Books I'm Reading: The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes

Mark Urban's The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (Perennial, 2001) is a  fascinating story that sheds light not only on the career of George Scovell, later Sir George Scovell, but a great deal of light on the man he long served, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. Despite the invaluable services Scovell performed for Wellington handling Spanish guerrillas and spies during the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic Wars and, most importantly, working as a code-breaker, Wellington appears to have been unable to overcome prejudices that made him favor upper-class associates over the common-born like Scovell, no matter how valuable the latter were to his successes (although his attitude was perhaps not unusual among the aristocracy).

Scovell was a linguist and had a talent for  ciphers. He was largely responsible for breaking France's "Great Paris Cipher," reserved for the most sensitive communications--a cipher the French never suspected had been compromised. At times, Wellington was reading messages between Napoleon's generals, between Napoleon and his generals, and between Napoleon and his brother Joseph, installed as the King of Spain (while Napoleon himself was busy failing to conquer Russia). Urban makes a strong case for Scovell's critical importance to Wellington's success in Portugal and Spain fighting the French and the book goes a long way toward reviving the memory of Scovell who doesn't seem to have deserved his treatment at the hands of Wellington--or his obscurity. Meticulously researched, well written, and important. Highly recommended.

Books I'm Reading: Napoleon: A Biography

I recently read The Black Count, about Alex Dumas, one of Napoleon's most successful (and unjustly neglected) generals, incidentally the father of Alexandre Dumas, the writer, who drew on his father's imprisonment for The Count of Monte Christo. It made me feel rather ignorant about Napoleon. Happily, ignorance is easily remedied, if you enjoy reading. So, I  picked this book up from my bookshelf. It was a gift--the last gift--I gave my father, shortly before he died. He never read it. It reverted to me after his death and it's been sitting on a bookshelf here since.

After finishing this comprehensive biography of Napoleon, I'm left wondering, what was it all for? The author estimates Napoleon was responsible for the deaths of about 4 million people, both soldiers and civilians, throughout Europe. He (Napoleon, not the author) appears to have been extremely selfish, extremely insensitive to the suffering of the civilians in the countries he overran, and of even his own soldiers. Virtually all the territory he took was later lost to France. He rolled back many forward-looking reforms that came out of the Revolution. So, what did all those deaths achieve? It's hard to say. I suppose the Rosetta Stone and other discoveries made by the scientific experts that accompanied his early campaigns (mostly the Egyptian campaign) were worthwhile, but probably not worth the lives of so many people.  

Strange also is the parabolic development of Napoleon's military genius. It seems to have bloomed rapidly, peaked, and then abandoned him. The second half of his tenure as France's leader was marked by bad military judgment with only a few exceptions--a few moments of resurgent brilliance. He seems to have been particularly bad at judging character, failing to sack incompetent and deceitful generals, and incapable of doing anything but indulging his ungrateful relatives.

Having read no other Napoleon biographies, I can't say how this one compares to others, but it appears to have been well received by critics and it gives the impression of being well researched and even-handed. At the very least, it's lucidly and engagingly written and without a single typographical error, which is refreshing (I read the 2011 Arcade Publishing paperback edition).