Battle of Corunna - Analysis

Analysis

The British army had been sent into Spain to aid in expelling the French, but they had been forced into a humiliating retreat in terrible winter conditions that wrought havoc with health and morale and resulted in the army degenerating into a rabble. In his authoritative account of the battle, the English historian Christopher Hibbert states: "It was all very well to talk of the courage and endurance of the troops but of what use were these virtues alone when pitted against the genius of Napoleon? 35,000 men had crossed the Spanish frontier against him; 8000 had not returned. We were unworthy of our great past." The British of the day similarly viewed Corunna as a defeat: according to The Times, "The fact must not be disguised ... that we have suffered a shameful disaster."

The historian Charles Oman contends that Marshal Soult's attack at Corunna provided Moore and his men with the opportunity to redeem their honour and reputation through their defensive victory, by which means the army was saved though at the cost of the British general's life. Moore was buried wrapped in a military cloak in the ramparts of the town; the funeral is celebrated in a well-known poem by Charles Wolfe (1791–1823), "The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna".

Charles Esdaile, in The Pennisular War: A New History, writes: "In military terms, Moore's decision to retreat was therefore probably sensible enough but in other respects it was a disaster ... Having failed to appear in time ... then allowed Madrid to fall without a shot, the British now seemed to be abandoning Spain altogether." Also, "Even worse than the physical losses suffered by the allies was the immense damage done to Anglo-Spanish relations. ... de la Romana ... openly accusing Moore of betrayal and bad faith." Finally, "... the occupation (by the French) of the most heavily populated region in the whole of Spain."

Chandler states, the British army had been "... compelled to conduct a precipitate retreat and evacuate by sea." Also, "Madrid and the Northern half of Spain were under occupation by French troops." Fremont-Barnes, in The Napoleonic Wars: The Peninsular War 1807–1814, writes that the then British Foreign Secretary Canning: " ... privately condemned Moore's failed campaign in increasingly stronger terms," while in public he " ... in the great British tradition of characterizing defeat as victory, insisted that although Moore's army had been pushed out of Spain his triumph at the battle of Corunna had left 'fresh laurels blooming upon our brows'."

A more charitable view is offered by W.H. Fitchett in How England Saved Europe: The story of the Great War, Vol.III, The war in the Peninsula: "... it is also a dramatic justification of Moore's strategy that he had drawn a hostile force so formidable into a hilly corner of Spain, thus staying its southward rush." Napier similarly speculates: "he second sweep that was preparing to make when Sir John Moore's march called off his attention from the south would undoubtedly have put him in possession of the remaining great cities of the peninsula."

Nevertheless back in England the reaction to news of the Battle of Corunna and the safe evacuation of the army was a storm of criticism over Moore’s handling of the campaign, while back in Corunna his adversary Marshal Soult took care of Moore's grave and ordered a monument to be raised in his memory.