Corunna

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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.

© Friedland Books 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

CORUNNA

CHRISTOPHER HIBBERT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 4

DEDICATION 5

PREFACE 6

ILLUSTRATIONS 7

MAPS 9

PART ONE — Lisbon 11

1 — Beginning of the War 11

2 — Moore in Command 21

PART TWO — The Advance 29

3 — Lisbon to Salamanca 29

4 — Salamanca 35

5 — Salamanca to Sahagun 55

PART THREE — The Retreat 65

6 — Sahagun to Astorga 65

7 — Astorga to Villafranca 77

8 — Villafranca to Lugo 86

9 — Lugo to Betanzos 92

10 — Astorga to Vigo 98

11 — Betanzos to Corunna 103

PART FOUR — Corunna 110

12 — Harbour 110

13 — The Battle: Morning and Afternoon 116

14 — The Battle: Evening 124

15 — The Homecoming 131

APPENDIX I — Composition of British Forces 136

APPENDIX II — Changes in Regimental Titles 139

A NOTE ON SOURCES 144

BIBLIOGRAPHY 146

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 151

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Hibbert was born in Leicestershire in 1924 and educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. He served as an infantry officer during the war, was twice wounded and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945. Described by Professor J. H. Plumb as ‘a writer of the highest ability’ and in the New Statesman as ‘a pearl of biographers’, he is, in the words of The Times Educational Supplement, ‘perhaps the most gifted popular historian we have’. His much acclaimed books include the following, The Destruction of Lord Raglan (which won the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1962); Benito Mussolini; The Court at Windsor; The Making of Charles Dickens; London: The Biography of a City; The Dragon Wakes: China and the West 1793–1911; George IV; The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici; Edward VII: A Portrait; The Great Mutiny: India 1857; The French Revolution; The Personal History of Samuel Johnson; Africa Explored; Garibaldi and His Enemies; Rome: The Biography of a City; The Virgin Queen: The Personal History of Elizabeth I; Florence: The Biography of a City, and Nelson: A Personal History.

DEDICATION

For Judy

PREFACE

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 17th 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 not, of course, so well known. A book specifically devoted to these events has not been written before, although numerous biographies, histories of the Peninsular War, diaries, memoirs, letters and regimental histories have made them familiar in a general way.

For their help in finding the various authorities on which I have based my book I am grateful to Mr. D. W. King, the War Office Librarian and his staff; Brigadier John Stephenson and the librarian’s staff at the Royal United Service Institution; Miss Susanna Fisher of the manuscript department of the National Maritime Museum; and the staffs of the British Museum, the Public Record Office, the London Library and the Codrington Library. A note on these authorities and a list of them will be found at the end of the book.

I want also to thank Miss Frances Ryan for helping me in my researches, and Major Freddie Myatt for helping me with the maps and appendices and for having read the proofs.

CHRISTOPHER HIBBERT

ILLUSTRATIONS

Sir John Moore by Sir Thomas Lawrence by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

Alexander Mackenzie Fraser, from an engraving by Henry Meyer after a painting by Richard Cosway by courtesy of the Parker Gallery, London

The Hon. John Hope from a contemporary engraving by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

Lord Paget, later Marquess of Anglesey by Sir Thomas Lawrence by courtesy of the Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum (from the Wellington Museum, Apsley House)

Sir David Baird by Sir David Wilkie by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

Jean-Baptiste Franceski from a contemporary engraving

Lord William Bentinck from an engraving after a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence

by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

William Carr Beresford by Sir Thomas Lawrence by courtesy of the Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum (from the Wellington Museum, Apsley House)

Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult, Duke of Dalmatia from an engraving by Henri Grévedon

Pedro Caro y Suredo, Marqués de la Romana from an engraving by A. Cardon

Alexandre Berthier from a contemporary engraving

‘The Convention of Cintra, a Portuguese Gambol for the Amusement of John Bull’ engraved from a drawing by G. Woodward, 1809 by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

Soldiers on the March from a caricature by Thomas Rowlandson by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

The brigades under Major-General Fraser crossing the River

Tagus near Villa Velha from an aquatint after an eyewitness sketch by the Rev. William Bradford by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

A snow-covered pass in Galicia from a sketch by Sir Robert Ker Porter by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

The road to Corunna from a sketch by Sir Robert Ker Porter by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

Corunna Harbour at the time of the explosion on 13 January 1809 from a sketch by Sir Robert Ker Porter by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

View of Corunna during the battle by H. Lecomte Hulton Deutsch Collection

Battle of Corunna, 16 January 1809 from an aquatint by M. Duborg, after a contemporary drawing by W. Heath Hulton Deutsch Collection

The Burial of Sir John Moore Hulton Deutsch Collection

MAPS

The Iberian Peninsula

The advance of the British Forces from Lisbon to Salamanca

The advance of the British Forces from Salamanca to Sahagun

The retreat of the British Forces from Sahagun to Vigo and Corunna

The Battle of Corunna

PART ONE — Lisbon

1 — Beginning of the War

‘The English declare they will no longer respect neutrals on the sea; I will no longer recognise them on land.’—Napoleon Buonaparte

IT WAS insufferably hot. For five days now the landing craft, packed with soldiers sitting four by four on the thwarts, had been plunging violently through the Atlantic breakers towards the burning sand of the beach. There had been a storm the first night, but the water had soon soaked away and the shore, dried by the fierce and constant sunlight, was parched again.

