John Moore

Sir John Moore was a British army officer and reformer who trained light infantry and commanded during the Napoleonic Wars. Sent to the Iberian Peninsula in 1808, he advanced into Spain to threaten French communications but was forced into a difficult winter retreat to Corunna. Moore organised an effective evacuation and defeated the pursuing French army, but he was mortally wounded during the battle in January 1809. His training methods influenced later British success.

Moore is a major historical figure in Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Rifles, which begins during the retreat to Corunna and transforms Sharpe after the general’s death. He appears in many Peninsular War novels as a humane and professional commander burdened by political confusion and inadequate support. Fiction often stresses the contrast between the misery of the retreat and the discipline Moore created at the final battle.

In Bernard Cornwell’s The Fort, Inside the unfinished fort, the young Lieutenant John Moore helps organise the defence. Adrian Goldsworthy’s Beat the Drums Slowly places John Moore within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making and social change and the pressures of ordinary life. Other novels featuring John Moore include Allan Mallinson’s An Act of Courage and Allan Mallinson’s Rumours of War.