The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

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The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes Page 17

by Mark Urban


  Scovell, however, was thinking of other responses. He was in possession of the new cipher. What if they also obtained the services of one of the captured afrancesados or collaborators, and used him and the code to get a false message into Ciudad Rodrigo? He noted in his journal, ‘the French figured Cipher is a very mean one. I have suggested that it might be employed by us with effect against the Garrison.’

  The idea was certainly ingenious: a fake letter in the Army of Portugal cipher might be used in conjunction with some ruse de guerre, such as sending troops dressed as Frenchmen to one of the gates at a predesignated time, so penetrating the defences without a costly siege. Ingenious, but not to Lord Wellington’s taste. That type of trick was the sort of thing the French and Spanish got up to, but it would not answer as far as he was concerned. He was already meditating plans for a new attack on the fortress with his powerful siege guns and several divisions of infantry.

  As the temperatures dropped and November turned to December, the Army was put into winter quarters. Divisions and brigades were broken down and sent to the little villages of the Beira hill country. There, the men and horses could sleep in barns or farmhouses while their chief considered his plan of war for 1812.

  NOTES

  1 ‘Joseph complained that he had no authority’: details of Joseph’s complaints are compiled from various letters of this period contained in Du Casse’s Correspondance du Roi Joseph.

  2 ‘he carried a note dated 17 May, summarizing what had been agreed in the military sphere’: the memorandum is reproduced in Du Casse.

  3 ‘The arrival of Berthier’s missive caused consternation at Joseph’s palace’: Joseph’s response to Berthier’s letter emerges from his letters reproduced in Du Casse.

  4 ‘Wellington’s military secretary wrote, “[we] greatly pity the poor King Joseph”’: FitzRoy Somerset’s letter to his brother of 18 July 1811, BP, FmM 4/1/6.

  5 ‘Marmont’s generals began cloaking their orders in the Army of Portugal cipher’: its first appearance would seem to have been in a letter from Marmont to Dorsenne on 29 August. Since, however, I have been unable to find this in ciphered form, I cannot be completely sure.

  6 ‘Sanchez had served as a non-commissioned officer’: details of his career from Hazañas de unos Lanceros, Diarios de Julian Sanchez ‘El Charro’, by Emilio Becerra de Becerra, a collection of documents about the guerrilla leader published by the local authorities in Salamanca in 1999.

  – ‘In the summer of 1810 his men surprised a company of about a hundred French dragoons’: this anecdote (and the British officer’s quote) are contained in the journal of John Fox Burgoyne, a Royal Engineer officer who was nearby, dated 30 June 1810.

  – ‘one British officer drew this memorable pen portrait’: Captain William Bragge, in the collection of his letters, Peninsular Portrait 1811–14.

  – ‘Sanchez had been brought under British pay in October 1810’: this fact is contained in Cocks’s journal. D’Urban suggests it may have been earlier than this, August 1810.

  7 ‘A portion of a message sent by one of Marmont’s Staff’: this is a letter dated 6 March 1812 from Colonel Jardet to his chief. It is found in WO37/1. While I would have liked to find an early example of the Army of Portugal cipher (from August 1811), I did not succeed. Jardet’s message is very long – much more than 711 characters – but I considered this a sufficiently long portion of it to analyse the cipher.

  – ‘A message from General Montbrun … provides some sense of how Scovell attacked the cipher’: my vagueness here is deliberate, since I must confess that the original ciphered version of this message does not appear in Wellington’s Dispatches, only the deciphered one, with passages in italics to show which words were ciphered. This French text was therefore enciphered by me in the year 2001 using an actual Army of Portugal cipher. It remains the case, of course, that the passage ‘HE Marshal the Duke of Ragusa’ was in code, surrounded by uncoded words just as it is shown in my chapter, hence the code-breaking technique would have been the same in 1811.

