The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  *

  Soult’s escape had only been possible at considerable cost, as the commander of British forces was quick to point out, lest there be disappointment in Whitehall. Wellesley wrote to Lord Castlereagh on 18 May,

  it is obvious that if an army throws away all its cannon, equipment, and baggage, and everything that can strengthen it and enable it to act together as a body … it must be able to march over roads on which it cannot be followed with any prospect of being overtaken by an army which has not made the same sacrifices.

  His argument had some validity: Soult had lost 4,000 men in Oporto and the subsequent retreat. He had left behind dozens of cannon too, leaving his army without artillery, unfit to take to the field except against guerrillas.

  The British general would not dwell on the near-miss with Soult at the foot of the Serra da Geres in his letters home, let alone reveal the extent to which Soult’s escape had been due to his own miscalculations, caution or failure of intelligence in his HQ. Instead, he made the most of his daring assault of the Douro. This action announced his return to Iberia with the necessary éclat.† It would lift spirits in London. By liberating that part of the country, it also cemented the Anglo-Portuguese alliance against the French.

  Wellesley’s official dispatch presented the events in northern Portugal in a suitably triumphant way. Since these accounts were published in the newspapers, there was little room for real candour in any case. For Napoleon devoured British newspapers with relish, and they sometimes found their way to his Paris cabinet within three or four days of publication. So, instead of conveying the confused realities, Wellesley soothed the Ministry with comforting sentences. In a General Order to the troops on 12 May, the general also singled out the secretary of war’s brother, Major-General Stewart, for praise in gallantly putting himself at the head of the cavalry on 11 and 12 May. The second charge, Wellesley claimed, ‘obtained the victory, which has contributed so much to the honour of the troops on this day’.

  Among the ambitious young officers who, Warre aside, had not found the glory they were looking for, Wellesley’s politically coloured account touched off frustration, expressed in their journals and letters home. Captain Edward Cocks of the 16th Light Dragoons, an aristocrat but also a fiercely dedicated young officer, wrote to his brother correcting the official version of events and damning the meddling Adjutant-General: ‘depend on it from me, whatever Sir A. Wellesley may choose to say, [Major-General Stewart’s] only merit on either day was being Lord Castlereagh’s brother. On both occasions when he came within sight of the enemy he said, “there’s your enemy, charge them”, and went back’ (original emphasis).

  Captain Cocks was soon to become involved in intelligence work and to gain Wellesley’s unqualified respect, but at this early stage of the campaign he echoed the anger of many in the Army that Soult had been allowed to escape. ‘Why’, Cocks demanded in his journal, ‘was Colonel Murray as QMG so ignorant of the road beyond Salamonde that he could give no directions to the Guards when General Beresford was so well acquainted with the country and when a few questions directed at any Portuguese peasant would probably have given sufficient explanation?’

  As a member of Wellesley’s Staff, Scovell could have answered these questions only too well. Communication with Beresford, whose people knew about the old Roman route, was too difficult, and General Wellesley had refused to see the Portuguese officer who could have imparted the same knowledge. A couple of days after his commander gave up pursuing the French, Scovell noted angrily in his journal, ‘we have now seen what it is to neglect the advice of an individual, especially one who knew the Country so well as the Commandant of Braga’.

  Early on in his relationship with his new commander, Scovell had detected the general’s aristocratic hauteur, and witnessed the costs of maintaining a strict hierarchy at Headquarters. It was not for Deputy Assistants of the Quartermaster-General’s branch to tell the general he had to see someone, or even to say the same to Colonel Murray. The prevailing relations among these officers were summed up later that summer by one officer of the QMG department: ‘One ought not however to venture an opinion,’ wrote the officer, ‘nobody can appreciate all the motives that sway a Commander in Chief but himself.’ This attitude was not shared by Scovell. Indeed, in his account of the Oporto operations sent to Colonel Le Marchant he made a number of criticisms of their conduct and of the rigid way that business had been conducted at Headquarters. Scovell explained his reasons for doing so thus: ‘I think it by far the most instructive part of a campaign to know why we fail; success is in the mouth of everyone to account for.’ The colonel’s former pupil had evidently perfected this philosophy at Wycombe: no general was beyond criticism, but any remarks of this kind must stem from a desire to perfect the Army rather than to vilify the person.

