The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  *

  The morning’s firing had not heralded a general action. The French still had men and equipment they wanted to bring up. Moore’s plan of defence, as day turned into evening, was based on a string of hills behind the port which, like two great arms, protected the harbour. The only real weakness in this position was where the arms met, where a small river called the Monelos cut through the massif and ran down to the Bay of Corunna. If the French could batter their way through this natural opening in their defences, the withdrawal of much of Moore’s infantry would be threatened. Soult could then hope to capture a few thousand of them and his already considerable prestige would be further enhanced. The tactical soundness of his plan was typical of the man, for he had risen by grasping the detail of successful military operations while leaving their overall direction to the emperor. Napoleon himself had broken off the chase when it had become apparent that he and his Guard could not catch up with Moore. He did not want the British to have the satisfaction of escaping him in person, so he had ordered Soult, whose troops nicknamed him the ‘Iron Hand’, to continue the pursuit.

  As Soult surveyed the Bay of Corunna with his Staff, messengers kept him abreast of the march of his army. Like many of Napoleon’s principal lieutenants, Marshal Soult had accumulated wealth and titles during the previous decade’s campaigning. He had dressed his young aides-de-camp in a striking uniform of his own design, with blue shakos and yellow coats. Their outfit was against regulations, but ma foi, these ADCs were his personal representatives after all. The Marshal himself wore his dark-blue general’s coat and clad his bow legs with white breeches. As he gave orders in his southern French accent, he cut a fine enough figure on horseback, his head crowned with black curls and a handsome decoration on his breast. Soult’s confidence was not just superficial, for his generals of brigade and division were similarly experienced. Each knew his place within the Napoleonic system of war and each was the veteran of many battles. These men had beaten the Russians, Austrians and Prussians, why should the British worry them unduly?

  In the early hours of the 16th, the British general was woken by one of his Staff with an important dispatch. He still hoped he might not have to fight. ‘Now, if there’s no bungling,’ said Moore as his assistant went to leave, ‘I don’t see why we should not all be off safely tomorrow.’

  This was not to be. Under the cover of darkness, the French had been working to make an attack possible on the weak point of the British line. Soult ordered ten cannons to be heaved up the heights of Penasquedo, a ridge overlooking the Menelos gap. The gunners slaved away in the pitch black, using their shoulders, ropes, blocks, tackle and gun spikes to get their pieces into range.

  Even after dawn on 16 January, Soult was not ready to order his attack. At first light, a young French light infantry officer, rejoicing under the name of Louis Florimond Fantin des Odoards, looked down from the Penasquedo to the British positions. He recalled in his memoirs that

  as a light fog dispersed, an eminently picturesque view appeared to us. On the opposing heights were English troops, and beyond one could see the city of Corunna, its port and bay crowded with countless ships. A clear sky, brilliant sunshine and all of the warmth of early spring completed the panorama. Nothing broke the complete silence that reigned in the valley between the two armies.

  Soult’s brushes with Moore’s rearguard had taught him that any engagement with the British had to be carefully prepared. The French marshal was bringing up a force of infantry not much larger than the 14,000 on the British side. It was in artillery and cavalry that he had a decided superiority: more than four times as many guns and a force of three divisions of horse; 4,500 fine troops. Soult had a keen military mind. It had led him to the command of that great self-contained military organism that was the French corps d’armée* at the same age at which Scovell, from similarly humble origins, was languishing within his own organization. Since the British effectively occupied only one of the two ridges behind the city (the easternmost, or left, from the perspective of the British general looking south), he intended to strike in the low ground between them. He would use an initial infantry assault to pin the British down while the cavalry were pushed into the gap made by the Menelos to cut off Moore’s line of retreat. All the time, the British battalions, standing in lines two men deep and 300 to 400 wide would be pounded by a hot fire from the Penasquedo ridge.

  The French hid their intentions sufficiently well for Moore to resolve, on the morning of 16 January, to begin withdrawing his men in preparation for boarding, starting with Paget’s Division. They were at the rear of the British position (closest to the port) and were the best-placed troops to foil Soult’s plan and plug the Menelos gap. It may also have been that Soult, lacking decisive infantry superiority and contemplating a difficult assault, was waiting for precisely such a diminution of Moore’s troops before ordering the attack. Paget’s men had actually been marched to the port when the sound of a heavy cannonade late in the morning caused them to halt.

  As the French guns opened up from the Penasquedo ridge, they sent cannonballs slamming into the British ranks. The standard French field piece was an eight-pounder. Its rounds were about the diameter of a small grapefruit. The mass of these solid metal spheres was, of course, considerably greater. If an eight-pound shot hit a file of men standing one behind the other, it could easily kill a dozen before it lost momentum. The range from the Penasquedo ridge to the British lines, about 500 metres, was well within the eight-pounder’s effective killing area.

  With the cannon dealing death from above, French troops, who had been waiting just out of view, began walking down the Penasquedo in battle formation. Captain Fantin des Odoards’s battalion of the 31st Light Infantry was among the leading units and he noted:

  to reach the enemy position, we had to go into a deep gully and climb its other side. At the same time, a powerful battery thundered from the heights we had left towards those of the English; they responded with a hot fire, and it was under a canopy of cannonballs criss-crossing over our heads that we reached the enemy position.

