Talk:Battle of Corunna

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anyone know the names of any of the Royal Navy ships which evacuated the British? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.140.179.93 (talk) 11:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Errors

This article is full of misinformation, the most significant is within the context of the casualties. The casualties for the British are more in the line of 900 rather than 8,000. Total British casualties can be attributed to roughly 6,000 (adding Corunna) taking into account privations suffered within the campaign as a whole, but within this single battle, ths casualties were 900. I would also not classify this battle as a French victory. This battle was fought in a rearguard fashion to allow the British army to successfully evacuate to the sea. In this strategic aim, they succeeded. Also, in doing so, the British defeated the French assaults upon their positions, reflecting a tactical superiority as well. If French victory is to remain within the article, it can be better qualified as "Phyrric" victor or what not.

I think this argument holds up. Changing result to "British victory", plain and simple. Albrecht 21:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I quibble on some of the details which I shall have a think about before editing. The last section of this article needs serious work the Dunkirk analogy is especially troublesome. Far from giving a positive bounce the death of John Moore (a whig) permanantly destroyed Whig support for the War making the existence of the Tory government tenuous. The whigs contained many who had never wanted a war but from 1789 had wanted the revolution of france imported to Britain. Moore's death brought most of the remaining whigs into open hostility to the war. Where the comparison is stronger is wrt to the rescued troops making up part of the army that landed in portugal under wellington.Alci12 11:27, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
There's possibly a problem with internal consistency in this article. The campaign as a whole in 1808-9 was indisputably a French victory. However this article states that the French intent for the battle was to destroy the British army and the British intent was to evacuate from Spain. Thus the stated result of "French strategic victory" is contradictory to the main text.Agema 20:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alan Neal, MD. Lugo 1809

I am sorry, my English is very limited.

I am the author of the book: "The Aio report", a documented study on the roman walls of Lugo, with a special dedication to topology, geometry and military engineering.

Alan Neal was an English doctor who accompanied to General Moore in his campaign against Napoleón in 1809. I would like to have more information about Mr. Neal as well as of the interesting drawings that he made of the campaign in the northwest of Spain. In the book I have used an engraving of Neal to make a topographic study (virtual space 3D) You can see it at: http://www.cartesia.org/article.php?sid=71

The book is also a denunciation of the form as it is interpreted today, the fortress, by the "active forces and the official institutions". (To see: "The Chinese Tower ", clear sample of a rooted error).

The book tries to demonstrate that the roman wall was an unconquerable technological strength, that their towers had a essential function and like, its only existence, horrifies to those "overwhelming institutions".

The last remainders of the towers disappeared in 1836, when the wall was adapted for the modern war. The time and lack of memory they caused erroneous current military interpretation.

See the summary: http://www.3dnauta.com

See: ROMAN WALL of LUGO (Trilogy. Experimental simultaneous translation)

IN PRAESENTIA (The Aio report) PRESENT of the wall and its documented links.

Warm greetings --Ulises Sarry 22:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC) --Ulises Sarry 21:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV summary outcome

There seems to be a dispute over describing the outcome. Different people regard it as a British victory (the British achieved their objective of withdrawing) and others as a French victory (the French held the battlefieid at the end). Why is "British withdrawal" not the best NPOV description? --Henrygb 10:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

It seems to have only one - POV - source. Spanishonion 22:02, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Display problems in Firefox

Looking at the article in Firefox the first three section "edit" links appear in the middle of section 3. If this is a general issue with Firefox (rather than a just me issue) does any skilled programmer there know how to fix this?

Springnuts 19:23, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] NPOV

I have been quietly keeping an eye on this article for some time and if this is an example of the sort of thing that can happen with the Wikipaedia then things do not bode well. It was recently revised from a very unsatisfactory version that was full of misinformation, erroneous statements and was definitely non-neutral in tone and outlook. This used quotations in the body of the article in order to make comments, or statements of opinion, that were unbalanced and partial. Whilst its replacement was far from perfect it was an improvement on the earlier version but quite recently the biased quotations that were excised from this article have been reinserted. The reliability and authority of the source of these quotes, Nuñez and Smith, is open to question.

Amendments to the present article are required but at the moment the result of the pitched battle fought at Corunna has to be cleared up.

WHOSE VICTORY? The Battle of Corunna was a tactical success for the British, and this is sufficient to record it in simple terms as a "British victory". The recent alteration of the Wikipaedia entry from "French victory", to "British withdrawal" is arguably an improvement but it is still inaccurate and misleading. Using the term "British withdrawal" gives the impression that the battle resulted in failure for the British, but the British were in the process of withdrawing from Spain when the French caught up with them at Corunna. It is also wrong to declare that the result of the battle was a "British withdrawal" rather than "French repulsed" or "French withdrawal" which was the immediate result of the day's fighting.

