# Charles Domery: The Soldier Who Defected for Food

*History & War · Eleanor Hartwell · 2026-09-21*

## TL;DR

Charles Domery was a Polish soldier who served in the Prussian army, then crossed to the French side during the Siege of Thionville, and was later captured by the British. Held as a prisoner of war near Liverpool, he became famous for an apparently insatiable appetite. Accounts describe him eating cats, rats, candles, and a human leg.

## Key facts

- Charles Domery was born in Poland around 1778 and joined the Prussian army at a young age.
- During the Siege of Thionville he reportedly surrendered to the French and began fighting for them.
- He was later captured by the British and held as a prisoner of war near Liverpool.
- Accounts from the period claim he ate cats, rats, candles, and once consumed a severed human leg.
- His story is often mentioned alongside that of Tarrare, another famously insatiable eater of the same era.

## A Hunger That Started a War (Well, Ended One)

Picture a soldier who switches sides not out of ideology, not out of fear, but because the other army simply feeds him better. That, in a nutshell, is the strange legend of Charles Domery, a Polish-born eater whose appetite is said to have driven him straight into enemy hands during the War of the First Coalition, the conflict that ran from 1792 to 1797.

The details of his early life are murky. Accounts generally describe Domery as Polish and place his birth in 1778, though that exact year cannot be reliably confirmed. What the accounts do agree on is that he ended up in the Prussian army at a young age, while the war against revolutionary France was raging.

Then came the Siege of Thionville. According to the original account, food shortages struck the Prussian army during the siege, and Domery surrendered to the French side and began fighting for them. The precise causal framing here is contested. Was it really hunger that pushed him across the lines, or simply the chaos of a besieged camp? The story as it survives leans hard on the appetite explanation, but it remains unverified.

One small correction worth making: Thionville sits in northeastern France, close to Luxembourg and Germany, but it is not itself perched on the Germany-France border, as some retellings suggest.

As the story goes, a French commander gave the new recruit a melon as a reward. Domery ate it immediately, rind and all. If that anecdote is true, it was only the opening course of a very long, very strange meal.

## The Melon, the Cats, and the 2 kg of Grass

Picture the moment hunger finally wins. According to the original account, Charles Domery, a young Polish soldier who had thrown in his lot with the French during the Siege of Thionville, was handed a melon by a French commander as a reward. He ate it immediately, rind and all. The detail is vivid enough that it has stuck to his name for more than two centuries, though no reliable record confirms it ever happened.

That melon story sets the pattern for everything that follows. While at a military camp near Paris, Domery is said to have eaten 174 cats in a single year. The number gets repeated everywhere, and it is worth pausing on it. As the story goes, the figure traces back to anecdotal sources rather than any documented tally, so treat it as legend wearing the costume of a statistic.

His eating habits, at least in the telling, ran in strange directions. He disliked vegetables. Grass was another matter. When he could not find food, he reportedly ate around 2 kg of grass a day. That precise weight, like the cats, comes from unconfirmed accounts, but the shape of the claim is consistent: this was a man who would eat what was in front of him rather than go without.

Each detail pushes the story further from ordinary hunger and closer to something stranger. A melon eaten whole. Cats by the hundred. Grass by the kilogram. By the time the anecdotes reach his years in the French navy, the escalation has nowhere left to go, and the stories about Charles Domery only get harder to believe.

## The Severed Leg and the Liverpool Cell

Somewhere at sea, serving with the French navy against the British, Charles Domery is said to have reached for a soldier's severed leg and begun to eat it. According to the original account, the other soldiers took the limb from him and threw it into the sea. That cannibalism anecdote sits at the heart of the Domery legend, and it cannot be reliably verified. It is the story people remember.

What followed is equally hard to pin down. Domery was reportedly captured by the British and transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp near Liverpool, though the camp's exact location is unconfirmed. Word of his appetite seems to have traveled ahead of him. Shocked by how much he could put away, his captors reportedly doubled his rations. It was not enough. He is said to have worked his way up to eating as much as ten prisoners' daily rations, a figure that rests on anecdote rather than record.

The cell itself became part of the story. He is said to have eaten roughly twenty rats that visited his cell, and the prison cat as well. He reportedly ate medicines that other prisoners refused to take, and the prison candles. Every one of these details comes down to us as legend, repeated because it is vivid, not because it is proven.

Read together, the leg, the rats, the cat, the candles and the doubled rations all point the same direction: a man whose hunger outran every attempt to satisfy it. The Liverpool cell is where the legend burns brightest, and it is also where the trail begins to fade.

## What Happened to Charles Domery After Liverpool?

Nobody knows. The surviving accounts of Charles Domery, the endlessly hungry man the British held as a French prisoner of war near Liverpool, simply stop. They never say whether he stayed in England, sailed back to France, returned to Poland, or died with his appetite still raging. That silence is the ending the record actually gives us.

It would be too tidy to say that no information exists at all. What we have is an obscure trail, not a blank wall. The story of Charles Domery survives because writers kept repeating it, not because anyone kept tracking him. Somewhere past the prison walls, the paper trail thins out and then vanishes, and the men who set down his tale never bothered to close the loop.

That missing final chapter is a big part of why the story still gets passed around. A man who reportedly ate his way through a prison camp, who according to the original account swallowed rats, a cat, candles and medicine other prisoners refused, ought to have a death scene. He doesn't. There is no grave, no final confession, no doctor's note explaining how a body like that finally gave out. Just a question hanging in the air.

So the eighteenth-century curiosity keeps its mystery. Charles Domery arrived in the historical record as a puzzle and left it the same way, which may be exactly why we are still talking about him.


## Frequently asked questions

**Who was Charles Domery and why is he famous?**

Charles Domery was a soldier remembered for an appetite that seemed to have no bottom. Accounts generally describe him as Polish, and the story places his birth in 1778, though that exact year is not firmly confirmed. He is famous for eating almost anything, from cats and grass to candles and medicine.

**Why did Charles Domery defect from the Prussian army to the French?**

According to the original account, Domery joined the Prussian army at a young age during the War of the First Coalition, which ran from 1792 to 1797. During the siege of Thionville, food ran short in the Prussian camp, and he reportedly surrendered to the French side, where he began fighting for them.

**What did Charles Domery eat during his time as a prisoner in Liverpool?**

As the story goes, Domery was held by the British as a French prisoner of war near Liverpool. There he reportedly ate around 20 rats that visited his cell, along with the prison cat, and even ate medicines the other prisoners refused and the candles lighting the jail.

**How much food did Charles Domery consume compared to other prisoners?**

Accounts say the British were so startled by his hunger that they doubled his ration. Reportedly he soon worked his way up to eating as much in a day as ten prisoners combined, a figure that comes from the anecdotal record rather than any verified measurement.

**Was Charles Domery's condition ever diagnosed by doctors?**

No reliable diagnosis survives in the accounts. The stories describe his endless hunger and his habit of eating non-food items, but the sources do not record doctors settling on any explanation for his condition, so the medical mystery around him was never formally resolved.

**Did Charles Domery survive his imprisonment or did he die from his appetite?**

His later life is obscure. Surviving accounts do not say whether he stayed in Liverpool, returned to France or Poland, or eventually died from his extreme appetite. That silence is part of what keeps the legend of Charles Domery alive. Editorial note: Details of Charles Domery's life and appetite come from period accounts of varying reliability, and any facts that remain unconfirmed are presented here as such.

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