The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  *

  At Wellington’s Headquarters, there was not yet any intimation of the kind of views Soult expressed so bluntly to Colonel Desprez. On the contrary, intercepted letters from the king to the Duke of Dalmatia had led the British general to believe that the Army of the South was expected to make a strong detachment to the north once Marmont came under attack. Scovell’s grasp of the grand chiffre had grown sufficiently strong for him to be able to get some sense of these coded orders from Joseph. Soult’s replies had not been intercepted.

  Wellington, however, found the fragmented knowledge of the contents of these messages unbearable. He had left a strong allied detachment under Lieutenant-General Rowland Hill to guard the southern entry into Portugal. But what if the king’s orders had directed Soult to make mischief somewhere between the traditional northern and southern invasion routes? After all, it was through the mountainous country of the central border region that France’s first attack on Portugal had taken place in 1807, and indeed the British move towards Madrid in July 1809. The thought of this vexed Wellington considerably. Towards the end of May, Marshal Beresford had been sent out to examine this inhospitable country, accompanied by Scovell and some Mounted Guides. They had found one or two places where an army might be able to pass with its artillery. This raised the prospect of a French corps appearing at the allies’ rear some weeks or even days after an offensive had been launched, increasing Wellington’s concerns.

  It was imperative that as much as possible be found out about the contents of the king’s coded messages to Soult and to his subordinate commander, the Count D’Erlon, who was closest to this possible route into Portugal. On 7 June, Wellington sent copies of three of the messages to his brother, the British minister at Cadiz. These were to be passed on to the Spanish war ministry to see if they could shed any further light on the contents. Perhaps their decipherers would succeed.

  The divisions of Wellington’s Army, meanwhile, had broken camp and were building up on the Spanish frontier. His attack force would number about 50,000. The stalwarts of the Light Division would be in the van, backed up by six divisions of infantry. There were also four cavalry brigades, totalling around 3,500 sabres. Half of this mounted force would be used for scouting and light actions. The other portion (Le Marchant’s brigade and one under the old German cavalry officer General Bock) were made up of heavy cavalry, a precious reserve to be used if the time arose to convert an intimation of victory into certainty.

  Wellington intended to launch himself forward and smash Marmont’s army, ideally on the plain of the River Tormes, before the French had been able to concentrate properly. In planning his move, Wellington had not neglected to summon up all of the alarms and excursions that the guerrillas and Spanish army could provide. General Ballasteros was once again incited to move on Seville, threatening Marshal Soult’s base. Others were asked to move forward in Galicia and Asturias to the north-west and north of the intended area of operations. The logic behind these attacks was to be the same as it had been in January 1812: to anchor French detachments to the points where they stood and prevent them answering any signal of Marmont’s for a general concentration.

  Marmont gained scraps of intelligence as all of this was happening. His analysis of the information at his disposal had been sufficiently good to have expected attack on or around 10 June. He knew better than anyone that it would take him time to concentrate, even without the Spanish attacking various scattered detachments. He had therefore already sent word out to some of his outlying garrisons to begin their march.

  As the British were poised to launch their attack, Marmont’s troops were still scattered. His available forces included 36,000 infantry and 2,800 cavalry. The enemy exceeded this by more than 10,000 and it was clear he could not face Wellington with these numbers. Once Brenier and Bonnet had come in and joined him with their divisions, as well as some other outlying posts, he would have a field force of 50,000. Then he could fight if he had to. All the better if he could bring in some more, especially more cavalry and guns, from the Army of the North or Joseph’s Army of the Centre. These reinforcements were requested urgently.

  In the meantime, Marmont knew that once Wellington allowed his juggernaut to begin rolling down from the border highlands, it could not be stopped by inferior forces. There was no point seeking an action in front of Salamanca: he would simply be crushed. Instead, the marshal resolved to try to slow the enemy down a little, by leaving a couple of strong forts in the centre of this city. These redoubts had been skilfully built to dominate the bridges over the River Tormes. It would be very hard for Wellington to use those bridges (necessary for the transit of supplies and heavy guns) under French fire, which would hamper any movement forward and force the British to lose time trying to storm the works. Once the marshal had concentrated 50,000 or even more men, then he would seek his own battle and give a forceful demonstration of his powers to the British and those who whispered about him in Madrid.

