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  Although his own engagement was completed and he was eligible for repatriation, Danjou had been infatuated with the Legion since he was fifteen, when a former employee of his father came to visit the family home in Languedoc while on leave from Algeria wearing the uniform of a second lieutenant in the Legion, and filled the boy’s head with tales of daring and adventure. Despite his father wanting him in the family business, Danjou attended St Cyr and passed out in 1847 as a second-lieutenant. Bored stiff when posted to the 51st Line Regiment on garrison duty in France, he requested a transfer to the Legion, which he joined at Batna in Algeria on 24 September 1852. The Legion had been his whole life since then. Now it was to be his death also.

  He volunteered to replace the absent captain of 3rd Company and Maudet volunteered to go along as second-in-command. By leaving at midnight, they could march eastwards towards the coast and reach Palo Verde at dawn, rest there until the following night and then reconnoitre the road to Soledad. If they saw the dust of the convoy heading their way, there might still be time to get a warning to it, for the heavily laden wagons’ best speed rarely exceeded 2km an hour in those conditions. If there was no dust-cloud, that meant the messenger had got through.

  Reduced by disease and deaths to sixty-two NCOs and men from its full strength of about 120, 3rd Company was roused at 2300hrs, given coffee and bread, setting off at 0100hrs as described in the official account, with the three officers mounted and the men on foot. Two mules were laden with rations and water for 36 hours and sixty cartridges per man. The distance from base to Palo Verde was 20km. By marching in the cool of the night, with spare ammunition and food carried on mules, it was possible to cover the distance before the heat of midday, even for men who had been ill for most of the thirty-four days since they landed in-country.

  [SEE MAP G – ‘The Mexican Intervention 1862 – 63’.]

  The climate in this part of Mexico is so hot and so humid that it is now the country’s major sugar-growing area, boasting the world’s largest refinery. At the time, the landscape through which the legionnaires had to march was mosquito-infested tropical scrub of bushes entangled with lianas that made progress off the road a matter of hacking every step of the way through it with the blade of a sabre. Despite its grand name the Royal Road was more of a track, badly in need of repair, with parapets washed away by the heavy rains and the muddy surface deeply rutted by the passage of supply waggons. Just before dawn the heavy downpour stopped and they were given breakfast of coffee and black bread at an outpost manned by an elite Legion grenadier company. Capt Gustave Saussier, in command of the post, offered Danjou some of his men, but Danjou turned down the offer, as instructed by Jeanningros. Odds of five or even ten to one were quite normal in Mexico and the Legion had little respect for the marksmanship of the guerrilleros who made up most of the forces in this region.[148]

  Dawn at 0530hrs found the column heading downhill after cautiously negotiating the narrow ravine of Payo Ancho. Below them lay the Jalapa River. It was going to be a hot day. They passed through several ramshackle settlements from which the inhabitants had fled, this being a war zone. Normally the left-right rhythm of the march would have been given by the Italian drummer Casimiro Lai, but they were marching in silence, given the likely proximity of the enemy.

  The village of Camarón was like all the others they passed, deserted and derelict from the war, with thatched roofs fallen in and the skeletal roof-timbers silhouetted against the lightening sky. To the left of the road stood a few abandoned hovels, with some more substantial dwellings 300 metres to the east. This was a property called Trinity Ranch, most of whose owners now lay in the cemetery at Palo Verde. On the left or north side of the Camino Real was its large main house with a dozen bedrooms. On the right or south side lay the single-storey stable block built around a courtyard with thin walls about three metres high broken only by two gateways wide and high enough for wagons to pass through. This too was derelict, the only signs of recent occupation being remains of campfires lit by guerrilleros camping there for the night.

  After passing the ranch, Danjou split his troop into two sections, he following the road with one section and the two mules, while the other section marched parallel on the left flank, hacking its way through the scrub on the lookout for enemy activity. Finding nothing, it rejoined the rest of the column at Palo Verde about 0700hrs, where they unloaded the mules and took a rest break to brew coffee. As senior NCO, Sgt Maj Henri Tonel posted a ring of sentries.

