The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (43 page)

The final chapter in the saga of Soult's letter had not yet played itself out as Wellington's army marched from Burgos back to winter quarters on the Portuguese frontier. The straggling and desertion seen during Sir John Moore's retreat to Corunna in 1808 or Wellington's march back from Talavera the following year once more reappeared. The distances covered
were large and as the British army moved onward some of its members went in search of food, drink and plunder. Others, driven to distraction by the privations of campaigning, and perhaps the horrors of Burgos, risked death by deserting their colors. Between 23 October and 29 November, some forty-nine hundred men disappeared from the ranks.

Joseph's army tried to bring on a second battle near Salamanca, but pursued by the united armies of Portugal, the South and Center, there was no chance that Wellington would ever have fought them. It was in mid-November, just after it had passed the site of July's great victory, that the Peninsular army's supply system broke down completely.

The ensuing privations of the 1812 march shared by all ranks were brought home most poignantly by Rifleman Edward Costello of the 95th Rifles, who wrote in his memoirs, “On this retreat, Lord Charles Spencer, a youth of about 18 years of age, suffered dreadfully from hunger and fatigue. Trembling with cold and weakness, he stood … anxiously watching a few acorns which, to stay the pangs of hunger, he had placed in the embers to roast … the tears started silently from his eyes. He will not forget, I expect, how willingly the rough soldiers flew to offer him biscuits, which they could not withhold from one so tenderly and delicately reared … there are times when Lords find that they are men, and men that they are comrades.”

The campaign was effectively over by the third week in November. Wellington and his staff settled once more into winter quarters in Frenada, the little village on Portugal's upland frontier. One of Wellington's first tasks on arriving was to pen an angry message, cursing the army for marauding and desertion: “From the moment the troops commenced their retreat from the neighborhood of Burgos on the one hand, and of Madrid on the other, the officers lost all control of their men. Irregularities and outrages were committed with impunity.” It will come as no surprise that this bad-tempered outburst caused deep resentment in the army after a retreat in which men had dropped dead from exhaustion and officers of noble birth had been reduced to eating acorns.

Having vented his spleen, the commander of forces calmed himself with frequent fox hunts, galloping for miles over the Portuguese sierras. His spirits restored, Wellington would begin to use his time in winter quarters the way he liked best: in rooting out and eliminating the imperfections of his army.

Scovell's ingenuity however became so restless that during the shrinking days of November and December 1812 he used every opportunity to try to discover the few parts of the
Grand Chiffre
that still eluded him. It was as he worked away on this task that a copy of Soult's fatal August letter eventually found its way to Frenada.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
F
RENADA,
D
ECEMBER
I812
TO
M
ARCH
I813

I
t was about midnight on a December evening and few people were stirring in the bivouac. The two hundred members of the convoy were mostly sleeping around faltering embers of the camphres they had built earlier. They were a little north of Valladolid on their way back to France and were doubtless tired from many hours in the saddle. Most huddled under blankets, trying to shut out the cold and find a spot where they could dream of home and sleep unmolested by stones or roots beneath them. The security of this little convoy, it is clear, was lax.

The leader of that French caravan moreover had not reckoned on the change that had befallen the country in the past few weeks, one that made even the plains of Segovia a risky place. The British might have relinquished Madrid and withdrawn toward Portugal, but the occupiers were to discover that things had not been restored to the
status quo ante
Salamanca.
*
On the contrary, everywhere in Spain guerrilla bands had
been inspired by the summer's events. They had finally seen the Bonpartist edifice in Spain shown up as a hollow façade and many entertained the hope that 1813 would see their country free of the French at last. In the hills, guerrilla chiefs like Longa ruled large tracts; collecting taxes and ruling the land like robber barons.

Down on the plains of Segovia, Joseph's convoy had been watched as it went into its bivouac in that December twilight by Jerónimo Saornil's guerrilla band. This chieftain was quite different from Don Julian Sanchez or Longa, who the British considered gentlemen. Saornil had been a common criminal imprisoned in his native Valladolid before the French invasion and the new authorities had unwisely released him. A British officer who had encountered Saornil's band in the summer of 1812 wrote, “They are complete
banditti,
two-thirds clothed in things taken from the enemy. The only pay they receive is from plunder.” When Marmont had pulled the Army of Portugal back to the Douro line in July, Saornil had come to the attention of the British for being able to provide captured messages in territory that was unfamiliar to Don Julian's men. Naturally, Saornil had greatly appreciated the silver paid on the nail for these enemy papers.

That December evening, he timed his attack carefully. The few sentries placed by the French barely had time to shout an alarm as Saornil's horsemen burst out of the darkness. The element of surprise was so complete that even the guerrillas balked at murdering the enemy in their beds. Some 180 were taken prisoner and two British officers who had been under escort were set free. As his men started stripping the convoy's members of their valuables, Saornil surveyed his spoils.

An ornate saddle lying beside a svelte horse caught his attention. The owner seemed to be some kind of secretary to King Joseph. Saornil cross-examined him. Wearing a dark green hussar's jacket tied up with a red sash and a top hat bearing the skull-and-crossbones motif, the guerrilla chief must have struck terror into this prisoner. The king's servant took one look at this pirate's unshaven face and knew that his only choice was to cooperate or die. He handed over a tiny key and explained its use. Saornil examined the saddle and fiddled with a brass ornament on its side, sliding it back to reveal a keyhole. Turning it, a small compartment built into the thick leather under the pommel dropped open. Inside was a package of documents. Breaking the seal, Saornil tried to
read one. Large amounts of text had been written in the king's
Grand Chiffre
and there were several such dispatches folded together. Saornil wagered that the British would pay a high price for this. He would take them to Lord Wellington in person.