Some people have asserted that the French were left in control of the battlefield but this is a distortion of the facts: it was the British that were left in control of the battlefield having successfully driven off all the French attacks. The British then posted pickets for the night and the embarkation was able to continue unopposed. The French returned to the battlefield only when the British withdrew as part of their evacuation. The last ships sailed on the 18th, surely a measure of the success of the British in battle on 16th.

The facts are that:

  1. the British repelled the French attacks and even gained some ground;
  2. the French retreated from the battlefield;
  3. the British were sufficiently in possession to post pickets on the battlefield overnight, and that their situation was then sufficiently secure to enable them to continue with their embarkation in relative safety;

which indicates that Corunna was a pitched battle occurring in a single day and ending in victory for the British.

THE QUOTATIONS Quoting from Nuñez & Smith is very unsatisfactory. I do not know what authority they are supposed to have that makes them worthy of being referred to but it is evident from reading the original article that the authors are very biased against the British, and quite untrustworthy as guides. Reading their article makes it very difficult to take them seriously, which is a great shame because they write with enthusiasm and include one or two interesting titbits but this is compromised by their approach.

Nuñez & Smith are quite wrong in their quoted assertion which I repeat here:

  • "Although with some problems and casualties, the British succeeded in embarkation. This however was not a victory in battle, they just succeeded in retreat. When the dust settled, it was the French army that held the battlefield and Corunna itself, not the British...In our opinion the battle of Corunna was and still is a decent cloak to cover the shame of an embarkation."

Contrary to the opinion of Messrs. Nuñez & Smith this was indeed a "victory in battle" for the British, because all the French attacks were repulsed and so over the next two days the British were able to embark upon the fleet that would take them home. Neither was it "a decent cloak to cover the shame of an embarkation" - it had no such affect on the British people or their government, they were well aware that the campaign had been a failure.

It is important not to confuse the failure of the campaign with the tactical success of the Battle of Corunna (which also achieved strategic success by enabling embarkation of the army).

It is worth mentioning here that the quotation attributed to Nuñez & Smith is taken from a website that appear to be closely related to "Napoleon, His Army and Enemies" and like the latter site it contains considerable anti-English bias. For all the work and apparent detail on these sites they are tainted with partiality and also with blatant ill-will towards certain targets and this renders them untrustworthy. Fortunately the bias is easy to detect although it might deceive the unwary. I suspect they are the source of some of the strange anti-British and pro-Polish statements and assertions that crop up from time to time in Napoleonic articles.

More misleading content has been reinserted into the present article. For instance someone has apparently insisted upon again including the section from the previous version of the article that stated:

  • "Moore ignored the advice of General La Romana and shunned his Spanish allies. With Napoleon himself leading an army in Spain the British were driven into a precipitate flight toward the far northern port of Corunna near the Bay of Biscay."

Note that the language used is yet another display of partiality: "ignored", "shunned". Flight there was, but neither the first nor the second sentence attempt to give a satisfactory explanation of Sir John Moore's strategy and the problems facing him.

Here’s another example:

  • “Moore, in his obsession to reach the sea, had ‘placed his army in an impossible situation and then, after days of uncertainty and vacillation, had been chased half way across Spain ignoring every position of strength at which he might have turned and fought back successfully’."

The above sentence doesn't make sense, and rather than inform it just appears to be a stick to beat the British commander with, using quotes so as to make a critical statement and to make it appear authoritative. (In fact this is largely taken from Nuñez & Smith but to be fair to them it is possible that it is relating a statement of a judgement placed upon Sir John Moore by the government or perhaps the newspapers, it is difficult to be sure because the piece is poorly written. However it chimes exactly with the partisan - or at least anti-British - approach of the authors of the piece.)

I don't mean to be crass, but the above two examples are hardly my inventions and constitute extremely unconvincing examples of anti-British POV, considering that until Liddell-Hart and Chandler came along, most British historians (Oman, Fortescue) were scathingly critical of Moore (Chandler, of course, is downright hero-worshipful). Again, you're more than welcome to shed light on "Moore's strategy and the problems facing him," (I personally do think the retreat was militarily wise, if poorly executed—but to the Spanish, it was nothing less than a betrayal), but to complain of partiality here is a bit of a stretch: La Romana was an able general who urged Moore to turn and fight at several strategically-sound locations. Moore, for better or worse, ignored his pleas. Romana's men were then left to fend for themselves and bloodied Napoleon's armies as best they could (a fact apparently lost amid all the frenzy over red-coated heroism at Sahagun, Benavente and Cacabelos). Frankly, this being one of the most controversial campaigns in British history, I'm surprised that you'd appeal to an anti-British bias. In fact, Wikipedia as a whole is systematically anti-French, especially regarding military history. Albrecht 01:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The above quote from the Wiki entry is misleading because this sentence gives the impression that there was no resistance, and no rearguard actions and also ignores Lugo where Moore found a suitable place to make a stand but found Soult's pursuing forces too strung out. Let's not forget that Corunna itself was a place where Moore made a stand.

