The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  I found him full of the pretensions of this Department of his, although he and it and all of them were under my orders and at my disposal … At last I was obliged to say that if he did not at once confess his error and promise to obey my orders frankly and cordially I would dismiss him instanter and send him to England in arrest. After a great deal of persuasion he burst out crying and begged my pardon.

  Wellington had gambled correctly in thinking that Stewart would do almost anything to avoid being sent home in disgrace, and rather than simply dismissing him – Stewart was Lord Castlereagh’s brother, after all – Wellington tried to sideline him from any significant military business. Stewart may not have been bright, but by September 1809 even he realized that his commander was not interested in seeking his opinion or even talking to him very much. The exacting task Wellington had in mind for him was the weekly adding-up of soldiers in the Army, based on returns from the different regiments. Stewart wrote from Badajoz to his brother, Lord Castlereagh, complaining:

  the Adjutant-General, deprived of close communication with the head of the army, is reduced to keeping accurately the returns of all descriptions of regiments … you will admit it does not carry with it interesting or pleasing occupation.

  Wellington’s ‘Stewart method’ was copied in various departments of Headquarters and divisions of the Army. In most cases, though, it seems to have been achieved without reducing the generals in question to tears. He had contempt for incompetence, but rather than risk scandal, Wellington allowed such men to serve on in some posts, and simply made sure that underneath this titular commander there was someone he could rely upon.

  Affairs were happy enough in the Quartermaster-General’s branch. Both George Murray, its head, and William De Lancey, his deputy, fitted Wellington’s bill down to the ground: they were active, handsome men of good family. The QMG branch became his principal organization for getting things done.

  While Wellington used his more zealous Assistant or Deputy Assistant QMGs ceaselessly, and understood their professional merits, he could not necessarily conceive of them as the best company at mealtimes or indeed as the stuff of which future generals were made. Those who would make their way in the Army hierarchy required both a modicum of military competence and breeding, in his view. ‘If there is to be any influence in the disposal of military patronage, in aid of military merits,’ Wellington asked rhetorically of one of his correspondents in London, ‘can there be any in our army so legitimate as that of family connection, fortune and influence in the country?’ By these criteria, Murray and De Lancey were sitting pretty. There were also the young men sent out to learn generalship at his feet, the aides-de-camp. Their numbers included sons of most of the great Tory landowning families of the day. As for someone like Scovell, his only ‘family connection’ was with the Lancashire property of his wife Mary’s clan. If he were to bridge the chasm between his actual social position and the kind Wellington thought desirable for promotion, Scovell must have understood that only ceaseless dedication to the organization of Headquarters and perhaps valour on the battlefield would suffice.

  Mealtimes were the main ritual of the day at Headquarters, and the staff officer sent ahead to find quarters always had to make sure that there was somewhere suitable for the general’s table. The usual coterie at dinner was drawn largely from among Wellington’s aides-de-camp, although others, including Scovell, were often present.

  The mood of the assembly varied according to the news Wellington had read in the London newspapers and the general state of the war. Earlier that summer, he had been in high spirits, as the Austrians battered Napoleon at the Battle of Aspern-Essling. By September, though, Napoleon had turned the tables on the Hapsburgs, who had been forced to conclude an unfavourable peace. The long-awaited British military expedition in northern Europe, a landing in Holland, had turned into the usual fiasco. They had failed to cause any noticeable diversion in support of the Austrians, and the Navy had returned the Army to southern England with thousands of its men dying of malaria. In London, the prime minister had suffered a stroke and the government was in imminent danger of collapse.

  Those who received these dining-table morsels of bad news from their general were most often the ruddy-cheeked young scions of Britain’s great political and aristocratic families serving as his ADCs. Wellington sometimes called them ‘my boys’ and, like all proud fathers, looked to them for a reflection of his own youthful perfection. He was already becoming estranged from his wife Kitty and his own children seemed to fascinate him less than those of his military family.

  FitzRoy Somerset, the youngest son of the Duke of Beaufort, became his firm favourite. When Headquarters reached Badajoz, he was still only twenty-one years old and a captain. He had little idea of campaigning and no formal military education. He owed everything to birth and interest. His position on the Staff had been obtained on the recommendation of the Duke of Richmond, who wrote to Wellington that Somerset was ‘an active and intelligent fellow and is anxious to go on service’. The commander of forces could hardly refuse, since he had been working for the duke, who was Ireland Secretary, until shortly before the campaign. Although Somerset had been commissioned into the Army five years before, he had been on almost continuous leave, precisely the kind of practice that fed the calls for reform of the officer corps.

  Although dilatory about his military duties, Somerset had acquired the engaging manner and ready humour indispensable for survival as the youngest of nine brothers. His family regarded him as nice but somewhat hopeless. Wellington had also been eclipsed for years by his older brothers and his mother had written dismissively, ‘anyone can see he has not the cut of a soldier’. There was another similarity more obvious to those dining around the commander’s table. Somerset’s hooked nose and arresting eyes suggested a young Wellington. His thick, tousled hair and good nature readily aroused a paternal love.