  *

  On the evening of 12 June, the soldiers of Wellington’s Army rested around their bivouacs. They sat in clumps under the oaks of the border country, pipeclaying the white cross belts that carried their fighting kit,* joining in songs and drinking some of the wine that sutlers brought out from Rodrigo or Guinaldo. They all knew what awaited them: some bloody hard marching for one thing, so each man would need the two or three spare pairs of shoes in his knapsack. As the sun sank on the western horizon, young officers toured about checking that their men had packed only what the regulations allowed. They had enough to carry as it was, sixty or seventy pounds in marching order, so a flask of grog or a bag of potatoes might make the difference between a good marcher and a straggler. In the 4th or Light Divisions, those that had suffered most heavily at Badajoz, there were many new drafts, callow youths who sat around and listened to the yarns of old soldiers with patched clothes and scarred bodies. Several hundred convalescents had come up too, men who had been wounded earlier in the campaign but were now fit to march again. Their reunions with those who had survived the horrors of April’s siege created a festive atmosphere in the dark forests.

  As was customary on the eve of some great movement, there was no rest for the Staff. The burden of organizing the Army’s march had fallen on thirty-one-year-old William De Lancey, the American-born Deputy Quartermaster-General. George Murray, formerly his chief, had been summoned back to Britain by Horse Guards, much to Wellington’s chagrin. In the Headquarters, young Deputy Assistants scribbled out copies of De Lancey’s orders so that there would be enough for the dragoons or Guides who kept appearing in the door and were bound for the commander of each division or brigade. ‘The Light Division and 1st Hussars to form the advanced guard of the Army,’ De Lancey’s instructions began. The march was to be in three columns: Sir Thomas Graham commanding the right, Picton the left, with the centre under Wellington’s hawk-like gaze. Below these introductory remarks, a table had been drawn, showing where the three columns would bivouac on each of the following three nights. For years, Wellington’s strategy had been defensive, aimed above all at preserving the British Army’s toehold in Iberia. Now it was time to go forward.

  NOTES

  1 ‘Early on the morning of 19 May 1812, soldiers of the 71st and 92nd Highlanders’: my account draws extensively on A Soldier of the Seventy First, originally published in 1819. Some controversy surrounds the identity of the author, or indeed whether the experiences related were actually those of more than one man.

  2 ‘Wellington dwelt long on Major-General Lumley’s panic’: see Wellington’s letter of 28 May to Liverpool, in Dispatches.

  3 ‘Wellington, behind his customary mask of inscrutability, awaited the outcome of this new campaign at Westminster’: that he discussed London politics is clear from the letters of FitzRoy Somerset that mention these topics (e.g. Perceval’s assassination). Somerset was also part of a big Tory family but it is apparent reading these missives (in the Beaufort Papers, FmM 4/1/7 and FmM 4/1/8) tha
t Wellington was careful about expressing strong personal opinions.

  – ‘an altogether safer topic for table-talk than London politics’: Cocks’s and D’Urban’s journals.

  4 ‘A further package of captured letters, dated 1 May’: preserved in the Scovell Papers, WO37/1.

  5 ‘By the end of May 1812, Scovell was beginning to get a real toehold on the slippery precipice of the code’: the key evidence of this is the report of some London decipherers who later attacked the code. Their results reside in the Wellington Papers, as WP 9/4/1/5. These careful men noted on their chart which codes had already been cracked by Wellington’s Staff before work began in London. Since we know they were asked to help on 25 June 1812, this record of what had been achieved up until that date is critical to understanding Scovell’s early results. Scovell’s own table is part of WO37/9 and seems to represent his achievement up until late 1812.

  – ‘Wellington was impatient’: his impatience on this point emerges in several letters in his Dispatches, for example on 7, 18 and 25 June 1812.

