"Prisoners of War" Topic

Wasn't the upkeep of p.o.w.s the financial responsibility of their own government?

Don't forget Bonaparte wanted to become a British prisoner: demanding Captain Frederick Maitland take him to England after Waterloo.

Well the Plymouth Sound Breakwater was largely built by French POWS--as were Bristol Docks--It was usually a case of first day as a POW--Here's your pick or shovel-get digging or you won't get fed…
As there was no Geneva Convention it was always a bit random how you were treated…
In Spain though the chances of being taken prisoner by either side was pretty slim and subsequent survival was even slimmer…One grisly story told of a Spanish soldier selling slices of roast "pork" to passing British redcoats….Only it wasn't…It was slices off a dead French soldier(yummy!!)

You've tried it then?

Just a quick note about the surrendering to the Spanish guerrillas.

The guerrillas were paid in gold by the British for each French prisoner they surrendered to them. Many guerrillas did prisoners and then went to the British to collect the prize money. Specially worthy were the officers. Soldiers could have a harder time, but usually weren't killed. Some guerrilla leaders were more bloodthirsty than others, though even the less prone to kill their prisoners would kill them if they thought they could be released by the French. From documents in the Archivos Nacionales I have been able to track the records of the Spanish guerrillas in La Mancha, Extremadura, Guadalajara, Soria, Burgos and Palencia. Between 1809 and 1812 they sent about 5,000 (conservative estimation) Imperial soldiers prisones to the Spanish and British armies.

However, sometimes they retaliated killing all prisoners when the French did something specially nasty. For example, Merino killed 100 Polish prisoners after the French shot the members of the Junta of Burgos (the political body responsible for the conduct of the war in Burgos and Northern Soria provinces). Or Longa -in Biscaia and Alava-, who killed 52 prisoners after the French shot fifteen Longa's men that had been captured some days earlier. Or Díaz Porlier, who hanged 9 French prisoners in retaliation for the hanging of 4 soldiers of his Division by Carrie in Palencia in October 1810. In December 1811, Espoz y Mina published an order to kill every French soldier and officer captured, though it came after Reille hanged or shot more than one hundred Spanish prisoners (between July and October), deported to France or arrested 1,000 people with relatives in the Navarrese guerrilla and burned to the ground 10 villages. Espoz was supported by the CiC of the 7th Army (that included all Northern guerrillas), general Mendizabal. They maintained the order in effect until Reille recanted and stop the burnings and indiscriminated killings of civilians.

Mind that the retaliation policy was authorized by the Spanish government by Royal Decree of February 27, 1809.

The problem is the misunderstanding of the sources. Many French and British memorialists blamed the guerrillas for the murders done by peasants that weren't involved in the guerrilla warfare. The peasants did kill practically any French straggler or small patrol that went stray.

Also there is the question of dates. I have been able to prove in my PhD that the smaller the band, the bigger the probability they didn't take prisoners. Actually there were not ellaborate tortures or killing. Usually they simply bayoneted or cut the throats of the soldiers that surrendered, not even bothering in the formality of accepting the surrender. When the bands grew larger and more formal in their organization, then they took prisoners and send them -as I mentioned above- to the Allied prisoner depots.

One kind of prisoners was killed on the spot: those Spaniards that fought in the ranks of King Joseph Army. It's rare the case which they were spared. One of the few instances I have been able to track was that of the 12 fifers and tambours captured by Villacampa (March 1812), and even then Villacampa felt obliged to explain that he did spare them because of "their youth" (12-14 y.o). Palarea also spared the lifes of 9 "jurados" (the name for the Spanish soldiers loyal to Joseph), captured in November 24, 1809; he sent them to the duke of Alburquerque (I have been unable to find what Alburquerque did with them, though).

Best regards
A.

TMP link

Why the new subject of this same topic?

?

?

I don't believe it's the same topic. In this thread the subject is about the treatment of prisoners from a historical point of view. In the other thread the subject is how to handle the surrendering of units in the tabletop. Related, yes, but not the same.

A.

The Spanish also had a few galleys at Cadiz. The lucky prisoners got a sentence rowing them in the sunny Mediterranean, unfortunately it was for life!

Johnny

Sorry but that is not correct. By 1808 the Spanish navy hadn't galleys. When someone was condemned to "galleys" (the legal punishment wasn't eliminated until 1834) it meant forced labour in some of the North Africa "presidios". However it was a penal procedure, i.e. applied only to persons judged and condemned by a court of law. Prisoners of war in Cadiz ended up in pontoons (decomisioned ships, anchored in the bay), and later in Cabrera.

Mi amigo Basileus, did you find any documents that inform about sending french prisioners to North Africa?.

I know about the Mayorca and Menorca islands, but anyting about North Africa colonies.

I think that the problem with the spanish prisions on that era was that they had none to offered to their own spanish common jailed as good food, bed, etc. It was a matter of lack of money.

