George Scovell

George Scovell (1774 – 1861) was a member of the quartermaster's staff of the British Army in Iberia during the Peninsular War.

He is most remembered for the crucial role he played in breaking the codes of the French forces during that war. A gifted linguist, he was put in charge of a motley crew of various nationalities recruited for their local knowledge and language skills and called the Army Guides. They developed a system for intercepting and deciphering French communiqués.

In the spring of 1811, the French began using a code based on a combination of 150 numbers known as the Army of Portugal Code. Scovell cracked the code within two days.

At the end of 1811, a new code called the Great Paris Code was sent to all French army officers. It was based on 1400 numbers and derived from a mid-eighteenth century diplomatic code which added meaningless figures to the end of letters. By December of 1812, when a letter from Joseph Bonaparte to Napoleon was intercepted, Scovell could decipher enough of it to read Joseph's explicit account of French operations and plans. The information gained proved vital to Wellington's victory over the French at Vittoria on June 21, 1813.

In later life, Scovell was knighted and became Lieutenant-Governor (1829-1837) and Governor (1837-1856) of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

Scovell retired from the British Army as a general.

References

Page on Scovell at the National Archives (UK): [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/spies/ciphers/scovell/default.htm] .

The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes: The Story of George Scovell by Mark Urban, ISBN 0571205380.

The Story of Sandhurst by Hugh Thomas.