The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (28 page)

Even in the symbolic act of passing the cipher to General Clarke, the duke of Feltre and minister of war, Joseph's new liaison back in Paris revealed Napoleon's desire simultaneously to be rid of Spanish affairs and carry on meddling in them. In his note to Berthier explaining these new arrangements, Clarke's new role is set out in a brief and businesslike manner, to which the emperor could not help but add this postscript: “Don't forget to send [Clarke] all of the ciphers; it might be a good idea for us to keep a copy, in case some letter from the King reaches us when we are with the Army.”

Napoleon's directive instituting the change of command, like almost all messages sent out by Paris, took its time getting to Madrid, but when it did, its arrival changed the whole system of communications. Joseph was now to be at the center of the web. The volume of messages passing to and from Paris was to decrease, that going via Madrid to increase correspondingly. In many cases, this exposed the messengers to greater risk. Prior to the change, messages from Marshal Soult, in southern Spain, for example, had often been conveyed by ships sailing out of Malaga or some other safe haven to ports on France's Mediterranean coast. If they were to go to the Spanish capital then they would have to run the guerrilla gauntlet of several groups active on the roads south of this city. Similarly, Joseph's need to bring General Dorsenne's Army of the North under his operational control would also require many couriers and
afrancesados
to take their chances riding through the northern hills. Joseph and Jourdan felt they knew the answer to this problem: plenty of silver dollars to hire the services of cunning couriers; the regular sending of duplicate or triplicate messages; and the use of the
Grand Chiffre
to protect the contents. Thus, even if every other thieving Spaniard who undertook such a mission were to convey his precious cargo to the enemy, it didn't matter, since everyone up to the emperor himself had complete faith in the code.

While imperial edicts on the new command arrangements were filtering through the Iberian Peninsula, the British received an object lesson in the fickle nature of many messengers in French pay. On 20 March, three days after beginning their siege at Badajoz, some redcoats squinting into the driving rain spotted a sodden Spaniard riding toward the British lines. He was duly presented to the staff, where he suggested a business proposition. He told them that he had been paid to take a message from the governor of Badajoz, General Phillipon, to Marshal Soult's headquarters in Seville. The French, he said, had given him the princely sum of 512 dollars to execute this hazardous commission, but if the British matched it, he would extricate the dispatch from its most ingenious hiding place and present it to Phillipon's enemies instead. It does not seem to have crossed the minds of Wellington's staff that they could simply hang this rogue and subject his belongings to the kind of minute examination employed by Don Julian's men. Evidently the war for information had already assumed
a more sophisticated character than that. Instead they agreed to his offer and paid him the additional 512 dollars. It was with some difficulty that he then removed the metal top soldered onto his riding crop and drew a thin slither of parchment from within. General Phillipon was not in possession of the
Grand Chiffre,
so the principal difficulty in making out his message consisted of reading its minute letters. The contents were what Wellington would have expected: Phillipon raised the alarm that a British siege had begun and that “within these few days the English works have assumed a formidable appearance.” By paying the messenger additional money, Wellington had ensured that he would continue his journey to Seville with every incentive to repeat a most profitable transaction. After all, he had just earned himself 1,024 dollars. Phillipon's appeal for help would still reach Marshal Soult's headquarters, only it would do so with a delay and the Spanish collaborator would retain the trust of the French, perhaps delivering future dispatches into British hands as well.

The rain that had soaked the Spaniard was also making life a misery for the British working parties digging their way toward Badajoz's outlying defenses. One young officer recorded, “It required every man to be actually in the trenches digging for six hours every day and the same length of time every night which, with the time required to march to and from them, through fields more than ankle deep in stiff mud, left us never more than eight hours out of the 24 in camp, and we were never dry the whole time.” The endless downpour was hampering operations in various ways, not least in raising the level of the Guadiana and cutting the British pontoon bridge there. This meant that for a couple of days, had the French surprised them, there would have been no line of retreat for the three divisions digging the approaches.

On 25 March, at about 10
A.M.,
the great sheet of rain that had divided the British parallel on the San Miguel ridge from the main defenses of Badajoz suddenly drew back like the curtain of a vast natural theater. On cue, the demented timpany of twenty-four-pounders began its performance. Most of the British batteries were trying to smash French cannon, a task requiring some marksmanship, since it meant directing fire through the embrasures in the bastions. At their end, the French were desperately trying to beat back the British from positions not two hundred yards from Fort Picurina atop the ridge. Ten of Wellington's siege guns were firing into that small work at point-blank range, with a weight of shot that overwhelmed
the two hundred defenders. Any man who tried to serve one of the Picurina's cannon was soon scrambled by a British twenty-four-pound ball, disintegrating into a shower of body parts. By the afternoon, the French defenders were making no attempt to fire their guns, cowering instead in the lower part of the work and praying for deliverance.

That evening, Wellington gave the order for Kempt's Brigade of the 3rd Division to storm the Picurina. His engineers had been studying the battered fort closely and believed that the time was right. Major Henry Hardinge, the deputy QMG of the Portuguese army and Scovell's friend, decided to accompany the stormers. As a staff officer, he had no formal role in the command of troops, but he knew of the opportunities to enhance one's reputation in such desperate moments.

