by John Cook
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The sketching officers belonged to the Quartermaster General's (QMG) department and operated behind and in front of the army. Their principal role was to acquire topographic information from which accurate maps could be made and it is remarkable to note that during the early campaigns, the Peninsula army was almost entirely ignorant of the theatre in which it found itself. It had almost no maps, and those that it did have were often inaccurate. Indeed, the site of the battle of Vimeiro was, apparently, in large part dictated by the possession of cartography of that part of the country. Sketching officers also compiled detailed reports about the country they surveyed, including information about road communications and the going in general, water obstacles and crossing points, and the logistic support the army might expect to find in a particular area, and so on.
AG Responsibility
The responsibility for intelligence fell by tradition to the Adjutant-General's (AG) department but in Wellington's headquarters for reasons, it seems, of accident and personalities rather than design, it devolved largely on the QMG's department. The role of the observing officers was to operate well inside enemy territory and obtain information about the their order of battle, movements, morale, strengths and so on. The best known observing officer is undoubtedly Colquhoun Grant, whose exploits are legendary.
These officers, however, were not the only sources of information. There also existed a network of agents and spies, called correspondents, whose information made its way back to Wellington's headquarters, usually by means of a system of messengers. In addition, Wellington offered a bounty for captured French dispatches taken by the Spanish guerillas and Portuguese irregulars. These were often in cypher and the responsibility for decoding them was entrusted to Captain George Scovell of the 57th Foot, Wellington's 'cypher clerk', who rose to Lieutenant Colonel in the QMG's department of Wellington's headquarters in less than two years.
For further information on this subject, SGP Ward's, Wellington's Headquarters, (The Oxford University Press, last, I think, in 1957), is probably best known. It should be available through library services. Sir Charles Oman's, Wellington's Army (Greenhill, 1993), has a chapter on the headquarters, as do Michael Glover's, Wellington's Army in The Peninsula 1808-1814, (David and Charles, 1977) and Colonel Roger's, Wellington's Army (Ian Allan, 1979), both of which appear use Ward in part as the source for their material.
Finally, information from London should not be overlooked but this, and the information provided by the various agencies described above, was generally of more value in the context of operational planning. The acquisition of tactical information on campaign was principally the domain of the light cavalry.
Patrols
Lieutenant Colonel Denison in A History of Cavalry from the Earliest Times with Lessons for the Future (Macmillan and Co, 1877), described how patrols should be used on the whole front and both flanks of an army on campaign, as its "antennae and feelers". In addition to noting the disposition and movements of the enemy and reconnoitring the ground, these patrols also questioned local inhabitants, seized mail and took prisoners, all of which were a potential source of information on all manner of things. However, the cavalry also had security duties and was required to mask the dispositions and movements of their own army by countering the activities of enemy cavalry patrols. In the early Peninsula campaigns, Wellington was not particularly well provided with cavalry, either in terms of quality or numbers. This, however, improved later on both counts and a number of regiments became very good at outpost and reconnaissance duties.
As far as the composition of British light cavalry patrols in the Peninsula is concerned, they seem to have comprised from about five or ten men, to up to approximately half a troop, say 30 or 40 men. The distances at which they operated from the main body of the army is equally vague but commentators speak various of two or three marches and up to 40 miles.
More Aide-de-Camp
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Turning to C Burley's letter in Dispatches FE33, Wellington did indeed employ 'exploring' officers of the kind depicted in the Sharpe series, although I have not come across that particular term for them elsewhere. Oman, and others probably repeating him, calls them sketching officers and observing officers.