The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  As this had been going on, the 4th and 5th Divisions had also advanced into the trough that separated them from the French and up the other side towards Maucune’s division. The British battalions began a heavy fire of musketry, which was returned by the defenders.

  For a moment, the French held the ridge, making the most of its natural strength, but then the 4th and 5th Divisions’ batteries engaged them with howitzer fire. These artillery pieces were able to loft a shell on a higher trajectory than a normal cannon and if the fuses of their shrapnel shells were set just right, they would explode over the heads of the French ranks, showering them with hot metal. Scovell, watching the howitzers open up from near Los Arapiles, noted ‘a few shells most judiciously thrown made the Enemy give way, and our light troops and line hurried on and gained the Heights’. The French, flinching from this new source of death, dressed their ranks back a few yards from the top of the ridge line. In their new position, enveloped in smoke, they could not see that Le Marchant’s heavies had mounted and were deploying into line in front of Los Arapiles.

  The 4th Dragoons and 5th Dragoon Guards emerged from their cover and one by one troops fell into a solid line of horse. The 3rd Dragoons followed on in reserve. With a chorus of trumpets, they all set off on the trot past Los Arapiles and towards the ridge. At this point, General Stapleton Cotton appeared and ordered Le Marchant to charge, an instruction that would seem entirely superfluous given Scovell’s earlier warning and Wellington’s personal commands. Le Marchant, however, could not see beyond the ridge and much of the field was wreathed in thick smoke. Cotton lost his temper with the brigade commander and strong words were exchanged. Le Marchant continued on his way after this, leading his men into the uncertainty ahead.

  The French artillery played on them ineffectually, for much of their fire had been switched to the British infantry, which was closer at hand. Le Marchant looked to his left and right, surveying the line of troopers that moved forwards, filling the air with the jingling of saddlery and the sweet smell of horses. Here and there, men pulled back on their reins, trying to check the impetuosity of their steeds. Others spurred them on, so that they did not fall behind. Regularity was everything in the business they were about to conduct. They had been trained to ride almost stirrup to stirrup, forming a solid wall of flesh and metal. If the mere sight of this great armament did not cause the French infantry to break and run, the matter would be settled by the merciless application of the 1796 heavy cavalry sabre.

  Just a couple of minutes after they had set off, the heavies were cantering up the Azan ridge. Le Marchant was directing them into a space between the 5th Division on his left and the leading elements of Pakenham’s 3rd on his right. At last, the trumpeters sounded the charge, unleashing the torrent that had been kept in check by an iron discipline until that moment.

  The footsloggers of the 66th and 15th de ligne,† forming one of Maucune’s brigades just behind the ridge, probably had no idea what was about to hit them. They were enveloped in smoke, and had moved back from the ridge line to escape the British artillery fire in any case. Their spirits had been shaken too by the sight of Thomieres’ men, who were flooding around them. Their hallooing and shouting as they fled back over the ridge was an intimation of the arrival of an enemy force on their flank at any moment. Fearing cavalry, their commanders had initially formed them in squares, but packing the men together like this had only increased the effect of a hail of musketry by the 5th Division to their front. The British battalions were deployed in line, firing with all muskets into the dense-packed Frenchmen, who could only respond with volleys from one or two sides of their squares. The French commanders had taken their companies out of square and were just moving them back again, to escape this withering fire, when they heard the thundering of Le Marchant’s men. Many of the infantry were not even facing the right way at that moment, but those who turned around were witness to a terrifying spectacle. When the messieurs en rouge erupted from the smoke, there would only have been seconds left in which to react.

  The 66th were lost in moments. The point of each sabre delivered a ton of mass at the speed of the gallop. When they connected with their targets, hundreds were impaled. Those who were not run through were sent flying by horses’ shoulders or trampled under thundering hooves. The moment of contact between dragoon and fantassin was in most cases a fleeting one, and having ridden down the 66th, Le Marchant’s brigade maintained its forward momentum towards the 15th. With the advantage of a few moments’ warning, their officers had turned them about and managed to fire off a volley. About one dozen dragoons dropped from their horses as the 15th also disappeared under the flood of cavalry.