  Like his new patron, Somerset was no fool either. He was kind, considerate, good at languages and very discreet. He was soon acting as private secretary to the general in numerous delicate matters of politics and intelligence. Somerset’s charm won over even those he had eclipsed. FitzRoy’s original commission had been into the 4th Dragoons, Scovell’s old regiment, which was commanded by his older brother Lord Edward Somerset. While serving as Adjutant of the 4th, Scovell had got to know Edward and the Somerset family. He and FitzRoy were already corresponding during the captain’s studies at Wycombe. The young Somerset seems to have aroused some sort of paternal love in Scovell too. It was becoming clear by this time that he and Mary could only have children of their own by some miracle. Young FitzRoy’s perfect manners and his evident rapport with Lord Wellington allowed him to become the vehicle for a sort of vicarious ambition on Scovell’s part.

  So the man who apparently had nothing in the race for advancement now had the young FitzRoy Somerset; a connection who was becoming privy to the commander’s secrets and had his complete confidence. The wheel of fortune was beginning to turn and Scovell’s investment in a cavalry commission years earlier to pay dividends. Young Somerset may have had every advantage in life, but he had evidently seen Scovell’s talents for what they were and, when the time came, would be ready to share with him the toughest intelligence problem facing his commander.

  *

  As these relationships moved into alignment, the scheme of military operations that Wellington would pursue for the next two years also suddenly became clearer, to those in the know.

  In Badajoz, Wellington took stock of his Army’s situation. Since news had reached him of Austria’s defeat by Napoleon, it was clear that in 1810 the entire weight of the French military machine could once again be turned against him. Britain could not afford an army capable of meeting 100,000 Frenchmen in open battle. The Spanish army could not be relied upon in any way. The French, he deduced, could soon sweep aside the Spanish regular armies and fall upon him with considerable strength. Since he had no intention of engaging such a super
ior enemy force, he would probably have to withdraw to Lisbon and embark the British Army. Probably. As he considered the ignominy of a second Corunna, alternative strategies formed in his mind.

  If the Spanish could not be reckoned effective allies, a quite different picture had emerged with the Portuguese. Since July, Marshal William Beresford had been retraining these forces with the help of dozens of seconded British officers. Scovell’s classmate from the Royal Military College, Henry Hardinge, had joined this effort. He was serving as deputy to the Quartermaster-General of the Portuguese Army, Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin D’Urban, another Wycombite. Their reports to Wellington were sufficiently encouraging that Wellington decided (early in 1810) to incorporate a Portuguese brigade into each division of British infantry.

  On 20 October 1809, Wellington gave secret orders to his chief engineer, Colonel Fletcher, to begin the construction of a series of defensive lines just behind Lisbon. Fletcher was to be given enormous resources of labour, materials and cash to create a system of forts, ditches, inundations and other obstacles, the lines of Torres Vedras. Wellington reasoned that the further the French advanced into Portugal, the longer their lines of supply would be and the shorter his own. If he combined these defences with guerrilla action and devastation of what was already very poor countryside, the French would be starving by the time they reached the Torres Vedras. Their logistic predicament would force them either into a precipitate and extremely costly assault or leave them melting away.

  In order to delay the French entry into Portugal, and make it cost as much as possible, Wellington needed to defend the two natural gateways into the country. The northern one led from Castile across a barren heathland in the Portuguese Beira, down, south-west, through the hills to Lisbon. The southern route went from Badajoz in Spanish Estremadura, across the Alentejo plain to the mouth of the Tagus just south of Lisbon. Each of these gateways to Portugal was guarded by a powerful fortress: Almeida in the north and Elvas in the south. These places had been laid out according to eighteenth-century principles, being surrounded by deep ditches and armed with numerous walled bastions bristling with heavy guns. The capture of such a place was a major undertaking. Almeida and Elvas each had its twin on the Spanish side of the frontier, namely Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Each of these was somewhat weaker than its Portuguese counterpart. At the end of 1809, all these fortresses were still in the hands of their Portuguese and Spanish masters.

  While he prepared his defence in depth, at Torres Vedras (about one year before he would use it), Wellington also had to give urgent consideration to the issue of early warning for the border fortresses. If he knew sufficiently far in advance of an imminent French offensive and which of the two major invasion routes they were taking, he would enjoy enormous advantages. In the recriminations that had followed Talavera, he reported, ‘at present I have no intelligence whatsoever … as the Spaniards have defeated all my attempts to obtain any by stopping those who I send out to make enquiries’. The British commander knew he must develop his own network of spies and other methods for obtaining information.

  In the autumn of 1809 and the following winter, therefore, he sent out several ‘exploring officers’ who scouted no man’s land in uniform alone or with one or two orderlies. They ingratiated themselves with the Spanish authorities in the border region, observed what was going on and gathered reports of French movements. Brave as these men were, their grasp of languages was generally no greater than that of the average British officer. Others were needed to recruit and operate a spy network. Contact was made with Spanish civilians willing to relay reports and generous sums were promised: 100 dollars per month in one case (with supplementary payments of four dollars for each report received); £500 being assigned to the establishment of a circle of spies in another province.

