The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  * That under Victor did briefly enter Portugal.

  † Derived from the Spanish for French, ‘frances’, this might be loosely defined as ‘the French party’ or ‘French lovers’.

  1. 249. 1076. N. T. 1082. 365. 622. W. 655. W. 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. W. 171. 1015. 1003. 13. T. 980. 1015. 131. T.

  CHAPTER SIX

  From Talavera to the End of the 1809 Campaign

  Scovell’s stay in Lisbon had proven a fruitful and agreeable interlude. His business was transacted as swiftly as was possible with the Portuguese war ministry, but none the less required him to remain there twelve days. Scovell took the opportunity to explore the city’s streets. Lisbon in 1809 was a place of considerable bustle, colour and adventure. It had palaces, fine avenues and narrow backstreets. Many of the public buildings dating from the wealthy days of the previous century had been built in the Portuguese baroque style, with soaring colonnaded façades. As they moved away from the pungent aromas of the river quay, visitors found themselves seduced by more pleasant smells of strong coffee and fresh pastries.

  One morning, Scovell walked up into the Bairro Alto, the city’s high quarter, and found his way to the church of São Roque. Its nondescript appearance concealed an interior adorned with mosaic works of astonishing intricacy, that defied the observer to distinguish them from paintings. São Roque’s baroque altar is a masterpiece of decoration and proportion. He declared, ‘nothing can be more beautiful or wonderful’, and marvelled that the French had not pillaged the art works during their brief occupation of Lisbon the previous summer.

  Scovell was not the only red-coated captain tramping the streets of Lisbon that June. The city had already had a year in which to become used to British officers: many were passing through, going to or from the fighting; others belonged to that habitual class of shirkers to be found to the rear of any army engaged in operations. Captain Moyle Sherer of the 34th Foot had just disembarked with his regiment and was preparing to move towards the Spanish border. He, too, walked up to see São Roque, being struck not just by the art but by the flirtatious glances of young Portuguese women, peering out from their mantillas and followed out of the church by their Brazilian maids.

  Sherer and Scovell were in a minority in their readiness to drink in the culture, sights and language of the Portuguese. Sherer records returning to dinner with his brother officers where he found

  some of our party had been very differently impressed with the morning’s ramble to what I had been. They drew comparisons between London and Lisbon exultingly … they had only seen the heaps of dirt … a squalid beggar … or been saluted by some unfortunate puff of air, impregnated with garlic.

  Predictably, these very superior English gentlemen had also complained loudly about the food before retiring to the São Carlos theatre for an evening’s amusement.

  Nights at the opera were one of the principal distractions for bachelor British officers, often raucously drunk. The São Carlos had been modelled on Milan’s La Scala, and its programme was mainly of Italian light opera. Although the air may have been close in this packed auditorium on a midsummer’s night, the audience’s behaviour was anything but stuffy. The British officers made eyes at the Portuguese maidens up in their family boxes, tried to force their way into the stars’ dressing-rooms after the entertainments and were even sometimes to be seen caterwauling on stage. Wellesley became so exasperated at the repeated reports of misbehaviour that he wrote with his distinctive blend of caustic disapproval and mordant wit to the senior officer in Lisbon:

  it has been mentioned to me that the British officers who are in Lisbon are in the habit of going to the theatres, where some of them conduct themselves in a very improper manner, much to the annoyance of the public and to the injury of the proprietors and performers … The officers of the army can have nothing to do behind the scenes and it is very improper that they should appear upon stage during the performance. They must be aware that the British public would not bear either the one or the other, and I see no reason why the Portuguese public should be worse treated.*

  The recipient of this letter, Colonel Peacock, posted armed sentries at the stage door of the São Carlos. If the episode reflects something deeper than the perennial struggle to limit the discord between soldiers and civilians, it is that the British commander had realized early on that many of his officers were as much of a liability in their dealings with the Portuguese or Spanish as the private soldiers who plundered the countryside. Wellesley was already quite familiar with the figure of the Briton abroad trying to make himself understood by repeating the same English phrase louder and louder until his perspiring face turned the same colour as his regimental coat. He would later write to Colonel Peacock: ‘I am sorry to say that our officers are too much disposed to treat with contempt all foreigners.’ When this subsequent row (concerning the use of a Portuguese barracks building) occurred, Wellesley recommended officers of the QMG’s department as the only ones that could be relied upon to deal with the Portuguese in a professional manner. Even in the summer of 1809, he was acting on the principle that officers of this branch could be depended upon to deal professionally with Iberian allies.

  By late June 1809, George Scovell was completing his mission to Lisbon. He had arranged uniforms for his men: brown cavalry jackets with red collars and cuffs, trimmed with black lace and leather helmets crested with a comb of fur like those of the British Light Dragoons. It was not as fantastic as some of the get-ups of the French guides and éclaireurs,† who had a truly élite status in the HQs of some of Napoleon’s generals, but it was distinctive enough. The Guides’ jacket’s resemblance to that of the Portuguese light infantry, and the British-style helmet, also signified its mixed parentage as a child of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance.