Groups of thirsty sailors, the white surf frothing round their thighs, stood naked at the water’s edge, watching the heavily loaded boats sweep forward through the spray. In the instant that the waters rushed back under the foam of a broken wave, the sailors ran out towards the boats to hurl a rope towards them. More often than not the end of the rope fell short into the water or sometimes a sailor lost his balance in the swirling currents and was caught up and swept back by the next great roll of the sea. Sitting with their packs and muskets held tightly between their knees, the soldiers waited nervously for the jerk that would tell them that the rope had been caught and the slack taken in, and then the boat would go scudding over the shallow water to the safety of the beach.

Above the high-water mark immense piles of food and ammunition, equipment and forage lay waiting for transport to take them inland. A harassed German commissary, scribbling an inventory in his notebook, looked in consternation at the guns and wagons, ‘the mountains of ship’s biscuit, haversacks, trusses of hay, barrels of meat and rum, tents’ and all the impedimenta needed by a British army of 13,000 men. Around him officers shouting orders, sergeants sweating and cursing, soldiers picking up the wreckage of splintered boats, aides-de-camp and orderlies choosing sites for the generals’ tents moved about barefoot up and down the beach and sometimes went to paddle in the surf to cool themselves. Frightened horses, released from weeks of confinement in the dark and stuffy holds of ships, galloped wildly along the shore, snorting, panting, neighing, biting one another, and rolling over in the sand, while dragoons chased after them, bridles in hand. Many of the horses had lost the strength of their legs from having been kept standing in the ships for so long, and the moment a trooper saddled and mounted one of them the poor animal’s hind quarters drooped absurdly to the ground.

Winding their way through the noise and muddle, brown-skinned peasants, their long black hair falling to their shoulders beneath enormous three cornered hats, led bullock carts which screeched so fearfully above the roar of the surf that the scratching of a knife on a pewter plate seemed like ‘the sweet sound of a flute beside them’. Regardless of the heat they wore thick blankets or large brown cloaks over their shoulders, and every now and then they goaded their mournful bullocks by striking them over the back with pikes six feet long. Watched by scores of monks and friars, each of whom carried a vast and luridly coloured umbrella, the peasants offered pumpkins and figs, grapes and melons, wine and apples for sale to the dry-throated troops.

It was 7th August 1808 and the British army was landing on the coast of Napoleon’s Europe, a hundred miles north of Lisbon. The year before a previous landing on the shores of the hostile continent had been made at Vedboek. The troops had rushed through the pinewoods to Copenhagen and on September 7th, after three days’ heavy bombardment of their beautiful capital, the Danes surrendered. The Danish fleet, which it was feared would fall into Napoleon’s hands, was removed from under his nose. The Emperor was furious. He renewed his threats of invasion; he told Talleyrand that all the ports of Europe, neutral or not, would soon have to be closed to English ships; that every English Minister on the Continent would have to be sent home; that all individual Englishmen must be arrested. He lost his temper with the representative of England’s oldest ally at a reception and shouted at him:

If Portugal does not do what I want, the House of Braganza will not be reigning in Europe in two months. I will no longer tolerate an English ambassador in Europe....The English declare they will no longer respect neutrals on the sea; I will no longer recognise them on land!

Within a few days the French Ambassador had left Lisbon, and a French army of 30,000 men was being concentrated under General Junot at Bayonne. The march through Spain would present no problems as, despite murmurs of discontent and occasional displays of independence, Manuel de Godoy, the Spanish dictator and his Queen’s lover, was little more than Napoleon’s puppet. On 30th November, 1807, after moving across Spain at an astonishing speed, the vanguard of Junot’s army marched into the streets of Lisbon. The day before Prince John, the Regent of Portugal, escorted by British warships had sailed for Rio de Janeiro. The Moniteur announced that the House of Braganza, as the Emperor had promised, was in fact no longer reigning in Europe.

It was all part of a larger design. Napoleon’s economic war would never be successful while the Royal Navy was able to pass unchallenged through the seaways of the world. His blockade hurt Britain, but it could not starve her. The British command of the sea must, therefore, be broken. The Mediterranean must be conquered. Three attacks were envisaged. One in the eastern Mediterranean through the Turkish Empire as a threat to India; one in the central Mediterranean against Sicily; the third, and most forceful, in the western Mediterranean through Spain to Gibraltar and the coasts of North Africa.