And there's more distortion and falsehood that follows on from the biased rewrite of the battle itself:

  • "That night the British abandoned the battlefield and fled to their boats. The French pursuit was swift, and by morning French guns had opened fire on the sloops and transports in the bay. Only the spirited resistance of Corunna's small Spanish garrison under General Alcedo kept the French at bay while the British escaped."

Really, this smacks of more propaganda and makes it sound like a rout. (It does however raise an interesting point of concerning the plight of the inhabitants of Corunna, or at least of the Spanish garrison.) I refer to my paragraph "Whose Victory" above that spells out the facts.

History must be told with truthfulness, fairness and impartiality. An NPOV is vital and this is lacking here. This article needs rewriting, and I would do it myself but I suspect that there are people with axes to grind who will insist on adding their slant. For this reason I have placed my comments here to add to the discussion and hopefully it might make a contribution to resolving this.

Chasseur 21:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

And I suppose the alternate version was a paragon of objectivity and meticulous historical research:
  • before the British army could see combat, the spanish armies were smashed by Napoleon's army and the small British force found themselves extended, facing the French alone and without supplies
  • when word arrived that the French were coming, "They all stood as one and formed in their companies and regiments, ready and eager to meet the enemy."
  • threw the French out in bloody hand-to-hand combat
  • The evacuation, however, was a complete success and led to some 27,000 men being saved to fight another day. (a flat-out lie—many of the survivors of Moore's campaign were so sick they never took up arms again)
  • the army that defeated the French invasion under Soult and subsequently drove the French from the Iberian peninsula. (Wait, didn't the Spanish and the Portuguese help just a little?)
  • the battle of Cacabelos where Irish rifleman Thomas Plunkett shot French general Auguste Colbert
  • a series of tenacious and vexing British rear-guard actions made Napoleon grow tired of the pursuit (Not quite.)
  • Far from being a bedraggled and decimated army, the British repulsed the French cavalry
  • The French attacks were uniformly defeated (Really? Uniformly?)
  • Despite the withdrawal of the British army from the Iberian Peninsula, it had against all odds demonstrated itself against a larger and better supplied foe.
  • it was a general morale success, much like Dunkirk would become in the Second World War, and did much to contribute to the reputation of the British soldier which arose during and following the Napoleonic Wars. (nationalistic vain-glory of the worst kind, not to mention shoddy history)
Nunez & Smith was an Internet site used for pure convenience; they should by all means be replaced with better sources as we come across them. But to replace them with what the anonymous editors had a habit of introducing—with nothing; no sources, no citations at all, in fact, large scale deletions of neutrally-voiced narratives—is a huge step backwards. If you examine the History of the article you'll see I made comments like "Again, don't hesitate to incorporate this new material into the article. But I don't see why you insist on removing so much of the existing narrative," ([1]) and "Feel free to contribute to the article, but please don't inexplicably remove whole chunks of it, including cited statements." ([2]) Well? Where are the revisions I so openly welcomed? Where are the neutral sources? I've got Chandler right here on my shelf—why didn't you add anything of the sort? In this light, I find your complaints extremely disingenuous and unconvincing. It should be no problem for you to introduce statements, as you have done above, to restore balance to the British side. No one will oppose you. So far, I'm the only one who has called for the measured introduction of more than one point-of-view. But the facts are these: no historical consensus exists labelling this battle a British victory. Spanish and French historiography has taken the opposite route, and, barring the heirs of Whig history who so methodically dominated the field of military studies in the last century, there seems to be increasing ambiguity in English-language accounts as well. As long as all these views are presented in their due proportions, we will have done our job. Albrecht 20:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Nunez & Smith are part of an internet site which is not just biased against the British, it is frankly racist towards them. Secondly, they are not primary sources, many of their quotes and opinions are conveniently unsourced when it suits them, and they have no authority as respectable historians of publishable standard I am aware of. Consequently, there's no particularly good justification for attibuting anything to them at all.Agema 13:37, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I am new to Wikipaedia. Did you alter the formatting of my "NPOV" entry? If so was there something wrong with it?

I will take your suggestion and I hope to find the time to introduce statements in due course. I have information from primary sources that will prove useful (and can provide interesting and entertaining reading for those wishing to follow things up). Hopefully we can do something to sort this out. In the meantime I have to get accustomed to Wikipaedia and then concentrate on enjoying Christmas and the New Year. Have a good one. Chasseur 10:17, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any hard-and-fast formatting rules; I simply found the many line breaks and headings a bit distracting, so I took the liberty of reducing them. Hope to see you back soon. Albrecht 01:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)