Amicalement
Armand

Nope. To North African presidios were sent common criminals and some deserters with penal records. But not POW. The POW depots were in Ferrol, Coruña, Badajoz (later sent directly to Lisboa, when Badajoz was attacked by Soult), Gibraltar, Cádiz -until the incident with the hulk Castilla-, Canarias and Baleares. There were some smaller POW depots in other parts, but as far as I can say were used in an ad hoc basis.

A.

Muchas gracias Basileus66!!.

Amicalement
Armand

basileus66 08 Nov 2009 4:40 p.m. PST
''Just a quick note about the surrendering to the Spanish guerrillas''.

There was also an official militia which the Portuguese called up to fight the French when Soult arrived: they had no tradition of wearing proper uniforms so the French used to shoot them as being outside the rules of war.

Messina was still shooting Portuguese Militia prisoners in 1810 even though at that time it meant far more French prisoners held by the Portuguese Militia were getting shot in retaliation. Wellington wrote to him to try to stop it on both sides, but Messena wouldn't relent.

Mr. Caçadores it's very interesting your point about militia without proper uniforms.

Please, allow me to question how it would be the formula from the french or any other Army to distinguish from "guerrilla" and "militia" in a war of that Era.

Because it seems difficult to me to made such a settle under atack.

Maybe because they "look" more training than the "guerrilleros"?.

My question is totally inocent and is not my intention to be took as cinic or similar.
I made it with all my respect and it's only for curiosly.

Amicalement
Armand

Armand

I can't say about Portuguese militias. The Spanish guerrillas though didn't receive an homogeneous treatment. Oficially the guerrillas were just "brigands", a word used in French to designate anything from highwaymen to political enemies of the State militarily organized (see Hoche memoirs on the Vendee rebellion). Rouget, who commanded the Young Guard division tasked to fight the Castilian and Basque guerrillas in 1810-1811, recognized that much in his memoirs (published in 1862). He stated that the guerrilleros were "patriots", but that the official policy was to denominate them "brigands" for delegitimizate them.

However there were not consistency in the real application of represalies. Cafarelli and Hugo, for example, tried to find a certain accomodation with the guerrillas in his areas of operations (you don't kill my captured soldiers, and I won't kill yours). Reille, as I mentioned in an earlier post, took a most hard stance, with shootings in masse, taking of hostages, burning of villages, ecc. Soult, for his part, moved between harsh mesures and leniency, being difficult to identify the reasons why sometimes choosed one instead the other. At local level, it depended of the personality of the leaders involved. There were not homogeneity.

The Spanish government tried to give some legal cover to the guerrillas. In order to do that approved two "Reglamentos" (December 1808 and April 1809) to provide with a short of "letters of marquée" to the "legitimate" partisans. Those "partidas" organized along the lines of the Reglamento of April 17, 1809, were known as "corsarios terrestres" (literally, "land corsairs"). Later on, many of the bigger bands were organized as actual units of the Spanish army, being designated Light or Flying Divisions or Brigades, or Freikorps. Theoretically they had uniforms and a semi-regular organization, and were subjected to the "Reales Ordenanzas" (the Military Code of Law of the Spanish Army). Then, they should be protected from retaliation from the French -they were soldiers- and vice versa.

However the French didn't honour those rules everytime. Again that they did or didn't depend on the commander in the spot.

I don't believe that the French behaviour was due to a supposed respect for the laws of war, but to official retaliation policy ordered from Paris in order to quell a rebellion through fear. What Paris didn't understand but many of the officers on the spot did was that the French lacked the forces to impose a thorough policy of retaliation and to project the power of the state over the whole occupied areas. The Spanish had the power to defy small/medium sized columns, even to defeat them; the garrisons, excepted the biggest ones, were in constant danger of being overwhelmed (as happened to the garrison in Calatayud, for example, in 1811); and when they launched a big chase to clean the country from guerrillas (as happened in Navarra, Palencia, Burgos and Alava in late 1811) the success was only temporary: once the troops were gone to their usual garrisons, the guerrillas would be back, destroying any small garrison left behind.

My hipothesis is that the French tried, and failed, to use the same methods that did work in Vendee, Tyrol and Calabria. However meanwhile in those lands they could use overwhelming force in the long run, and the rebels lacked of external support and the French armies hadn't regular enemy armies to fight against, in Spain the tasks were too many for the forces involved: besiege/blockade the Spanish, Portuguese and British held fortresses; to watch the Spanish and British-lusitanian regular armies; to fight the small bands of guerrillas; and to fight the semi-regular partisan divisions operating in their strategical rear. All of this in a difficult, poor country, with poor communications, with a lot of mountain ranges where the partisans could find temporary shelter, and with areas where the guerrillas could be supplied from the sea by the British, even with regular troops (as happened in Cantabria, Ronda and Catalonia in several occasions).

In other words: the 350,000 Imperial soldiers that were deployed in the Peninsula in any given moment, were impotent to accomplish the strategical objectives that Napoleon did set for his army. The retaliation policy tried, and failed, to compensate for this relative weakness. Of course, since early 1812, when troops begun to be relocated to France in preparation for the invasion of Russia, all the problems were multiplied manifold.

Regards
Antonio