  Le Marchant, who had led from the front, cutting down many men with his own hand, knew that his brigade was breaking up. Many troopers were wild with triumph and had gone off in pursuit of little groups of enemy soldiers who were scattering into the oaks on the backside of the ridge. The brigadier detailed a squadron to herd the prisoners and then carried on rallying his regiments for a further charge. They met the 22nd Regiment, the leading unit of another Army of Portugal division, Taupin’s, at the charge once more. These battalions had the time, while the British heavies were reordering their ranks, to align themselves in heavy columns and deliver a powerful volley when the British were only ten yards or so away, felling dozens of men of the 5th Dragoon Guards. It did not save them, though, for if a last-minute fire like this did not check galloping cavalry, despair spread immediately in the ranks.

  The Heavy Brigade’s charge had expended almost all of its immense energy. Eight battalions of French infantry had been ridden down. Colonel Somerset’s 4th Dragoons had taken five pieces of artillery too. Watching from his vantage-point behind Los Arapiles, Wellington turned to the commander of his cavalry and exulted, ‘By God, Cotton! I have never seen anything so beautiful in all my life!’ The British commander knew that Pakenham’s charge and the actions of Le Marchant’s brigade had ruined two divisions and that Marmont would need a miracle to recover from the loss of one quarter of his men.

  What Wellington did not know was that Marmont had been wounded at least one hour before. He had fallen victim to one of the British artillery shells as he turned to mount his horse, trying to organize his forces against the British onslaught. Marmont had been hit in the arm and was evidently losing a lot of blood, for he was carried from the field. His place had been taken by his most senior divisional general, Bonnet, who had been similarly powerless to save the French left.

  All across the ridge, the combat of two armies had degenerated into the brawling of groups of individuals. Bands of five or ten French infantry, many of them lacerated with dreadful sword wounds to the head or upper body, were meandering around, trying to find their bearings. British dragoons, meanwhile, were riding about, hacking as they passed. One young officer wrote home: ‘it was a fine sight to see those fellows running and, as we held our swords over their heads, fall down on their knees, drop their muskets and cry: Prisonnier, Monsieur!’ As Le Marchant was trying to restore order and bring together one squadron for a final charge, he was shot. The ball broke his spine, killing him almost instantly. Like Moore and Craufurd before him, the torch bearer of scientific soldiering had been killed at this moment of destiny.

  The shattered remnants of the 101st, 66th, 15th and 22nd infantry were either skulking in the trees or giving themselves up to British infantry. Some 1,500 surrendered to the 5th Division. Elsewhere, the 3rd Division met the French fugitives: ‘hundreds of men frightfully disfigured, black with dust and worn out with fatigue and covered with sabre cuts and blood threw themselves among us for safety,’ one diarist recalled.

  Among the French casualties were several of their leaders. General Thomieres had been shot during the fight with Pakenham: he was captured but would soon die. Colonel Jardet, the ADC whose ciphered letter from Paris had provided such good intelligence to the British earlier in the year, was also killed. Command of the Army of Portugal devolved at thi
s critical moment on to General Bertrand Clausel, who, in the best style of his imperial master, resolved to meet this emergency with an immediate attack of his own.

  The British 4th Division had already been checked atop the ridge, and Clausel threw the three uncommitted French formations into a general advance on this central sector, supported by a dragoon brigade. At first, Wellington’s men were driven back towards Los Arapiles in disorder. Marshal Beresford, accompanied by his ADC, Major William Warre, rode into the retreating columns, trying to rally them. Beresford was soon shot in the chest and fell from his horse (although he survived). Warre recorded, ‘I escaped very well with two shots on my sword scabbard, and one thro’ my holster, which is as near as I ever wish to have them.’

