Denis Smith
The Prisoners of Cabrera
Napoleon's Forgotten Soldiers, 1809-1814

"Utilizing memoirs of survivors, manuscript records from the British Foreign Office, and Spanish and Swiss archives, Smith offers a harrowing account of bare survival." — Library Journal

"The Cabreran adventure was deadly folly. The prison camp was the product of a chain of circumstances leading inexorably-if unpredictably-from the overweening ambition of Napoleon Bonaparte." — from the book

Lost in the marginalia of the vast Napoleonic saga, over 12,000 French soldiers were imprisoned on the small deserted island of Cabrera, and over half never left it. Denis Smith seeks to salvage these lives from obscurity as he tells their stories for the first time in English.

After Spain turned away from Napoleon in favor of Britain, many French defeats were suffered in the Grand Army's attempts to take the Iberian Peninsula. When the French lost the battle of Bailén, Spain made concessions to repatriate the French soldiers. The British, however, had other ideas, and urged the Spanish to imprison the surrendered French forces.

The soldiers, and their camp followers, were loaded onto squalid ships and kept in Cádiz Harbor. Those who survived their stay on the hulks were faced with an even more cruel confinement. The prisoners were sent to Cabrera, an uninhabited island south of Majorca, where they remained for the next five years.

The Prisoners of Cabrera dynamically and meticulously recounts events surrounding the imprisonment of the French soldiers as well as everyday life on the island. With only one insufficient source of fresh water, the clothes on their backs, and no shelter or food supply, the French soldiers depended on starvation-level rations and their own ingenuity to stay alive.

Some prisoners concocted plans to escape. Others lived like hermits in caves. Some lived in the nude, choosing to trade their clothing for food. The prisoners started a theater and conducted black market business. By the end of their internment, despite all efforts to stave off boredom and starvation, more than half of the prisoners had died. Those who survived were grudgingly repatriated to France when Napoleon was exiled to Elba.

Denis Smith is a former dean of political science. His other books include noted biographies of Canadian political figures, and he was the recipient of two John W. Dafoe prizes. Smith lives in Port Hope, Ontario, and spends part of each year in Andalusia.