The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (3 page)

Marshal Auguste Frederic Marmont:
When he was sent to Spain, Marmont was the same age as Scovell (thirty-six), but had acquired all of the honors and glory Napoleon's empire could heap upon a man of modest origins who had risen through the technical arms. Marmont was an artillery officer whose early career brought him close to Bonaparte. During the Egyptian campaign, he served as aide-de-camp and was one
of the chosen handful who was with Napoleon when he left the army to its fate and returned to Paris to seize power.

Marmont superceded one of the army's greatest heroes in command of the sixty-thousand-strong Army of Portugal. His predecessor, Masséna, had been broken by Wellington, so Marmont went to Spain well aware that it was becoming the graveyard of commanders' reputations. Once in command he was bombarded with often contradictory orders from the emperor and his brother, Joseph, who had been placed on the Spanish throne.

Several times, Marmont outwitted Wellington by skillful maneuver and the use of surprise, but a major victory eluded him as the two men entered the campaign of 1812. Through his captured dispatches Marmont's anxieties emerge as he uses every ounce of his skill and experience to try to avoid defeat in the run up to Salamanca.

CHAPTER ONE
R
ETREAT TO
C
ORUNNA
, J
ANUARY
1809

G
eorge Scovell brought the glass to his eye and searched the horizon for sight of sail. The cold blast of an Atlantic westerly buffeted him this 14 January 1809. He was a little breathless yet again. For a week he had been climbing the long flights of stone steps to the top of the lighthouse, sometimes several times a day, hoping to glimpse the British Fleet. With each fruitless visit, he knew the anxiety of the army waiting in Corunna's hinterland behind him was growing. Where were the ships?

All of Europe knew that Napoleon had perfected the mightiest armament since the legions of ancient Rome. They were steeped in science, they were daring and cunning too. And now that Corsican Ogre's mighty host was bearing down on them, weaving its way through the Galician hills. At any moment the French advance patrols would reach the outposts behind Corunna and they would have their moment of reckoning. If the ships did not come soon to take them away from this cursed spot, the British army would be smashed and its remnants swept into the dustbin of some
hideous prison. Its officers had already begun speculating what the next few years might hold for them as prisoners of war.

Certainly the wind was just right, blowing across the cold gray Atlantic and into Scovell's face. A good wind to carry the fleet into Corunna Bay and set sail again for home. No doubt this was the best vantage point too. The Spanish called it the Tower of Hercules, a great lofty pillar built by the Romans during the time of Trajan, which still served the purpose that those ancient conquerers had intended: as a lighthouse alerting ships to the dangerous rocks off the isthmus that marked this northwestern corner of Spain.

As Scovell glanced through the telescope again, his patience was rewarded. Sails began to blossom on the horizon. First the topgallants, as just the peaks of the first few masts crested into view, then more and more spreads of taut canvas. Admiral Samuel Hood was bringing up a huge squadron: 112 vessels, far more than at Trafalgar four years before. Only this mission was very different, for just 12 belonged to the Royal Navy; the rest were merchantmen chartered cheaply and packed with lubbers under poor captains. Embarking an exhausted army in a crowded harbor, probably under enemy fire, there was much that could go wrong.

Scovell set off, anxious to get the news to headquarters. General Moore's regiments had begun arriving at Corunna four days earlier, after a terrible retreat through the snowcapped Galician mountains. They had been marched beyond the limits of human endurance. Many had dropped dead from exhaustion, thousands more had been left straggling behind. Many of those who fell back froze to death, while others were slaughtered by French cavalry patrols whose energetic pursuit did not allow for prisoners. Those who had cheated a grisly fate had been arriving in small groups for the previous couple of days. Scovell passed many of these wretched soldiers. He had despaired at their condition as they limped toward the sea, some leaving bloody smudges in the snow as they tramped across it, barefoot. They had marched out of Portugal the cream of the British army, mainly first battalions of its finest regiments. Now their scarlet uniforms were stained and patched, bodies crawling with lice, bellies empty and eyes sunk in their sallow faces. Scovell noted in his journal, “Never did so sudden an alteration take place in men, they were now a mere rabble, marching in groups of 20 or 30 each, looking quite broken hearted, and worn out, many without shoes or stockings.”

Moore's soldiers had become euphoric at the sight of the sea. It promised deliverance. Their sense of anticipation had soared as they hobbled into the hills just above the port. A few miles before they could see the brine, they had noticed a warming of the temperature and lush vegetation, an abundance of trees bearing lemons, oranges and pomegranates. After the barren wastes they had marched through in Lugo and Astariz, Corunna had seemed like the Garden of Eden. But the relentless threat of the approaching French and the uncertainty about the fleet quickly reminded them of the reality of their situation and the possibility of a fight. As word spread of Hood's imminent arrival, all kinds of rumors coursed through the narrow streets of Corunna.

