The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

by Mark Urban

  Many surviving soldiers profited in the way they had hoped to, by pocketing cash or jewels. Even some officers did likewise, making off with church plate which they cashed in at a later date. Others got the promotions they so earnestly desired. For Scovell, there had only been one thought after the successful conclusion of this sanguinary affair. Bright and early on 8 April, he set off to see his beloved Mary in Lisbon.

  NOTES

  1 ‘On 17 March 1812, the bands struck up’: according to Lieutenant Cook of the 43rd.

  – ‘One young officer of the 95th Rifles hoped’: this was Harry Smith in his Autobiography, first published in 1903.

  2 ‘further orders from Napoleon on 18 and 20 February’: these details drawn from Du Casse (volume 8) and the French correspondence produced as an appendix to Wellington’s Dispatches.

  3 ‘Napoleon had scribbled a most important order to Berthier in Paris’: contained in Du Casse.

  4 ‘When he did, the grand chiffre of the armies of Spain was symbolically passed to General Clarke’: this order was actually only given on 4 May 1812 and is contained in a letter from the emperor to Berthier, reproduced in Napoleon’s Correspondance, item 18685, volume 23.

  5 ‘the fickle nature of many messengers in French pay’: this account is pieced together from Scovell’s journal (alas, he does not say whether he was the man who negotiated with the Spaniard) and that of Edward Cocks.

  – ‘The messenger could be allowed to continue his journey’: neither Cocks nor Scovell suggests the messenger was executed or sent back into Badajoz. Whether the man decided to undertake more of these lucrative missions or confined himself to less hazardous business, we can only speculate.

  – ‘One young officer recorded, “it required every man to be actually in the trenches”’: Lieutenant John Kincaid in his memoir, Random Shots (reprinted by Spellmount in 1998).

  6 ‘one diner recalled “there was little conversation at table”’: McGrigor in his most perceptive memoir, The Autobiography and Services of Sir Jas McGrigor, London, 1861.

  – ‘Sergeant William Lawrence of the 40th had volunteered’: these details are all taken from the excellent Shinglepicker Press reprint of Lawrence’s memoirs, A Dorset Soldier.

  – ‘the thought struck me forcibly – you will be in hell before daylight!’: this was William Green, another diarist of the 95th. So memorable is this phrase that it has provided the title for a recent book on Peninsular sieges.

  7 ‘Rifleman Costello of the 95th was one of a team’: Costello’s memoirs, like Lawrence’s, are reprinted by the Shinglepicker Press.

  8 ‘One eyewitess saw: “General Philippon”’: McGrigor again.

  9 ‘Scovell’s friends Somerset and Hardinge were both promoted to lieutenant-colonel’: to be strict, this emerged not in the victory dispatch but in subsequent correspondence.

  – ‘some officers did likewise, making off with church plate which they cashed in at a later date’: this interesting, if somewhat discreditable, detail emerges from the journal of E. W. Buckham, a commissary who encountered the officers in question selling their spoils in Oporto.

  * During the previous two centuries, a general understanding of elaborate ‘rules of the game’ concerning siege operations had emerged in Europe. Among other things, these said that if a garrison refused the besiegers’ summons to capitulate, once there were breaches suitable for storming, then the attacking army could do what they wanted with the inhabitants and their property.

  1. DONT. 1082. 365. 622. WE. W. 439. 669. E. 1085. 398. 326. 13. CEI. 1085. ED. 481. T. 980. 985. 186. T. 843. 688. 2. N. D. 1297. 536. 174. 1085. 1024 … 713. T. 980. 854. E. 326. 536. 700. W. 171. 1015. 1003. 13. T. 980. 1015. 131. T.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  From Lisbon to Fuente Guinaldo, April–June 1812

  Walking through Lisbon with Mary on that bright spring morning, George Scovell emerged from the hell of Badajoz into the promised land of his two-week leave. For three years now, he had ridden about Iberia, answering the whims of Wellington or the Quartermaster-General, and doing it in double time, sir! For months at a time he had kept his portmanteau packed, his horses ready and had laid his head in a different place every night – usually without removing his clothes. He had endured mortal danger on half a dozen occasions and finally achieved his majority.

