The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes [Hardcover]

Mark Urban (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2002

History books report -- and rightly so -- that it was the strategic and intelligence-gathering brilliance of the Duke of Wellington (who began his military career as Arthur Wellesley) that culminated in Britain's defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1815. Nearly two hundred years later, many of General Wellesley's subordinates are still remembered for their crucial roles in these historic campaigns. But Lt. Col. George Scovell is not among them.

The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes is the story of a man of common birth -- bound, according to the severe social strictures of eighteenth-century England, for the life of a tradesman -- who would in time become his era's most brilliant code-breaker and an officer in Wellesley's army. In an age when officers were drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the nobility, George Scovell -- an engraver's apprentice -- joined Wellesley in 1809. Scovell provides a fascinating lens through which to view a critical era in military history -- his treacherous rise through the ranks, despite the scorn of his social betters and his presence alongside Wellesley in each of the major European campaigns, from the Iberian Peninsula through Waterloo.

But George Scovell was more than just a participant in those events. Already recognized as a gifted linguist, Scovell would prove a remarkably nimble cryptographer. Encoded military communiqués between Napoleon and his generals, intercepted by the British, were brought to Scovell for his skilled deciphering. As Napoleon's encryption techniques became more sophisticated, Wellesley came to rely ever more on Scovell's genius for this critical intelligence.

In Scovell's lifetime, his role in Britain's greatest military victory was grudgingly acknowledged; but his accomplishments would eventually be credited to others -- including Wellington himself. Scovell's name -- and his contributions -- have been largely overlooked or ignored.

The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes tells the fascinating story of the early days of cryptology, re-creates the high drama of some of Europe's most remarkable military campaigns, and restores the mantle of hero to a man heretofore forgotten by history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"I am making haste to pass on the contents to 25. 13. 8. 9. 38. . . . who has ordered me to open communications with you." So reads a French dispatch captured by the British in the Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon's armies, causing the Duke of Wellington to comment, "The devil is in the French for numbers"--and occasioning Mark Urban's intriguing study of code making and code breaking.

The early 19th-century British army was hidebound by tradition, writes Urban; elegant and well-placed gentlemen gained command, while more deserving but lower-born men languished in the ranks. Against that army, in Spain and Portugal, stood Napoleon's forces, "the mightiest armament since the legions of ancient Rome." Thanks to one common-born officer, George Scovell, a linguistic genius and adept solver of puzzles, Wellington's forces avoided disaster by learning of the superior enemy's plans--though, after the war, Wellington dismissed Scovell's contributions and took credit for himself and his favorite staff officers. A fine chapter in the history of intelligence and cryptography, Urban's book provides a fascinating aside to the well-documented Napoleonic Wars. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Alan Turing wasn't the only Brit with a genius for code cracking. The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes introduces readers to George Scovell, an engraver's apprentice who stumbled into a job as the Duke of Wellington's decoder and managed to unravel Bonaparte's legendary Great Paris Cipher, which contained 1,400 coded elements. Mark Urban, a BBC correspondent, chronicles Wellington's campaigns against the French from the battle of Corunna in 1809 to the 1815 victory at Waterloo, showing how Scovell's decoding of enemy communiqu s was pivotal to Napoleon's defeat. (Mar.)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006018891X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060188917
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,128,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Account of a Little Known Subject, May 18, 2002

By 

Aussie Reader ""Rick"" (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (Hardcover)

Mark Urban has added another great book to the many titles competing to be placed in a Napoleonic library. This book, `The Man Who Broken Napoleon's Codes' covers a little known and written of subject, the story of George Scovell. This man had as much to do with the British victories in Spain as did Wellington although you would not know it if you read any previous accounts of the Peninsular War.

George Scovell helped break the French Imperial codes and provided much useful intelligence to Wellington in his campaigns against the French armies. But since Scovell was of low birth he struggled for advancement. He showed his bravery on a number of battlefields but was almost always forgotten when it came to promotion, being passed over by younger men of more distinguished birth.

