The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (20 page)

Marshal Nicolas Soult, duke of Dalmatia. He was capable of great generalship but put self-interest first during the campaign of 1812.

Marshal Auguste Marmont, duke of Ragusa. A favorite of Napoleon's, he showed great skill in keeping Wellington in check during 1811, but was later humiliated by the British at Salamanca.

General Maximilien Foy met the British on a dozen battlefields between 1808 and 1815. His personal papers survived, providing precious insight into the dilemmas facing the French in Iberia.

Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan. His appointment early in 1812 as chief of staff to King Joseph caused much resentment among other officers, and despite his sound diagnoses about French problems in Spain, he achieved little.

The Battle of Vitoria, 21 June 1813. This watercolor by Atkinson shows the birth of a more propagandistic style among British artists in the immediate aftermath of the wars. British troops are depicted capturing a French eagle (in fact, it was a less significant standard), while a genuine trophy taken in this rout of the French army, Jourdan's marshal's baton, awaits Wellington.
(By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

Wellington and his staff at Waterloo. The British commander saw several Peninsular colleagues killed or maimed during this final confrontation of the Napoleonic era.
(By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

George Scovell, aged eighty-five or eighty-six. His longevity guaranteed that he would be one of the select band of Peninsular veterans to be photographed. Scovell reached the rank of full general and was granted the Grand Cross of the Bath, worn proudly on his coat.
(By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

CHAPTER EIGHT
T
HE
B
LOCKADE OF
C
IUDAD
R
ODRIGO
, J
UNE TO
N
OVEMBER 1811
—T
HE
G
REAT
C
IPHER

T
he carriage carrying Joseph sped through the gates of Rambouillet's palace and clattered out onto the cobblestones. A handsome team pulled the vehicle and coachmen dressed in the king of Spain's livery rode postillion. 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 the embattled sovereign. This farce in which he must play the role of “His Catholic Majesty” was unsupportable. He begged to be allowed to end it, to abdicate.

Before Joseph even started the long journey from Madrid, the emperor had done everything he could to avoid this scene and had seen to it that Joseph was virtually held prisoner in his Iberian kingdom. But knowing that he would never get past the frontier if he actually sought permission, his brother had simply traveled into France on 10 May
without it, ignoring an order delivered by one of the imperial
estafettes
*
on the wayside in Gascony to turn around and go back to Madrid.

On the fifteenth he had arrived not in Paris but at the Bourbon's old hunting domain south of the capital, where Napoleon preferred to conduct the interview. 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 soothe 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, and 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; moreover, there was nothing to fund the changes that would draw the Spanish bourgeois 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 chateau and walked in its ornate corridors, Napoleon reminded his brother that he was no general: it would be impossible to nominate him actually in command of the French armies in Iberia. Why then, asked Joseph, not appoint a marshal to act on my behalf? This 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, but he knew that trying to place one of them above his peers would produce all sorts of new problems.

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 Masséna's campaign in Portugal, news from the field commanders often took weeks to reach Berthier in his office in Paris.

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 inisted that these two armies must continue to operate under direct orders from Paris.

However, Napoleon did recognize the justice of some of his brother's complaints and knew that it was vital to have him on his way back to Madrid as quickly as possible, lest some of the accompanying Spanish courtiers with him write home with damaging details about the gravity of this crisis.