“Shaking him by the hand Major-General Murray said, ‘Captain Sumners!’” (p. 2)
George Murray is an historical figure. According to Mark Urban’s excellent study The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes: The Story of George Scovell (London 2001), he was in charge of gathering intelligence for the British Army: “This did not mean recruiting some spy in the French court; it meant knowing how many horses might graze in a particular valley, or where the bridges were on the Guadiana river. Even in 1809, Spain and Portugal were poorly surveyed and the best maps available to Headquarters were fifty years old and inaccurate. Murray’s envoys were to make sketch maps wherever they went, detailing the distances between villages, how many men might be quartered in each, the state of the rivers, bridges and so on. When he had run out of members of his own staff, he started sending regimental officers.” (Urban, 56) General George Murray , by Sir John Hoppner, before 1810 I'm not sure why the portrait's title makes Murray a general. He was promoted from lieutenant-colonel
