The Portsmouth Napoleonic Society

'Over The Hills and Far Away'

        Corunna 16th January 1809:

Death of Sir John Moore

Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult, the French commander             Sir John Moore, the British commander

View from Penasquedo Heights taken in 2000

Panorama of Elvina from the Church

Moore's monolith in the old battlefield, now a campus of the University of Corunna

Panorama of Corruna from Mont Mero 2000 (click on picture for larger version)

Panorama of Corruna from Mont Mero 1992 the actual battlefield would have been on the right of this picture

Plaque marking site of the building in which Sir John Moore died  

The Old Walls around the Citadel

Tomb of Sir John Moore in the San carlos Gardens

The Museum

Plaque with excerpt of  burial of Sir John Moore

'The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna'

   Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,

    As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot

    O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

  We buried him darkly at dead of night,

    The sods with our bayonets turning;

By the struggling moonbeam's misty light

    And the lantern dimly burning.

   No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

    Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest

    With his martial cloak around him.

  Few and short were the prayers we said,

    And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,

    And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

  We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed

    And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,

    And we far away on the billow!

  Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone

    And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,--

But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on

    In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

  But half of our heavy task was done

    When the clock struck the hour for retiring:

And we heard the distant and random gun

    That the foe was sullenly firing.

  Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

    From the field of his fame fresh and gory;

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,

    But left him alone with his glory.

                -- Charles Wolfe

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