  Although Clausel’s counter-attack initially made good progress, Wellington had more in reserve than his opponents and was able to throw three fresh divisions in their way. Wellington himself was now riding about the centre, often on his own, firing off orders to the Staff who somehow still managed to find him in the gloom and cacophony. Clausel’s attack had lost momentum and it only remained for the British Army to take one more great step forward to complete the victory. The French, meanwhile, had begun falling back to a position about half a mile behind the Greater Arapil hill, where they would make their final defence. Sensing the change in fortunes, Wellington sent the Prince of Orange with an order to bring up the Light Division. He then directed an assault on the Greater Arapil, which captured another French battery.

  After 8 p.m., with darkness almost enveloping the battlefield, Scovell found Wellington and was also issued with new orders. He was directed to bring the 5th and another division across from where they had been fighting earlier in the afternoon. He galloped off to his task, even taking it on his own initiative to redirect one of the divisions at one point on its march across.

  By 10 p.m., the battle was almost at an end. There was elation among Wellington and his Staff. When eventually the officers of the Adjutant-General’s department would compile their returns, it became apparent that the losses of the allied forces were around 5,000 (including wounded), whereas those of the French probably exceeded 14,000. Two eagles had been captured, a loss that always irritated the emperor, along with twenty cannon.

  Everything was set, late on 22 July, for an energetic pursuit the following morning. Wellington had (a couple of days before) deployed a Spanish brigade to the main bridge on the French line of withdrawal over the Tormes. With any luck, thousands of men would be stuck on the allied side of its channel. Two brigades of cavalry awaited the dawn keenly, for they were fresh and had not been committed in the fight that the British would remember thereafter as Salamanca and the French as Los Arapiles.

  On the battlefield, soldiers’ wives went in search of their fallen husbands. Susannah Dalbiac was one, turning over the disfigured faces of one dragoon after another before hearing the joyous news that her husband was not dead. Scovell was relieved to find that his brother-in-law had also survived the great charge that had done so much to win the day. Clowes told Scovell that riding off the field, he had encountered General Le Marchant’s son, Carey. It became clear that the young captain was quite ignorant of his father’s fate and Clowes, who had led his regiment gallantly throughout the day, found that his courage failed him at this dreadful moment. Scovell’s brother-in-law could not bring himself to tell Carey that his father was dead and that he and his seven siblings were orphans.

  The Staff had a brief respite that night. They chattered excitedly in their bivouacs about a victory that had transformed every expectation of the war in Spain. Some wrote home, keen to break the news of the triumph to their loved ones. William Warre told his sister:

  you cannot think how beautiful it is to be cannonaded all day, being very tired and hungry, and at 5pm instead of sitting down to eat a good dinner, to set to give the French a good beating in a very strong position, which, however is the best part of the whole divertissement, and though Ld Welln. naturally got all the laurels, it was a most glorious business.

  The following morning, the pursuit was resumed, with General Wellington making the painful discovery that the Spanish force he had intended to block the Tormes had relinquished its position even before the action of 22 July, allowing the French to escape across the river. His immense disappointment was tempered somewhat late in the morning of the 23rd, when Bock’s brigade of heavy cavalry caught the French rearguard near Garcia Hernandez. The retreating troops belonged to Foy’s division, the only one of the Army of Portugal that had escaped largely unscathed from the previous day’s pounding. Scovell watched from a nearby ridge as the German Legion dragoons prepared to charge the French. The Staff officer noticed squadrons of French cavalry near by who did nothing to intervene, and he reflected that their spirit had been broken for they had ceased to risk their own lives in defence of their comrades’.

  Faced with the imminent onslaught, the rearmost French battalion formed square, but this specific, usually infallible, was to fail them this day. As the German dragoons charged in, their commander and his horse were hit by a hail of musketry; man and beast fell together on to the French ranks. In that moment, the integrity of their defence was broken. Troopers rode into the breach and the battalion was finished. Once cavalry rode into a square, it dissolved in seconds, for the infantry found themselves attacked from behind and it became a matter of every man for himself. A little further along, another regiment was mauled too. Foy’s division thus suffered more than 1,100 casualties and Wellington’s heavies notched up their second triumph in as many days.