  8 ‘One of them noted they had formed “an extremely favourable notion of the judgement and good sense” of Marmont’: this was Charles Stewart, writing as Lord Londonderry, in his History of the Peninsular War. Perhaps it is wrong of me to quote Stewart’s opinion of anything or anyone, but although I have generally condemned him as a dangerous fool, like all people of this kind he occasionally succumbed to outbursts of good judgement.

  9 ‘Henry, aged twenty, had come out to fill a lowly civilian post as a Deputy Assistant Paymaster General’: a record of Henry Scovell’s service was passed to me by his descendant Martin Scovell and its principal points are confirmed in the Challis Index of Wellington’s officers at the Royal United Services Institute.

  – ‘In Ciudad Rodrigo, the principal agent was a former member of the town junta’: this emerges in a letter from Wellington to his brother of 17 May 1812. The general says his Spanish spy performed service of ‘utmost importance to the cause’.

  10 ‘In Salamanca, Wellington’s principal correspondent was an Irish priest’: quite a few contemporaries wrote about Curtis, including Tomkinson in his journal. There are also many references to him in Wellington’s Dispatches. It is unclear exactly when he began his career as a spy, but it seems to have been in the summer of 1811.

  – ‘General Regnaud, the Governor of Ciudad Rodrigo, had been captured by Don Julian Sanchez’: this event was described in very different terms by General Dorsenne, writing to Paris, and in Wellington’s Dispatches. The British general says Regnaud had an escort of twenty cavalry and was captured under the guns of the town. Dorsenne’s version is that Regnaud only had three or four people with him and stupidly rode more than one league from the city.

  11 ‘D’Espagne had first wanted to shoot Regnaud’: this detail and some others in this account come from two letters from FitzRoy Somerset to his brother, dated 16 October and 22 October 1811. Their Beaufort Paper references are FmM 4/1/6 and FmM 4/1/7 respectively.

  – ‘Wellington’s table in the Frenada Headquarters’: a delightful description of the general’s dining arrangements in Frenada is contained in the journal of Captain Thomas Browne, an officer of the Staff, published by the Army Records Society in 1987.

  12 ‘Wellington’s spy in Ciudad Rodrigo, however, fled the city’: this is described in Wellington’s letter of 17 May 1812, in Dispatches.

  – ‘Lieutenant-Colonel John Grant presented himself’: his arrival at Frenada is recorded in Scovell’s journal, WO37/7.

  – ‘At the end of October, a ciphered message from Marmont to General Foy was captured’: it is reproduced in Wellington’s Dispatches.

  13 ‘When Regnaud’s successor as Governor of Ciudad Rodrigo arrived on 30 October (escorted by an entire division of infantry), he most likely brought new codes with him’: this is my deduction, since Scovell’s journal talks about the meanness of the French cipher and the fact that he has just finished deciphering the message. If it had been one of the ciphers already known to him, making sense of it would have been light work. Scovell’s papers contain a deciphering table for at least three different versions of the Army of Portugal code.

  – ‘Scovell had been doing it, but so had Somerset and even Wellington himself’: Wellington told Ellesmere that Somerset had been good at deciphering and it is contained in Ellesmere’s memoir of the duke. Scovell’s papers never mention anyone else being involved in this work. Since he remained a lifelong friend of Somerset, it is hard to imagine Scovell wanting to deny him any legitimate credit. On the other hand, Somerset, as military secretary, used ciphers in the course of managing Wellington’s own correspondence with other potentates, so we may assume he was familiar with them and was probably involved in deciphering in its early stages.

  * Couriers of the imperial service.

  † ‘Gilded farm’: it was a fashion in the eighteenth century for aristocrats to turn the soil with silver trowels and generally affect an interest in agricult
ure.