  *

  Throughout the first half of July, Scovell trained his men at the camp of Abrantes. They stayed behind as Wellesley and the main Army struck out, intent on a rendezvous with the Spanish General Cuesta so that they might bring the French to a general action. Many, no doubt, had to be taught even how to stay on the horses that Scovell had bought them. There was sword drill and some basic instruction in manoeuvring. They needed to be schooled in the basics of mounted soldiering, even if the Guides’ commander knew that his men were destined to be posted in penny packets around the army and it was most unlikely that they would ever act as a united force on the battlefield. Some of the training must have been designed with the very specific tasks of the Guides in mind. Officers had to be taught how to prepare reconnaissance reports for their British generals. All of the men had to learn how the British system of military communications would work. Relays were to be used to carry orders over long distances. They would be positioned at a particular inn or farmhouse, and each packet of dispatches was to carry a ticket on which its progress along this chain would be noted. In this way, Scovell, Murray and even Wellesley would be able to monitor the men’s activities and if any mail ever went missing could detect fairly precisely where and at what time such an ominous event might have happened.

  On 19 July, Scovell set off to join the Army at the head of his Guides. They followed in Wellesley’s tracks into New Castile along the higher Tagus valley, practically the route between Lisbon and Madrid. This was not easy country, as it consisted of many hills carved through by deep river courses.

  The commandant of the corps of Guides led his hundred or so troopers through spectacular scenery towards their rendezvous with Headquarters. There were familiar faces in the ranks – some of the Italians who had endured those nerve-racking hours on the quayside of Corunna – and there were new ones. All had been united in the brown uniform of Scovell’s new command. A clatter of hooves and jingling of the men’s accoutrements announced the progress of the Anglo-Portuguese army’s latest squadron. Their journey took more than one week, for as th
e Guides set out from Portugal, the main Army had once again moved further forward into Spain.

  Since leaving Abrantes, Wellesley had marched his 21,000 troops onwards with the aim of uniting with one of the Spanish armies that had survived the first two years of campaigning and lurked in corners of the country that remained unconquered by the French. The British general wanted to join forces with the Spanish Army of Estremadura and move towards Madrid. This threat to King Joseph’s seat of government would then force the French to unite forces in defence of their capital, so easing the pressure on those areas that had still not fallen under French control. This strategy was similar to General Sir John Moore’s advance at the end of 1808, a sally into northern Spain that the dead general’s partisans (Scovell among them) credited with saving southern Iberia from invasion. Wellesley’s thrust, seven months later, took advantage of a more favourable strategic picture. Napoleon had left Spain early in 1809, taking with him thousands of picked troops of his Old Guard and much heavy cavalry. The emperor’s departure left his forces in Spain without a dominating leader and scattered more thinly. But while the strategic climate for Wellesley’s advance was more favourable than it had been for Moore, his relations with Britain’s supposed allies were to prove equally poor.

  On 10 July, the British commander had set out to meet the leader of this Army of Estremadura, General Cuesta, only to get lost on the way, a mishap Scovell must surely have thanked the heavens that neither he nor his Guides had anything to do with. Once he had met the Spanish general, Wellesley was exasperated to find him choleric, obstinate and apparently determined to assert his independence from British orders at all times. There was one immediate benefit from the junction with Cuesta’s army, however. It provided Wellesley with a healthier flow of intelligence, so he appreciated they were about to take on a French army of around 45,000 men. Faced with the problems of coordinating his troops, King Joseph had gone forward from Madrid to take personal command. It is a measure of the success of Wellesley’s gamble up until mid-July that the French had to assemble their forces at Talavera de la Reyna, two thirds of the distance between the Portuguese border and Madrid.

  Much to Scovell’s regret, his Mounted Guides only reached the Army as the general action sought by Wellesley was almost over, on 28 July. The British commander had deployed his forces in a defensive line three miles long, running north from Talavera to the Sierra de Segurilla. The topography made it very hard for the French to go around either end of this line. Wellesley’s northern flank was protected by the rocky hills of the sierra while its southern end was anchored on the city of Talavera itself, which stood astride the great River Tagus. Even the central section of this line afforded advantages to the defender, for there was a little brook running from north to south that was difficult to cross in some sections. In one place, where the British and Spanish armies met (about one mile north of the city), Wellesley had improved upon this formidable natural position by ordering the construction of an earthen redoubt containing several cannon.

  The French had assaulted the Anglo-Spanish defensive position during the 28th and been driven off. Both sides had been almost too eager to fight. One French corps had attacked precipitately on the evening of the 27th, and the British 1st Division had mounted an attack at one moment on the 28th without being ordered to do so, carrying them across the brook that marked the front of Wellesley’s position, where they received a bloody check. The price for this almost savage determination to lock horns with the old enemy was heavy casualties on both sides: 7,268 French and 5,365 British.

