The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (51 page)

Scovell himself did not write memoirs, nor was his fascinating journal published. He and Mary lived to ripe old ages: she to her eightieth year and he to his eighty-seventh. When he expired, in January 1861, he was interred beside Mary in the grounds of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, dying a prosperous general, leaving the handsome sum of £60,000 to his relations, servants and friends. His lifetime struggle to escape his lowly origins was a success. Even if Wellington ill used him in the years following the Peninsular War, the army had looked after Scovell well.

He did not just leave behind cash when he was buried, however. During his years in Iberia and, later, while reexamining the captured
French correspondence at Croydon in 1823, Scovell had kept many of the originals and copied other examples of the coded letters he had worked on. Dozens of them, together with his annotated little code-breaking crib, Conradus, remained in his papers. In his will, knowing the importance of the documents he had retained all those years, he made a specific note of his bequest to his nephew of “all my papers on the subject of the Great Paris Cypher.”

So despite his obscurity in his later life, the legacy of Scovell's code breaking was not lost. Reviewing the documents available today, its influence on Wellington's strategy is obvious. At times it is explicitly stated in some of the general's dispatches; at others the precious thread of knowledge that the code breaker unwound for his commander in chief can only be followed by hints.

It must always be remembered that the essential prerequisite for gathering that vital intelligence was the ruthless campaign by the Spanish guerrillas against French communications. As for its use, that depended upon the flawless execution of orders on the battlefields of Salamanca or Vitoria. But it is safe to say that without someone to break the code, those French dispatches would have remained just useless, tantalizing paper, with streams of digits successfully concealing the writers' meanings.

Once unlocked by Scovell, however, they revealed so much knowledge that was priceless to the British general: the strength and plans of Marmont's Army of Portugal, as it maneuvered opposite Wellington just before Salamanca; and in 1813, when Joseph and his generals prepared to fight their final battle for Spain, the deciphered letters unlocked their preparations and strategy behind them; the quarrels between marshals, their faltering confidence and the poor condition of their armies.

These campaigns—Scovell's of the mind coinciding with Wellington's in the field—marked the turning point of the war in Spain. Even in 1811, the British still feared another Corunna, another evacuation. By late 1813 they were escorting the French across the Pyrennees and back into their own country. While there were a few great code breakers before Scovell and certainly legions of them afterward, it might justly be said that he was the father of this secret business, at least on the battlefields of modern Europe.

This book is based largely on eyewitness accounts and journals of those who fought in the Peninsular War. The main manuscript sources are:

Scovell Papers: in the Public Record Office, under the class number W037.

Beaufort Papers: referred to below as BP.

Letters of FitzRoy and Edward Somerset, residing in the private collection of the duke of Beaufort and reproduced with his permission.

Wellington Papers: referred to below as WP. These are now held at the University of Southampton Library and reproduced with permission.

Le Marchant Papers: listed below as LMP, they are now in the Library of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

In addition to these archives, many eyewitness accounts in the form of letters or journals have been published. These are noted below, along with the specific file references for the manuscript collections mentioned above.

3. “Scovell brought the glass to his eye and searched the horizon …”: Scovell left us a journal as part of W037 at the PRO that describes this scene.

4. “Its officers had already begun speculating what the next few years might hold for them as prisoners of war”: this fear was expressed by William Warre of the staff. His journal and letters are published as
Letters from the Peninsula 1808–12,
published in 1909 and reprinted by Spellmount in 1988.

5. “Moore's soldiers had become euphoric at the sight of the sea”: this is mentioned by several diarists of the Corunna campaign.

5. “One captain of the 10th Hussars kept a record”: Captain Alexander Gordon of the 15th Light Dragoons (Hussars) published as
Cavalry Officer in the Corunna Campaign,
London, 1913.

6. “A commissary, one of the civilian supply officers accompanying the army, wrote in his journal”: this was A. L. F. Schaumann in
On the Road with Wellington: The Diary of a War Commissary,
originally published in 1924 and by Greenhill Books in 1999.

8. “Another of the young DAQMGs had his own secret weapon in the advancement game”: this was William Maynard Gomm. Details come from
Letters and Journals from 1799 to Waterloo,
London, 1881.

14. “He had his own private worry about the embarkation …”: Scovell made this concern explicit in his journal.

19. “Hardinge later recorded …”: Henry Hardinge's memo on the death of Moore is quoted in the biography of Hardinge by his son, the Second Viscount Hardinge.

20. ‘“recounting the day's events, and mourning comrades who had stood on the threshold of their careers … this comes from the memoirs of Louis-Florimond Fantin des Odoards of the (French) 31st Light Infantry.

21. “who had deserted the French and given good service to the British army …”: details of the early Guides are contained in Scovell's papers.

21. “several officers (including the dashing Captain Warre) claimed in their journals and letters home the honor of being the last man to leave”: evidence may be found in Warre's and Gomm's respective journals.

24. “Stewart damned Moore several years later in one of the first histories of these events”: his
History of the Peninsular War
is published under his title of Lord Londonderry.

25. “[Wellesley] wore his full dress uniform”: this detail emerges from the account of his appearance in
Gentleman's Magazine
published that year.