  The events at Salamanca caused considerable éclat in the French command. Every previous assumption that Wellington was some Sepoy General, an overrated mediocrity, had to be cast aside. Indeed, General Foy himself was moved to compare his adversary to the greatest captains of the previous century:

  the battle of Salamanca … put Wellington in almost the same class as Marlborough. We had the opportunity, until that moment, of knowing his prudence, his choice of positions, his skill at drawing things out; at Salamanca he showed himself to be a considerable manoeuvrer; he kept his dispositions hidden almost all day; he waited for our movements before revealing his own; he revealed little; he fought in an oblique order; it was a battle in the style of Frederick [the Great].

  Wellington’s private verdict was given succinctly in a letter to Sir Thomas Graham:

  after manouevring all morning in the usual French style, nobody knew with what object, [Marmont] at last pressed upon my right in such a manner, at the same time without engaging, that he would have either carried our Arapiles, or he would have confined us entirely to our position. This was not to be endured, and we fell upon him, turning his left flank; and I never saw an army receive such a beating.

  On 24 July, Wellington halted the army and set about writing his victory dispatch. There was praise enough to go round; the ordinary soldiers were thanked, as were the many senior officers, several of whom had fallen wounded. Le Marchant’s heavies did not get the credit that their pivotal role merited, but it seems that General Cotton, following his argument with their now-dead commander, had already gained a revenge of sorts in the writing of this record. For the more junior officers, any mention in this missive meant promotion. Most of Wellington’s aristocratic favourites were there: De Lancey, the Prince of Orange and FitzRoy Somerset. The honour of going home with the victory dispatch and laying the captured eagles at the Prince Regent’s feet was given to a high-born ADC, Captain Lord Clinton.

  While Wellington might have ignored Scovell on many an occasion, he knew a secret shared by only two or three officers in Headquarters. Without confidence about the size of the enemy army, he would never have given battle. It was Scovell’s deciphering of letters in the Great Paris Cipher that had given Wellington the pronounced advantage as the campaign had drawn towards its crisis. They had told him first that Marmont’s army would not be reinforced by large numbers from the north and then they had revealed
exactly when he must take them on or lose the chance once they had made their junction with the Army of the Centre. For this Scovell was mentioned in the Salamanca dispatch and so made up to lieutenant-colonel just fifteen months after getting his majority. If he had any regrets at not sharing in the glorious charge of Le Marchant’s brigade, this must surely have swept them away. For Scovell had now achieved another step of promotion, not by drawing blood but by the application of science and intellect.

  NOTES

  1 ‘General Foy, occupying the end of the French deployment closest to the river, set out to survey the enemy lines’: Vie Militaire, a biography of Foy by Girod de L’Ain, includes long passages of direct quotation from the general’s letters and diaries, a vital source on the French side of the battle. Other information on their perspective comes from Du Casse’s collection of Joseph’s documents, Marmont’s Memoires and Jourdan’s ditto. I have also referred to Souvenirs du Capitaine Parquin, by Charles Parquin. Many authorities consider the last unreliable, but he is good for colour.

  2 ‘Pakenham and the cavalry marching in his company were to make a long march’: the British sources on the battle differ on when Pakenham got his orders and where exactly they were in the early part of the day. One thing is clear, though: they had moved so far by 3 p.m. that their orders must have been given early on.

  3 ‘Foy … worried about his chief’s judgement’: these damming meditations by Foy came from a letter to a friend in France on 16 July 1812 and are quoted by Girod de l’Ain. The fact that these reflections were contemporary to the campaign is important, for Foy later became one of the many officers to vilify Marmont for his defection from the Imperial cause in 1814.

  – ‘Marmont’s hesitancy revealed itself once more in orders that kept his options open’: all of Marmont’s rather sad attempts to explain what happened suggest he had not resolved to attack Wellington with his full strength.