The plans for this, the crucial attack, were carefully laid. By threats and promises Godoy was made more afraid of Napoleon and more dependent upon him than he had ever been; by the Machiavellian use of some indiscreet letters to the Emperor, which Prince Ferdinand, the dissolute but not unpopular heir to the Spanish throne, had written, the King of Spain, Charles IV, was induced to have his son arrested for treason; and, by the skilful manipulation of a minor revolution which this arrest provoked, the King was persuaded to abdicate in favour of Ferdinand. The deposed King and Queen tried to make their escape to South America, but the mob prevented them; and Napoleon then had no difficulty in luring them to Bayonne where Godoy joined them. Prince Ferdinand was also induced by the Emperor to cross over into France where he was confronted by his angry parents, who told him he was a bastard. Neither an ambitious nor a strong-willed man, the Prince, in return for a pension, agreed to execute with the King and Queen an abdication of the throne which was immediately offered to Joseph Buonaparte by a few compliant Spanish Grandees.

While quickly settling the political fate of the Spanish royal family, Napoleon had meanwhile been strengthening his military hold on their country. By the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed on 27th October, 1807, he had already secured Spanish assistance in the attack on Portugal and authority to occupy several large towns south of the Pyrenees. Three months later even the pretence of formally negotiated settlements was given up, and French troops poured into Spain as an undisguised occupation force. It was a familiar Napoleonic pattern, but it had an unfamiliar result. It had not been difficult to do away with the feeble Spanish Bourbons. ‘Un Bourbon sur le trône d’Espagne c’est un voisin trop dangereux’, he had said, having no doubt that he could push Charles IV off the throne as easily as he could push the representative of the House of Braganza off the throne of Portugal.

But Napoleon’s calculations had not allowed for the patriotism, the courage and the pride of the Spanish people. On 2nd May, 1808, the people of Madrid turned furiously on the French garrison and shot and stabbed every soldier they could find. And although the revolt was soon put down by the ruthless fire of French guns, which by nightfall had filled the streets with blood, less than three weeks later the anger broke out again in other towns, in other provinces. Spanish officials who had shown themselves corruptible by French money or the offer of power were dragged out into the streets and murdered. In Badajoz, in Cartagena, in Jaen and in Cadiz, governors and Corregidores were lynched by the mob. In Valencia, in the Asturias and in Andalusia, committees were organised, troops were enrolled, proclamations promising support to Prince Ferdinand and death to the French were read to wildly cheering crowds.

At the end of May General Sir Hew Dalrymple, Governor of Gibraltar, forwarded to London a request he had received from the Junta of Seville for money and arms. A week later six representatives of the Asturian Juntas landed at Falmouth with a fervent appeal for help from a country with which Spain was still officially at war. They were welcomed sympathetically. Past quarrels were forgotten. George Canning, the Foreign Secretary and most influential member of the old Duke of Portland’s Administration, announced that ‘Britain would proceed upon the principle that any nation of Europe which starts up with a determination to oppose a Power which, whether professing insidious peace or declaring open war, is the common enemy of all nations, becomes instantly our ally’. In replying to this announcement for the Opposition, Richard Brinsley Sheridan showed that the country was united in its enthusiasm for the Spanish cause. ‘Hitherto’, he said in a speech which brought tears to the eyes of Members on both sides of the House,

Buonaparte has had to contend against princes without dignity and ministers without wisdom. He has fought against countries in which people have been indifferent to his success; he has yet to learn what it is to fight against a country in which the people are animated with one spirit to resist him.

Never, he thought, had there been ‘anything so brave, so generous, so noble’ as the conduct of the Spanish patriots.

No one could doubt the importance of their resistance. At last there had come an opportunity to build up a dam against the flood tide of Napoleon’s success. The nationalist reaction had begun; and, if the spark caught flame and the flames were fanned and spread, all Europe might be caught up in the fire. Were help to be given promptly the first step would be taken towards what Sheridan called in a dramatic phrase, ‘the emancipation of the world’.

Help was given promptly. Peace was declared and an alliance pronounced. At the War Office Lord Castlereagh considered a report from Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley who suggested that ‘this would appear to be a crisis in which a great effort might be made with advantage; and it is certain that any measures which can distress the French in Spain must oblige them to delay for a season’ the execution of their other plans. Sir Arthur had under his command at Cork rather more than 9,000 troops which it had been intended to send to Venezuela in the hope of bringing about a revolution there. There were 5,000 more men in transports at Gibraltar, where they had been sent after the failure of General Whitelocke’s attempt to set free the Spanish colonies and open up their trade to British ships. Major-General William Carr Beresford had 3,000 more at Madeira, which had been occupied the previous December in the name of the exiled Prince John of Portugal. There were 10,000 men off the Swedish coast under Sir John Moore whose views on the uses to which they could usefully be put were not those of the mad King of Sweden, who would only let the English troops land if they helped him defy the threatening armies of France, Russia and Denmark in a wild attempt to recover Pomerania