Settling into the little farmhouse that would be his billet for the winter, Scovell at last had time to consider personal matters. Mary had been left behind in Lisbon all these months of campaigning. With little chance of the British army moving forward until late spring, she would now be safe in Frenada: it was time to send for her.

Meanwhile, the army moved into its winter quarters in frontier villages, and headquarters was set up in the same grindingly poor village that it had occupied the previous winter. The better sort of Frenada inhabitant had a two-level dwelling, with the ground floor reserved for livestock. The most a staff officer could hope for was a small room in one of the single-story farmhouses that formed most of the village. Only the commander's house, on Frenada's little square opposite the church, had a room large enough for Wellington to entertain fourteen or fifteen officers at dinner.

Those who had not wintered at this impoverished upland headquarters before, like Francis Larpent, thought it “wretched.” Larpent was a London lawyer hired by Wellington as part of his plan to enforce some order on his unruly soldiery. The new judge advocate wrote of his own accommodation, “I am literally buried in papers, saddles, portmanteaus, bundles, bedding, panniers etc and have no room to give a visitor but by standing myself.” Larpent soon discovered that George Scovell was one of the few men in Frenada capable of erudite conversation and they became firm friends. It was perhaps an indication of the narrow intellectual horizons of most of the army's officers that Scovell became such a valuable find to this highly educated outsider. In his journal, Larpent noted Scovell's impressive intellect and the administrative efficiency that he had brought to the Guides, post office and communications generally.

There was another attraction to seeing Scovell, of course—his wife. Somehow, he had obtained lodgings large enough for them both to live in comfort and to entertain four or five guests at their makeshift dinner table. Larpent wrote, “I have dined here with Major and Mrs Scobell
[sic],
the only lady here; I there for the first time (to the credit of the
lady) got a tender fowl, and a piece of mutton, for even at headquarters they kill and eat wholesale.”

Larpent and the other guests did not just eat well in this rude Portuguese cottage, but enjoyed games of cards afterward with George and Mary. What more agreeable way to follow the lady's roast than with a hand of loo, winner takes all? An invitation to one of these “very pleasant little dinners” became an ace in Scovell's hand during the long winter quarters, especially in helping to draw De Lancey or Somerset into the schemes Scovell began to hatch for the 1813 campaign.

As was usual, many of the better-connected sort went home for winter. One officer who had departed under a cloud was Colonel James Willoughby Gordon. He had served briefly as the army's quarter master general during the autumn and soon after his arrival had started sending indiscreet and often pessimistic accounts of the campaign to political friends, most of them Whigs fiercely critical of the Peninsular War. Wellington discovered this behavior when several details from one of his dispatches to the secretary of war appeared in the
Morning Chronicle
before the letter had even reached the minister's office.

Gordon's indiscretion annoyed Wellington all the more because following the setback at Burgos and the losses on the retreat, Wellington was extremely sensitive to the notion that his operations during 1812 might be considered a failure in London. The general's ADCs awaited the daily post from Lisbon with some trepidation, for if Wellington read a newspaper article critical of the war it was sure to sour his mood for the remains of the day. He wrote to the secretary of war, complaining, “From what I see in the newspapers I am afraid that the public will be much disappointed at the result of the last campaign, notwithstanding that it is in fact the most successful campaign in all its circumstances, and has produced more important results than any campaign in which a British army has been engaged for the last century.” He trumpeted the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz as well as the victory of Salamanca before conceding, “the only occasion on which I have been seriously mistaken was at Burgos.”

Whatever the newspapers might say, the victory at Salamanca had established the general's reputation both with the ministry and with the wider European public as an extremely successful commander. He now had the power to pick or discard those he worked with and no longer had to care a jot whether this might offend party interests. The Tory Major
General Charles Stewart, adjutant general for three years, had gone on a sort of unlimited leave from the army early in 1812. At the end of the campaign it had been the turn of the Whig Gordon. A plague on both their houses. Wellington could now choose his staff by his own criteria, not by those of the political patrons of Horse Guards. Men of good family and military merit, that was what was required. His victories also meant he was no longer as dependent on a narrow cabal of Tories to sustain his position. “As I have long ceased to think of home politics, it cannot be said that I am of a party different to that to which any other person belongs. I serve the country to the best of my ability abroad,” the general told one member of Parliament in a letter from Frenada.

One more sacrifice was required to exorcise the demons of Burgos: the senior Royal Artillery officer at headquarters. This officer struck fair-minded observers as decent but somewhat ineffectual, and the failure to bring a strong train of siege guns to Burgos had been an important ingredient in the British reverse there. Wellington put this unfortunate colonel under such pressure that he resigned and the general sent him on his way home with these brutal words: “As you state that you don't feel yourself equal to the magnitude of your situation … I can feel no scruple … in pleading guilty to the charge of not placing confidence in you … I have found that you were not so capable as I had believed you for the arduous task which you had undertaken.”