Free The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes by Mark Urban Page B

opportunity to bring himself to the notice of General Wellesley.

    By the next day, 15 May, Soult’s men had cleared the first of their three mountain hurdles, the Serra de Santa Catalina. A heavy rainfall had set in, drenching the French infantry and liberating all the evil smells that a season’s campaigning had locked into their woollen greatcoats. Hours of struggling along slippery paths with waterlogged feet were followed by fitful sleep under sodden mantles. Those downpours soaked the British too, waterlogging the roads and splattering their white trousers in mud. The foot soldiers, cursing their prey, quickly nicknamed Soult the duke of “damnation” instead of Dalmatia.
    On the evening of the fifteenth, the regiments Scovell was with were joined by Wellesley, Murray and several battalions of infantry in Braga, about thirty miles north of Oporto. Braga, a cathedral town considered Portugal’s Canterbury, stands at the mouth of the Cavado Valley, which flows between the second and last of the three mountain barriers of the Minho country that Soult would have to cross. Even though communications with him were proving extremely difficult, Wellesley was hopeful that Marshal Beresford’s force would be blocking the other end, the eastern end, of this valley, to block the French from leaving. Late that evening, the Portuguese military commandant of Braga came to the headquarters asking to see Wellesley. He knew the Minho ranges well and wanted to tell the British general about an old Roman road that would allow Soult to escape the Cavado Valley directly to the north, cutting straight across the Serra da Geres—the last of Soult’s great hurdles—without running into either the British or the Portuguese forces at either end. Wellesley would not consent to speak to the Portuguese officer, who took it as a snub resulting from his low social and military rank.
    By the morning of the sixteenth, Soult’s bedraggled column had cleared its second hurdle, had turned east and was marching on top of a sort of shelf along the steep southern side of the Cavado Valley. Using the same route, Wellesley’s troops moved swiftly from Braga in the same direction and that afternoon caught up with the French rear guard at a village called Salamonde.
    Wellesley had shown daring in Oporto, but here he approached the new situation with the greatest caution. The nature of the terrain made an immediate charge with cavalry impossible. Scovell, De Lancey and some light infantry were sent exploring farther up the steep side of the valley tosee if there was an easy way to bypass Soult’s blocking force—probably about two thousand men. Wellesley meanwhile ordered up the Guards Brigade to assault the Salamonde position frontally. The British general’s caution allowed Soult several hours in which to keep the head of his column marching, taking his corps down the side of the valley to the first of two bridges at its bottom. These spans would have to be crossed before Soult’s corps could scale the final ridge and make its way back into Spain.
    It was at this point that the advanced elements of Marshal Beresford’s Portuguese column came into play. Guided by Portuguese staff, Beresford had the local knowledge that Wellesley lacked: the key importance of the two bridges. The old Roman road from Braga to Galicia in Spain descended the steep valley below Salamonde, crossed the two bridges deep in this natural trough before climbing up the other side, across the Serra da Geres mountains. Quickly, Beresford sent Captain William Warre, * the same officer who had been a fellow DAQMG of Scovell’s at Corunna, ahead of the regular troops. He rode ahead of Beresford’s regular troops, and using his fluent Portuguese placed himself at the head of the local armed citizenry. The bridge in Ponte Nova was built of wood and, under Warre’s directions, they started pulling up the planks that formed