  Le Marchant had helped found the Royal Military College in 1799 and its graduates had come to form a body of professional officers often referred to as ‘Wycombites’ or, later, as ‘scientific soldiers’. The education of the officer corps was just one plank in the raft of reforms that Le Marchant and a few like-minded officers wanted to introduce. Their other ideas extended to the formation of a professional General Staff to plan and oversee operations; reforms of the system of promotion and patronage, leading to advancement strictly on the grounds of professional competence; and the grouping of troops into divisions of all arms (infantry, cavalry and artillery) so that they could operate more effectively in battle. The Army hierarchy, notably the Duke of York, had initially responded favourably to these ideas, accepting that change of some sort was necessary if Britain were to withstand the mighty French, who had defeated every major European power. The colonel’s most ambitious proposals, submitted in 1802, however, were soon suppressed by generals who felt that copying the French army might possibly improve military efficiency but was too dangerous to Britain’s social order. They saw any argument for reform, be it of promotion or perhaps the granting of important posts on the Staff on the basis of ability rather than patronage, as a dangerous drift towards ruin, rebellion and Jacobin excess.

  In 1806, Le Marchant wrote despairingly:

  It is well understood by the Government of the Country that intelligent officers are necessary to an efficient army, and that it is alone a well organised Etat Major [General Staff] who can lead large bodies of troops to victory. How can we be so absurd as to oppose that, neglecting as we do all instruction and the aid of science in our military enterprises, we are to be victorious over troops that possess those advantages in the highest degree of perfection?

  Wycombe men were taught that science and brain power were more important to victory than noble birth or the maintenance of patronage. Not all of those who passed through the college adopted these arguments uncritically; William Warre, for example, seems to have emerged from his studies with his conservative views intact. As for Scovell, it had taken the experience of the Corunna campaign to convince him finally of the Army’s desperate need for reform. Once he had accepted this creed, Scovell applied his mind devotedly to schemes for tackling the Army’s myriad faults. He had taken to scribbling away in his journals and notebooks until late into the night, even after a hard day’s march. Scovell hoped that one day he might impart the many lessons he was learning on campaign to a new generation of officers, perhaps as a teacher at the Royal Military College. The need to perfect the Army was so important and so urgent that he did not feel that his commander or any other senior officer should be placed above scrutiny.

  This attitude was precisely the kind of thing that irritated Wellesley, a strict believer in hierarchy. If a captain on the Staff had something of benefit to say, doubtless Colonel Murray could say it for him. The general had both personal and philosophical reasons to distrust these self-appointed reformers.

  Wellesley was a younger son of one of the great Anglo-Irish landed families. He had grown up amid a deafening chorus of panegyrics sung to the intelligence of his older brother Richard. Those w
ith an exaggerated view of their own intellect could go to Hell as far as Arthur Wellesley was concerned.

  As a colonel in the Army, Wellesley had spent several years attached to Headquarters in Ireland, at Dublin Castle. These were times of revolutionary ferment in Ireland (and indeed in 1798, after he had left, of a French-supported rising) from which Wellesley emerged with a conviction that landowners were the key to social order and patronage was the best mechanism for keeping them happy.

  Events in France and Ireland had taught him that the dangers of revolution in Britain were very real. Wellesley believed it highly significant that Bonaparte had emerged from an artillery academy and saw the sons of France’s new professional class, the bourgeoisie, as the force that had forged that country’s Jacobin mobs into mighty legions threatening the established order of all Europe. British officers who came from a similar background might be just as dangerous. ‘These are in fact the description of officers who have revolutionised other armies,’ Wellesley would later write, ‘having no connection with the property and rank of the country, they are the more easily disposed to destroy its institutions.’

