The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  If any further incentive was needed finally to make the move towards communicating in code, it may well have come from General Maximilien Foy, who, while travelling back to Spain in March 1811 after briefing the emperor, had narrowly escaped capture during a guerrilla ambush. Marmont elevated Foy to the command of one of his divisions. The two men had been in the same class at artillery academy in 1792, campaigned together in 1805 and trusted one another completely. Foy had fought the British more times than almost any other commander in the French army. He had been at Vimiero, Wellington’s Peninsular début in 1808, had led the troops trying to storm the seminary in Oporto following the crossing of the Douro in 1809 and been seriously wounded in action at Busaco in 1810.

  Marmont had already discussed the possible introduction of a grand chiffre for use in high level communication with Paris and Madrid with Marshal Berthier, Napoleon’s Chief of Staff, before his own departure from Paris. While this question was being considered, he got his staff to prepare a new code table for use between himself and the Army of Portugal’s six divisional commanders. This fell in complexity somewhere between the simple ciphers of thirty or fifty numbers and the grand chiffre with its printed tables of 1,200. It would come in its own standard table of 150 characters. Marmont and his chief of staff had grasped two important points: a cipher for use by the Army of Portugal would be much easier to distribute in his own area of operations than one for use by the senior commanders right across Spain, so he might as well proceed with it. Furthermore, since the problems of getting it to his commanders were not so great, its security could be maintained by changes of cipher table.

  In the meantime, Marmont took the field with his reorganized army and prepared it to march shortly before the end of May. Wellington had been busy trying to find a way to continue besieging the border fortress of Badajoz. When Don Julian’s scouts near Salamanca detected the French preparation to go south, Wellington did not believe that Marmont’s exhausted host could possibly be ready to march. But he knew that his siege of Badajoz would have to be abandoned if he was wrong, and Marmont did march south to join Soult.

  Uncertain of the value of the intercepted dispatches he continued to receive, Wellington relied heavily on his exploring officers, and in particular on Colquhoun Grant, a young captain of the 11th Foot, who sent in valuable reports based on reconnaissances he carried out inside French lines. Grant had begun this secret work a few months earlier, while the Army was still inside the Torres Vedras lines. He operated in uniform, alone or with one or two comrades, and relied on the speed of his hunter to gallop clear of any pursuing enemy. Like Scovell, Grant loved Spanish culture and language, using his excellent grasp of it to win the confidence of locals up and down the frontier. ‘His knowledge of the enemy’s army was exact,’ wrote one officer at Headquarters, ‘he knew not only the regiments, but the character of every superior officer.’

  The presence of men like Grant deeply unsettled the French. Sometimes a column of infantry marching across a dusty Estremaduran plain would see the glint of a telescope on a nearby hillside and then catch sight of a silhouetted figure on horseback. One Army of Portugal staff officer recorded:

  we frequently saw observers of this kind flitting round us. It was vain to give chase to them, even with the best-mounted horsemen. The moment the English officer saw any such approach he would set spurs to his steed, and nimbly clearing ditches, hedges, even brooks, he would make off at such speed that our men soon lost sight of him, and perhaps saw him soon after a league further on, notebook in hand, at the top of some hillock, continuing his observations.

  Although many of the French felt powerless to stop Wellington’s exploring officers, their trade was in fact a hazardous one. Lieutenant-Colonel Waters, an officer who had played a vital part in the Douro crossing two years earlier, was captured in April 1811. Another lieutenant-colonel, confusingly called John Grant, disappeared in Estremadura while observing Marmont’s advance.

  On 10 June 1811, Wellington was in possession of enough reports from his exploring officers and spies to realize that his plans to take Badajoz would have to be scrapped. In any case, the artillery’s attempts to batter breaches in the town’s defences had achieved only limited success. There was no time for further bombardments. Wellington ordered his army to retire behind the Guadiana river, on the Portuguese frontier.

