The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  At the outset of the campaign, Wellington had sent Colonel Benjamin D’Urban in command of a brigade of Portuguese cavalry on a great arcing movement north of the main army through no man’s land. He was hoping that D’Urban might detect French reinforcements as they marched down and report it back to him. Now it was becoming clear that Bonnet must be close, Wellington recalled D’Urban from his reconnaissance.

  There were two other important pieces of information in the letter. The first was a complaint by Marmont that not one soldier of the Army of the North’s promised reinforcement had arrived in Valladolid, to his rear, by the 28 June. The other was this humble sentence: ‘I dare to beseech your Majesty if you can, send me your cavalry from the Tagus.’ This was most significant, because it allowed Wellington to begin guessing how his uncertainties about both Joseph’s Army of the Centre and D’Erlon’s corps to the south might be resolved. If Marmont succeeded in drawing up the former to unite with his troops, then D’Erlon would be left too weak to mount a major strike against central Portugal.

  Marmont’s letter of 1 July also presented, almost comically, the French commander’s desire to say one thing to the British who opened his mail and another to his masters in Madrid. It contained the passage:

  I am not anxious about the future and am confident of a glorious outcome 81.918.215.74.713.413.1055.1168.607.711.1100.280

  Scovell’s grasp of the cipher revealed the coded passage to mean: ‘if I receive the reinforcements that I have asked for’.

  *

  By 5 July, Wellington’s Headquarters had settled into Rueda, a pleasant town in the wine country a few miles south of the Duero. The British put scouts close to the river, but kept their divisions a few miles back from it, denying the French a chance to study their deployment. Marmont’s forces, on the other hand, were deployed in strength, ready to receive anyone who attempted to cross this watery line.

  Once again, Scovell had a chance to stay put for a few days and set his mind to attacking the cipher. His every waking hour consisted of trying to please his commander and he knew that if he could deliver some breakthrough in deciphering, Wellington would be gratitude itself.

  Mulling over the information extracted from Marmont’s coded letter of 1 July, the general must indeed have been satisfied, because it gave him new insight into French dispositions. Marmont’s complaint about the non-appearance of any troops from the Army of the North helped convince Wellington, along with D’Urban’s reconnaissance reports, that there would not be any substantial reinforcement from this quarter. Some cavalry had been sent off by Caffarelli, and some uncoded intercepted messages would help the British keep track of its progress. Since Marshal Soult would not help either, this left only the force under Madrid’s direct control, the Army of the Centre, to provide substantial succour to Marmont. Although Wellington had received reports that some of these troops had started marching, he had worried for weeks that this force might be intended to join with the Count D’Erlon in some diversionary raid. Now he had clear evidence of Marmont trying to draw the Army of the Centre’s cavalry into his own field of operations.

  As the hot July days passed on the Duero line, the outposts kept a vigilant watch on French positions and one false alarm of an impending French assault followed another. Wellington had to hope that the guerrillas operating on the other side of the river would warn him of the arrival of any new French forces. Better still they might bring him some dispatch that would tell him how long he had to bring Marmont to battle before the marshal’s constant pleas for help finally produced an army that was larger than his own and he would have to turn back towards the Portuguese frontier.

  NOTES

  1 ‘shouts of “Viva!”; cups of local wine; petals scattered from upstairs windows’: these scenes come from Tomkinson’s, Warre’s and Scovell’s journals.

  2 ‘an intercepted letter the following day that contained, en clair, nothing less than the Army of Portugal’s morning state’: referred to in Wellington’s Dispatches, 14 June 1812.

  3 ‘Among the rank and file, Marmont was a popular leader’: the descriptions of Marmont come from Robert Christophe’s Les Amours et Les Guerres du Marechal Marmont (a rather purple text, giving much space to the notion that Napoleon was sleeping with Marmont’s wife while the marshal was on campaign). The unnamed officer is Captain Charles Parquin in his Les Souvenirs du Capitaine Parquin (an account considered unreliable by the historian Charles Oman, but containing some good colour nevertheless).

  4 ‘I will manoeuvre about Salamanca’: Marmont’s letter of 22 June is in the Scovell Papers.

  5 ‘a round shot, 8lbs, went very near Major Lawrie who stands in my way for promotion!’: the ambitious officer in question was Edward Cocks.

  6 ‘“Very little confusion was occasioned,” noted one of those present’: this was Tomkinson, who was acting as an ADC to General Stapleton Cotton at the time.

  – ‘The British troops had slept on beds of flattened corn’: details of the scene atop the San Christoval ridge from our indefatigable Light Division diarists, Lieutenant Cook and Rifleman Costello.

  7 ‘For the general, there was an opportunity to receive his secret correspondent, Father Patrick Curtis’: Tomkinson tells us they met at this juncture, also that the open way Curtis was received might pose problems for him in the future, an accurate prophecy.

  8 ‘Wellington resolved that he must obtain the services of the best decipherers in Britain’: Wellington’s letter to Bathurst is in Dispatches; the above-mentioned document, WP 9/4/1/5, tells us what Scovell knew by 25 June.