  The burning sun had already dried out the surface soil and was raising dust-devils everywhere. With the heat-haze, these made vision difficult, but before the hour was out the sentries discerned the tell-tale cloud of dust thrown up by an approaching party of riders. However, this was not the French convoy because it was coming from the wrong direction and was already quite close by the time Danjou’s men could make out the riders’ Mexican military caps and cowboy-type clothing.

  The men sleeping in the shade of bushes were roused and those making coffee doused the fire by overturning the coffee onto it. Tonel ordered some men under Cpl Charles Magnin to catch the mules browsing nearby and re-load the water containers on them. Within five minutes the company was formed up, weapons ready to give battle.

  Chapter 13: Death in the afternoon

  Mexico 1863 – 1867

  Danjou decided not to stay on the road, but to put the mounted Mexicans at a disadvantage by striking out cross-country in the direction of La Joya. Cutting their way through the bush with difficulty, his men seemed to have lost the enemy, but progress was so difficult that they turned back towards Camarón. As they approached the Trinity Ranch, a shot rang out from one of the windows. Surrounding the derelict buildings, they explored the interior but found no one there. Preparing to make a stand, Danjou hurriedly despatched some men with the now empty water containers to a gully that sometimes had pools of water in the bottom, but they returned empty-handed.

  Despite the single shot aimed in their direction, there seemed to be no enemy nearby, so Danjou decided to set out for Chiquihuite. They had covered only 400 metres when the point man spotted several groups of Mexican horsemen about to charge. Calling on Lai to beat the signal form a square! Danjou got his men onto a small, bare hillock in defensive square formation. With Mexicans splitting into two squadrons to attack from both sides simultaneously and thus divide the Company’s fire, the crisis of this first indecisive skirmish came when the noise and powder-smoke panicked the mules into running off, to be captured by the enemy.

  The Mexicans withdrawing to a safe distance, Danjou ordered his men to hold their fire. Cavalry commander Jiménez boldly brought his men to within 60 metres before giving the order to charge again with lance and sabre.

  Danjou yelled the order, ‘Fire!’

  The volley rang out, leaving men and horses on the ground with the untouched riders galloping out of range, pursued by fire at will. The open ground being ideal for cavalry charges, Danjou moved his men into the cover of a small wall and cactus hedge nearby, which would protect them from the horsemen at least on one side. Another, more cautious, Mexican charge was repulsed here. In the following lull, Danjou coolly decided to move his men by sections back to the nearest building, which was the stable block of the Trinity Ranch.

  To gain the necessary respite he ordered the men to all shout at the top of their voices in unison, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ The ruse worked. Thinking that French reinforcements had arrived, the Mexicans held back just long enough to enable most of the legionnaires to reach the protecting walls of the ranch before any shots rang out. It was now about 0930hrs and Danjou had already lost sixteen men in his retreat to the ranch.

  Taking stock of the situation, he realised that these were not the usual odds of five or ten to one, but vastly more. The sheer numbers had to mean that he was looking at the cavalry force with which Col Milán was intending to ambush the supply column. If he could keep them engaged at the ranch, he was ensuring the convoy’s safety.
r />   Built in traditional style with inward-facing rooms around a central courtyard protected by a 3-metre-high wall, the complex of buildings could be mistaken by French eyes for a wayside inn. It was designed to be easily defensible – but not against the odds Danjou was up against. The strength of 3rd Company at this point was three officers and forty-six NCOs and legionnaires. Setting them to make loopholes through the softer walls made of adobe and barricade the gateways with rubble and fallen timbers, he ordered Sgt Morzicki to the roof as lookout. From there, Morzicki cold see hundreds of horsemen and infantry in various military uniforms, supported by masses of guerrilla fighters in civilian clothes. All the regular troops were armed with the latest American carbines.

  Nobody has explained why Milán kept all his troops at Trinity Ranch, instead of pinning Danjou’s men down with a holding force and despatching the rest of his forces to ambush the convoy. It may be that Jeanningros’ warning had reached the convoy commander, in which case Milán’s assembled forces had nothing else to do.

  Under sporadic fire from the attackers, Danjou calmly moved from point to point checking the defences. As the sun mounted in the sky, the heat in the courtyard built up. With the only drinkable liquid a bottle of wine from Danjou’s saddle-bag, carefully looked after by his orderly Ulrich Konrad, Danjou ordered him to open it and give a few drops to each man.