  Ten days later, Marmont and Soult’s united force of 60,000 men stood opposed to Wellington’s Army. He had 46,000 troops, of whom only 29,000 were British. These were odds against which the British general would be most reluctant to fight, although he had posted his troops in strong positions. Not only had he seen his plan to take Badajoz thwarted, but he had become apprehensive for the safety of its Portuguese counterpart, Elvas. A series of tetchy orders were fired off, ordering that supplies be thrown into the place and that the governor should put it in a state of defence, for Wellington was anticipating that he might have to fall back across the Alentejo plain and leave the garrison under an enemy siege. During this tense period, Wellington outwardly displayed his usual sang froid and businesslike calm to his Staff and soldiers. But his anxiety that an onslaught by Soult and Marmont’s combined forces might force him all the way back to Lisbon was very real, revealing itself in a letter to his brother on 21 June: ‘matters are in a very critical state just now; but I think I shall carry them through’.

  Wellington had learned a worthwhile lesson during those summer months of 1811. He could not be in two places at once and he could not rely on others to act according to the letter of his orders. Not only had there been a failure to prevent Brenier’s breakout from Almeida in May, but in June Lieutenant-General Spencer, the officer left in charge in the north, had taken fright at a French probing attack and blown up those works, abandoning them once more. Now, on the plain of the Guadiana he had seen something else: that if French generals cooperated rather than bickered, his calculations would be upset.

  For as long as he was one man trying to cover two routes into Portugal from invasion by two or three French armies, communications would be paramount. His would have to be impeccable and those of the enemy would need to be intercepted and their secrets revealed. The success of all future operations depended upon this and therefore upon his superintendent of communications, George Scovell.

  NOTES

  1 ‘Before the first light’: the details of the cavalry battle of 5 May are drawn from Brotherton’s memorandum in Hamilton’s ‘Historical Record of the 14th (King’s) Hussars’; Cocks’s journal, edited and reproduced by Julia Page as Intelligence Officer in the Peninsula; Letters and Diaries of Major The Hon Edward Charles Cocks; and Tomkinson, who was another officer of the 16th Light Dragoons and bequeathed us ‘Diary of a Cavalry Officer 1809–1815’, and Scovell’s account in his journal.

  The attentive reader will notice that I have skipped Scovell’s story throughout 1810 and early 1811 in order to move forward to Fuentes d’Onoro to see his brush with death, and even later in 1811, the introduction of the first French ciphers in the campaign. I apologize to any reader who feels hard done by, but would stress that I am not setting out to write an exhaustive biography of Scovell per se. The principal military event that I have left out was the Battle of Busaco on 27 September 1810. During this fight, Marshal Massena threw his troops against Wellington, who occupied a steep-fronted ridge. The French came badly unstuck and the British continued falling back to the lines of Torres Vedras, having shaken the invaders’ confidence badly. Late on the night before the battle, Colonel Murray, the QMG (with Scovell) in company, detected a weak point in the British deployment and ordered some battalions to plug it. This stands as a rare example of one of Wellington’s officers changing his orders without his master’s approval and not being condemned for it. Murray had the satisfaction of being proved right on the day of the battle, when a French corps struck the British line precisely where he had predicted, and Wellington doubtless respected him for his initiative.

  2 ‘the only i
nstance I ever met with of two bodies of cavalry coming in opposition, and both standing’: Tomkinson.

  – ‘A cry of “No Quarter!” went around the British cavalry’: this telling detail emerges in one of Cocks’s letters, reproduced by Page.

  – ‘There was a general, I might say, flight, but the disorder was really terrible’: Somerset’s letter to his brother, the Duke of Beaufort, 8 May 1811, BP FmM 4/1/6.

  3 ‘Don Julian Sanchez’s guerrillas were attached to the corps of Guides’: this is a little known, but highly significant, fact, given the subsequent role of Sanchez’s men in intercepting the mail that Scovell would decipher. The arrangement had been in effect since 25 August 1810, according to a letter from FitzRoy Somerset to Scovell dated 27 July 1811 and copied into the military secretary’s letterbook, reference WP 9/2/1/1.

  4 ‘Massena’s headquarters found three soldiers who were willing to risk trying to penetrate … Each of them had been given a message in code for Brenier’: the main source for this story is Baron de Marbot’s memoirs. He was on Massena’s staff. Curiously, British sources make no reference to the execution of the two captured men, alleged by Marbot, or indeed of the discovery of any ciphered messages on them. Marbot is regarded as a charlatan by many British historians, but the French evacuation made clear that a messenger got through. Personally, I find the idea that these brave men carried coded messages somewhat doubtful. Why not just memorize the message?