  Wellington and the Staff, while committing bags of silver to this goal, were predisposed to view any intelligence it produced through spectacles tinted by their unfortunate experiences of the Spanish and Portuguese. Major William Warre told his father in a letter, ‘Spaniards more frequently report what they wish than what is true, as we all know to our cost.’

  Access to French messages was critical, Wellington himself noting:

  it is most difficult to form any judgement from the Spanish and Portuguese accounts of the strength of any French corps; and I generally form my estimates of their strength, not only from these accounts, but from intercepted letters.

  Already, Wellington was beginning to realize that access to his enemy’s mail presented him with the most valuable form of intelligence. Not only were these missives penned by the enemy’s commanders themselves and therefore free from Iberian exaggeration, but they might also give warning of a French action before it happened. The great majority of his spies and indeed his own observation officers, on the other hand, could only report the march of a French division once it had begun.

  The first task, therefore, was to get the guerrillas to hand over captured French dispatches to their people rather than to the Spanish army, thereby speeding up the whole process and keeping it free from allied interference. In part, this could be achieved simply by circulating the word that handsome amounts of silver would be placed in the hands of anyone providing such trophies. It would also require the British to form close relationships with some of the guerrilla commanders. This work was under way as 1809 slipped into 1810. The Portuguese Staff soon enjoyed a good flow of intelligence since its native officers could pass easily in the border area. Scovell’s Guides provided another answer, for some of his people were Spanish and thus the best choice to meet agents or their messengers and convey their information directly to Headquarters.

  It was in winter quarters that Wellington laid the foundations of his intelligence network and, more importantly, the strategy it was designed to serve. During the next two years, events would reveal the wisdom of his calculations.

  NOTES

  1 ‘Captain Moyle Sherer of the 34th Foot’: Sherer, Recollections of the Peninsula (originally published in London in 1823 and reprinted by Spellmount in 1996), along with Sergeant Cooper, Rough Notes on Seven Campaigns, republished by Spellmount in 1996.

  2 ‘I am sorry to say that our officers are too much disposed to treat with contempt all foreigners’: this statement by Wellington came in a letter of 8 October 1811, proof that Wellington judged all his people by harsh standards, not just the rank and file.

  – ‘He had arranged uniforms for his men: brown cavalry jackets with red collars and cuffs’: this is described both in the Scovell Papers and the memorandum of 1854 in the National Army Museum.

  3 ‘One young captain wrote’: this eloquent description comes from Captain Moyle Sherer and actually relates to the Battle of Busaco, early in 1810. I hope the reader will forgive me taking this chronological liberty.

  – ‘Lord Wellington later gave this account of a furious row’: this was related in John Wilson Croker’s memoir of the Duke of Wellington. Croker was one of several acquaintances who stepped in with their anecdotes when it became clear Wellington would never write memoirs of his own.

  4 ‘If there is to be any influence in the disposal of military patronage’: this comes from Wellington’s letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Torrens (the military secretary at Horse Guards, a man with considerable influence in the business of promotion) of 4 August 1810.

  5 ‘While serving as Adjutant of the 4th, Scovell had got to know Edward and the Somerset family’: it is quite possible that there was some earlier connection between the Duke of Beaufort’s family and that of Scovell, whose father hailed from Cirencester, just ten miles from the Badminton estate. Nevertheless, searches through the Beaufort family archives at that stately home by Mrs Margaret Richards (the present duke’s archivist) failed to turn up any link. Scovell senior was not a tenant of the Beaufort estate, nor does he seem to have been a member of the local gentry. Perhaps he was a tradesman who did business with the duke.

  6 ‘Contact was made with Spanis
h civilians willing to relay reports and generous sums were promised’: these details come from letters of 9 and 25 January 1810, in Dispatches.

  – ‘it is most difficult to form any judgement from the Spanish and Portuguese accounts of the strength of any French corps’: this quote from Wellington comes from a letter to Lieutenant-General Hill of 20 February 1810, in Dispatches.

  * The general added: ‘I have been concerned to see officers in uniform, with their hats on, upon the stage during the performance.’ I find the implication that this behaviour might have been more acceptable if hats were removed both hilarious and perplexing.

  † From ‘éclairer’, to enlighten or explore.

  PART II

  The Campaign of 1811 and the Evolution of French Codes

  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 SEVEN

  The Battle of Fuentes d’Onoro

  Before the first light of dawn, 5 May 1811, Captain Brotherton rode out with Don Julian to the furthest outpost. His short trip took him eastwards, through the copse of pygmy oaks and dense brush across the stream that the locals called the ribiera del campo and then atop the little tor that stood just to the east of it. Some Spanish irregulars had been posted at this vantage-point the previous night. There was patchy mist in the hollows and as Brotherton arrived with the celebrated guerrilla at his side, a night-time chorus of bull frogs was giving way to the avian one of dawn. The small Spanish camp was stirring into life. Brotherton did not trust Don Julian and the mission he had been assigned – manning the forward outposts of the army’s right – was too important to be left to chance. Most of the Spaniards were probably sleeping.