When the signal was given, the heavy British guns stopped firing and Kempt's men ran the short distance through the darkness toward the Picurina's slanting walls. Once they were close, the officers leading the storming parties then made a dreadful discovery: they could see no way into the Picurina. Pallisades of sharpened stakes surrounded it at every point, and even as they hacked their way through, they could see that the ditch in front of the work was so deep that their ladders, once placed in this well, would not reach up to the top of the walls that rose above it. While the redcoats milled about in confusion, the work's defenders used the respite from British artillery to come running out onto the Picurina's top with primed muskets and repay their earlier sufferings. Firing down on the stormers from only forty feet away, the French quickly slaughtered two hundred men. In this moment of crisis, one Captain Oates of the 88th was seized by a sudden inspiration. Seeing a lip at the far side of the ditch, he ordered his men to lay their ladders across the deep obstacle. They scurried along them, stood on the ledge hugging the base of the wall, and then raised their ladders in this new position. They were in. Fort Picurina had fallen.

The charmed Major Hardinge came through the storm just as he had survived the death of General Moore and the Battle of Albuera. “Hardinge got shot through his coat at the assault and as usual behaved with great zeal and courage,” William Warre reported to his father.

For the French the fall of Fort Picurina was an ominous event. It allowed British batteries to be established just four hundred yards from the Santa Maria and Trinidad bastions on the city's southeast corner. From here on, it was just a question of how many days it would take
them to silence all the guns in these casements and batter some breaches in the walls that connected them.

From Wellington's perspective, matters looked a little different. The
fausse braie,
the great earthen rampart around the walls themselves, was more massive at Badajoz than it had been at Rodrigo. It would have to be blasted away if the stormers were not to drop twenty feet into the ditch behind it. This ridge also screened some of the main wall, even from batteries on the San Miguel feature, and it would therefore not be possible to cut breaches right down to the base of the walls.

The engineers usually had two ways of dealing with such a problem. They could dig a trench right up to the
fausse braie
and blow it up with a mine, or they could use the exploding shells fired by howitzers for the same purpose. Both methods usually filled the ditch behind it with earth and debris, further reducing its effectiveness as an obstacle. Unfortunately for Wellington, neither technique provided a panacea: the first would subject the sappers to a murderous fire and the latter would take too long. Wellington knew he must press matters forward as quickly as possible. Sooner or later Soult or Marmont, or perhaps both of them, would have to do something to save Badajoz.

For Major Scovell these final days of the siege were a time of high personal expectation. Mary had set sail on the Lisbon packet. His masters in headquarters had agreed that he could have a short leave to go and see her as soon as the business at Badajoz was completed. It is unsurprising then that Scovell did not venture into the breaches in search of glory, like the impatient young bachelors Hardinge, Somerset or Lord March. After all, Scovell had not seen his wife since they had parted at Sprotborough Hall in 1809, and it would be tragic indeed for Mary to endure the journey to Lisbon only to receive the terrible word that she had become a widow.

By the evening of 5 April, Wellington's engineers reported to him that there were three breaches in the main wall practicable for assault, but he was worried that the
fausse braie
in front of them was still too high. He asked for the general's orders.

The general was seized by doubt: what if the ditch behind this obstacle was still so deep that injured stormers would pile into it and then be unable to escape? They would be butchered or taken. He did not have too much time, but he must see the
fausse braie
bombarded for at least another day.

While the British tried to use shells to shift tons of earth, General
Phillipon made every preparation to resist the assault. Each night when the bombardment had stopped, French troops went into the great ditch around the walls and scattered every kind of impediment: iron crows' feet and boards studded with nails to injure the feet of anybody coming through; explosive mines cleverly sited in those places where the stormers might take cover; and an intimidating array of
chevaux des frises,
wooden trestles bristling with sharp blades that had been chained to the top of the breaches themselves. Behind these broken walls, a new parapet had been built, giving the British a second wall to storm.

On 6 April, Wellington was once again asked for his orders. He knew that the
fausse braie
had hardly been touched in the day's extra battering and that he was running out of time: Marshal Soult was finally reported to have left Seville on 1 April, heading for Badajoz with a large column. Marshal Marmont had begun moving toward northern Portugal (as ordered by Napoleon) and was threatening Almeida. Wellington's earlier confidence about the security of that fortress began to falter a little. He needed to bring this Badajoz business to a conclusion quickly, even though it was going to cost him the lives of many more of his soldiers. At last, the assault was ordered. The Light and 4th Divisions would attack the breaches. Picton's 3rd Division would make an attempt to mount the walls farther along with scaling ladders. Two more attacks would go in on the western side of the fort. There, a more favorable topography had allowed British sappers to put giant mines under the
fausse braie,
and these would be detonated prior to the troops attempting their own escalade.
*

At lunchtime on the sixth, a heavy pall of apprehension hung over the staff. As they sat around the table with Marshal William Beresford, the Portuguese army commander, one diner recalled:

That evening, men of the main storming parties marched down toward the breaches. Sergeant William Lawrence of the 40th had volunteered for the 4th Division's Forlorn Hope with his mates Pig Harding and George Bowden. They had been inside Badajoz before, back in 1809, and, as Lawrence noted: “We knew where the shops were located. Having heard a report that, if we succeeded in taking the place, three hours' plunder would be allowed, we arranged to meet at a silversmith's shop.” Wellington would not have explicitly encouraged looting at any time, but the young officers who walked forward with Sergeant Lawrence and his friends did nothing to disabuse them. Every man needed to believe that if he survived the hideous business ahead, there would be some reward at the end. It was, after all, entirely in accordance with the Laws of War
*
that any town that refused the besiegers' summons, as Badajoz had done, forfeited all right to the lives and property of its inhabitants.

Between 8 and 9
P.M.,
the stormers were paraded, given a lump of bread and a double tot of rum. They continued on their way in the darkness. “Off we went with palpitating hearts,” one of them later recalled. “I never feared nor saw danger until this night. As I walked at the head of the column, the thought struck me forcibly—you will be in hell before daylight!”