  – ‘There was also the little office in London off Abchurch Street where the foreign secretary and prime minister retained a few fellows’: see Ellis, History of the Post Office, Oxford, 1958, for an account of these decipherers.

  6 ‘Jourdan had drawn up a memorandum at the end of May, outlining what needed to be done to defend French interests in Spain’: which he helpfully printed in his Memoires, also quoting from Clarke’s fatuous reply.

  7 ‘Antoine Fée, the young pharmacist to a dragoon regiment’: who left us the memoirs referred to previously.

  8 ‘Marshal Beresford had been sent out to examine this inhospitable country’: on 24 May, according to Scovell’s journal.

  9 ‘On the evening of 12 June, the soldiers of Wellington’s Army rested around their bivouacs’: our old Light Division companions, Lieutenant Cook and Rifleman Costello, are the source of these details.

  * Pipeclay was the substance used to turn naturally coloured leather white. It became so closely associated with the drudgery of soldierly life that when the 95th Rifles was formed with green uniforms and black leather equipment, their recruiting posters carried the words in bold type: ‘No White Belts: No Pipe Clay!’

  1. DONT. 1082. 365. EVE. WE. W. 439. 669. EV. 398. 326. DECEIVED. 481. T. 980. 985. 186. T. 843. 688. AND. 1297. 536. 174. V. 1024 … 713. T. 980. 854. E. 326. 536. 700. W. 171. 1015. 1003. DE. T. 980. 1015. 131. T.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Marmont and the Great Cipher under Attack, June–July 1812

  The people of Salamanca did not stint as the first British soldiers entered their city. Everything flowed in abundance: shouts of ‘Viva!’; cups of local wine; petals scattered from upstairs windows and kisses to the bronzed cheeks of Wellington’s host. The townfolk ‘were out of their senses at having got rid of the French’, wrote one young officer, ‘and nearly pulled Lord Wellington off his horse’. Warre, of Beresford’s Staff, wrote in a letter to his mother:

  it was quite affecting to see the joy of the inhabitants. Many absolutely cried for joy, and we were embraced or had to shake hands with everybody we met. One old woman hugged and kissed [Wellington] to his great annoyance and one man literally kissed my horse as I rode into the town.

  It was not just that the British commander disdained such effusions of unbridled emotion; he was trying to concentrate on giving battle. The French had not cleared out of the city entirely, for their forts still dominated the old Roman bridge over the Tormes. Although he had learned of their construction from his spies in the city, he was not expecting the strength of one work in particular or the complication of trying to assault it in the midst of some impromptu street fiesta. Battalions of the 6th Division were marched up to the river and stood under arms, ready to receive an order to attack at any moment. These men, however, were still being mobbed by the public, giving rise to anxiety in the Staff about whether these citizens would soon be exposed to a hot fire.

  As the hours passed, Wellington realized that the main position, the San Vincente convent, had been barricaded and built into a position of such strength that it could not simply be rushed by his men. It stood on a natural promontory, with sheer faces on two of its sides. Houses had been demolished on the convent’s other flanks, giving French gunners a clear field of fire and providing debris to build a considerable fausse braie. Scovell, one of the few officers in the Army to have been in Salamanca before (while accompanying Moore’s expedition in 1808), was most struck by the destruction that had been necessary to create these French positions. Battering guns would be needed, and the labours of Wellington’s engineers.

  Salamanca’s strange atmosphere, that 17 June, became all the more peculiar when the French defenders started to use their guns. The centre of the city began echoing to their fire and citizens who had one minute been running to greet the British were the next sent scurrying for their lives as projectiles whizzed overhead.

  Having put the 6th Division into positions around the forts, Wellington pushed the rest of the Army beyond the city, using two fords to cross the Tormes. He knew Marmont was not far away, since he had only cleared out during the early hours of the morning.