  In Lisbon, he could be enfolded in Mary’s arms, lie with her between crisp sheets and eat the finest food. He had days in which to guide her through the narrow streets of the Bairro Alta, sharing his discoveries: the São Roque church or the riot of colour in the Chiado fruit market. Outside the Exchange, the volunteers of the city militia daily changed guard, a ceremony accompanied by the martial airs of their band. English officers who observed this ceremonial were agreed: the volunteers’ turnout was most regular, almost what you’d expect from a line regiment, and their musicians were of a very high standard. When Mary tired, there were so many places to find refreshment. The Grotto was a favourite eating house for British travellers, down in the Largo de São Paolo: there, they could watch fashionable society drift by while tasting strawberries and delicately flavoured sorbets and imbibing coffee or hot chocolate. Having accumulated a good deal of money during his campaigning, George could treat her to the finest.

  What must Mary have made of him, when she saw him after three years? Like most Iberian campaigners, wind and sun had weathered Scovell’s face to a leathery tan. He was probably much thinner than when they had parted too. His hair had also receded a little further from his brow and his clothes must have shown every sign of wear and tear. Perhaps Scovell was tempted to blow some cash on a smart new uniform. Certainly the merchants of the city competed to sell their wares to men like him; as one officer recalls, ‘the streets of Lisbon glittered with uniforms; the shop windows of all the embroiderers furnished a grand display of military ornaments. The magazines of the gunsmiths and sword cutlers were constantly filled with customers.’

  Scovell had the option of wearing the Mounted Guides’ uniform, with an embroidered brown light cavalry jacket and handsome crested tarleton helmet, or the new Staff outfit. The latter consisted of a red coat with dark-blue facings, rank being shown by embroidered white waves on the lapels and cuffs. It was topped off with a cocked hat, trimmed with a broad stripe of gold tape. This ensemble was quite splendid, so much so that from a distance it could easily be mistaken for a general’s suit. That was all very well for promenading down Horse Guards, but for officers on service it was a distinct liability. ‘I suppose our good chiefs do not think our Generals or Staff get killed off fast enough that they order them cocked hats with gold binding,’ William Warre explained in a letter home, ‘it must only be meant for Wimbledon. There are no Voltiguers [sharpshooters] there, and a gold laced cocked hat, though very ugly is a very harmless thing – not here.’

  As the Scovells enjoyed the sights of Lisbon, Headquarters was in motion again, moving back from Badajoz towards northern Portugal. Major Scovell’s leave had only been possible because the main army would take a week or ten days to make its way back to its usual domain on the northern Portuguese frontier. But the commander of forces may well have rued giving even this short furlough to his Assistant QMG, because in his absence the British suffered a significant intelligence setback.

  *

  Marshal Marmont met his dinner guest that evening with some sense of curiosity and excitement. His servants were preparing his meal in unusual surroundings, a large house in Sabugal that had been requisitioned as French HQ. Marmont’s incursion into northern Portugal had reached its high-water mark and the supply situation being what it was, he would soon have to turn back into Spain. Still, he was not unhappy. He had followed the emperor’s instructions while having the satisfaction of being proved right, since ‘laying waste northern Portugal’ had not caused Wellington to adandon the siege of Badajoz. Secondly, he had a most interesting dinner companion; someone he might use to penetrate the miasma of uncertainty that enveloped his enemy’s operations.<
br />
  Marmont’s guest was none other than Lieutenant-Colonel Colquhoun Grant, Wellington’s intelligence officer. To say that his presence at the marshal’s table was reluctant would have been understating matters. On 10 April, Grant had been captured. Sent north ahead of the main army to plot French dispositions, he had been caught between two patrols of French cavalry. In vain, Grant and his Spanish guide, Leon, realizing they were surrounded, had dismounted and tried to escape through a copse. This final gambit had failed and Leon, who was not wearing any uniform, had been executed on the spot.

