The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (6 page)

What could have been on Scovell's mind as he sat down later to an unpalatable meal in
Implacable's
wardroom, exhausted from forty-eight hours without sleep and the strain of organizing the safe retreat? Relief at the imminent return home to his wife, Mary? General Moore, his admired superior, was dead. The British expedition into the Iberian Peninsula had been a failure, vitiated only by the heroic performance of the British infantry behind Corunna and the hussars during the retreat. Many of the regimental officers were whispering about the staff's incompetence. Scovell's own role was known to a few, Murray among them, but hardly glorious enough to bring promotion. Scovell's personal fortunes were as low as they had ever been.

It can be safely assumed that sitting in the dark gun deck of the
Implacable
as it rolled in a heavy Bay of Biscay swell, he was not in high spirits at the prospects opening up before him. He could not have known that his stay in England would last only a few weeks and that he would then join a new expedition that would give him one more chance to distinguish himself.

CHAPTER THREE
I
NTERLUDE IN
E
NGLAND
, J
ANUARY TO
M
ARCH
1809

J
ust a few days after the Corunna embarkation, British ships started appearing in ports along the southern coast. Many commanding officers would not let their men off until they had been cleaned up and dressed in new uniforms. But in some places the remnants, as barefoot ragamuffins of Moore's army, were marched past shocked townsfolk. If the Spanish had been moved to make the sign of the cross, it can be imagined what an impression they made in the prosperous lanes of southern England.

From Falmouth to the Solent, the fleet disgorged the consequences of another ill-conceived foreign expedition in numerous bays and harbors, reminding many of previous disastrous campaigns where the Royal Navy had come to the rescue: in Flanders, the River Plate, Dardanelles and the second Egyptian campaign. One observer wrote in the
Times,
“the fact must not be disguised that we have suffered a shameful disaster.”

The
Implacable's
passage took just three days from northwest Spain to Torbay. The ship was a prize of Trafalgar, one of twenty vessels taken when the French sailors had finally surrendered by striking their colors. Three and a half years later, this trophy of the nation's most sublime victory at sea was bearing back the lice-infested survivors of yet another ill-considered adventure on land.

Scovell left the
Implacable
in Torbay and made his way to Portsmouth, where his two horses, servant and the remnants of his Corps of Guides had been disembarked. He returned to a land buzzing with rumor and speculation, one in which the name of Sir John Moore was already being murmured with the reverence befitting a martyr of the long struggle against the French.

It was a sign of those factious times that those who exalted the late general's memory soon found themselves trying to counter a whispering campaign against the fallen commander in Parliament and Horse Guards. Major General Charles Stewart, who had served in the Corunna campaign, was one such malcontent. Stewart damned Moore several years later in one of the first histories of these events: “He wanted confidence in himself—he was afraid of responsibility—he underrated the qualities of his own troops and greatly overrated those of his adversary.” The argument over Moore's legacy was an outburst of London's permanent struggle between Whigs (who revered Moore as a reformer and an enemy of the lash) and reactionary conservatives.

Stewart, a cavalry general, was the brother of Lord Castlereagh, the secretary of war, and as such was influential among the ruling Tory faction in London. Of limited brain and boundless confidence, Stewart had risen through influence and was Scovell's polar opposite. Everything about him was show. He loved his hussar's uniform with its rows of rich lace weaving back and forth across the chest, connecting shiny buttons. The ensemble was crowned with a furry busby towering eighteen inches on his head. Stewart was also fond of wearing his decorations, great crusty chunks of enamel and jewels, in the field, seeing himself as the dashing light cavalry officer, a
beau sabreur
*
par excellence. Moore on the other hand saw him as “a very silly fellow.” If only it could have been that harmless. As a member of Parliament serving in the field,
something not uncommon, he had no understanding of the dangers of mixing party politics with military duty. Since political influence counted for so much in the army hierarchy, however, he was a fool who had to be suffered gladly by various generals.

Stewart was not the only critic, but others were a little more delicate. A few weeks after the Corunna embarkation, Captain William Warre, for example, wrote in a letter to his father, “Everything I hear confirms my opinion that our retreat from Spain, etc etc etc was inconsiderate, and I fear will place us in rather a disgraceful light. This
entre nous.”

Word about the Corunna campaign was slowly filtering around the country. London newspapers carried both the French accounts of these events as well as Castlereagh's version. Some carried verbatim translations of French army reports: “The English retreated in confusion and consternation … the English have lost everything that constitutes an army; generals, horses, baggage, ammunition, magazines,” the
Gentleman's Magazine
reported. And the truth was that eight thousand of Moore's thirty-five thousand had not come home. Perhaps only one-tenth of these had been lost at the Battle of Corunna itself, while the remainder had expired or fallen behind on the dreadful retreat.

For the architects of this expedition, it was important to quash these criticisms by declaring a glorious victory as quickly as possible. Lord Castlereagh went to Parliament on 25 January and paid tribute to Moore, who, he said, could not be blamed for following his difficult orders from London and, “fell deeply lamented, on the 16th January at Corunna, where he defeated a very superior French army and established the glory of the British military character.”

Swiftly he moved on to more palatable business. Two days later, with recriminations about Corunna still echoing in the lobbies of Parliament, Castlereagh felt it an auspicious moment to remind everyone of the victory of Vimeiro six months earlier. There, Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Wellesley had defeated the French army sent to occupy Portugal.

