Moore, John , Sir (1761 -1809)
John Moore was born in Glasgow, the third, but eldest surviving son of John Moore (1729-1802), a doctor and author of Zeluco, and elder brother of Admiral Sir Graham Moore and James Carrick Moore. His mother was Jean Simson. He attended Glasgow High School, but at the age of eleven joined his father and Douglas, the young sixteen-year-old 8th Duke of Hamilton, (1756–1799), his father's pupil, on a grand tour of France, Italy and Germany, including a two-year stay in Geneva, where Moore's education continued.
He joined the British Army in 1776 as an ensign in Minorca. He first saw action in 1778 during the American War of Independence as a lieutenant in the 82nd Regiment of Foot, which was raised in Lanarkshire for service in North America by the 8th Duke of Hamilton. After the war he returned to Britain , in 1783, and in 1784 was elected to Parliament as the Member for Lanark Burghs, a seat he held until 1790.
In 1791 his unit was assigned to the Mediterranean where he was involved in campaigning in Corsica and was wounded at Calvi. Friction between Moore and the new British viceroy of Corsica led to his recall and posting to the West Indies under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1796. Moore played a leading role in the British reconquest of St. Lucia, from a group of slave rebels, but he fell ill with yellow fever and returned to Britain. In 1798, he was made Major-General and served in the suppression of the republican rebellion in Ireland.
He recovered from serious injury sustained during the Helder Expedition of 1799 to lead the 52nd regiment during the British campaign in Egypt against the French. He returned to Great Britain in 1803 to command a brigade at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Folkestone, where he established the innovative training regime that produced Britain's first permanent light infantry regiments.
On 14 November 1804 Moore was made a baronet. He chose as supporters of his arms “a light infantry soldier, as being colonel of the first light infantry regiment, and a 92nd highlander, in gratitude and acknowledgment of two soldiers of that regiment who saved my life in Holland, 2 October 1799”.
In 1808 he took command of the British forces in the Iberian peninsula. In the battle of Corunna, he was mortally wounded by a cannon shot that struck his breast. He lived only a few more hours. After the British evacuation of the town, the French commander Marshall Soult ordered a monument to be built over his grave.
In his native Glasgow he is commemorated by a statue in George Square, and in England by a monument in St Paul's Cathedral.