  5 ‘the Anglo-Portuguese force operating to the south, near Badajoz, had picked up an interesting dispatch’: D’Urban’s Peninsular Journal 1807–1817 (originally published in 1930 and reissued by Greenhill Books in 1988).

  6 ‘He and D’Urban discovered the meaning of the captured message on the same day they received it’: that, at least, is the clear impression left by D’Urban’s Journal, which makes reference to the contents of the letter.

  7 ‘On the 21st, Wellington … decided to look over the battlefield of Albuera’: Scovell’s journal.

  8 ‘Among the staff officers milling about outside Headquarters in Elvas, the affair of the 16th generated much gossip’: good sources for this are Tomkinson, Warre and D’Urban.

  – ‘Wellington’s aristocratic young military secretary, FitzRoy Somerset, wrote home’: his letter of 23 May 1811 is in BP, 4/1/6.

  9 ‘Wellington had seen Scovell’s corps of Guides at work and had been impressed’: this is a quote from a letter to Lord Bathurst in February 1813 and contained in Wellington’s Dispatches.

  – ‘Later that summer, Scovell and his Guides were tasked with establishing a daily post between the two halves of the Anglo-Portuguese force’: this post was formally established by Wellington’s General Order of 14 August 1811, although in practice it had been running for some weeks beforehand.

  – ‘Scovell later said, with evident pride, “there was no instance of any of these orderlies betraying his trust”’: this comment appears in the interview with Scovell about the Guides conducted in 1854 by an anonymous staff officer who was putting together a similar unit for service in the Crimea and is contained in his notebook held at the National Army Museum.

  10 ‘the Portuguese had maintained links of signalling stations up to Elvas and Almeida on the frontier’: details of the telegraphic system come from Les Renseignements, La Reconnaissance et Les Transmissions Militaires du Temps du Napoleon, L’exemple de la troisieme invasion du Portugal 1810, by Charles-Alphonse Raeuber. I am grateful to Rene Chartrand for providing me with a photocopy of this text.

  – ‘Once he became Superintendent of Military Communications he was given extra pay of £50 per annum, which was soon increased to £80’: the subject of pay and allowances in Wellington’s Army is labyrinthine. This increase was notified in a letter from George Murray to Scovell, copied in Somerset’s letterbook, WP 9/2/1/1. Further details of the extra pay and financial arrangements of the Guides can be found in the PRO, under AO 1/171/488.

  – ‘Scovell was handed a small notebook containing a handwritten copy of a most unusual text: Cryptographia’: thankfully, this precious little tome survives as WO37/9.

  11 ‘Among diplomats and royal princes ciphers had been growing in size and complexity’: see, for example, The Art of Decyphering by John Davis, a very rare public offering on this subject, published in London in 1737.

  – ‘His replacement was Marshal Auguste Frederic Marmont, Duke of Ragusa’: details of Marmont’s career from his own Memoires and Girod de L’Ain’s book on Foy, Vie Militaire.

  12 ‘Marmont had an advantage over the others. He had used ciphers in the Balkans’: an example of his 1807 cipher is included in Le Chiffre sous le Premier Empire, by Lieutenant-Colonel J. Volcoq, Revue Historique de L’Armée No 4, 1969.

  13 ‘Marmont had already discussed the possible introduction of a grand chiffre’: this seems clear from a letter Berthier wrote to Marmont on 10 July 1811, contained in Napoleon’s Correspondance.

  – ‘he got his staff to prepare a new code table for use between himself and the Army of Portugal’s six divisional commanders’: details of the Army of Portugal cipher are drawn from Scovell’s papers, WO37.

  14 ‘one Army of Portugal staff officer recorded’: Marbot.

  * Latour Maubourg was an aristocrat who personified the sang froid and gallows humour of the French cavalry. On losing a foot at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, he cursed his sobbing manservant with the words, ‘Stop snivelling, you fool, that’s one less boot for you to polish.’

  † The open ground near the entrance to a fortress, where troops assembled.