  As the cutlery clicked on the marshal’s porcelain and crystal glasses were emptied of wine, he cross-examined Grant about the character of Wellington. Grant met these enquiries with politeness, while concealing whatever knowledge he actually possessed of his master’s plans. ‘Will he try to cut off my withdrawal into Spain? What is the spirit of your army?’ Marmont, it seemed, viewed his contest with Wellington as an intellectual challenge. He wanted to learn as much as he could about how the British general’s mind worked. He wanted his guest to know, as he seemed to want everyone around him to know, that the English were doing battle with one of the finest minds of the French army.

  As the meal drew to a close, Marmont evidently felt his hunger for information had not been satisfied. He looked across at Grant and told him, ‘It is fortunate for you, sir, that you have that bit of red over your shoulders [meaning his uniform], if you had not, I would have hung you on a gallows twenty feet high.’ The marshal asked for, and obtained, Grant’s parole, his word, that he would not try to escape. Their interview was at an end and the captive was taken back to Salamanca.

  While Marmont’s army was menacing Almeida and generally driving the Portuguese about the countryside, militiamen and Don Julian Sanchez’s guerrillas had swarmed about the French rear. As Wellington brought his HQ back to the north and Marmont began inching back into Spain, a packet of intercepted dispatches was delivered to the British commander. Two, dated from Sabugal on 12 April, shortly before he pulled out of that town, gave arrangements to Marmont’s divisional commanders for the withdrawal back to the border. Fortunately for Wellington, it was in an Army of Portugal petit chiffre and it is likely that Somerset was able to discover its details.

  Wellington then acquired, in fairly quick succession, four messages in the higher-command grand chiffre, the 1,400-character cipher circulated to the most senior officers a few months before. Two had come from Marshal Soult in Seville, and were taken from one of his ADCs. The first was long, with dense passages of the strong cipher, but from what they could make out, it was evidently an essay of self-justification following the fall of Badajoz, since the fortress was located in his area of responsibility. Soult sought to blame Marmont for those events and displayed his own suspicions about the communications war being waged by Britain and its allies, telling Paris: ‘the way the English conducted themselves during this action was so well thought out that we may suppose that they intercepted some part of the correspondence which revealed to them the Army of Portugal’s system of operations and the irresolution of the Duke of Ragusa [Marmont].’

  Soult’s letter may be taken as evidence that the paranoid are not necessarily wrong. But he was not completely right either, since he did not consider that Wellington might already have resolved to finish the siege of Badajoz before intercepted letters from Marmont actually reached him. Marshal Soult had in any case demonstrated his confidence in the Great Cipher by writing his own letters in it. Shortly after his staff officer was captured, a further letter in this cipher, from Marmont to Berthier and dated 16 April, was taken. Finally, a short message from General Dorsenne, commander of the Army of the North, to Marshal Jourdan in Madrid and also dated 16 April, was seized.

  Scovell rode back into Headquarters on 25 April, after bidding a fond farewell to Mary. She was going to stay in Lisbon until they could meet again. Like many an officer who ekes out every last moment of his leave, he was obliged to ride hard when he left the city. It took him just three days to travel from the Portuguese capital to Fuente Guinaldo, a few miles across the Spanish border, where Wellington’s Staff had once more taken up residence.

  From late April through to early June, Wellington remained in the mayor’s handsome house in Fuente Guinaldo’s plaza. Upon returning to the north he had been disturbed to find that a Spanish garrison thrown into Ciudad Rodrigo had downed tools because of arrears in pay, leaving January’s breaches in the city’s defences unrepaired. Although he had taken possession of all of the main border fortresses by mid-April, Wellington did not feel free to make his next move until he was confident that Rodrigo would be able to resist a purposeful enemy attack. Once this work had been done, he would be free to launch himself into Spain: it was a matter of choosing in which direction.

  Major Scovell, meanwhile, was able to consider several examples of the grand chiffre for the first time. Wellington had christened it the Great Paris Cipher. If he had expected Scovell to crack it with the celerity he had shown on Marmont’s codes, then his lordship would certainly be disappointed. Scovell looked upon the captured scraps of paper with wonderment. This was something altogether different from the Army of Portugal codes. A solution might be impossible. If this new cipher was changed regularly, as Marmont’s had been, then it certainly would be. Could he produce the key or not? He would have to study these messages most carefully before he could say.

