The Prisoners of Cabrera: Napoleon's Forgotten Soldiers, 1809-1814 [Hardcover]

Denis Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 2001

After their surrender at the Battle of Bailen, 12,000 French prisoners of war were exiled to the bleak island of Cabrera in the Mediterranean, eight miles from Majorca, with only the clothes on their backs, no shelter, insufficient fresh water, and no food supply other than the meager rations dropped off intermittently by the Spanish. By the time they were repatriated to France after Napoleon’s defeat five years later, their number had dwindled to 2,500. Never before told in English, the story of Cabrera is not only a riveting account of survival and the community formed by these men, but also an intriguing look at the politics of divided Spain during this period.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Andersonville, Stalag Luft III, Hanoi Hilton: the annals of military history are full of dreadful prisons in which captured soldiers suffered and died. Denis Smith adds Cabrera to that unholy list with this study of a little- known episode of Napoleonic history.

In 1809 some 12,000 French troops, defeated by Spanish and British forces at the Battle of Bailen, were promised parole to France on condition that they not return to Spain. The British command reneged on the terms of surrender, and the French were marooned on the almost uninhabited island of Cabrera, off the coast of Majorca. Forgotten by their captors--and, it seems, by Napoleon--many of the French prisoners took up a Robinson Crusoe-like life in the hills. Others, including elements of the elite imperial guard, organized mostly ill-fated attempts at escape, some with the aid of sympathetic British sailors. Thousands died. Many of the survivors, Smith writes, suffered from the symptoms of what today is called post-traumatic stress disorder. This vivid narrative tells their story and honors their memory, and it is of considerable interest to students of military history. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Relying on prisoners' memoirs and their captors' documents, Canadian scholar Smith (Rogue Tory; etc.) tells a rather uninspired tale of French soldiers imprisoned on Cabrera, a Spanish island. After Napoleon deposed Spain's Charles IV in 1808, he made his own brother Joseph the new king. A grassroots Spanish rebellion ensued, aided by Napoleon's mortal enemy, Britain. The so-called Peninsular War started badly for Napoleon: a large French army was defeated at the Battle of Bailin in southern Spain. The postbattle terms of surrender included the repatriation of the French army back to France. Arguing that a repatriated French army would simply be marched back into Spain to fight again, the British convinced Spain to renege on its promise. At first, the French POWs were kept on ships anchored in Cadiz harbor. Later, they were shipped to the Spanish island of Majorca, but the Majorcans refused to allow the enemy soldiers on their island. Desperate, the Spaniards dumped the POWs on the deserted island of Cabrera, which had insufficient food, water, shelter and medical facilities. Thousands of POWs died from malnutrition and disease. Smith recounts the prisoners' pastimes: building shelter and waiting for the next food shipment. They established a newspaper, filling it with fictitious stories of French glory, and a theater company devoted to French classics. Some POWs, such as the memoirist Henri Ducor, planned escapes. In 1814, after Napoleon was imprisoned on Elba, the Cabrera prisoners were sent home. Despite the potential of this material, Smith shapes a prosaic, unsatisfying narrative devoid of the drama of individual portraits. Photos and illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows (November 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568582129
• ISBN-13: 978-1568582122
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,307,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Napoleonic Death Camp, November 13, 2001

By 

Tom Holmberg "tholmberg" (Hoffman Ests., IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prisoners of Cabrera: Napoleon's Forgotten Soldiers, 1809-1814 (Hardcover)

For five years, from 1809 to 1814, a tiny sun-baked rock in the Balearic islands off Spain served as a prisoner of war camp for some 9,000 French (and allied) soldiers. The soldiers had surrendered to a Spanish army in one of the more humiliating French defeats of the Napoleonic wars. While the incident has received little attention in English-language accounts of the Peninsular war-this is the first, full-length account of the dramatic story of Cabrera in English-a number of the survivors left memoirs of their internment on this desolate islet. Now Canadian author Denis Smith tells the story of the prisoners who lived and died on this dry, barren rock.

When Napoleon heard of the surrender of Dupont's army at Bailen he was enraged at the blow to France's aura of invincibility and wrote, "I do not suppose that it is necessary to make great preparations at Rochefort, because the British will surely not let these imbeciles pass, and the Spaniards will not give back their weapons to those who have not fought." Napoleon was right.

