“Shaking him by the hand Major-General Murray said, ‘Captain Sumners!’” (January 19, 1814)

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

 

Urban is probably drawing on Sir Charles Oman's classic Wellington's Army (1913), which states: "It was they who made topographical surveys, reports on roads and bridges, and on the resources of districts through which the army might have to move in the near of distant future." (Chapter VIII).

I was amused to find Oman almost as confused as I was about the various Murrays dashing about in the Peninsula at that time: apart from George Murray, introduced here, there was Major-General John Murray who made such a hash of operations around Tarragona, and John Murray, the Commissary-General.

   

George Murray was promoted from lieutenant-colonel to colonel in 1809, to major-general in 1813 (1811 according to Oman), and served as quartermaster-general in the Peninsular War.