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Author: Captain Alexander Gordon
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1908902000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
Captain Gordon led a troop of the 15th Hussars during the first of the British army’s campaigns into Spain, commanded by Sir John Moore. Unearthed and published many years after it was written by the esteemed Regimental historian Colonel Wylly, his diary bears testimony to the events of the retreat to Corunna. Gordon writes of his adventures with verve, wit and in some places a little venom when talking of his erstwhile commander Moore; he is fulsome in his description of the Portuguese and Spanish people to whom the British had come to aid. For example when relating the qualities of a local wine he could “only compare the taste of it to a mixture of vinegar and ink” On military matters he is no great respecter of rank, and distributes blame and praise where he believes they should be rightly apportioned. He gives a great first-hand account of the famed skirmish of Sahagun, to which he believes started a moral ascendancy of the British cavalry over their French counterparts. Despite some defective equipment and, as Gordon attributes it, dilatory conduct by the commander, he reaches Corunna unlike a number of his comrades and fellow country-men. A fine read, which despite its format as a journal retains some pace, it gives a great view of the retreat from an expert military eye. Author – Captain Alexander Gordon (1781-1872) Editor – Colonel Harold Carmichael Wylly (1858-1932)
Author: Captain Alexander Gordon
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1908902000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Get Book Here
Book Description
Captain Gordon led a troop of the 15th Hussars during the first of the British army’s campaigns into Spain, commanded by Sir John Moore. Unearthed and published many years after it was written by the esteemed Regimental historian Colonel Wylly, his diary bears testimony to the events of the retreat to Corunna. Gordon writes of his adventures with verve, wit and in some places a little venom when talking of his erstwhile commander Moore; he is fulsome in his description of the Portuguese and Spanish people to whom the British had come to aid. For example when relating the qualities of a local wine he could “only compare the taste of it to a mixture of vinegar and ink” On military matters he is no great respecter of rank, and distributes blame and praise where he believes they should be rightly apportioned. He gives a great first-hand account of the famed skirmish of Sahagun, to which he believes started a moral ascendancy of the British cavalry over their French counterparts. Despite some defective equipment and, as Gordon attributes it, dilatory conduct by the commander, he reaches Corunna unlike a number of his comrades and fellow country-men. A fine read, which despite its format as a journal retains some pace, it gives a great view of the retreat from an expert military eye. Author – Captain Alexander Gordon (1781-1872) Editor – Colonel Harold Carmichael Wylly (1858-1932)
Author: Alexander Gordon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coruna, Battle of, 1809
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Author: Colonel H. C. Wylly C. B.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781847349910
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Like the Dunkirk campaign in 1940, General Sir John Moore's advance and retreat from and to Corunna in the early stages of the Peninsular War, was a defeat that has acquired in hindsight all the glorious aura of a famous victory. This was largely due to Moore's own heroic death at the climax of the campaign; but as Churchill remarked after Dunkirk, 'Wars are not won by evacuations' and any reader of these revealing diaries will be left in no doubt that Corunna was a calamitous defeat for Britain at the hands of a confident, competent French force. The author of these journals - first published in 1913 - was Captain Alexander Gordon, a Scottish aristocrat - (he was the son of the Earl of Aberdeen) - who wrote them up from notes he made at the conclusion of the campaign when the events he describes so vividly were still fresh in his mind. Although a Hussar, the conditions during the retreat on Corunna were so chaotic that Gordon, as he puts it "Enjoyed opportunities of becoming acquainted with the situation and general movements of the [whole] army." His journals cover the complete campaign - from Moore's unwise advance into Spain's interior in an effort to link up with Spanish armies; his encounter with the French under Napoleon himself; and his fighting retreat on the port of Corunna where the Royal Navy was waiting to rescue them. The climax was the pitched battle of Corunna itself, during which Moore was killed by a cannon ball in his chest. The British army of 16,000 succeeded in holding the numerically equivalent French at bay until they had embarked, inflicting 2,000 deaths for their own losses of 900 men. But - as at Dunkirk - they had to abandon much of their equipment o the enemy, including 20,000 muskets. In retrospect it is probably fortunate that by the time of the battle, Napoleon had left Spain to meet an Austrian threat, leaving the battle to the cautious Marshal Soult. This is a valuable eye-witness account of an often overlooked campaign by a perceptive and informed professional observer. IIlustrated with maps and a portrait of the author.
Author: Christopher Summerville
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1853675644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
In the bitter winter of 1808, a small British force found itself outnumbered and outmanouevered by a French army led by none other than the emperor Napoleon. Faced with crushing defeat, the British, commanded by Sir John Moore, turned and began a legendary march through the snow and ice of northern Spain to freedom and escape. Napoleon, swearing that he would drive the British leopard into the sea, pursued and an epic was born.
Author: William Tomkinson
Publisher: London S. Sonnenschein 1894.
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Author: Albert Jean Michel Rocca
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Peninsular War, 1807-1814
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Author: Charles Dalton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo, Belgium, 1815
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Author: Philip Haythornthwaite
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1846035384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
A fully illustrated and detailed account of the retreat to Corunna, one of the epic campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Late in 1808 Sir John Moore found himself virtually alone with his small British army deep inside Spain. The armies of his Spanish allies had been overwhelmed and he faced a victorious French force under the Emperor Napoleon. He had little option but to order a retreat to the port of Corunna. This became the most arduous of trials with armies traversing mountainous terrain over appalling roads in the depths of winter. Somehow Moore held his outnumbered, exhausted men together as they struggled to reach safety. Philip Haythornthwaite recounts how, finally, at Corunna, Moore's army turned to face its tormentors.
Author: Benjamin Randell Harris
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 1474626327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 131
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'Describing narrow squeaks and terrible deprivations, Harris's unflowery account of fortitude and resilience in Spain still bristles with a freshness and an invigorating spikiness' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 'A most vivid record of the war in Spain and Portugal against Napoleon' MAIL ON SUNDAY Benjamin Harris was a young shepherd from Dorset who joined the army in 1802 and later joined the dashing 95th Rifles. His battalion was ordered to Portugal, where he marched under the burning sun, weighed down by his kit and great-coat, plus all the tools and leather he had to carry as the battalion's cobbler - 'the lapstone I took the liberty of flinging to the Devil'. Rifleman Harris was a natural story-teller with a remarkable tale to unfold, and his Recollections have become one of the most popular military books of all time.
Author: US Army Military History Institute
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commonwealth countries
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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