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This is slightly OT, but I live at only a small walking distance of Moore's grave at Coruña, a really beautiful place, and go through the battle site everyday on my way towards university.

He is not much liked here due to the pillaging the retreating british soldiers did on the civilian population, and I always thought of him as a not very brilliant general.
 
Note that both were easily prepared to risk enormous amounts of lives for victory and not always achieving it, (Assaye (won, but almost phyrric), Borodino)

Surely that's simply part of the decisions that a general has to make sometimes. Wellington, for example, seems to have had a general obsession with finishing sieges quickly, hence his reputation for feeding men into the meat grinder when storming fortifications (e.g. Ciudad Rodrigo & Badajoz). It seems callous of him but when you reflect that in resolving such situations swiftly, he prevented his army from being bogged down and hence pinned down by French forces which would have meant even more men killed or taken prisoner.
 
Would he become a Whig? Could he accumulate enough battlefield glory to have a shot at the premiership, like Wellington?

Depends. It was Waterloo which clinched it for Wellington, not Vitoria. What you need is for Moore to go up against Napoeleon and win a striking victory.
 
Just a question:

If Moore fights and survives at Corruna is it really a cirtainty that he will command the British in the Peninsula?

He was retreating from Napoleon when the battle took place and, as far as I know, the British were pulling out of Spain. Would this campaign not be seen as a failure highlighted only by Victory at Corruna?

Besides which Wellesley has already proven himself capable of defeating the French (the Battle of Roliça and the Battle of Vimeiro) and shortly after the Battle of Corruna he submitted a memorandum to Lord Castlereagh on the defence of Portugal, stressing its mountainous frontiers and advocating Lisbon as the main base because the Royal Navy could make it impregnable. This memorandum would directly lead to Wellesley assuming command of all British forces in Portugal.

Is it not possible then that Wellesley would still take command in the Peninsular and Moore used elsewhere? Perhaps, a little later, in America during the War of 1812
 
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