  PART III

  The Campaign of January–November 1812

  1. D. 1076. NT. 1082. 365. 622. WE. W. 439. 669. E. 1085. 398. 326. 13. 309. I. 1085. ED. 481. T. 980. 985. 186. T. 843. 688. 2. N. D. 1297. 536. 174. 1085. 1024 … 713. T. 980. 854. E. 326. 536. 700. W. 171. 1015. 1003. 13. T. 980. 1015. 131. T.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Winter Quarters and the Attack on Ciudad Rodrigo

  During the dying days of 1811, Wellington’s officers were making the most of the lull in military activities. On many a December’s morning they could be seen setting off from Frenada or Almeida in their undress coats and fur-lined caps. They slung fowling pieces over their shoulders and bounced along to the pleasing rhythm of cantering hooves and panting dogs. Since the Beira highland looked just like a British moor, they treated it as such, searching out the hares, foxes and any number of game birds to be found in the quieter folds of this wilderness. A gentleman could hardly hope for better sport. Wellington, who liked nothing more than a hard ride of twenty miles on a bracing December’s day, himself set about hunting the Portuguese foxes in the traditional English manner, with hounds baying and horns blaring.

  The long evenings dragged in familiar company, so there was much reciprocal entertaining, the officers riding from one smoky little Portuguese village to its neighbour, where some rough-hewn peasant’s table groaned under all manner of delicacies procured by generous payments of silver dollars. Not only did the young gentlemen treat the moorland like some hunting domain in Connemara or Northumberland, but they also enjoyed some of the diversions of their youth. A wrecked chapel on the outskirts of Fuente Guinaldo was fitted out with painted scenery and soon echoed to Shakespeare’s words as the young officers of the Light Division put on their production of Henry IV.

  While this daily sport and leisure continued, Wellington was considering his next campaign and a small number of officers on the Staff were compiling every scrap of information they received about the dispositions of the French army. Colonel George Murray had become the general’s right hand in these and other matters. Early criticism of him during the 1809 operations in northern Portugal had given way to a much more positive impression. One of Colonel Le Marchant’s letter-writing alumni in the Peninsula informed those back at Wycombe, ‘nothing can be more gentlemanlike in every instance than Colonel M.: I find that whole Army giving him credit for ability’.

  The Storming of Ciudad Rodrigo

  Captain Edward Cocks, one of those quick to judge Murray, had been able to remove himself from Staff duties and expressed the customary disdain of fighting soldiers for those who remained in such appointments:

  a Staff man is not much with secret till he gets pretty high in his department. Colonel Murray may have the key to the great strategic movement of the campaign but your Deputy Assistants have little more to do than to look out for encampments with regard to water and forage and chalk doors for General officers.

  Notwithstanding these views, by the end of 1811 it had become clear to many an ambitious officer that an attachment to Lord Wellington’s Staff could be most advantageous. No less a personage than William, Prince of Orange had appeared in the late summer to boost the blood-line of the general’s corps of ADCs. On hearing of Orange’s imminent arrival, FitzRoy Somerset had written home, ‘we understand that a great many amateurs intend to favour us with their company’. The Duke of Richmond’s son, Lord March, who had been an ADC for more than one year, became the Prince of Orange’s firm friend. Both of these handsome youngsters loomed large in Wellington’s affections, eclipsed only by Somerset. While Wellington knew he had to accept the loss of thousands in battle sometimes, even a bad cold on Lord March’s part caused him to set pen to paper, telling the young peer’s mother, the Duchess of Richmond, ‘he is really a fine fellow; and you may depend upon my taking as much care of him … as if he were my own son’. Wellington’s solicitude in the case of this particular ADC was doubtless connected with his desire to treat the duchess as he would have done his own son’s mother.*

  Some on the Staff believed Wellington’s favouritism towards aristocrats stemmed from boundless personal ambition rather than disinterested affection. ‘You may suppose the Puff is not without its object,’ Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Gordon wrote home, explaining a favourable mention given to the callow Prince of Orange in Wellington’s dispatches. That must be so, Gordon reasoned, since Wellington ‘has no idea of gratitude, favour, or affection, and cares not for anyone however much he may owe to him or find him useful’. This brutal verdict on the general’s ‘private character’ was given by an officer who described himself in the same paragraph as someone who ‘could not desire to be on a better footing with Lord W. in every sense of the word’.