  In May 1809, when Scovell wrote to Le Marchant that the most instructive part of a campaign consisted of being frank about its failures, he had set himself entirely at odds with Wellesley. It was one thing to have toyed with such ideas under a forward-thinking commander like the late Sir John Moore, but under the new circumstances of serving a reactionary Tory general, they were close to sedition. And if Wellesley naturally distrusted the reformers, Scovell repaid the compliment. The general’s refusal to receive the Portuguese Commandant of Braga had been taken by the Deputy Assistant QMG as snobbery and it clearly rankled. In seven years of keeping his journal, Scovell did not pen one word of affection towards Wellesley. Equally, although there were many occasions when he questioned the way operations had been carried out, Scovell never attacked his commander in personal terms either. This was not only the best professional attitude to take, but also hardly surprising since he was writing a journal that might be prised from his baggage and read by rivals at Headquarters in the event of his injury or death.

  Even Scovell’s criticisms of Wellesley’s professional conduct had to be subsumed in public, however, for the reality of relations between the aristocratic general and his lowly DAQMG was all too clear. Wellesley was the key to everything Scovell wanted in life, as long as he remained in the Army. It fell to Colonel George Murray, the QMG, to use his considerable charms to soothe the discord between his reactionary master and a Staff that contained quite a few reform-minded Wycombites. As a former teacher at the Royal Military College who hailed from a landed Scottish family, Murray was better suited than anyone for this task. In the days after Soult’s escape, the QMG decided that Scovell himself would play an important part in the prevention of any repetition of these events. Scovell knew what Murray had in mind and it filled him with a sense of foreboding.

  The Army retired from the Geres mountains, heading south back to Oporto. Scovell rode with Major-General Payne, the commander of the light cavalry brigade. Doubtless he was deep in thought, for Murray and De Lancey had already expressed their desires. How could he get what he wanted when he held so few cards? Scovell certainly knew what he wanted. He had seen an opportunity while riding with Moore’s Headquarters the previous summer.

  Wellesley, like Moore before him, was working with a limited cavalry force: six regiments, or about 4,000 men. In the coming months Horse Guards was most reluctant to send more regiments of these troops: the British Isles were still under threat of invasion, Ireland was rumbling away and the Ministry was also assembling a major military expedition to northern Europe. What little cavalry the British commander had was constantly being reduced by detachments: eight dragoons to carry letters here; a troop of cavalry to guard an important convoy there; a squadron to explore uncharted territory elsewhere. Scovell understood that if Britain were to maintain its army in the Iberian Peninsula for the foreseeable future, it would need more cavalry, some of which would need to be raised locally. There were plenty of precedents for this in the American war, and even the expedition to Egypt nine years before had been accompanied by a mongrel band of émigrés, deserters and adventurers called Hompeshe’s Hussars.

  Scovell had been lobbying for his scheme even during the tumultuous events of Moore’s campaign, handing memoranda to George Murray which, hardly surprisingly, the QMG had little time to read. Scovell wanted to lead cavalry again, and he saw the campaign as an opportunity to build a new regiment around himself. If that was not possible, then he would happily remain Major-General Payne’s DAQMG for the time being and consider whether he had a future in the Army.

  The Major-General and his pensive companion reached the bustle and gaiety of Oporto on 24 May. Once more, they were a world away from the scenes of the Ponte Nova bridge, of torched villages, wounded French conscripts impaled on locals’ pitchforks and smashed equipment strewn across the savage mountains.

  Next morning, Scovell stepped into the bright light and incessant noise of the city’s streets. He had been invited to see Colonel Murray at HQ. The captain had washed and donned the smartest coat he could find in his baggage. He had made the best of his appearance and was now ready to make his best argument.

  Murray did not waste time with preliminaries. It was necessary to raise the corps of Mounted Guides again urgently. Wellesley’s intention to do this had already been announced two days earlier, in a General Order to the Army. The Guides’ skills were needed if there was to be no repetition of episodes like Soult’s escape. The commander of the forces saw a wider role for them too. He was most anxious that the Army obtain the best possible intelligence and he knew that few men could be trusted with the delicate task. Murray spoke in his mild Perthshire brogue, fixed Scovell with his grey-blue eyes and asked him whether he was ready to take on this task.

