The French Foreign Legion has April 30 marked in red. Every year around those dates its barracks honor a wooden hand and the myth of Camerone. We say Camerone and not Camarón, his name between us, to avoid misunderstandings. In Spanish, the only Camarón in capital letters is Camarón de la Isla. Talking, therefore, about the myth of Camarón could make one think of José Monje Cruz, Camarón de la Isla, the great cantaor.
The Andalusian writer Joaquín Mañes Postigo is well aware of the importance of avoiding misunderstandings. Author of a dozen books on armed conflicts with the presence of Spanish soldiers, he has fictionalized the battle that the French Foreign Legion fought in Camerone. And with this French place name he titled his novel, El mito de Camerone (Magase Ediciones), although it refers to Camarón de Tejeda, in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
Why do we bring up on the Comer channel, and not on the Historia y Vida channel, this episode of the surreal adventure of Napoleon III in Mexico? Historia y Vida has already masterfully explained the imperial dream of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III, Napoleon’s nephew. But Camerone perfectly illustrates the importance of the quartermaster, an aspect that is always on the minds of the French military (and our website).
The grognards said that Napoleon, a forerunner of blitzkrieg and speed in enemy territory, won battles not with the arms of his soldiers, but with his legs. And with his stomach, he might say. As he discovered at terrible cost the Grande Armée in 1812, during the catastrophic withdrawal from Russia, it is very difficult to fight with nothing to put in your mouth. That is also what the myth of Camerone is about.
The French Foreign Legion (still alive: 1,600 new recruits enlisted so far this year) formed part of Napoleon III’s expeditionary corps in Mexico. The legionnaires protected the lines of communication and, above all, the supply convoys, permanently threatened by the guerrillas and the popular opposition of the Mexicans. Captain Jean Danjou was in command of one of these support columns.
Danjou, 35, lost his left hand in an accidental explosion in 1856 and had an articulated prosthesis made of wood. He and 65 men were sent to protect a shipment of supplies on April 29, 1863. The next day they ran headlong into a very strong enemy column, made up of some 2,000 soldiers, including horsemen and infantry, who rushed against them convinced that they would its overwhelming superiority.
Captain Danjou could have told his troop of the third company what Leonidas had said to the Spartans at the Thermopylae pass: “Have a good breakfast because tonight we will dine in Hades.” Against all odds, the legionnaires managed to stop the first Mexican onslaught, but in the fray they suffered the first casualties and lost the mules that carried the water, food rations and spare ammunition.
Danjou and his men turned what could have been a rout into an orderly retreat and withdrew to a farm near the town of Camarón de Tejeda (today just Camarón), where they strengthened themselves and saved ammunition (“an enemy , a bullet”). Given the disproportion of forces, the thirst and hunger that gripped the besieged, the Mexicans unsuccessfully ordered them to surrender.
Captain Danjou was one of the first to fall, the victim of a sniper. “We will fight until the end”, he said before he died and thus he made his small and multinational troop swear to do so (the Foreign Legion continues to receive recruits from almost all over the world today: Legio patria nostra). They kept their word. In the end, after hours and hours of siege, only a handful of legionnaires remained standing, surrounded by 40 corpses and 18 wounded.
The Mexicans, who suffered hundreds of casualties, marveled at such courage and agreed to attend to the wounded (many died) and let the survivors march with their weapons. Danjou’s prosthesis was shipped to France, where he still honors it. Every April 30, the urn with the hand is carried by a veteran and decorated legionnaire in a parade, a symbol of a sacrifice as heroic as it is useless. Useless? No, the supply convoy has arrived at its destination.
