The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  With the evacuation of Salamanca, Wellington had ordered his supply train down the Ciudad Rodrigo road at dawn. A great column of wagons, pack mules, camp followers and other livestock was making its way back towards the frontier. Although the thunderstorm of the previous night had thoroughly soaked the soil, it did not take long for its surface to be dried by the sun and for the movements of men and beasts to send their characteristic dusty smudges across the azure morning sky.

  Marmont’s staff officers and cavalry videttes were out early, trying to gain an idea of their enemy’s movements. In crossing the river, both armies had turned through a right angle. For days they had been marching south, with the French trying to get around Wellington’s right flank and so cut off his withdrawal. Now the British general occupied a line that extended south from the Tormes. Marmont’s game, turning the British right, remained the same, but that now meant pushing his people around the southern end of a British line rather than the eastern end.

  As the French divisions got under arms, General Foy, occupying the end of the French deployment closest to the river, set out to survey the enemy lines. The British had occupied the ridge opposite, a typical Wellington deployment that denied to the enemy any knowledge of what lay beyond the feature. Foy could see them drawn up, half a mile away, across the gully that ran from south to north, carved by a tributary of the Tormes. Foy knew that the few battalions he could see represented a small proportion of the enemy army. At times, glancing through his telescope, Foy could spot Wellington and his Staff atop the flat-topped tor in front of him. He decided to press forward a little to see if he could get a better idea of the British position, while he awaited his marshal’s orders. Somewhat to his surprise, Foy discovered British and Portuguese light infantry on his side of the ravine, around a ruined chapel known as Nuestra Senhora de la Peña.

  He decided to deal with these outposts in the usual way, sending his own voltigeurs and tirailleurs* forward to drive them in. The French light infantry set off with alacrity, skirmishing up to the rocky edge of the ridge; alternately firing, running forward and dropping into cover behind a boulder or in a fold of the ground while they reloaded. As this exchange of fire picked up, Wellington sent more light troops forwards. Dark-green clad marksmen of the 95th Rifles reinforced the defenders of Nuestra Senhora de la Peña. With more than a thousand men on each side exchanging shots stubbornly, Foy realized that this was something more than the usual night-time picket waiting for its orders to move out.

  Wellington was determined to maintain the position around the ruined chapel a little longer, so that he could keep his own main body out of sight while trying to force Marmont into showing his. In this way, the British general would allow the baggage to get well under way and see whether the day might present an opportunity to offer battle while the numbers were still advantageous. Just a couple of hundred yards behind the battalions spotted by Foy early that morning, but shielded by the lie of the land, were no less than five divisions of British infantry standing in closed column, ready to march.

  The British commander jotted down his first orders of the day. Major-General Pakenham and the cavalry marching in his company were to make a long march, ten miles or so, all the way behind the Army (and for most of their journey, invisible to the French). Having started the day at his left, on the river, they would become the right flank and be ready to check Marmont’s usual game of trying to get around that side of the British line. Meanwhile, the men seen early that day by Foy were being pulled back off their ridge and replaced with a rather more formidable-looking assembly, Wellington’s main infantry reserve, the 1st and Light Divisions. Four divisions remained hidden, for Wellington’s intention in posting the 1st and Light was to make a strong rearguard if he continued his withdrawal or tempt the French commander to fall upon what he would see as a manageable portion of the British Army.

  As the British commander surveyed the ridge opposite, studying Marmont’s reactions, he was accompanied by men in a variety of fantastic get-ups, an assembly that at first seemed an unruly riot of colour but in which each man had been assigned a place in the great scheme of things: there were his boys, like March, Somerset and the Prince of Orange, ready to drive their thoroughbreds across the Spanish fields in the delivery of some pencil-scribbled note; Cotton, with his glittering entourage of young cavalry officers; Beresford in his blue Portuguese coat, surrounded by his own retinue (Majors Warre and Hardinge among them); and there were those dedicated to the efficiency of the Staff rather than its decoration, Lieutenant-Colonel De Lancey, Major Scovell and others of the Quartermaster-General’s Staff.

  Two miles away, Marmont was surrounded by his own people. The armies had already been in motion for hours, but it was only 9 a.m. The Army of Portugal’s commander heard reports about the fighting around Nuestra Senhora de la Peña and drew precisely the conclusion that Wellington would have wanted. It was clear the British were moving off again. Videttes had seen the baggage rumbling back towards Portugal. If most of the British force could not be seen, that was because they too had joined the march. The troops across from the chapel were a rearguard. Should he attack?

  At this point in the campaign, Foy was beginning to despair of his master’s generalship. Marmont knew that his best hope had always been to catch a British division or two without proper support and hammer it; if Wellington was returning to the frontier, he would soon lose the opportunity. However, Foy, the marshal’s onetime classmate from the artillery academy, worried about his chief’s judgement. ‘He is a good man, estimable and respectable,’ wrote Foy,

  but he and others are entirely deluded about the nature of his talents. He was not born to be a field general. His face too easily reveals the hesitancy of his spirit and the anxiety of his soul; thus the army enters into his secret. He asks advice too often, too publicly and from too many people.