  9 ‘The British had started firing red-hot shot at the roof of the massive building and succeeded in setting it on fire’: this was the idea of Major Sturgeon, another Wycombite, who was a source of almost as many good ideas as Scovell.

  10 ‘The landscape, with its tall fields of billowing corn, vineyards and orchards, seemed lush and wonderful’: details from our reliable guides to this campaign, Tomkinson, Warre and Scovell himself.

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

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Breakthrough

  After the campaign’s furious start, nobody knew what to make of the long pause on the Douro. The British kept their forces back from the river bank, but allowed look-outs and Staff officers to conduct their surveillance there. Day by day, the enemy became a little more relaxed and began to approach their side at the same time as Wellington’s men. Major William Warre, in a letter to his father, described the scene:

  The French are on one side of the river, and we are on the other. Both parties are very civil to each other, and both seem on the qui vive for fear the other should cross and attack him. It is comical enough to see hostile troops quietly watering their horses, or washing within 30 or 40 yards of each other, like perfect good friends. We are forbid to talk to them for fear of spoiling our French, and are therefore highly profuse in bows and dumbshow. I hate the very sight of the villains, but it is no use for either party to annoy the other when nothing is to be gained by it.

  In Medina del Campo, young Guards officers took advantage of the hiatus in operations to entertain the local gentry. For eight successive evenings, they held dances in their impromptu mess, lavishing champagne and compliments on any half-respectable dancing partner they could find.

  While this surreal impasse went on, the more junior members of both armies found themselves at a loss to understand their commanders’ plans. On 7 July, General Bonnet finally marched into Marmont’s camp, bringing 6,500 infantry, a battery of guns and 100 horse with him. This brought the marshal’s infantry and artillery strength to the sort of numbers he felt were a prerequisite for offensive action. He still felt weak in cavalry, having about 1,200 fewer than his enemy. He addressed this deficit in a remarkably resourceful, if unpopular, way: the Army of Portugal�
��s officers had their personal mounts requisitioned. Troopers whose horses had died or gone lame suddenly found themselves astride some nag that had been carrying a colonel’s camp kettle and cognac until the day before. Clearly these horses were untrained in the evolutions required for mounted warfare and their new masters had but a few days to school them. By this expedient, Marmont had added about 1,000 men to his cavalry formations and, if nothing else, that might look impressive through an enemy spyglass.

  The Battle of Salamanca

  Marmont was still hoping to receive more cavalry from Caffarelli and King Joseph, but felt that he was reaching the point where he must bring matters to some sort of conclusion. He had seen for himself at San Christoval that Wellington would not attack, even when he had superior numbers and the advantage of the ground. While he understood his generals’ reservations, the time was approaching to disorientate this British mediocrity with some brilliant manoeuvres and then hit him hard on the open plains of Leon.

  Once Bonnet’s division had joined them, Marmont began marching and counter-marching up and down the river. Feints were made, fords explored and alarms given. The British had to react to each movement in earnest, as their outposts sent back reports. One day after another, divisions were stood to, cavalry formed up near some threatened ford and everyone was scorched by the sun for a few hours before being sent back to their bivouacs. Inevitably, frustration began to build among the British officers who knew that each of these responses had to be conducted with alacrity and precision lest they incur the wrath of their commander or, worse, allow the passage of the French van. One British major wrote home grumpily, ‘they have manoeuvred a great deal. In fact they seem to keep their people in constant motion … to what end all this marching and counter-marching of theirs can be, I cannot guess.’

  If Marmont’s manoeuvres were succeeding in their aim of confusing the lesser officers, what of their captain? Wellington had lost the initiative by mid-July. He understood that each day’s inactivity played into the Army of Portugal’s hands. Sooner or later the French would build to a strength where he could not face them in this open country and then it would be a matter of clapping spurs to his exhausted beast of an Army and driving it back towards the Portuguese border.

  At his table, Wellington was withdrawn. The Staff were perplexed that he had not given battle on the San Christoval position, when the superiority of British numbers was so evident. He understood their implications and he did not care one jot for their opinions. He had ignored the siren calls of those around him before on at least a dozen occasions during these years of Peninsular campaigning. He was responsible for the fate of this precious British Army and he alone would decide.

  And London? That was a more delicate question. He had told them he was seeking a general action with Marmont, some affair that might end with church bells ringing across Old England, eagles laid at the Prince Regent’s feet and handsome promotions for one and all. If he produced nothing, there was bound to be criticism and scorn from the usual voices in the Commons. He might even become the victim of popular lampoon, like the Duke of York following his fruitless expedition to Holland. Wellington, after all, had marched 50,000 men to the ‘top of the hill’ and was about to march them back again without result. He had lost his earlier opportunity of smashing Marmont while the balance of forces was really favourable. Wellington would have to prepare the ministry, through the agency of Earl Bathurst, his new master as secretary of war, for the disappointment of a withdrawal to Portugal.