  For someone like Henry Hardinge, whose exploits had attracted the commander’s notice, it became vital to remain in Portugal, ignoring any chance of leave as this influx of aristocratic ‘amateurs’ brought new competition for Wellington’s attention. As someone whose prospects were far less rosy, the same lesson clearly applied to Scovell. By the end of his fourth campaign, he at least could reflect that his work on the ciphers was at last involving him ‘with secret’.

  Those who were latecomers to this military ensemble found that only virtuoso performance would earn them a hearing with Wellington or Murray. One acute observer noted:

  the officers in the lower branches of the Staff are sharp-set, hungry, and anxious to get on, and make the most of every thing and have a view even in their civilities … there is much obsequious time serving conduct to any one who is in office, or is thought to have a word to say to Lord Wellington.

  Scovell, at least, could rise a little above this for he was now the veteran of several campaigns and entrusted with vital work by the general.

  His spirits were further lifted by the appearance at Frenada of John Le Marchant, newly promoted to Major-General and taking over command of a brigade of Wellington’s heavy cavalry. Having left the classrooms of the Royal Military College behind, Le Marchant was busy applying his ideas in the field. Soon after arriving, Le Marchant learned that his beloved wife, Mary, had died while delivering their eighth child. The newly made general’s family and friends stepped in, urging him not to return from Service since the opportunity in Iberia could be the making of him. Le Marchant, displaying the kind of professional zeal that overcame any prejudice Wellington may have had against such a reformer, resolved to stay with his brigade, despite this terrible family news.

  Wellington had to think over his next gambit in Frenada and he knew that a siege of Ciudad Rodrigo launched while Marmont or Dorsenne could come to the garrison’s relief simply would not answer. There was no point setting this great scheme in motion if it would only have to be put into reverse following the kind of French concentration seen in September. He needed to know where each of the divisions of these armies was and how long it would take them to march towards Rodrigo. From this, he could calculate when his enemies could achieve the kind of concentration needed to drive him off.

  Meanwhile, everything had to be ready so that he could launch his strike without a moment’s hesitation and so that it would proceed quickly enough for the fortress to fall before the united French forces could intervene. The British siege train of powerful battering guns had been parked inside the walls of Almeida (just two or three marches from their target), awaiting the general’s word of command. Other supplies too had been gathered: powder and shot to fuel the monstrous cannon; gabions, great baskets that could be filled with earth to form protective cover for a besieging force; fascines, the bundles of brushwood that would be thrown down into the deep ditches around Ciudad Rodrigo’s defences; and a train of pontoons that would be used to bridge the Agueda upstream of the fort, allowing the British guns to be brought to the best place of attack.

  *

  Winter, in Napoleon’s mind, was the time to take advantage of British lethargy. He had seen what kind of general this Wellington was during the previous s
eason: evidently not a man with any great belief in himself, since he would never run the slightest risk. His army was full of sick men, too. That was obvious from the British newspapers and reports of spies. The emperor felt it was ridiculous that affairs in the Peninsula should consume so many troops and be such a source of vexation just as he was contemplating a great military expedition against Russia. It was time to knock his marshals’ heads together and put some order in the Spanish house.

  On 19 November, Napoleon started firing off a series of terse orders. The commander in the south-east was to hurry up and finish the siege of Valencia. The Spanish defenders of this great southern city had been struggling on for months and its continued resistance was an affront to the power of French arms. Marmont was to send him 6,000 troops to settle this interminable affair. The emperor knew this would prompt some carping from the Army of Portugal, so he told Berthier to make it clear to Marmont: ‘the English have 18,000 sick in Portugal and are unable to undertake anything’.

  And Dorsenne, what was he playing at? Why were these two infamous thieves, Mina and Longa,† still raiding the Bayonne road at will? He should set about those banditti and liquidate them. If he needed Bonnet’s division, the northernmost of the Army of Portugal, to help in this work, so be it. Berthier should tell Dorsenne one more thing: he must understand, ‘the great object is to take Valencia’.

 

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