Who cries for the lost, p.29
Who Cries for the Lost, page 29
In 1836, a group of survivors who petitioned the French National Assembly listed sixteen thousand dead out of those taken at Bailén. But many of those died in Calais or in transport, and other French prisoners were also sent to Cabrera. So no one knows exactly how many actually died on Cabrera, although the more conservative modern estimates do not add up. I have based much of the account here on Denis Smith’s The Prisoners of Cabrera: Napoleon’s Forgotten Soldiers, 1809–1814. It makes for harrowing reading.
After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoléon returned to Paris and abdicated in favor of his young son. He then tried to flee to a ship that was to take him to the United States but ultimately surrendered to the captain of the British ship HMS Bellerophon. The British refused to hand him over to the French to be hanged, but the French did hang or quietly murder many of the officers who fought with him at Waterloo. The Bourbons then launched a vicious and bloody White Terror against anyone they perceived as their enemies. They were overthrown by the French people again in 1830.
Acknowledgments
An author always has many people to thank, and that is especially true when a book’s path to publication is disrupted by disaster. I was only a few chapters into the writing of Who Cries for the Lost when Hurricane Ida slammed ashore on the anniversary of Katrina and wrecked my New Orleans–area home. There were times when I thought this book would never see the light of day. That it did is only due to the many people to whom I am so very grateful.
Thank you to my editor, Michelle Vega, for being so patient, understanding, and supportive; I can’t begin to tell you how much that has meant to me. Thank you to my publicist, Dache Rogers; to Elisha Katz, marketing coordinator; and to Jenn Snyder and Claire Zion, for putting up with one very stressed author constantly distracted by evacuation, house repairs, endless drives back and forth between Texas and Louisiana, the sale of two houses, and a multisegmented move from hell, all in the midst of a pandemic.
Thank you to my agent, Helen Breitwieser, who went through this with me once before, during Katrina, and has never, ever wavered.
Thank you to Aaron Cook, Carlos Martinez, and Jose Diaz; the repair and sale of our New Orleans house after Ida would have been impossible without you. You guys are the best. Thank you to Carrie Godbold, who did a brilliant job selling our lake house under less-than-ideal circumstances. And thank you to James Coker, who built the bookcases and cabinets we so desperately needed to start getting settled in our new house.
Thank you to my friend Charles Gramlich, whose lovely poem fragment has now inspired the titles for two of my books.
Thank you to my dear friends Pam Ahearn and Farrah Rochon; you will never know how much you helped me get through this. And thank you to Lillian Wegmann, who not only let us sleep at her house for weeks but also fed us and consoled us. If y’all ever need a refuge from future storms, you know exactly where to go.
A huge thank-you to my daughters, Samantha and Danielle, and their husbands, Thomas and Ryan, for being there for us and helping with everything from packing to house painting to cat sitting. We couldn’t have done it without you.
And finally, thank you to my husband, Steve. There is no one with whom I’d rather go through two house-wrecking hurricanes. You are my rock.
About the Author
C. S. Harris is the USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty-five novels, including the Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries; as C. S. Graham, a thriller series coauthored by former intelligence officer Steven Harris; and seven award-winning historical romances written under the name Candice Proctor.
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C. S. Harris, Who Cries for the Lost
