleon, there was a very real danger that England herself might face final and utter defeat. He immediately halted his advance, and began a 250-mile retreat to Corunna, on the Northern coast of Spain, advising the Royal Navy of his intentions and asking them to meet him there to evacuate the army.

The weather was brutally cold, with heavy snowfall. Lack of supplies and warm clothing meant that many weaker soldiers - and most of the camp-followers - were almost starved to death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, fell out of the line of march, many to die of hunger and cold, others to be slaughtered by the pursuing French, who showed no mercy. Desperate for supplies, Moore ordered them to be commandeered from Spanish towns and farmers, but the locals took to burying their food and essentials so that the British could not get them. Meanwhile, supplies that were not essential to survival, or would be too bulky and heavy to carry over the mountains that lay ahead, were burnt to keep them out of the hands of the French.

Several brisk rearguard engagements were fought with the French pursuers, ending in victory for the British forces. This caused widespread dissatisfaction among the British troops, who did not know why they were retreating so fast. Moore had not told them of the added threat from Napoleon's 40,000 men. As one writer describes it:

The mood in the ranks grew mutinous. General 'Black Bob' Craufurd, the stern commander of the 1st Light Brigade, kept his men in check by flogging those who disobeyed orders, but in many units discipline fell apart.

Those too exhausted to go on simply lay down in the snow to await death. At each town they came to, finding no food and hostile inhabitants, starving soldiers would go on the rampage. At one rare halt beside a field, Rifleman Harris and his comrades scrabbled in the frozen earth for turnips.

Soon after, Harris saw a soldier's wife, reduced to a 'moving corpse', dragging along a little boy of seven or eight who was screaming with exhaustion. 'The mother could no longer raise the child in her arm. At last the little fellow had not even the strength to cry.
But, with mouth wide open, they stumbled onwards, until both sank, to rise no more.'

Another sergeant remembered seeing women who, 'in the unconquerable energy of maternal love, would toil on with one or two children on their back; till on looking round, they perceived that the hapless objects of their attachment were frozen to death'.

But still, on they marched. On New Year's Day the rearguard finally reached the town of Bembibre. The divisions that had passed through earlier had left a trail of destruction and a thousand men, women and children lying in the streets, many of them too enfeebled or drunk to move, abandoned as the column marched on.

Shortly afterwards, a regiment of French dragoons galloped through the stragglers, slashing swords at the drunken forms on the ground.

Fleeing in terror, a few horribly butchered survivors, their ears lopped off, flesh 'hanging off in collops', managed to catch up with their comrades on the road ahead.

Moore had them paraded as a warning against straggling.

The British reached Corunna on January 11th, but for four days the evacuation fleet could not approach land due to stormy weather. By the time the storm subsided, the French army under Soult had arrived (Napoleon having returned to Paris in the meantime), and the fight was on.

All afternoon on the 16th the battle raged. Sir John Moore fought a masterful battle against a much stronger enemy, beating back the French through the use of superior tactics and better use of the ground. Tragically, he was struck by a cannonball during the battle, which "broke his ribs, his arm, lacerated his shoulder and the whole of his left side and lungs". He lived for several hours, long enough to learn that victory was his.

Sir John Moore died that night, and was buried on the ramparts of Corunna by his grieving soldiers, who then embarked in the waiting ships. By noon on the 17th, the evacuation was complete. Marshal Soult, on occupying the town, had Sir John's body exhumed and re-buried in a proper tomb, out of respect for his outstanding leadership in battle. It is there to this day.




In retreating to Corunna and defeating Marshal Soult there, Sir John Moore accomplished three things.

• • He preserved England's only standing army, and allowed it to return safely home. There it would be rebuilt and re-committed to the Peninsular War under Wellington, to emerge triumphant after many more years of struggle.
• • He revealed many of the shortcomings of English military administration. The lessons learned from his campaign would make future support of the troops easier, and Wellington and others would learn from his experience and apply those lessons to their own campaigns.
• • He showed that Napoleon's crack Marshals and troops were vulnerable, and could be beaten. In a Europe dominated by France after so many victories, this was an invaluable tonic, and gave hope at a time when no hope seemed possible.

In many ways, Corunna was a forerunner of the Dunkirk evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France in 1940. Both allowed Britain to fight on, to eventual victory. However, Corunna is little remembered today, and Sir John Moore, who deserves to be remembered as one of the outstanding battlefield commanders of history, is almost forgotten.

Perhaps the best memorial to Sir John Moore is a poem by Rev. Charles Wolfe, titled 'The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna'. I give it now in full, in honor of a great soldier's memory on this, the two hundredth anniversary of his death.

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him —
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

May the souls of those who died at Corunna, and on the long and bloody road there, rest in peace.

Peter