  The French veterans were sufficiently used to the demented whizz of cannonballs not to slacken their pace. They kept marching forward. On the British slope, soldiers were ducking down as the eight-pound shot began to smack into the bodies and limbs of their comrades. Moore appeared on horseback, apparently oblivious to danger, and tried to reasssure them that the terrifying noise made by a cannonball signified that it had already passed overhead.

  At the foot of the British-held slope was the village of Elviña. Soult needed to capture it in order to secure the flank of his own cavalry force, which was going to rush past it, into the Menelos gap. Early on, the French took the village and it was in Elviña that the heaviest fighting of the day raged. British troops were ordered to counter-attack. As they began walking towards Elviña, the 42nd Highlanders (the famous Black Watch) and the 50th Foot had to endure heavy fire from the French battery overlooking them on the Penasquedo.

  Many officers on the British side had noted the ‘miraculous transformation’ of men they had seen straggling into Corunna a couple of days before. In truth, the ranks of redcoats contained many who were longing for a fight. Nothing else compensated for the privations of campaigning in the same way. The marching of the previous two months had worn them out, body and soul. They had seen the French many times, but whenever battle had seemed imminent they were ordered about and on their way towards the coast again. Many, officers and men, thought it had all been dishonourable and pointless. Now the banging of cannon was reminding them of their purpose. Still, Moore must have had his concerns, watching a group of Highlanders recoil in horror as one of their comrades crumpled, screaming, to the ground, his leg carried off by a cannonball. The general steadied the Scots, calling out to the wounded man, ‘My good fellow, don’t make such a noise, we must bear these things better.’ His troops did not disappoint him.

  As each victim of the French cannon was claimed, t
he advancing men shuffled towards the colours flying at the centre of their battalion, closing ranks. In that way, a continuous line of muskets was maintained, despite the losses. The weapons they carried were useless beyond 200 yards and could only be discharged with devastating effect when fired en masse at half or even one quarter of that distance.

  The 42nd and 50th took Elviña from the French, only to come under a heavy counter-attack. This contest was a savage affair, soldiers impaling one another on bayonets and the French moving several guns forward so that they could rake the buildings with grape shot. When a battery was charged with these munitions, it spewed out dozens of smaller balls, turning the cannon into giant fowling pieces. Each discharge of grape into Elviña sent shards of stone and plaster flying off the buildings, lacerating the British troops with this debris and choking them in dust and smoke. It did not take long for this punishment to drive them out of the village. The two battalions were suffering heavily. The Highlanders had 150 men killed and wounded in this action; the 50th, 185 men (casualties of between one in five and one in four of those fighting).

  General Moore rode close to the scene of the action to order a brigade of two Guards battalions to counter-attack and retake Elviña. The general sent Captain Hardinge, his ADC, to bring up one of the Guards units. As the young staff officer reported back to his chief on the slope above the village, they were within full view of the French batteries overlooking the area. Hardinge recorded what happened next:

  I was pointing out to the general the situation of the battalion, when a shot from the enemy’s battery carried off his left shoulder and part of his collar bone. The violence of the shock threw him off his horse; but not a muscle of his face altered, nor did a sigh betray the least sensation of pain. The blood flowed fast, but the attempt to stop it with my sash was useless from the size of the wound.

  Carried from the field, Moore remained conscious as the British fought their way back into Elviña and the momentum of the French attack slowly died away. After Paget’s Division marched back up from the port and plugged the gap in the British defences made by the Menelos river, the French cavalry sent to break through in this direction came under heavy fire and retired.

  As night fell, fighting ebbed away and Moore lay dying in a Spanish house, attended by a surgeon and some of his staff officers. It had been immediately apparent to everyone, not least the general himself, that his terrible wound was a mortal one. He was barely able to speak, but when news was brought to him that the French had been hammered to a standstill, Moore whispered, ‘I hope the people of England will be satisfied.’

  With the hills enveloped in darkness, General John Hope, who had taken over command, began the difficult task of extricating his troops. He was well aware of the danger that the French might attempt further assaults if they detected this movement, so sentries engaged in a charade of noisy calling between posts and stoking of camp fires while the bulk of their comrades filed off.

  The British soldiers passing through Corunna at dawn on the 17th presented a most sorry spectacle. They had looked dreadful even before the battle. One eyewitness noted: ‘they were all in tatters, hollow-eyed, covered with blood and filth. They looked so terrible that the people of Corunna made the sign of the cross as they passed.’

  Up on the Penasquedo ridge, the French spent a fitful night. The men of the 31st Light Infantry shared around some rough wine and stale bread and, one of their captains remembered,

  recounting the day’s events, and mourning comrades who had stood on the threshold of their careers. Behind the camp, in some ruins, was our dressing station. The cries of the unfortunates suffering amputation there, carried by the gusts of a strong wind, did not lighten our insomnia. Towards midnight the enemy’s fires began going out; by day we were surprised to see their embarkation had been carried out in the darkness.