  On 3 July he wrote to Lieutenant-General Graham, commanding the Army’s left wing (who was about to return home sick), ‘It appears certain that Marmont will not risk an action unless he should have an advantage; and I shall not risk one unless I should have an advantage.’ The next day, in a letter to Bathurst, Wellington explained, ‘I hope that I am strong enough for Marmont at present’, but surely his lordship must see that so much depended on the Spanish forces to the north, and if they could not match the British advance and move up to the Duero line, ‘we may be obliged to fall back’. On 13 July, in a note to Lieutenant-General Hill, commanding the force detached to the south in Estremadura, he wrote: ‘I am apprehensive that, after all, the enemy will be too strong for me; but we shall see.’

  By 14 July, with spies’ reports coming in to the effect that Joseph’s Army of the Centre was collecting in readiness to march, it was time to tell Bathurst in London that hope for any large battle was disappearing: ‘it is obvious that we could not cross the river without sustaining great loss, and could not fight a general action under circumstances of greater disadvantage than those which would attend an attack of the enemy’s position on the Duero’. Another piece of bad news made Wellington’s mood even gloomier. A planned landing by several thousand British, Spanish and Sicilian troops under the command of General Lord William Bentinck on the Mediterranean side of Spain, in Catalonia, had been postponed. Wellington wrote to his brother (in Cadiz) on 15 July, ‘Lord W. Bentinck’s decision is fatal to the campaign, at least at present’.

  At the outset, one month before, it had seemed clear to everyone on the Staff and at home in Horse Guards that the key criteria for Wellington’s efforts would be the balance of forces with Marmont and the availability of the right fighting position. When both of these had been favourable, at San Christoval on 20 and 21 June, Wellington’s confidence had faltered. Now that the initiative was passing to the French, he must explain himself to the politicians in London, and indeed those running the Spanish war in Cadiz. In his disappointment and frustration, Wellington placed the operations of the Spanish forces in Galicia and Lord Bentinck’s Catalonian expeditionary force at the centre of the picture, even though he had never expected them to produce anything more than diversions. Good manners, and his unfailing political instinct, dictated that he blame the Spanish in his letter to Bathurst, and the British commander, Lord Bentinck, in the version that would be passed to the Spanish authorities.

  Having warned his political masters, Wellington began to worry about the military practicalities of getting away from the Duero line without mishaps. The reports that the Army of the Centre was about to shift concerned him greatly, for if it attacked his right flank or moved directly on Salamanca rather than joining Marmont, he could be in serious difficulty. It was at this delicate juncture that the guerrillas delivered another clutch of intercepted mail.

  The most interesting of the dispatches was written on a tiny sliver of paper that had been hidden in a riding crop. It was largely in the grand chiffre, but it was clear that it was from King Joseph to Marmont. This highly important piece of information, sent from Madrid on 9 July, reached Wellington late in the afternoon of the 16th and its contents might well reveal exactly what the king was planning to do with the armament he had collected. Just as the Staff began their study of this important document, urgent reports of movements along the Duero were arriving.

  During the day, Foy and Bonnet’s divisions had begun crossing the River Duero at Toro, on Wellington’s left. Since he had kept the main body of his force a little way back from the river, the French crossed without opposition. On the evening of the 16th, with the British commander confidently expecting this break-out at Toro to build into Marmont’s general attack, he ordered a leftwards movement of all his forces. Headquarters had joined in this shift westwards, abandoning Rueda earlier that day.

  The men of the two armies got little rest that night, as the 16th became the 17th. The British moved into defensive position, ready to face an eruption of French troops from Foy and Bonnet’s bridgehead.

  Marmont, however, had deceived his opponent. In the darkness, those two divisions crossed back over the river, destroyed the bridge and started moving eastwards. At the other end of the French line, divisions under Maucune and Clausel moved over the Duero at first light on 17 July, accompanied by a brigade of light cavalry under General Curto. Within a few hours they had occupied Rueda, which was to the right of Wellington’s line and which the
British general had uncovered as a result of Marmont’s feint the previous day. The first stage of Marmont’s manoeuvre had succeeded brilliantly. He had fooled Wellington into moving left, only to reappear on his right. The Army of Portugal was across the river virtually without loss and Wellington had missed his opportunity of using it as a defensive barrier. During the next few days, the marshal used the same tactic repeatedly; marching southwards around the British right in order to outflank it. These manoeuvres served his higher purpose: if Wellington was not fast on his feet, the French would get between him and the Portuguese frontier, cutting off his line of withdrawal.

  Scovell reflected on the events of the 17th with little sentimentality:

  on the evening of this day it was discovered that we have been outmanoeuvred and that the Enemy had actually crossed in great force at the Bridge of Tordesillas and the Fort of Pollos. Marmont deserves great credit for the way in which he carried on the deception.

  The British fell back about twelve miles, taking up a new defensive position along the line of a small river, the Guarena. Before dawn on the 18th, Captain William Tomkinson, attached to the staff of Lieutenant-General Stapleton Cotton, the Army’s cavalry commander, went out to inspect the outposts on this new defensive line:

  I had scarcely got beyond our picquets when I met a squadron of the enemy’s cavalry. More were coming up, and in half an hour the picquets were driven back on Castrejon, and from the number of squadrons showed by the enemy, it was evident they were in force, and advancing.