  On the morning of 22 July, Marmont’s hesitancy revealed itself once more in orders that kept his options open. Artillery was to be brought up, ready to open a cannonade on the British divisions in front. Meanwhile, Thomieres and Maucune’s infantry divisions, accompanied by light cavalry, were to make their way south and turn Wellington’s flank there.

  As the morning wore on, the front began to turn through a great arc. It became obvious that the French were crossing the 1st and Light Divisions’ feature about one mile to the south. Wellington’s attention suddenly turned to this advance, near the larger of the two flat-topped hills that the locals call los hermanitos, the Little Brothers, which dominate this part of the field. Seeing French troops appearing near this rocky tor, he ordered some Portuguese infantry to take it, but they failed. At this point, Wellington resolved to throw the 1st and Light Divisions south, to decide the fate of this singular feature and perhaps draw Marmont into the open in its defence.

  But indecision that morning was not only evident in the French camp. Almost as soon as he had set his men in motion, Wellington changed his mind. Scovell, among several Staff officers, watched it happen and recorded, ‘Lord Wellington was more than once about to attack, but was prevented by the insinuations of those about him.’ Another of that group, Captain William Tomkinson, watched the general confer with his old confederate Beresford before cancelling the attack on the Greater Arapil, and noted rather more candidly:

  Marshal Beresford, no doubt, was the cause of the alteration from what he urged. Yet, at the same time, Lord Wellington was so little influenced, or, indeed, allows any person to say a word, that his attending to the marshal was considered singular. From all I could collect and observe The Peer was a little nervous. It was the first time he had ever attacked.

  Instead of precipitating battle, the British general fell back once more on what he knew best: a defensive posture that challenged his opponent to bring on the fight. He was doubtless aware of the murmurings of his Staff, for once more, just as he had done on 20 June, the general had faltered at precisely the moment when battle seemed desirable. Major FitzRoy Somerset, ever
loyal to his master, detected the insinuations and wrote somewhat defensively that Wellington ‘was fully as anxious as the youngest fire eater in the Army to avail himself of any favourable opportunity to attack the French’ (original emphasis). Having halted the attack on the Greater Arapil, the general busied himself ordering the deployment of several divisions along a new line, a step made necessary by Marmont’s manoeuvres to the south-east. The 1st and Light would remain in their north–south arrangement, whereas the new positions would stretch back from the east to the west, the whole British line forming a right angle or L-shape.

  Wellington and his Staff galloped up the Teso San Miguel, a hillock that rose behind the village of Los Arapiles, close to the bend in this new line. Although this vantage-point was not as high as the Little Brothers to its left and front, it was an extremely good place from which to study the field. If he looked over his right shoulder, more or less behind him, Wellington could follow the progress of Pakenham and his light cavalry as they moved along, following the orders he had given them that morning. Ahead, behind a ridge topped with dwarf oaks, he could see plumes of dust that revealed the passage of French forces to his right. Atop the bigger of those fraternal features, the Greater Arapil, he could see Marmont and his suite. Between himself and his adversary, Wellington’s subtle eye could discern a dip in the ground where he could hide many of his troops from the marshal’s gaze. Wellington ordered the 4th and 5th Divisions, with Le Marchant’s heavy cavalry brigade, to occupy that ground.

  At about 3 p.m., Wellington’s servants brought him a picnic lunch on the Teso San Miguel. He munched some chicken as he watched French teams setting up their cannon on the ridge opposite him, the Monte de Azan, the one beyond Los Arapiles that was topped with trees. It seemed they intended to bombard the centre of his new line. He looked to his right. The dust still showed the progress of a French force at least a mile away. He totted up the Army of Portugal. Foy’s division remained where it had been that morning. There was another atop and around the Greater Arapil hill. Two or three more were deployed on the ridge south of him, with the cannon. Elsewhere he could see the columns of dust. Some scouts brought further reports of the French division and cavalry marching furthest to his right. Why were they still moving, if everyone else was establishing a new line in front of the village of Los Arapiles? Wellington knew how many divisions there were in the Army of Portugal and he could account for all of them. Scovell’s deciphering had told him very clearly that there were no reinforcements yet from the Armies of the North and Centre. What were those people doing on the French right, moving further and further away from support? Marmont’s manoeuvres were creating precisely the sort of danger to his own army that he had been hoping for the past five weeks to cause the British. Wellington threw aside his half-eaten chicken and announced, ‘By God! That will do!’

  There followed the briefest of instructions to the QMG Staff on top of the hill. Wellington then clapped heels to his charger and galloped off the back of the Teso San Miguel, in search of Pakenham. Within minutes he was outpacing those who tried to follow (De Lancey among them). Soon he was quite alone, and it was the single figure of the British commander who came galloping across the scrub to meet his brother-in-law at the head of his column. ‘Edward, move on with the 3rd Division, take those heights in your front and drive everything before you.’ Wellington had directed Pakenham to move up the end of a ridge just south of the village of Los Arapiles and strike the unsupported French division moving north-west across it. ‘I will, my Lord,’ the divisional commander replied, and the two men shook hands. And with this simple exchange, Wellington had lit the fuse for the bomb with which he intended to destroy Marmont. The British commander turned about and began galloping back to Los Arapiles. The Staff, meanwhile, had flown to each corner of the Army, relaying messages so that everyone would know their part in what was about to happen.