  None of the messages was entirely in code. That was one thing. What was not encoded often provided useful context, as he had learned with his earlier deciphering. Further study also allowed certain deductions to be drawn from the messages, in particular the longest and shortest of them. Soult’s weighty catalogue of excuses of 14 April yielded something to the reader, even if the meanings of its long ciphered sections were obscure. It had used hundreds of code numbers, ranging from 2 to 1390. Many numbers were not used at all, others only used once or twice. Some, however, did repeat themselves rather a lot: 13 had been used twenty-five times; 210 was repeated thirteen times; 413 appeared in a dozen places and 2 in nine. Were these most-used codes (13, 210, 413 and 2) very common words, letters or bigrams? Could one of them be ‘et’, the most frequently used word in French?

  Looking at how these frequently recurring numbers appeared in the other messages that fell into British hands in April–May 1812, some early hypotheses could have been formed. Marmont’s message of 22 April, for example, contained the passage ‘nothing will stop the emperor’s Army of Portugal 13.70.354 …’ In this context, 13 might mean ‘de’, or ‘from’, in this sense. The meaning ‘of’ seems to come through quite clearly in a wish list (for various supplies) compiled by the Duke of Dalmatia that featured the code ‘13’ repeatedly. Elsewhere in Soult’s message of 17 April, there is a passage of code ending, ‘722. 074.13.821 campaign’. If 13 meant ‘de’, then 821 must be ‘la’, since ‘campaign’ is feminine in French and it becomes a fair working hypothesis that ‘13.821 campagne’ stands for ‘de la campagne’. A similar methodology, working across several letters, would have suggested that the commonly occurring ‘210’ meant ‘et’, ‘and’.

  The shortest letter, Dorsenne’s, was even more interesting. In its entirety it reads:

  I received Your Excellency’s letter of the 2nd of this month, inviting me to send the King reports of 1238 with the aim 607.73.432.1181.192.1077. 600.530.497.701.711.700 that he considers appropriate.

  In the letter of 16 March, 1207 announced 516.1264 was giving 703.1328 command of 409.1327.1333.210.249.523, but was making 1165.1060. 1238.820. Your Excellency will appreciate then 139.229.531.305.69. 862.605 to make the efforts required of me. 187.609 I would humbly assure 73.516.918 will not neglect any opportunity to 605 give a full account of everything that could interest 240.196 and that requires his attention.

  Dorsenne’s dispatch was crassly enciphered, as bad in its way as General Montbrun’s letter of August 1811. Given the much greater size of the grand chiffre, the damage resulting fr
om this inept staff work was considerably less, but damage there was because this note could be used to begin a substantial attack on the Great Paris Cipher. The way that it mixes in and out of code gives far too much away, an effect that is more pronounced in its original French.

  Taking the second paragraph, which begins ‘In the letter of 16 March, 1207 announced 516.1264 was giving …’, it is fairly clear that 1207 indicates a person. The construction ‘announced 516’ is also interesting, since the normal use of language dictated the word ‘that’ must follow. Does 516 mean ‘that’, or is it just the letter t, a bigram for ‘th’, or even a blank, with 1264 meaning ‘that’?

  A little later on, we see ‘I would humbly assure 73.516.918 will not’. The code 516 is repeated. The sense of this second phrase is clearly something like: ‘I humbly assure you’, or HM, or the King, ‘that …’. There seems to be a likelihood 516 does indeed mean ‘that’. This becomes clearer with what follows this code number. In French, ‘918 ne negliserai aucune occasion’: the tense and person of the verb ‘to neglect’ making it apparent that 918 must mean ‘je’ or ‘I’. Examining the passage, it is clearly a good working hypothesis that 516 means ‘that’ and 918, ‘I’.

  As he sat struggling with this puzzle, Scovell’s superb grasp of French grammar and syntax was his best weapon. His ability to absorb language was quite remarkable. Having landed in Iberia with Latin and some Italian, he had quickly obtained a sophisticated grasp of Spanish, noting in his journal following an evening’s entertainment with Spanish hosts just a few months later: ‘I could easily perceive that the double entendre was the grand substitute for real wit.’ With French, he had the benefit of having studied the language for twenty years. He was therefore able to fill in the blanks in ciphered passages better than almost anyone else at Headquarters could have done.