A new book by Francisco Garcia del Junco argues that Napoleon Bonaparte personally authorised his marshals to use looting as payment for their troops, turning Spain into what the author calls the greatest patrimonial plunder ever suffered by a European country in modern times.
The book, titled Los robos de Napoleon en Espana (Napoleon’s Thefts in Spain), portrays Bonaparte not as a great man of history but as an amoral strategist who bears full political and military responsibility for what happened to Spain’s cultural heritage during the French occupation.
A Guide for Looters
Garcia del Junco says French commanders including marshals Soult, Sebastiani and Lannes behaved not as officers of honour but as what he describes as hounds who smelled business. He writes that the invaders used a Spanish art reference work, the historical dictionary compiled by Juan Agustin Cean Bermudez, not as an academic resource but as a practical guide to identify and prioritise the most valuable works.
The scale of the operation was vast. In one city alone, Cordoba, up to 800 carts were used to remove stolen goods. Marshal Soult carried out what the author calls the most methodical looting in history in Seville, taking 999 paintings including the finest works of the Sevillian school. Between works by Murillo, Zurbaran, Valdes Leal and Alonso Cano alone, Soult removed 281 canvases that the author says now hang in foreign museums or private collections after being sold by the marshal’s wealthy heirs.
Desecration and Destruction
In Granada, General Sebastiani went beyond theft. He desecrated the tomb of Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba, known as the Gran Capitan, burning seven hundred military trophies the commander had won in battle. Garcia del Junco says Sebastiani bore a deep hatred toward the Gran Capitan because the Spanish general had repeatedly humiliated French armies at the battles of Cerinola and Garellano in 1503, where French casualties were massive compared with Spanish losses.
In Zaragoza, French soldiers used centuries-old varnished canvases by Spanish masters as waterproof capes to protect themselves from cold and damp in their camps. At the Monastery of El Escorial, the arms of a crucifix by Benvenuto Cellini were cut off simply so the sculpture would fit into a transport crate bound for Paris.
The Royal Cabinet of Natural History was looted with the assistance of a man named Pascual Moineau, who identified the most valuable pieces. Among the items taken was the Treasure of the Dauphin, described in the book as a jewellery collection of unmatched technical and artistic quality in Europe.
The Crown Jewels and the Archive
King Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, took the pearl known as La Peregrina and the diamond called El Estanque when he fled Spain. Garcia del Junco writes that Napoleon himself later confirmed at Saint Helena that his brother had taken a fortune in diamonds belonging to Spain, and that the jewels ultimately helped finance Joseph’s exile in the United States.
The Archive of Simancas suffered what the author calls a historic mutilation: more than 22,000 kilograms of strategic documents were sent to Paris to form an imperial archive. France retained thousands of those documents for more than a century, the book says, using diplomatic pretexts to delay their return.
Resistance and Heroes
Garcia del Junco also recovers lesser-known acts of resistance. He describes Corporal Jose Garcia, a one-armed disabled soldier who threw himself onto lit fuses to prevent the French from blowing up the Alhambra during their retreat. Monks at San Isidoro de Leon hid the Chalice of Dona Urraca overnight to keep it from French commanders. The author places these acts alongside the battle of Bailen, which destroyed the myth of Napoleonic invincibility, and the sustained guerrilla war that turned Spain into what he calls the emperor’s bleeding ulcer.
Restitution and Double Standards
The book ends with what Garcia del Junco calls the million-dollar question. He asks why art looted by the Nazis during the Second World War is actively traced and returned to its rightful owners as a matter of basic justice, while art taken by Napoleon’s troops remains, in his words, legalised by the passage of time in the world’s great museums. He argues that works plundered from Spanish churches, private homes and royal palaces continue to appear at international auction houses without any demand for restitution, and that several major European museums would be left with almost nothing if they had to return everything acquired through military pillage.
After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ordered France to return stolen cultural property. Garcia del Junco says the restitution was incomplete. Spain reclaimed the Treasure of the Dauphin, a collection of rock crystal jewels, but twelve pieces later turned up in the Louvre. In June 1816, 146 crates of looted manuscripts arrived at the Simancas archive, but France retained documents touching on French interests. That return was not completed until 1941. Many stolen paintings were never recovered, the author writes, because their French owners concealed them and Spanish diplomatic representatives lacked the skill to locate and reclaim them.