  Major Scovell took his horse down the front of the Teso San Miguel, closer to the French, behind Los Arapiles to a hollow beyond where Le Marchant’s brigade was waiting. He looked for his old teacher and mentor, now in command, but could not find him. Scovell surveyed the brigade of heavy cavalry: more than one thousand horsemen of the 3rd Dragoons, 4th Dragoons and 5th Dragoon Guards. Almost every officer there would have been known to him, for the heavies were a tight-knit brotherhood. The 4th, after all, was his old regiment; the source of so much pride when he was commissioned into it and of so much regret when he had been forced to sell up and exchange with Oliver of the 57th. His old commanding officer, Lord Edward Somerset, was at the head of the 4th that day, as was another acquaintance, Colonel Dalbiac, the second-in-command. Scovell’s regret at being unable to join them in what was about to happen can only be guessed at. These tough men in their patched red coats, overall trousers and watering caps watched the familiar staff officer moving among them. Some of the veterans bore the livid scars of past combat on their countenances. They were a superior kind of soldier, paid more than the footsloggers and brighter with it. Tall men on big mounts, dubbed les messieurs en rouge by their enemy, the heavies had waited in reserve more or less throughout Wellington’s campaigns until that day.

  At this moment, about 4 p.m., the French batteries on the ridge, approximately 750 yards away, opened fire. The brigade had been sent to their fold in the ground precisely to make them invulnerable to fire from that point. To be doubly sure, the troopers had dismounted and stood next to their horses, holding them by the reins. Scovell weaved through them until he found his brother-in-law, Major Leigh Clowes, who was in command of the 3rd Dragoons. They greeted one another cordially and Scovell delivered his message. He warned him to expect the immediate advance of the 3rd Division to his right, as their conversation was punctuated by French round shot ripping through the air a few feet above them. He should be prepared to support them, for Lord W planned to use Pakenham’s men to hit the French on their flank.

  Not long after Scovell’s visit, Wellington appeared and found Le Marchant. He told the brigade commander that he should be prepared to move forward and to hazard everything on a charge if the opportunity should present itself. Le Marchant may well have said a silent prayer, for that was his habit before battle. He looked about for his son, Captain Carey Le Marchant, who had joined his father’s personal staff, despite every insistence that no special favours would be shown.

  The 4th and 5th Divisions of infantry began moving forwards to take position south of Los Arapiles. They drove out some French light troops and found themselves under fire from dozens of guns on the Azan ridge opposite. Their metal began biting into British ranks, flipping men over in crazy somersaults or sending an arm or head on its own yawing into the sky. Their batteries of Royal Artillery six-pounders began answering the French cannonade, so that shot was criss-crossing the land. This pounding of guns and musketry began to fill the air with dense smoke, blotting out the bright blue dome above.

  Marmont, too, had realized that something was wrong with the division on his flank. He looked out from atop the Greater Arapil, trying to see through gaps in the pall. What was Thomieres doing? Was he trying to bring on a battle all by himself, just as Clausel had, four days before? Why was he getting so far ahead of Maucune on the ridge? Marmont knew he had to stop it at once. He scrambled down the rocks just below the summit, mounted his horse and set off towards Thomieres.

  At around 4.30, Thomieres discovered the terrible consequences of his headlong advance. His 101st Regiment, marching at the head of the column, had been spotted by D’Urban and two of his Portuguese cavalry scouts. They turned about, bringing up 200 Portuguese horse, and swiftly charged the French infantry. Such was the unexpected nature of this attack, the horsemen bursting through the trees just a few hundred yards in front, that the leading battalion of the 101st had no time to form square or even bring its men together in closed column. They broke and fled. As the bloodied routers came running into his main body of troops, Thomieres understood the magnitude of his crisis. Out o
f the oaks in front of him, the 3rd Division appeared in two columns. Barely missing a step of their march, the British troops deployed into battle line. He had seconds in which to respond. Desperately, he tried to order his men out of their column of march and into some sort of formation. His artillery battery came swiftly into action, and Curto at the head of the cavalry on his left reacted instinctively to the danger that had suddenly appeared. Shells began to fall into the British ranks. Pakenham’s men, however, were already moving in a line just two men deep, so the shot did them far less damage than that of the 3rd Division’s own guns, smacking into the deep files of deploying French.

  It probably took no more than fifteen minutes for Thomieres’ division to be defeated. D’Urban, and some squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons under Colonel Hervey, soon put the French horse about and the 3rd Division continued its advance up on to the Azan ridge. The two leading French regiments had lost all formation and were trying to defend themselves as a clump of individuals. One of the 3rd Division’s brigades advanced up to them in a kind of crescent, the two ends of its firing line curving around the dazed mass. After receiving two French volleys, the redcoats, with the Irish of the 88th at their centre, shouted a couple of hurrahs and went in with the bayonet. In moments, the 101st’s colonel and its eagle, the gilded symbol that the emperor had handed to them and urged them to defend to the death, had both been captured.