  From the roof, Morzicki warned of the approach of Lt Ramón Lainé, a young French-speaking Mexican officer with a white flag, who called out, ‘We have more than 2,000 men and you are at the most sixty. Lay down your arms and surrender, to avoid a massacre.’ Danjou’s reply was, ‘We have cartridges and shall not surrender.’ Lainé withdrew and firing broke out on all sides, Danjou ordered his men to conserve ammunition by firing only at sure targets. With fire incoming over the tops of the walls and even from the roof, casualties began to mount. It was at this point that Danjou went the rounds making each man promise not to surrender, but fight on to the death.

  At about 1100hrs almost all the ranch buildings were occupied by the enemy, with the legionnaires huddled behind barricades of corpses and rubble in the corners of the courtyard. Shot in the chest, Danjou fell, to die a few minutes later. Since the 3rd was Vilain’s company, although he was the senior officer by promotion, Maudet courteously let him take command.

  A bugle call was heard, signalling the arrival of more troops. The legionnaires’ spirits rose in the hope that this might be Capt Saussier’s grenadiers coming to their rescue or the advance guard of the convoy, but it turned out to be 1,000 more Mexican infantry arriving after a forced march. There were now so many uniforms: the grey with blue trimmings of Vera Cruz, the blue of Córdoba and the men from Jalapa with their blue coats, grey trousers and képis with neck cover. Some wore boots, some home-made peasant espadrilles. The officers were even more colourful, with red or blue stripes down their trousers, gold epaulettes, polished brass buttons and gleaming leather holsters on their belts. In contrast the blue coats and red trousers of the legionnaires were filthy and stained with the blood of the wearers and their comrades.

  From his position on the roof, Morzicki could see that the position was hopeless. Seeing him up there, Lt Lainé approached again and repeated the offer of surrender. Without bothering to ask Vilain, Morzicki yelled back, ‘Merde!’ Vilain’s reply was the more correct: ‘We shall not surrender!’

  In addition to the fusillade that rang out from all sides, the legionnaires now heard the noise of picks and shovels as the Mexicans outside enlarged the loopholes into breaches in several places. Despite the heavy fire, Vilain kept doing the rounds of his men, who were calmly making every shot count. After one risk too many, he took a bullet through the forehead and died instantly about 1400hrs.

  The wounded lay where they fell. Suffering the torment of thirst in the blazing sunshine, some were so desperate that they attempted to sip their own blood or urine. To the heat in the courtyard and the stifling powder-smoke the men could not avoid inhaling was added a new torture as the Mexicans set fire to the mouldering thatch of the roofs. Smoke billowed into the courtyard so thickly that the choking legionnaires with streaming eyes were reduced to firing at dim silhouettes creeping continually closer. When the fire died down after ninety minutes, the legionnaires had only a few metres separating them from the nearest enemy.

  At 1700hrs a lull allowed Lt Maudet to take stock of his remaining men, spread out in the ruins of the stable block and courtyard, shortly after which they heard Milán haranguing his men to make the final attack. A third offer of surrender terms from outside was simply ignored by legionnaires with throats too parched to reply. By exploring their dead comrades’ pockets for ammunition, from behind their parapets of corpses the eleven legionnaires still alive managed to slaughter so many of adversaries in the new onslaught that the courtyard was carpeted with bloodstained bodies of dead and dying Mexicans.

  One hour later, Maudet had only five men still able to fire a gun, with one cartridge apiece. Fixing bayonets, which gave them a small advantage at close quarters over the bayonet-less carbines of the Mexicans, they emerged from cover to make a suicide charge on the several hundred enemy confronting them. Seeing dozens of rifles immediately levelled at Maudet as the only officer, Belgian Legionnaire Victor Catteau threw himself forward to protect Maudet and died with nineteen bullets in his body. His sacrifice was vain: the lieutenant was also badly hit.

  The remaining men on their feet had only seconds to live, had not Col Angel Lucio Cambas literally leaped between the desperate men, parried a blow aimed at him by Cpl Louis Maine and separated the two sides with the flat of his sword. Cambas had studied in France and spoke perfect French. ‘Rendez-vous!’ he cried: Surrender!