As Scovell continued by horseback toward the port's hinterland, groups of infantry were being rallied to their different colors. They had to occupy the shoulders of the Corunna peninsula, and in particular the shoulder that commanded the harbor, in order to stop the French from shelling the embarkation. He also saw hundreds of hussars standing next to their mounts, deep in thought. Nobody was quite sure how long their enemy would allow them to perform the delicate operation of lifting off the army, and since there were orders to get the heavy guns and cavalry embarked first, it was clear that not many horses would be loaded onto the transport vessels.

The cavalry knew the army would not surrender thousands of highly trained mounts to Napoleon. In some armies, when capture was inevitable, the horses were hobbled, the tendons on the backs of their legs sliced so the poor animals could barely walk, let alone gallop to the charge. This, however, was not the way that the British cavalry intended to conduct its affairs.

Somehow a rumor began to run through the ranks that the horses were to be killed forthwith—whether they were standing in the cobbled streets of the town or in the fields behind it. None of the cavalry generals would ever own up to having given such a command, but almost immediately an immense slaughter began.

One captain of the 10th Hussars kept a record. He wrote despairingly:

At first, it was decided to dispatch the animals with a pistol shot to the head. However, many of the troopers literally flinched from their duty as they pulled the triggers of their flintlock pistols, thus either maiming their chargers or missing them altogether. New orders were barked above the terrible din of dying animals. “In consequence of their uncertain aim with the pistol,” the same hussar officer continued, “the men were latterly directed to cut the throats of the horses.” Corunna's cobblestones were soon running with ruby blood.

Outside the port itself, other regiments set themselves to the same unpleasant task. Some of the hussars and dragoons wept as they drew their weapons. Hundreds of horses were shot on the beach, and their lifeless bodies were soon being dragged back and forth by the waves, blood bubbling in the surf. On the cliffs just southwest of Corunna, men of the artillery train, having dispatched their draft animals, pushed their wagons and caissons over the precipice, watching them smash to pieces on the rocks below.

Despite the cool of mid-January, the deliberate slaughter of so many others soon began to create an overwhelming assault on the senses. A commissary, one of the civilian supply officers accompanying the army, wrote in his journal:

In fact, when the regiments later accounted for their animals, it became clear that something approaching three thousand horses were killed in and around Corunna.

The sun was sinking over the Atlantic as Scovell left the grisly scenes of Corunna behind him and he reached headquarters up in the hills overlooking the port. Napoleon's wars had transformed Scovell's expectations beyond anything he could have imagined twenty years before when, as an engraver's apprentice, he had seemed destined for a tradesman's life. Instead he had risen to the status of gentleman by the granting of an officer's commission and had even managed to make his way onto the staff of General Moore, one of the most celebrated soldiers of his age.

Captain George Scovell was a deputy assistant quarter master general. Not the deputy, nor one of the several assistants, but a deputy assistant, a title that seemed to say “insignificance” and to say it in a mumble. So did his rank. Scovell was nearing thirty-five years old and running very lamely in the promotion stakes. Certainly he did not look like any young thoroughbred. The hair above his round, benign face had already started receding from the brow. He had overcompensated somewhat by growing his sideburns thick and wide, covering most of the cheek with a ginger brown thatch. It was voguish to sport these, but younger, more handsome types did not cultivate quite such formidable whiskers. On Scovell they seemed to reinforce the impression of a kindly countenance, and of a man who had aged past the point of being a threat in the race for preferment. He wore a red coat with the yellow distinctions of the 57th Foot marking its collar and cuffs, one of the most common combinations in the army. The only striking thing about his appearance were Scovell's eyes. A deep blue, the kind of color the portraitist struggles to capture, they endowed him with the appearance of acute intelligence. But where exactly had favorable impressions gotten him during his thirteen years of soldiering?

Scovell had tried everything from ceaseless labor to the customary sycophancy toward those in authority to the huge expenditure of buying a captaincy in a fashionable cavalry regiment: none of it had worked. In fact, all it had done was bring him to the brink of financial ruin, and, after a series of slights, seen him end up in the 57th. There he bided his time, still cherishing the dream of commanding a cavalry regiment, something most of his colleagues would have regarded as utterly unrealistic.

During these past few months he had worked in the quarter master general's department, under Colonel George Murray. His job was to translate General Moore's orders into reality: to choose the routes of march, find the fodder, chart unknown countryside, locate the billets and, most importantly for what was to happen in later years to Scovell, to gather information. The QMG's labor was vast and unending, for it began all over again each time the army marched into some new place.