I must admit that I was a bit dubious when I started reading this book as I usually find accounts on code breaking and intelligence quite dull and boring however this book reads like a novel. Full of information with a narrative that races along, it was a great story and full of action. The book covers all the major campaigns and battles in the Peninsular and was a joy to read. I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone who loves reading about the Napoleonic period.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book with only a few flaws, March 5, 2002

By 

Bill O'Chee (Surfers Paradise, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (Hardcover)

The hero of this valuable work is Major George Scovell, a member of Wellington's Quater-Master staff in the Peninsula War who almost single handedly broke the Great Paris cypher used by the French Army. Scovell also ran the postal system in the Peninsula for Wellington, and created a docket system for the delivery of confiential material that is still used today.

As such, this book sheds invaluable light on the process of intelligence gathering and dissemination, as well as the analysis of encrypted messages. Many of these basic field techniques are stock in trade for intelligence professionals in the twenty-first century.

I thought that author did an excellent job of balancing readability and historical detail. The book moves along at a good pace, and is fairly compelling reading. Many of the details of the Peninsula campaign are well drawn, and good light is shed on otherwise porrly documented actions.

Although I rated this book as five stars, I did eventually tire of the author's clear prejudice against Wellington, and his belief that Scovell was hard done by after the end of the campaign. This is not entirely correct. Scovell ended his days as a Major-General, and the Commandant of Sandhurst. Although others from well connected families were promoted faster, this was a common occurrence in the British Army of the time, and indeed most European armies. I got the faint suspicion that the author had a bee in his bonnet, although perhaps I do him a disservice.

This one of the few flaws in an otherwise excellent text. The only other criticism is that the author should have included a deciphering table for the Great Paris cypher. This was a curious omission.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Decoding for Wellington: Espionage inthe Peninsular War, March 18, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (Hardcover)

Codebreaking is not an easy subject to make plain, or to make exciting. There have been a number of good accounts of the work of Alan Turing and the crew at Bletchley Park, accounts that were aided by the memories of the participants and an exciting tale of successful boffins who made a difference against the Nazis. Codebreaking in previous wars has not had as spectacular a story, but in _The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes_ (HarperCollins) by Mark Urban, we can read about a similar victory through brainpower. Oddly, Wellington's one-man cryptography staff is only now, almost two hundred years after the fact, getting his recognition.

George Scovell was of humble background, a matter that was to bedevil his entire career. He was a brilliant linguist in school and got his break in the army when he was put in charge of Wellington's communications. He had a knack for decoding, but then his first efforts were easy. But when Wellington stepped up his campaign, the French started using their "grand cipher," a fiendishly difficult code in which a single word could be encoded in multiple ways, eliminating the easy patterns that made previous codebreaking possible. Urban describes the decipherment in sufficient detail to appreciate the intellectual challenge; Scovell cracked the code when teams in London could not do so. By the eve of the decisive Battle of Salamanca in July 1812, Scovell had chipped away enough at the code to be able to tell how big an army Wellington would be facing and how long before it would be reinforced with more soldiers. It is possible that because he was working with captured documents from many sources, Scovell had such information to give Wellington that it may have been more than the on-scene French general had himself.

Possibly because codebreaking is a pretty dry subject, this extensive book covers more than just Scovell's efforts. It is, indeed a history of the peninsular war, with special attention to intelligence matters. Scovell is only now getting the recognition within this book because Urban looked up Scovell's papers in an archive; they consisted of his own journal, extensive notes, and explanations of his method. Wellington owed him a lot, but never really repaid his debt. He knew how much Scovell had done; he was even able to send a sarcastic note back to London where experts in secret writing had been trying to crack the code with far less success than Scovell had. But when after the war, Scovell asked for a reference letter, it did not come. Wellington one evening told fellow diners who were curious about the code victory that decipherment had come because "I tried, everyone at headquarters tried, and between us we made it out." It is quite possible that Wellington wanted to emphasize his own brilliance, or the steadfast character of the British soldier, as the key to victory, without acknowledging the dirty work of espionage. "The legend of his great generalship might have been undermined, however subtly, by revelations that he had been reading his enemy's most sensitive mail." Nonetheless, Scovell can now be placed in his proper position as far greater than a footnote within the Napoleonic wars, and he has an exciting tale of military history as his commemoration.