  Seeing that only he and two comrades were still on their feet, the dazed corporal answered with extraordinary presence of mind, ‘We will if you promise to let us keep our weapons and equipment and to care for our wounded lieutenant.’

  With a courtesy equally amazing at such a time and place, Cambas agreed: ‘One can refuse nothing to men such as you.’

  Giving orders for stretchers to be brought, Cambas led Maine and Legionnaire Godfied Wensel away through the crowd of excited and armed Mexicans – as they thought, to be put against a wall and shot. This very nearly was their fate, because a furious mounted guerrillero leaped from his horse with a revolver in both hands to kill them both. Without hesitation, Cambas drew his own revolver and shot the attacker dead. It was the last shot heard at Trinity Ranch that day, apart from coups de grâce for the injured horses.

  The immaculate moustached Col Milán, who was the ranking Mexican officer present, was amazed that so few exhausted and wounded men had gone on fighting against such odds. Meeting the survivors shortly afterwards, he concluded, in the phrase that every legionnaire learns, ‘Pero no son hombres, son demónios!’ They are not men, but devils!

  Of the twenty legionnaires still alive, several were already dying. In Algeria, in Spain and even in Italy when fighting Franz Josef’s Croatians, they would have had their throats slit there and then. With a compassion and chivalry rare in such a situation, the Mexicans loaded all those who could be transported onto improvised stretchers lashed two to a mule, and set off for the hospital at Huatusco.

  With the heat and all the jerking and bumping, five more men died on the way. The survivors were nursed by the sisters of St Vincent de Paul and an extraordinary widow, Doña Juana Marredo de Gómez, whom her patients called Mama Juana. Maudet was given even better treatment in the home of Col Francisco Maredo, whose daughter cared personally for the wounded man under Doña Gómez’s instructions. Shortly before he died on 8 May, Maudet wrote for Mama Juana with great difficulty on a piece of paper, ‘I left one mother in France and found another in Mexico.’ He was buried with full military honours.

  Back at Chiquihuite on the day of the battle, Col Jeanningros had no reason to suspect what had happened because it would have been quite normal for Danjou to rest his men during the da
y and return to base the following night. When they had not returned next morning, he ordered 1st Company out to search of them. As they neared Camarón, Danjou’s drummer Casimiro Lai was found at the side of the road, miraculously still alive. His was the first eyewitness account to be recorded.

  After receiving seven thrusts from cavalry lances and two bullet wounds, Lai had sheltered under a pile of corpses until nightfall enabled him to drag himself away from the site of the battle. Darkness brought the wounded man no rest. Coyotes attracted by the smell of blood would have attacked him, had he fallen asleep or fainted from loss of blood.

  When Jeanningros reached the hacienda, the scale of the carnage was immediately apparent, even though the Mexicans had removed all the wounded of both sides and buried their dead. The naked bodies of some legionnaires, stripped of uniforms and boots, were found where they had been dumped in a ditch. Fearing that some of the 3,000 Mexicans were still in the neighbourhood, Jeanningros did not stay to bury them but retreated to his base, leaving the dead legionnaires unburied for another two days.

  That same day Col Milán was awaiting the arrival of the convoy at La Joya, where he authorised Cpl Evariste Berg to write a letter to be delivered to Jeanningros, describing the end of 3rd Company. It began: ‘In the enemy camp, 1 May 1863. Colonel, the 3rd of the 1st is dead, but it achieved so much that one can say it had some fine soldiers.’ Never delivered to its addressee, the letter was published a few days later by several Mexican newspapers.

  And that is as close to what actually happened at Camarón as one can get. Learning of the nearness of Milán’s cavalry, the French convoy commander delayed his approach to the troubled area until his escort could be strengthened. When the reinforced convoy at last rendezvoused with Jeanningros’ men at Palo Verde, the remains of the unburied legionnaires, scavenged by coyotes and vultures in the meantime, were laid to rest. The safe arrival of the convoy at Puebla was instrumental in the fall of the city on 17 May, by when Juárez had fled from Mexico City northwards to San Luis Potosí. So, in military terms, Danjou’s no-surrender policy was the right one. In part posthumously, he had achieved far more than anyone could have asked.