  On the morning of the 17th, Soult, seeing the British had abandoned their positions, moved his batteries forward on to a promontory overlooking the harbour.

  *

  The moment of Scovell’s private anxiety had arrived. He assembled his Guides near the waiting boats. He had been ordered not to take the dozen or so Spaniards home, although some of them pleaded to be allowed to go with the Army. Instead, they were each paid a bounty of fourteen Spanish dollars, signed for their money and disappeared into the streets of Corunna. But the others had to be got on board quickly since they were Italians and Swiss who had deserted the French and given good service to the British Army. Scovell calmed them. But while he was trying to organize the Guides, the bay thundered with an echo of French guns.

  For an instant it looked as if the worst fears of the officers organizing the embarkation would be realized. Some of the inexperienced masters of merchantmen panicked, cutting their cables in an attempt to escape the shot and make their way out to sea. One officer wrote, ‘everybody commanded, everybody fired, everybody hallooed, everybody ordered silence, everybody forbade the fire’. In this chaos, four of the small transports ran aground. Sailors were dispatched in longboats to rescue the crews and passengers of these striken vessels. Some of the Royal Navy escorts began responding with a heavy cannonade towards the French batteries. As the grounded merchantmen were cleared of passengers, they were set on fire to prevent them becoming prizes of the French. Soon the bay was full of smoke, the thundering of heavy guns and the cries of men in longboats trying to find space on board the few ships not full or getting under way.

  With the harbour itself becoming unsafe, the Staff decided to switch the embarkation to the other side of the Corunna isthmus. This was risky, since there was no quay there and the rocks which were to be used as a makeshift jetty would answer for this purpose for just a few hours at high tide. Scovell moved his anxious Guides across to this new place, where, to his immense relief, they were taken off on the evening of 17 January.

  Scovell left it as late as he safely could, when all but a couple of thousand British troops were afloat, before taking a longboat out to Implacable, an impressive seventy-four-gun line-of-battle ship of the Royal Navy squadron. Early on the 18th, the last British troops embarked; several officers (including the dashing Captain Warre) claiming in their journals and letters home the honour of being the last man to leave. For these ambitious young bloods, it was important that their patrons learn of this gallant act as quickly as possible, so that they might circulate the story in the salons. Alas for Warre and the others, it was to be Hardinge, eyewitness to Moore’s death, who would be in demand at many a general’s table when they returned home, since everyone wanted to hear his melancholy tale.

  What could have been on Scovell’s mind as he sat down later to an unpalatable meal in Implacable’s wardroom, exhausted from forty-eight hours without sleep and the strain of organizing the safe retreat? Relief at the imminent return home to his wife Mary? General Moore, his admired superior, was dead. The British expedition into the Iberian Peninsula had been a failure vitiated only by the heroic performance of the British infantry behind Corunna and the hussars during the retreat. Many of the regimental officers were whispering about the Staff’s incompetence. His own role was known to a few, Murray among them, but was hardly the sort of glorious thing that brought promotion. Scovell’s personal fortunes were as low as they had ever been.

  It can be safely assumed that he was not in high spirits at the prospects opening up before him, but he could not have known that his stay in England would be shortlived. Within weeks, he would be at sea again on a new expedition.

  NOTES

  1 ‘He had his own private worry about the embarkation’: Scovell made this concern explicit in his journal.

  2 ‘Hardinge recorded what happened next’: Henry Hardinge’s memo on the death of Moore is quoted in the biography written by his son, the Second Viscount Hardinge.

  3 ‘recounting the day’s events, and mourning comrades who had stood on the threshold of their careers’: this comes from the memoirs of Louis Florimond Fantin des Odoards of the (Fren
ch) 31st Light Infantry.

  4 ‘Italians and Swiss who had deserted the French and given good service to the British Army’: details of the early Guides are contained in Scovell’s papers.

  – ‘several officers (including the dashing Captain Warre) claiming in their journals and letters home the honour of being the last man to leave’: evidence may be found in his and Gomm’s respective journals.

  * Army corps, an assembly of two or more infantry divisions, light cavalry and artillery. Its numbers could vary from 10,000 to 75,000.

  1. 249. 1076. 718. T. 1082. 365. 622. 699. 655. 699. 439. 669. 655. 1085. 398. 326. 13. 309. I. 1085. 655. 249. 481. T. 980. 985. 186. T. 843. 688. 2. 718. 249. 1297. 536. 174. 1085. 1024 … 713. T. 980. 854. 655. 326. 536. 700. 699. 171. 1015. 1003. 13. T. 980. 1015. 131. T.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Interlude in England, January–March 1809

  Just a few days after Corunna, ships started appearing in ports along the south coast of England. Many commanding officers would not let their men off until there had been a chance to have them cleaned up and dressed in new uniforms. But in some places the barefoot ragamuffins of Moore’s army were marched past shocked townsfolk and into barracks. If the Spanish had been moved to make the sign of the cross, it can be imagined what an impression these survivors made in the lanes of southern England.