26. “In replying to the vote of thanks, he thus told them”: there must be various records of Wellesley's speech, but I found one in the Goodwood Papers (the duke and duchess of Richmond's papers) in Chichester Record Office. Wellesley had sent it to the duke, who was his most important godfather in the Tory hierarchy.

27. “Sprotborough Hall, a huge mansion …”: the hall no longer stands; I found details of its layout and furnishings in
Sprotborough Hall
by Gordon Smith, a privately published mongraph made available to me by the local library in Sprotborough.

27. “He was ‘the son of very respectable parents … Scovell's early life is something of a closed book. This quote and some other details come from the journal of Edward Healey, one of his servants, and was published in several parts in the
Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research
through 1987.

28. “he paid a vast sum, £3150, to buy a captain's commission in the 4th Dragoons”: details of these transactions can be found in W031/158.

28. “its officers were soon doing long hours in the salons and assembly rooms adorning the fashionable set surrounding the Prince of Wales”: according to F. Scott Daniel in his history of the 4th.

30. “Mary, it seems, shared Jane Austen's view …”: the quote comes from
Mansfield Park.
“George and Mary were married in May 1805 in Manchester Cathedral”: the record of this remains in the Register of Marriages at Chester Record Office.

30. “the extra pay received by a deputy assistant quarter master general, just over £172 per annum”: details of pay from
The Regimental Companion
by Charles James, published in 1811.

30. “[Scovell] transferred from the 4th Dragoons into the 57th Foot”: details of the transfer are in W031/224.

30. “he spent the best part of two years working away at Wycombe on French, German, mathematics, trigonometry …”: details of the syllabus are from RMC documents at the modern-day Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, where they still keep a class of papers (W099) relating to the college.

33. “He was … directed to make his way to Cork Harbor for embarkation”: Scovell kept the letter from Brownrigg and it remains in the Scovell Papers.

35. “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 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.

37. “The 16th had gone in and lost many men …”: details of this bungled engagement come from William Tomkinson (one of the officers injured) in
The Diary of a Cavalry Officer in the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns 1809–1S
(published in 1894 in London and then again by Spellmount in 1999) and Edward Cocks, an officer of the same regiment, whose letters and diaries were assembled very expertly by Julia Page in her book
Intelligence Officer in the Peninsula,
published by Spellmount in 1986. My occasional references to Cocks's views all refer to the original materials reproduced in her book.

38. “Marshal Soult was woken”: the French side of this story comes from Captain Fantin des Odoards, already mentioned, and General Maximilien Foy. Maurice Girod de L'Ain published many of the general's letters and diary remarks as
Vie Militaire.

40. “Scovell penned a letter to Colonel John Le Marchant…”: this is in the Le Marchant Papers at Sandhurst, dated 27th May 1809, LMP packet 13a, Letter 1.

44. “the Portuguese military commandant of Braga came to the headquarters asking to see Wellesley”: this incident is covered in Scovell's journal and the letter to Le Marchant mentioned above.

50. “They saw any argument for reform …”: Le Marchant's proposals for the formation of a general staff, written in 1802, contained a proposal that the staff should be chosen on the basis of ability. It was one of several reasons why this extraordinarily forward-looking document (a copy of which is kept at the Sandhurst Library) was suppressed by the quarter master general at Horse Guards.

51. ‘“It is well understood by the Government …”: this letter from Le Marchant to Colonel William Stewart, 18 June 1806, may be found in the letter books of the RMC, part of the papers currently kept at Sandhurst.

51. “it had taken the experience of the Corunna campaign to convince him finally of the army's deperate need for reform”: Scovell said explicitly that he had been converted to Le Marchant's views on reform “since I left Wycombe” in a letter to Le Marchant of 23 November 1808, LMP Packet 12, Item 3.

52. ‘“These are in fact the description of officers who have revolutionised other armies'”: this quotation of Wellesley comes from a letter to Lieutenant General Sir Herbert Taylor of 11 April 1821 contained in
Military Correspondence of the Duke of Wellington.
Although written some time after the Peninsular campaigns, Wellington stressed in the letter that this is what he had “long thought.” Certainly the general's disdain for low-bred officers from the scientific arms (artillery and engineers) was remarked upon by a number of diarists at Peninsular headquarters, for example, Sir James McGrigor.

53. “Scovell had formed a scheme and lobbied for it…”: his ideas for auxiliary cavalry are mentioned in the same letter to Le Marchant of 23 November 1808 mentioned above.

54. “Anxiously, Scovell went on to explain himself”: he repeated the arguments he had made in the interview in his journal, in the letter to Le Marchant of 27 May, and years later (1854) in an interview with an unnamed officer who was tasked with forming a Corps of Guides for the Crimea. The memorandum prepared as a result of that interview is in the British Army Museum library manuscript collection. These sources state, for example, Scovell's belief that Murray promised him promotion in return for taking on the job.

57. “soldiers of the Guards, the Buffs and numerous other regiments were woken by the reveille of drums and bugles”: details of how the army got under way are taken from the 1837 edition of Colonel Gurwood's
Selected General Orders
(and reproduced by Charles Oman in his
Wellington's Army)
and of the order of march from a General Order during the Oporto campaign, also in one of Gurwood's volumes.

59. “One captain in the Buffs, for example, confessed in his journal that he knew nothing …”: this was T. Bunbury, in
Reminiscences of a Veteran.