‘Le Général Maitland commande l’expédition anglaise venue de 747: O’Donnell peut réunir 786 692 1102 en y comprenant le corps de l’Anglais Roche. Le 19 août je n’avais que 135 692 1102 à lui opposer.’
Here it is quite clear that ‘747’ means Sicily; that ‘692.1102’ in the two statements of forces means thousand men. A little guessing and comparison with other cryptic statements of forces would soon show that 135 meant 7 and 786 meant 12.
Notwithstanding much useful help it was still a marvellous feat of Scovell to work out by the end of 1812 no less than nine hundred separate cipher-numbers, ranging in complexity from the simple vowel a to the symbol that represented ‘train des équipages militaires’! He must have had a most ingenious brain, and unlimited patience. Down to the end there remained numbers of unsolved riddles, figures that represented persons or places so unfrequently mentioned that there was no way of discovering, by comparison between several documents, what the number was likely to mean.
Sometimes very small fish came into the net of the guerrilleros, and were sent on to Wellington; take, for example, the tiny scrap containing the pathetic letter of the young wife of General Merlin, of the cavalry of the Army of the Centre—I fear that the bearer must have fallen into the hands of Julian Sanchez or one of his lieutenants, and have had short shrift:—
‘Mon cher Ami,—Depuis ton départ je n’ai reçu qu’un seul mot de toi—pendant qu’il arrive des courriers (c’est-à-dire des paysans) du quartier général. Mon oncle qui écrit régulièrement dit toujours qu’on se porte bien, mais tu peux te mettre à ma place! Je crains que ta goutte ne soit revenue, je crains tant de choses, qui peut-être passent le sens commun, mais qui me tourmentent. Je ne dors plus, et n’ai d’autre plaisir que celui de regarder ma fille, qui se porte bien. Encore si elle pouvait m’entendre et me consoler! Adieu! Je suis d’une tristesse insupportable, parce que je t’aime plus que moi-même.—Mercédes.’
It may suffice to show the general character of a typical cipher-dispatch if we give a few lines of one, with the interpretation added below—the following comes from a dispatch of Marmont written on April 22, 1812, to Berthier, from Fuente Guinaldo:—
Le roi après m’avoir donné l’ordre
1060 462 810 195 1034 1282
de faire par- tir deux divisions
971 216 13 192 614 20 90 92
et plus de la moi- ti- é de la
1265 582 637 851 809 388 177
cavalerie dis- po- ni- ble, et avoir