Camerone's fight
The account of the Battle of Camerone has been read in these terms at every commemoration on April 30 since 1931:
"The French army besieged Puebla.
The Legion had for mission to assure, on one hundred and twenty kilometers, the circulation and the security of the convoys. Colonel Jeanningros, who commanded, learns, on April 29, 1863, that a large convoy carrying three millions in cash, siege material and ammunition was on its way to Puebla. Captain Danjou, his adjutant, decided to send a company ahead of the convoy. The 3rd company of the Foreign Regiment was designated but it had no available officer.
Captain Danjou took command himself and second lieutenants Maudet, standard bearer, and Vilain, paymaster, joined him voluntarily.
On April 30, at 1 a.m., the 3rd company, three officers and sixty-two men strong, set out. She had traveled about twenty kilometers when, at 7 a.m., she stopped at Palo Verde to make coffee. At this moment, the enemy reveals himself and the fight begins immediately. Captain Danjou had the square formed and, while retreating, victoriously repelled several cavalry charges, inflicting the first severe losses on the enemy.
Arrived at the height of the Camerone inn, a vast building comprising a courtyard surrounded by a wall three meters high, he decided to take refuge there to fix the enemy and thus delay as much as possible the moment when the latter This will be able to attack the convoy.
While the men hastily organize the defense of this inn, a Mexican officer, asserting his vast superiority in numbers, summons Captain Danjou to surrender. This one makes answer:"We have cartridges and will not surrender". Then, raising his hand, he swore to defend himself to the death and made his men take the same oath. It was 10 o'clock. Until 6 o'clock in the evening, these sixty men, who had not eaten or drunk since the day before, in spite of the extreme heat, the hunger, the thirst, resisted two thousand Mexicans:eight hundred horsemen, one thousand two hundred infantrymen .
At noon, Captain Danjou was shot in the chest. At 2 a.m., Second Lieutenant Vilain fell, hit by a bullet in the forehead. At this moment, the Mexican colonel manages to set fire to the inn.
Despite the heat and the smoke which increase their suffering, the legionnaires hold on, but many of them are struck down. At 5 o'clock, around Second Lieutenant Maudet, only twelve men remained in a condition to fight. At this moment, the Mexican colonel gathers his men and tells them what shame they will cover themselves if they do not manage to kill this handful of brave men (a legionnaire who understands Spanish translates his words as he goes) .
The Mexicans are going to make a general assault through the breaches they have managed to open, but beforehand, Colonel Milan still sends a summons to Second Lieutenant Maudet; he rejects her with contempt.
The final assault is given. Soon there are only five men left around Maudet:Corporal Maine, the legionnaires Catteau, Wensel, Constantin, Léonhard. Each still keeps a cartouche; they have fixed bayonets and, taking refuge in a corner of the yard, their backs to the wall, they face each other; at a signal, they unload their
pointed rifles on the enemy and rush at him with bayonets. Second Lieutenant Maudet and two legionnaires fall, stricken to death. Maine and his two comrades are going to be massacred when a Mexican officer rushes on them and saves them; he shouts to them:"Surrender!" - "We will surrender if you promise to relieve and
treat our wounded and if you leave us our weapons".
Their bayonets remain menacing. "We refuse nothing to men like
you!" replies the officer.
Captain Danjou's sixty men have kept their oath to the end; for 11 hours they withstood two thousand enemies, killed three hundred and wounded as many. They have, by their sacrifice, by saving the convoy, fulfilled the mission entrusted to them.
Emperor Napoleon III decided that the name of Camerone would be inscribed on the flag of the Foreign Regiment and that, in addition, the names of Danjou, Vilain and Maudet would be engraved in gold letters on the walls of the Invalides in Paris.
In addition, a monument was erected in 1892 on the site of the battle.
It bears the inscription:
There were less than sixty here
Opposed to a whole army
His mass crushed them
Life rather than courage
Abandoned these French soldiers
April 30, 1963
In their memory the homeland erected this monument.
Since then, when the Mexican troops pass in front of the monument, they present their arms."
This famous monument was erected on a common grave in Camerone and the inscription is engraved in Latin:
QVOS HIC NON PLVS LX
ADVERSI TOTIVS AGMINIS
MOLES CONSTRAVIT
VITA PRIAM QUAM VIRTVS
MILITES SERVES GALLICOS
DIE XXX MENSI APR. ANNI MDCCCLXIII
"They were here less than sixty
Opposed to a whole army
Its mass crushed them
Life rather than courage
Abandoned those French soldiers
April 30, 1963."
That day, Colonel Milan was still at La Joya, waiting for the convoy. He authorized Corporal BERG to write a letter to his colonel to tell him of the end of the 3rd company. This letter begins with these words:"At the enemy camp, May 1, 1863. The 3rd of the 1st is dead, my colonel, but she has done enough so that by speaking
of her one can say:she had only brave soldiers...". This letter never reached its recipient but was published a few days later by several newspapers in Mexico.
On his arrival at the scene, alerted by Indians, Colonel Jeanningros discovered that everything had been "cleaned up":no more weapons, the dead piled up in a ditch, ... He only found, a little before the Camerone farm, the wounded LAÏ drummer who, after recovering his senses, had slipped the furthest far as possible from the place.
The total of Camerone's losses amounts to 3 dead officers, 49 dead corporals and legionnaires, 12 surrendered prisoners and the Laï drum found by Jeanningros's men. Laï will give his name to a commando.
Monuments and other symbols recalling the battle of Camerone also exist in France.
Thus, at the Carré Légion in Puyloubier, we find the grid which once framed the tomb of the heroes of Camerone in Mexico.
There is also a house in Dijon (now used as a hotel) in which one of the heroes (Lég. Billod) of the Camerone battle was born. On this house is a commemorative plaque.
At I.I.L.E. de Puyloubier, in the uniform museum, there is a showcase dedicated solely to Camerone.
Captain Danjou carried an articulated wooden hand. This was recovered by a Mexican on the battlefield. It was found in 1865 and brought back to Sidi-Bel-Abbès.
In 1930, for a formal historical link between the "old" and the "new" Legion, Rollet chose the commemoration, on the 30 April, from the combat of Camerone, a more dramatic symbol and model of conduct, preferred to March 9, the date of creation of the Legion.
On April 30, 1931, the first official commemoration of Camerone took place. Other commemorations have already taken place in the past on the initiative of small groups. However, one of them took place in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, in the 1st R.E.:the regiment was decorated in 1906 with the Legion of Honor by ministerial decision of February 19 and the
ceremony took place on April 28.