JOHN MCORE OF CORUNNA

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27303, 20 March 1954, Page 3

JOHN MCORE OF CORUNNA

BIOGRAPHY CORRECTS tradition Sk Hndrt... MO °s e o.” y Carola Oman. Hodder and Stoughton. 700 pp. flne . hist °rian, whose 1 Nelsol ‘ « a masterpiece. work on Sir John bi°crlnL n d A^ noUgh ' the ma i°r tovS „ y th? 8 B reat and much-trainerg„<-n?ra ’ most remarkable o£ t£ oops th® British Arm, has hto pursued by ill lu’ek in th? i Moore continued to suffer ?• fia“fi? of an unjust Fate after “t s -~ eat b- his last words at Corunna, be e people of England will be satisfied. I hope my country will J , ustlce ; were sadly unrequited. Political controversy surrounded his last his brother provided the ? . biography, a work scorned q 5^ 1^a . ry , literary men alike; “ Hist o r y of the Peninsular War, fixed the picture of him a s a Gommander-in-Chief “Bonaparte-, struck and liable to look upon the gloomy siae of things; his only major champion was William Napier; and the man who might have made his best biographer—General Anderson, his bosom friend and companion in arms for 21 years—remained silent. In the popular memory Moore’s name was perpetuated by a poem, the one and only poetic production of an obscure curate, which is full of inaccuracies and absurdities. Neverthe- ; es ®. I t.,has lived for the elements of oont ains: a great General, who u a ? ln the moment of victory, had been hastily buried, in foreign soil, by a broken-hearted staff, who feared that justice would not be done to his memory.

Miss Oman at last does full justice I°x .°^ ln Moore. She describes in detail his unusual youth, largely spent L ° ur mg the Continent in the companvi of his father and the young Duke of Hamilton, to whom Dr. Moore was tut ? r ’ T , h , is , earl y services in Minorca an * d ,P a^ fax ’ and his youthful entry into Parliament. Moore’s parliamentary career had little vital effect upon him, for he remained until the end of his cafeer a strictly unpolitical soldier. His single-minded devotion to soldicrJhg is in fact the most remarkable thing about Moore; he never married, believing that a soldier should not take a wife. His private life is scanty; in spite of Miss Oman’s scholarly delving and lively writing, it cannot be made interesting. Byt there is plenty of absorbing matter m Moore’s military career—his difficult situation in Corsica, for instance, under a vain and envious commanding officer, who came near ruining his career when, he requested Moore’s recall on general grounds—and plenty of variety. His service in St. Lucia, Ireland, on the secret expedition to the Helder in 1799, in Egypt, Sicily, Sweden and finally Portugal and Spain is rich in many kinds of experience. Miss Oman writes of military matters with knowledge and produces a smooth-flowing narrative out of the mass of detail. She has had unusual difficulty in unearthing much of the material, the Moore family in the direct line having died out in 1925. The collaterals were eventually traced, however, and valuable relics were found in the possession of descendants of his officers. Miss Oman’s achievement is a most scholarly one. and it would be ungrateful to suggest that the book might have been shortened. Such feelings do, however, plague the reader at moments when he is more than usually burdened by the wealth of detail. Do we really need to know that Moore sent a parcel to his mother with this particular letter, or that Mr Pitt had a cough on one occasion, a cough, moreover, that had no vital bearing on the career of Sir John Moore? Such information adds nothing to the portrait Miss Oman otherwise so triumphantly draws of a noble man, warm and lovable, with a strength of character that struck all who met him —very' different from the rather shadowy, haughty and irresolute “unlucky general” of the uncorrected tradition of the past.