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The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes: The Story of George Scovell
paperback £8.99
Faber And Faber
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More reviews by Richard Garrett
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The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes: The Story of George Scovell by Mark Urban
When presented with MARK URBAN's recent THE MAN WHO BROKE NAPOLEON'S CODES: THE STORY OF GEORGE SCOVELL, I expected a discourse on a minor extra dimension to the Peninsular War. But by the time I had finished it, my whole conception of the strategies that led Wellington to defeat the French had been turned on its head.
Code breakers almost always make fascinating stories: the work takes place in the shadows and combines both intellect and cloak and dagger suspense. And the breaking of a code has often been the key event in the outcome of a war which changed the course of history. The Engima story -- the breaking of Hitler's codes -- is as thrilling today as it was important to the final result of World War II.
Today, of course, "information" is recognised as crucial to any military campaign. Mathematicians are called in to create new "unbreakable" codes only to have someone come along and break them. Code breaking is an important aspect of the shadowy world of intelligence and espionage, one that we know far too little about.
This story goes back much farther than most people realise. The fact that Napoleon's codes - or, strictly speaking, ciphers -- were broken, was kept secret for too long. Although information has been available in the archives, it has not until now been given the publicity it deserves.
Urban has told us the story of the man who deciphered the messages in the context of the Napoleonic Peninsular campaigns (arguably a "World War" well before the two that formally carry that moniker), and the result is a good old fashioned yarn.
George Scovell succeeded in the army through his own efforts at a time when success was often arranged through other factors; the book tells us how he managed to shine in spite of his modest parentage. Initially he bought a commission in a cavalry regiment, but he could not afford the lifestyle it entailed and he transferred into the 57th Regiment of Foot. Although this was a step down, he managed to become part of the Quartermaster General's staff and there his skill at languages propelled him to the management of "guides". These were the means by which orders were transmitted from the commander to his officers spread about the countryside. Scovell spent much of his time on horseback organising the guides, but later on he managed to bring his wife out to brighten his life. She was very popular with his fellow officers who appreciated her civilised hospitality.
Scovell served in the first campaign and was evacuated from Corunna after the death of Sir John Moore, who led the campaign. He returned to Portugal with Wellington, and his hard work was gradually recognised. In the summer of 1811, he was appointed Superintendent of Military Communications. It was about this time that the French started to use a cipher to maintain the secrecy of their messages and it fell to George Scovell to decipher them -- which, of course, he managed to do. Urban spices his text with enough examples of how this was achieved to whet our appetite and make us wonder at his skill.
But the book is more than just the story of Scovell and his code-breaking exploits: the history of the campaigns is explained in the light of how Wellington made use of the information. At first this did not make much difference, but by the time of the 1812 campaign, Wellington was becoming much better informed. The French then introduced a new, more elaborate, cipher and the pressure was on Scovell to break it. It is a measure of his skill that he was able to decipher much of it in a reasonably short time, something even the experts in England could not do. Urban continues the story till the breakthrough of the Vitoria campaign and shows how Scovell's role was pivotal to Wellington's success.
In a development that is more than a little reminiscent of the present day, Wellington kept secret the breaking of the cipher, as it would have detracted from his glory. Scovell knew he could not brag of his achievement, but he left behind copious papers of his time in the Peninsular. Urban has uncovered those papers and his revelation of Scovell's work casts an entirely new perspective on Wellington's generalship as well as recognising a forgotten hero.
Richard Garrett
23/09/2003
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Richard Garrett is a HK-based civil engineer, writer, historian and collector of antique firearms. He is a member of the Arms and Armour Society and the Society for Army Historical Research and an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre of Asian Studies at the Hong Kong University.
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