  1. 249. 1076. NT. 1082. 365. 622. WE. W. 439. 669. E. 1085. 398. 326. 13. 309. I. 1085. E. 249. 481. T. 980. 985. 186. T. 843. 688. 2. N. 249. 1297. 536. 174. 1085. 1024 … 713. T. 980. 854. E. 326. 536. 700. W. 171. 1015. 1003. 13. T. 980. 1015. 131. T.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  King Joseph’s Crisis of Confidence and the Arrival of a Great Cipher

  The carriage carrying Joseph sped through the gates of Rambouillet’s palace and clattered on to the cobblestones. A handsome team pulled the vehicle and coachmen dressed in the King of Spain’s livery rode postilion. Hidden behind the coach’s windows, Napoleon’s brother was deep in thought as he left the Gothic spires and turrets of the palace behind him.

  For two days he had laid before the emperor every vexatious fact, every tedious detail of his life as an embattled sovereign. This farce in which he must play the role of ‘His Catholic Majesty’ was insupportable. He begged to be allowed to end it, to abdicate.

  Before Joseph started out for Paris, the emperor had tried very hard to avoid this scene and had seen to it that Joseph was virtually a prisoner in his Iberian kingdom. But knowing that he would never get past the frontier if he sought permission, his brother had travelled into France on 10 May without it. Joseph had ignored an order, delivered by one of the imperial estaffettes* on the wayside in Gascony, to turn around and go back to Madrid.

  On the 15th, he had arrived not in Paris, but at the Bourbons’ old hunting domain south of the capital, which Napoleon preferred. In latter years Marie Antoinette had made Rambouillet the royal dairy, her ferme ornée,† where manicured sheep grazed the park and the Queen conducted experiments in scientific husbandry. It was as good a place as any to find the right sop for his irksome brother.

  Joseph complained that he had no authority or respect. The marshals ignored him and conducted the war as they saw fit. There was no proper system of taxation: money raised was often sent back to France or disappeared into the pockets of military commanders. Starved of revenue, the court had become an impoverished affair lacking in majesty and spectacle. There was nothing to fund the changes that would draw the Spanish bourgeoisie to the bosom of Napoleon’s cause. And while Joseph entertained some hopes of winning more converts among the professional classes, almost everywhere in the countryside the grim business of violence and retribution had alienated the population.

  After they had talked for two days in the salons of the château and w
alked in its ornate corridors, Napoleon reminded his brother that he was no general: it would be impossible to nominate him in command of the French armies there. Why not, then, asked Joseph, appoint a marshal to act on my behalf? It was not a question Napoleon could answer easily. He knew better than anybody that his marshals were guilty of every kind of absurd pretension and petty rivalry once they strayed from his sight.

  In theory, Marshal Louis Berthier, Prince of Neufchatel and his formidable administrator, still held the title ‘Major-General de l’Armée d’Espagne’, or Chief of Staff of the Army of Spain. In fact, as the emperor knew only too well from the experiences of Massena’s campaign in Portugal, Berthier sat in his office in Paris bereft of news from some of the field commanders for weeks on end.

  Joseph appreciated soon enough that his brother was loath to lessen his personal control over the French armies that garrisoned Spain’s northern and Catalan coasts. These troops, the Army of the North and the Army of Catalonia, had direct contact with France through the frontier. The emperor insisted that these two armies must continue to operate under direct orders from Paris.

  However, Napoleon recognized the justice of some of his brother’s complaints. He also knew that it was vital to send him back to Madrid as quickly as possible, lest some of the Spanish courtiers he had brought with him should write home with damaging details about the gravity of this crisis.

  When Joseph left Rambouillet in his carriage, he had been promised that the French Exchequer would fund the expenses of his court to the tune of 500,000 francs each month. Furthermore, he carried a note dated 17 May, summarizing what had been agreed in the military sphere. Before setting off for Madrid, Joseph went to see his wife Julie at their estate in Mortefontaine, where she spent most of her time, preferring to avoid the looking-glass world of her husband’s court and its empty flattery. She thought Joseph much changed and could not understand why he was so euphoric about his meetings with Bonaparte. Joseph’s ‘frivolity was inconceivable and his self-confidence was equally inexplicable,’ she wrote; ‘he was surprised that we did not look at him with great admiration, so convinced was he that he had performed great deeds’. Queen Julie, it seems, was a better judge both of her husband’s impossible situation and of the emptiness of the promises made at Rambouillet.