  It would be with the utmost reluctance, Scovell replied. The captain knew he could not refuse an order, but Murray’s request had not yet been couched in those terms and this was as close as the Deputy Assistant QMG could go. Disillusion with the Army had finally reached its limit for Scovell. He had taken on untold extra duties as an adjutant in the 4th Dragoons, his old cavalry regiment, without extra pay. He had applied himself with complete dedication at Wycombe. He had penned any number of schemes and plans to try to unite his interests and those of the Service, all without success.

  Anxiously, Scovell went on to explain himself. The current situation with General Payne’s cavalry brigade was most agreeable to him and offered every opportunity for distinction. The colonel surely remembered that the formation of the corps of Guides the previous summer had been attended by every conceivable difficulty. He had been presented with a pack of deserters from the French infantry and a few dozen nags bought cheaply in the Portuguese markets, and had been told to turn them into a force of mounted soldiers. There had been no junior officers to assist him. He had devoted himself to this unenviable task while trying to fulfil all of the other duties of a Deputy Assistant at Headquarters.

  Murray perhaps realized that when a man as bereft of interest and wealth as Scovell declined a request, it was time for delicate proceedings. The Quartermaster-General also knew that Scovell had shown unique linguistic skill in dealing with his polyglot horde during the last campaign; other officers did not have these abilities, nor would the DAQMGs with better connections regard the job of controlling the Guides as a desirable one. There were no real alternatives.

  The Scottish colonel reassured his Captain. Murray was capable of great charm; it had won him Moore’s respect in Egypt nine years before and Wellesley’s on the Copenhagen expedition in 1807. If great captains of such strong will and differing temperaments as Moore and Wellesley had been seduced, then what chance did Scovell have? There was no question of the Guides being established on anything other than the most formal basis, as Sir Arthur Wellesley’s General Order had made clear. It would be a much larger unit
this time, at least 100 men, with four lieutenants and four cornets as commissioned officers to carry out Scovell’s orders. Couldn’t he see that this was the very cavalry that he himself had advocated in his memorandum? Their duties would be extensive, and the enterprise was one which General Wellesley would overlook with the closest personal interest.

  Scovell had made his protest. The conversation was moving to its climax. The general and he himself, Colonel Murray said, understood that such a large task could not be superintended by a humble captain. The QMG made clear that if his Deputy Assistant accepted the command, it would be rewarded by a recommendation of promotion to major. Scovell knew very well that the step from captain to major was one of the most difficult to make. The simple mathematics of the Army establishment did not allow any but the most determined or best connected to manage it: there could be a dozen captains in a regiment but only two majors. The promotion would also entail a change of status from Deputy Assistant to Assistant Quartermaster-General, which meant a further increase in pay.

  Scovell agreed to Colonel Murray’s proposal. Captain Scovell was on his way to becoming the man in charge of Wellesley’s communications and a vital part of his intelligence apparatus.

  NOTES

  1 ‘It was about 10 a.m. on a typically sleepy May morning’: this account is drawn from Scovell’s journal, Wellington’s official dispatch about the operation, personal observation at the place of the crossing and some other officers’ journals. While looking at the Beaufort Papers, I came across a fascinating letter of 13 May 1809 (FmM 4/1/4) from FitzRoy Somerset, in which he wrote: ‘I believe Sir Arthur thought that the greater part of the French army had left Oporto and that as soon as our men entered advanced into the town, they would send an officer to beg us to take care of their sick.’ This suggests that Wellesley’s crossing of the Douro was not as bold an act as it is usually made out to be. Notwithstanding this, the Army clearly did move into Vila Nova gingerly, French pickets were spotted on the north shore and the first wave of British troops crossed the Douro with great anxiety while a grand battery of guns was deployed to cover them. All of this leaves me supposing FitzRoy Somerset exaggerated his case a little and that his general was moving forward with justifiable caution.