  In his dispatch to London, Wellesley promptly declared a victory, and indeed it had been one in the sense that the Anglo-Spanish had withstood a determined assault by the conquerors of Europe. They had also inflicted greater casualties upon the French. But it was the kind of victory that Wellesley had no desire to repeat: it was too costly, for too little strategic gain. The principal lesson he drew from Talavera was that there was absolutely no point in cooperating further with the Spanish, many of whom had fled the battlefield.

  The Army’s officers also knew that the butcher’s bill paid by Wellesley had resulted in part from all the amateurishness already detected in the Oporto campaign. In addition to the heavy losses taken as a result of the unauthorized advance of the 1st Division (including the Guards) on the 28th, there had been incidents of British units opening fire on one another by mistake on the 27th and of the Army’s followers joining the flight of several thousand Spanish troops.

  As Wellesley pulled back from the battlefield, he saw an opportunity to seek a smaller battle, at much more favourable odds: a way to cap the campaign with something altogether more clear-cut. He knew from Marshal Soult’s letters captured with General Franceschi that his corps had been moving south-east from its position on Portugal’s northern border towards his own area of operations. Subsequent reports from the Spanish peasantry had confirmed the arrival of French troops just a couple of marches distant from the line of British communications back into Portugal. General Wellesley assumed that Soult’s corps (the 2nd, which had survived May’s campaign in northern Portugal) would still be in a parlous state after its narrow escape. But just a few days into his march, on 3 August, Wellesley’s plan was thrown out.

  A couple of days earlier, some Spanish guerrillas in Avila had detained a monk travelling on one of the dusty roads in that corner of the country. What had aroused their suspicions? An implausible manner? Perhaps a spoken Castilian that showed a little too much education, or was it an unlikely travelling itinerary? With drawn weapons, they searched the man thoroughly and found that he was carrying a message from King Joseph to Marshal Soult. It may safely be assumed that the messenger, an afrancesado or Spanish collaborator, was swiftly put to death. His precious package was sent to General Cuesta without delay. Fortunately for Wellesley, relations between the two men had not yet deteriorated to the point that Cuesta did not realize the import of this windfall and he informed the British commander immediately.

  Joseph’s letter urged Soult to move rapidly to cut off Wellesley’s line of withdrawal. The arrival of this intercepted message caused consternation at British Headquarters. It revealed that Soult was not just in command of his own battered corps of 18,000 but also of Marshal Ney’s, a combined strength of 30,000 men. Since there were only 18,000 British under Wellesley’s command, it was only by the capture of Joseph’s secret messenger that a disaster had been averted.

  Once back at Headquarters, Scovell resumed his many duties mapping, exploring and generally involving himself in the business of communications. His Guides were scattered in their penny packets across the Army. They were sent in fours or fives to each division and to the way-houses and stopping-points on the stages that connected these forces.

  *

  By 3 September, British Headquarters had been established at Badajoz, a fortified Spanish town close to the border with Portugal, withdrawing from active operations for the remainder of the campaigning season. During August, the Army faced considerable supply difficulties in Spain. These would only intensify with the onset of autumn, as the fields were bare. Wellesley knew that if he was to feed his troops and their horses he would have to take them back, closer to the Portuguese harbours.

  As for the Headquarters itself, its arrival at each new location during the last months of 1809 followed a familiar ritual. Firstly, an AQMG or a Deputy Assistant, accompanied by a Guide, the mayor or some other worthy, would locate suitable premises. Large farms, convents or the mayor’s own residence might all answer for the purpose. The staff officer would then go around the new HQ and its surrounding buildings, chalking the names of particular officers or staff on the doors. When the Headquarter’s baggage arrived on its carts and beasts of burden, the servants would then begin unloading effects into these preassigned quarters. There was not a vast disparity between the retinues of the highest and lowest in this entourage. Scovell travelled with his servant, Healey, and two horses. His commanding general eschew
ed grandeur in the field, usually with half a dozen servants of the human variety and seven or eight of the equine.

  The day after his arrival at Badajoz, Wellesley was created Viscount Wellington in honour of Talavera. The transformation from a vaguely familiar to a household name was appropriate at this moment for it was during the last months of 1809 that he would make decisions about the future of the Army under his command that would ensure his entry into the pantheon of great military leaders.

  By the time of his peerage, Wellington had been campaigning for five months; the Army and its general had got to know one another rather better. In action on the Douro or Talavera, many regimental officers had noted the general’s superb grip on his men as well as his air of calm even at times of crisis. One young captain wrote:

  I was particularly struck by the style of [his] order, so decided, so manly, and breathing no doubt as to the repulse of any attack; it confirmed confidence … he has nothing of the truncheon about him; nothing full mouthed, important, or fussy: his orders on the field are all short, quick, clear, and to the purpose.

  Wellington had also cast his merciless gaze on the Army and spotted many of his generals for the plodders or incompetents that they were. Perhaps it is unsurprising that in the case of the Army’s Adjutant-General, Major-General Charles Stewart, five months had sufficed to convince Wellington that he was an overdressed buffoon.

  Stewart’s desire to question prisoners was too important a matter to be overlooked, particularly since episodes like his interview with General Franceschi had convinced Wellington of his incompetence. Lord Wellington later gave this account of a furious row: