Corunna
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As his corse to the rampart we hurried.’
—from ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna’ by Charles Wolfe
One of the best remembered poems in the English language has served to keep alive the memory of Sir John Moore and of his burial at Corunna on 17 January, 1809. The story of the battle which he fought on the previous day and of the short campaign and horrifying retreat which preceded it is, however, not so well known.
The Battle of Corunna saved a British army from annihilation and resulted in the tragic death of one of England’s finest generals. Setting out from Lisbon in the autumn of 1808, Sir John Moore had marched his army into Spain against Napoleon and by a daring manoeuvre had thrown it across the line of French communications. But, having thus drawn off Napoleon’s army from Madrid, Moore found himself so outnumbered and with no hope of assistance from the ineffectual Spanish armies, that he decided to withdraw to the coast. After a 250-mile retreat across the mountains of Galicia under appalling weather conditions, with inadequate food supplies and the French hard on his heels, he eventually reached the port of Corunna. Here he turned and drew up his depleted forces to face Marshal Soult’s massive army; and, though mortally wounded in the ensuing battle, he lived long enough to learn that the French had been checked and that his own army would be able to embark in safety.
In Corunna extensive use is made of the many eyewitness accounts which survive in the form of official despatches, histories, diaries, memoirs and letters. With the aid of these, Christopher Hibbert not only shows a remarkable understanding of John Moore and his fellow officers, of their conflicting characters and views, but also provides a horrifying picture of the hardships of this brief and bitter campaign.
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Christopher Hibbert (born Arthur Raymond Hibbert) MC (5 March 1924 - 21 December 2008), was an English writer, historian and biographer. He has been called “a pearl of biographers” (New Statesman) and “probably the most widely-read popular historian of our time and undoubtedly one of the most prolific” (The Times).
Born in Enderby, Leicestershire in 1924, the son of Canon H. V. Hibbert (died 1980) and his wife Maude, he was educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. He was awarded the degrees of B.A. and later MA.
During World War II he served as an infantry officer in the London Irish Rifles regiment in Italy, reaching the rank of captain. He was twice wounded and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945.
Described by Professor J.H. Plumb as ‘a writer of the highest ability’, he is, in the words of the times Educational Supplement, ‘perhaps the most gifted popular historian we have’, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of many books, including The Story of England, Disraeli, Edward VII, George IV, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, and Cavaliers and Roundheads.