  Wellington had begun calculating the strength of the forces opposed to him with an almost obsessive diligence. He was quite sure in his own mind that he would not attack if he was outnumbered. On setting out, on 13 June, he had assumed that he would have a comfortable superiority over Marmont. He had been concerned, however, to receive an intercepted letter the following day that contained, en clair, nothing less than the Army of Portugal’s morning state for 1 April. This precise listing of every man available for duty in each regiment showed that the Duke of Ragusa’s army numbered 51,492 in all, made up of 43,396 infantry, 3,204 cavalry and 3,393 artillery. The British commander had written to Lieutenant-General Graham, ‘notwithstanding that the enemy is considerably stronger than I believed he was, I propose to continue our present movement forward’.

  He had penned that before observing the Salamanca forts. Now he knew their strength, his worries resurfaced. Wellington understood that Marmont had not yet concentrated these 51,492 men and needed time to do so. By placing the Salamanca forts in Wellington’s way, he might just delay the British enough to allow him to unite the entire Army of Portugal. Wellington did not intend to give battle on those terms, except if he was in one of those strong defensive positions that he could choose so well.

  On the day the British entered Salamanca, Wellington calculated that the enemy field army was not more than 47,800 (in fact, it was considerably less). But when the British Commander totted up how many troops he could bring to the Tormes plains beyond the city, he would have to subtract his own 6th Division which would have to be left behind to cover the city’s forts, and it was possible that the British force might no longer outnumber Marmont’s. What was more, Wellington knew from messages intercepted in the Army of Portugal cipher (which was still in use in this area) that the last of Marmont’s forces, Bonnet’s division, was probably only two or three marches away. Taking a deliberately cautious view, Wellington calculated that by 19 or 20 June his opponent could meet him with a superiority of 4,000–5,000 men. All of this undermined the initial confidence with which the British general had struck into Spain.

  Wellington believed that Marmont’s sense of honour would require him to do something to save the men in the forts. He therefore decided to search out a strong defensive position where such intentions might cause his enemy to throw the Army of Portugal on British bayonets. He found it a few miles north-east of Salamanca, where the ridge of San Christoval commands the rolling country of the city’s hinterland. There he marched his men into fields of waist-high corn, on to the ridge. Monsieur le Maréchal was most welcome to present himself here and learn the same lesson Marshal Massena, his predecessor, had at Busaco.

  *

  In the Duke of Ragusa’s camp, the numbers looked even less encouraging than they did to Wellington. Marmon
t knew that the force he had concentrated and immediately available did not much exceed 30,000, since they were not coming together as quickly as he had hoped. Circumstances would oblige him to move forward and, as the emperor might put it, ‘show an imposing attitude’. As for actually giving battle, it could not be considered until he had brought in his last divisions at the very least and hopefully some reinforcements from the Army of the North. Having seen his troops gathered and in motion across the plains, he had every confidence in their abilities. The men of the Army of Portugal included many veterans and were inured to hard marching. Their officers had drilled them to the point that a sudden change of formation or an order to turn an entire division through right angles and then assume a defensive position would be carried out with swiftness and precision.

  Among the rank and file, Marmont was a popular leader. The soldiers sometimes chanted a song that had come out of the Austrian campaign three years earlier. One of its verses went:

  La France a nommé MacDonald,

  L’armée a nommé Oudinot,

  L’amité a nommé Marmont!

  Loosely translated, it meant ‘France appointed [Marshal] MacDonald, the army appointed Oudinot and friendship appointed Marmont.’ It celebrated their marshal’s march hundreds of miles from the Balkans to join Napoleon on the Danube in 1809. One officer noted that Marmont ‘was most courageous and very much loved for the care he took of the soldiers’. For the French lower ranks, their spirits were raised by the idea that they were on their way to an honourable affair with the English, rather than having to put up with more of the bitter counter-guerrilla fight in the Spanish countryside. Just as the British footslogger corrupted the names of his adversaries, the French infantry, as they marched across the Castilian fields, cursed Wellington as ‘Vilainjeton’, a phrase that suggested both meanness and duplicity. The senior officers of this force saw matters somewhat differently – many openly questioned their chief’s abilities – but Marmont knew he could rely on them to act with their customary professionalism.