On 27 January, Lieutenant General Wellesley entered the chamber to receive the vote of thanks in person. Wellesley looked around, acknowledging the approbation of his fellow MPs. He wore his full dress uniform: red coat, with cuffs, collar and lapels of royal blue, chevrons of gold lace marking his rank on the sleeves. In the field, he preferred a plain blue coat, but Wellesley was a man of finely honed
political instincts and he knew that in this particular arena he must look the part of the conquering hero. As he listened to the panegyrics, many members no doubt took the opportunity to study him. Wellesley's hooked nose and hawklike gaze were often remarked upon. Goya sketched him a couple of years later with his close-cropped hair brushed forward across the brow, enhancing the impression of an intense, brooding intellect. His wiry frame and precise manner of speech suggested an active, zealous personality. Sir Arthur had shown great merit in his military service in Flanders, Ireland and India. His rise within the army, though, was due in large measure to political patronage.

Having grown up in one of the great Anglo-Irish political families, Wellesley understood how to speak to this audience. He may have privately considered many members of the Commons to be little more than upstarts and blackguards, but Wellesley knew well that they saw themselves as the defenders of England's ancient liberties. Exploiting these sentiments would consolidate his good standing. In replying to the vote of thanks, he thus told them:

While the Corunna affair may have cooled some of the patriotic excitement of the previous summer, the performance of the British troops in Elvina or of the cavalry in its rear-guard actions had convinced many members of Parliament that the game in the Iberian Peninsula was still worth pursuing. Others also believed the nation wanted to see Sir John Moore avenged, and, finally and most pressingly, there were rumors that Austria was about to launch a new war against France. The expediency of organizing a further expedition to stir up the Iberian hornet's nest was clear to most members of Parliament. If anyone was favorite to lead such a new enterprise it was Arthur Wellesley. In the Commons they knew he had won victories in India, but what they really cared
about was that he had made such a good showing against the French at Vimeiro (never mind that the odds were stacked in his favor) and that he had the complete confidence of the ministry.

Scovell did not allow himself time to weigh up the events of Corunna for some months. He attended to business in Portsmouth as best he could and then set out at the end of January to find Mary. He had not seen her for six months and the time Scovell spent with his wife in February 1809 was an idyll that would sustain him through untold hardship in later months.

Mary had retreated to Yorkshire, to be with friends and family, and Scovell found her at Sprotborough Hall, a huge mansion with elaborate gardens and great fountain, where she was staying as a guest.

George and Mary had grown up in rather different worlds. She was the eldest daughter of the Clowes family, Lancashire landowners. Her family were not hugely wealthy during her childhood, but by 1809 the expectations of the Clowes clan were looking more promising with each day. Twenty years before, when her grandfather had made a will, their scattered holdings around Salford and Manchester had given him a worth of £5,000—certainly no great sum. The Clowes patriarch, however, had lived on (surviving his son, Mary's father) to see his holdings increase in value several fold as their city became one of the throbbing hearts of England's industrial revolution.

Scovell on the other hand had come from humbler origins. He was “the son of very respectable parents, though not independent gentlefolks,” in the tactful words of a family servant. His parents (also George and Mary) had married at St. Martins in the Fields church in Westminster, London, in 1770. Young George, born in the capital in 1774, was the oldest of five siblings. Scovell, it seems—for he was reticent about revealing details of his early life—grew up in the great metropolis of his birth. He had excelled at school, particularly in languages, mastering Latin, Greek and French. As a teenager, George's father had propelled him toward a trade, for the Scovell family could not afford to carry passengers, and George found himself apprenticed to an engraver, an occupation in which his patience and methodical approach to problems could be applied to some profit.

It was the mayhem across the channel, and Napoleon Bonaparte's emergence from it as emperor, that transformed Scovell's prospects. The triumph of France's revolutionaries had touched off a series of invasion scares in Britain. The army needed to be expanded rapidly and vast reserves of militias, yeomanry and fencibles assembled in case Bonaparte's hordes crossed the channel. It was this mobilization that allowed Scovell to escape his destiny hunched over an engraver's table and become a gentleman. When the Warwickshire Fencibles, a regiment of cavalry for home defense, was raised, his intelligence and literacy singled him out for commissioning as an officer in 1798.

When, in 1800, the Fencibles were disbanded, Scovell was offered the chance of converting into a regular cavalry regiment, the 4th Dragoons, with the rank of lieutenant—a transition from a band of county amateurs to one of Britain's best-trained bodies of heavy cavalry. By this stroke of luck, he had taken another step up the ladder of gentility and done so for no outlay whatsoever, for those seeking advancement in a regiment as fashionable as the 4th Dragoons often paid large sums of money to jump the promotion queue.

Scovell loved his new life in the 4th. He took on extra duties as the colonel's adjutant, helping to administer the regiment, while applying himself earnestly to training. His desire to make his way in this new military family was so intense that late in 1803 he paid a vast sum, £3150, to buy a captain's commission in the 4th Dragoons. Since he had netted just £262 from the sale of his lieutenancy, he had to draw on his family for the difference, almost £2900. This high figure (almost as much as the purchase of a commission in the Household Cavalry) reflected the 4th's status as a fashionable regiment.