On landing on Cabrera, most of the prisoners were stepping foot on solid land for the first time in four months. There they found no buildings except for an abandoned fort, no sign of human habitation and little more than scrub brush, lizards and rocks. 4500 French, Polish, Swiss and Italian conscripts were left to largely fend for themselves. Supplies arrived, in theory, every four days, while Spanish and British warships stood guard. There was a single spring of fresh water that dried up in the height of summer. The few goats and rabbits which shared the rocky islet with the French were quickly hunted down and eaten. By the end of the first month 62 men had perished (an annual equivalent death rate of 20%). Between May 1809 and Dec. 1809 approximately 1700 soldiers had died. By 1810 only 17 men from an Imperial Guard unit that had numbered 75 still lived. The unit's highest-ranking officer wrote that "they were all virtually naked, pale, and gaunt: left so long without provisions, they resembled skeletons." During one four-day period when food supplies were cut off more than 400 men died.

Finally in May 1814 word came that the war was at an end and freedom at hand. "An incomparable happiness seized everyone," wrote one observer. "Some seemed to lose their minds...Others embraced, crying..." Search parties had to scour the island for hermits who were hold up in caves like troglodytes. Of the almost 12,000 men who had been imprisoned, any where from 4,000 to 10,000 (the later figure including those who had died at Cadiz) had died, their graves unmarked.

The Prisoners of Cabrera is written in clear, scholarly prose. Smith does not overly sensationalize a story that really needs no such embellishments. Nor does Smith exhibit a false sense of outrage. It is incredible to me that the story of Cabrera has never received full-length treatment before. Such a dramatic story would seem a natural topic for a book. Denis Smith is to be commended for bringing the story of Cabrera to an English-speaking audience. Smith does a credible job in fully recounting the events of the Spanish "death camp." Even-handed in its treatment, Smith spreads the responsibility for the affair among the Spanish who imprisoned the, the British who aided and abetted but kept their hands clean, and Napoleon who sent the soldiers to Spain in the first place and who could have done more for their relief.

Events elsewhere at the time are only touched upon briefly by Smith, who focuses on the fates of the imprisoned men. Little space is devoted to the wider conflict in Spain and elsewhere except where it touches upon what was happening on Cabrera. A detailed understanding of these outside events, while helpful, are not necessary to appreciate Smith's narrative. The real story of Cabrera is that of the men imprisoned there. Men like Henri Ducor, the French sailor who scrounged an infantry uniform to be sent to Cabrera in the hopes of being repatriated, and Louis-Joseph Wagré, the "Corporal of the Spring," and Louis Gille, who managed to get himself sent to England along with the officers. As well as, Robert Guillemard, who used the island's theatrical troupe to effect an escape, and Bernard Masson, who escaped twice from Cabrera and even organized a private rescue attempt after his successful escape. The true hero of the book is, perhaps, Don Antonio Desbrull, the liberal Spanish commissioner for Cabrera who almost single-handedly did what he could, often at the risk of his life an fortune, to alleviate the sufferings of the prisoners.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary story, January 13, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prisoners of Cabrera: Napoleon's Forgotten Soldiers, 1809-1814 (Hardcover)

The Prisoners Of Cabrera by political scientist, biographer, and historian Denis Smith is a compelling and informative examination of the Napoleonic Wars in Spain, and carefully chronicles its most brutal events. Thousands of Napoleon's soldiers were sent to the island of Cabrera, with nothing to protect themselves from the elements, insufficient fresh water, and insufficient rations dropped off from Spain. Life was so harsh that approximately half of the prisoners died over the next five years until the survivors were repatriated to France. The Prisoners Of Cabrera is an extraordinary story and a welcome addition to military history shelves chronicling the Napoleonic Wars.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A gripping, moving account", June 26, 2003

By 

Yvonne P. Joseph (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Prisoners of Cabrera: Napoleon's Forgotten Soldiers, 1809-1814 (Hardcover)

I read this book in a week's time, for I couldn't put the book down.

This is an excellent work by Dennis Smith. As I read, I tried to envision what the French soldiers endured as captives in Spain. Their being shuttled from one Spanish town to the next as no one knew how to deal with POWs in this period. Their facing threats of violence by the angered Spanish civillians. Their being holed-up in the prison warships, and suffering under the filthy conditions, until finally being disposed of to fend for themselves on the deserted island of Cabrera. And we Napoleon fans thought Napoleon's final exile on Saint Helena was bad??? Huh! Regarding its geography, Saint Helena is a remote island, yes. But after reading this harrowing account, Saint Helena is absolutely NO COMPARISON to the barren island of Cabrera. (...) many of the captive soldiers suffered and died under the inhumane conditions there.

Yet, what I found encouraging was how the suffering French captives tried to make the best of their situation, despite the calamities. They managed to build a colony, ran businesses, and even built a theater in a cave, and held plays! The situation of the love affairs between the single women and Officers (both single and married) also served, understandably, as a distraction for the prisoners -- and for the reader, as well.

A gripping, yet very disturbing, part of Napoleonic history I never knew about...until I read this book.