The war drama of the Eagles

by Edward Fraser

The “Eagle-Guard”

The loss of twelve Eagles in one battle made a deep and lasting impression upon Napoleon. That twelve of his cherished emblems, those mementoes of victorious Caesar, for whose prestige he had advanced such exacting claims, should have fallen en bloc into the hands of the enemy came as a galling blow to Napoleon’s military pride. Twelve Eagles reft from amid the bayonets of the Grand Army on one battlefield: twelve Eagles paraded together as trophies through the capital of an exulting foe! It was a poignantly felt humiliation for the mighty Imperator of the Field of Mars. And yet no default could be charged against the soldiers to whom these Eagles had been entrusted. All that men might do for their defence they had done. Most of the luckless battalions, indeed, had fought and fallen directly under the eyes of the Emperor himself, looking on from his post of vantage by the wall of Eylau churchyard.

Napoleon, however, had already realised that his distribution of an emblem to whose preservation he attached such extreme importance had been made on too lavish a scale. He had been imprudent in distributing such hostages to fortune broadcast; there were too many Eagles on offer to the enemy. Napoleon, indeed, had already tacitly admitted that. Within two months of the opening of the first campaign of the Grand Army—during the Austerlitz campaign—immediately after Murat’s daring gallop on Vienna, Napoleon had summarily directed all the light cavalry Eagles to be sent back from the front. Every Hussar and Chasseur regiment was ordered to return its three squadron Eagles to head-quarters forthwith, for sending back to France. In future, a new Army regulation laid down, those corps would not take their Eagles into the field at all. The regulation after that was extended to Dragoons; and later to all Light Infantry battalions. No doubt it was a step dictated by prudence. In these corps particularly, from the nature of the duties they had normally to perform, the Eagles were peculiarly exposed to risk of isolation and capture.

What had happened at Eylau, and several narrow escapes in hand-to-hand combats at Friedland, together with certain other incidents in that battle which had come under Napoleon’s personal notice, where, through a nervous anxiety for the safety of their Eagles, some battalion commanders had kept back round them men whose bayonets were badly wanted elsewhere, led to a further step. Napoleon took advantage of the general scheme for the reorganisation of the Grand Army, which he carried out in 1808, to recast entirely his original arrangement as to the Eagles. He reduced the numbers by two-thirds.

NO MORE BATTALION EAGLES

Battalion Eagles were to be withdrawn in favour of Regimental Eagles. In the infantry, under the reorganisation scheme, there were to be five battalions to each regiment instead of three as heretofore; but there would be only one Eagle in future for the entire regiment. The existing Second and Third battalions were ordered to give up the Eagles they had hitherto carried, which would find a resting-place at the Invalides. The Regimental Eagle would be borne by the First Battalion. The other battalions would carry only “fanions,” small pennon-shaped flags. Each would have one “fanion,” a plain serge flag, of a distinctive colour for each battalion, without any mark or device on it, beyond the number of the battalion.

The Imperial edict, issued early in 1808, laid down that for the special protection of the Regimental Eagle in battle a commissioned officer and two picked veterans were to be appointed as the “Eagle-Guard,” replacing the sergeant-major and escort of the Battalion Eagles. The three were to be known as the First, Second, and Third Eagle-Bearers or “Porte-Aigles.” The officer to whose special charge the Regimental Eagle itself was committed was to be a senior lieutenant, “a man of proved valour, with not less than ten years’ Army service, including service on the battlefield in four campaigns,” specified as those of Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland. He would receive captain’s pay, and wear a gold-laced cocked hat and gold epaulettes. The two other Porte-Aigles were to be, in Napoleon’s own words, “deux braves,” of ten years’ service in the ranks, and “non-lettrés.” On the last qualification, indeed, Napoleon laid peculiar stress. The two were to be, as the Emperor himself put it, “men who could neither read nor write, so that their only hope of promotion should be through acts of special courage and devotion.” They would receive lieutenants’ pay, have special privileges, and wear four gold lace chevrons on their arms. Only the Emperor could nominate or degrade Porte-Aigles.

PENNONS TO FRIGHTEN HORSES

The Second and Third Porte-Aigles were to carry no weapons except heavy pistols, “to blow out the brains of an enemy attempting to lay hands on an Eagle.” These were Napoleon’s own words as to that, in his order of February 18, 1808: “Pour éviter que l’ardeur dans la mêlée ne les détourne de leur unique objet, de la garde de l’Aigle, le sabre et l’épée leurs sont interdits. Ils n’auront d’autres armes que plusieurs paires de pistolets, d’emploi que de veiller froidement a brûler la cervelle de celui qui avancerait la main pour saisir l’Aigle.” After the Wagram campaign of 1809 Napoleon substituted a helmet and defensive brass scale-epaulettes as the First Porte-Aigle’s equipment. He gave the two soldiers of the Eagle-Guard a halberd each, with a pennon or banderol attached—Red for the Second Porte-Aigle, White for the Third—as well as a sword and a pair of large-bore pistols. The pennons were for use should mounted men attack the Eagle; “for fluttering in front of the horses in order to make them rear and plunge and upset their riders.”[19]

Two more soldiers were added to the Eagle-Guard in 1813, as the Fourth and Fifth Porte-Aigles. They were armed with the same weapons as the others, and had respectively Yellow and Green pennons on their halberds.

Yet further to add to the prestige of the Eagles, Napoleon, after Wagram, decreed the institution of a Special Order of Military Merit, which he called the “Order of the Trois Toisons d’Or”—something on the lines of our own Victoria Cross—certain of the provisions of which had direct reference to the Eagles. The decoration was to be conferred on men, whatever their rank, “distinguished in the defence of the Eagle of their regiment.” Also, according to the 6th Article of the Constitution of the Order, “Les Aigles des régiments qui ont assisté avec distinction aux grandes batailles seront décorés de l’Ordre des Trois Toisons d’Or.”[20]

The special distinction of having the badge of the Legion of Honour affixed to its Eagle as a decoration to the regimental standard was in 1812 granted to one corps, the celebrated 57th. It was as a reward for magnificent intrepidity displayed under the eyes of Napoleon at the battle of Borodino. The 57th had at the same time a further and unique mark of Imperial regard awarded to it. Napoleon ordered that a representation of the badge of the Legion of Honour should be stamped on the uniform buttons of the regiment. No corps of the Grand Army, perhaps, had a finer fighting tradition than this splendid regiment—the same “Terrible 57me qui rien n’arrête,” of the Army of Italy; which, too, as has been said, Napoleon singled out for a special word of encouragement on the morning of Austerlitz; calling to them as he rode past, “You will remember to-day, Fifty-seventh, how I once named you ‘Le Terrible’!”

But, with regard to the Regimental Eagles of 1808, even for Napoleon it was one thing to decree the abolition of Battalion Eagles, and another to obtain compliance with the order that the surplus Eagles should be returned to the War Minister for laying up at the Invalides.

SOME CORPS DID NOT OBEY

A number of second and third battalions of regiments stationed at places out of the way of direct Imperial inspection—in garrisons beyond the frontiers, in subjugated countries, or in the remaining overseas possessions of France—continued for some time to evade the order recalling their Eagles. No doubt, too, they were unwilling to part with standards some of which had led the corps under fire at Austerlitz and Jena.

Napoleon had to repeat his order of recall twice: once during 1809; the second time in 1811. That second order was the outcome of a discovery made by the Emperor himself. At an Imperial review of the troops of the Amsterdam and North Holland garrisons on October 12, 1810, three of the regiments had the temerity to parade before the Emperor’s eyes with four Eagles apiece—one to each battalion. Such flagrant disobedience could not be overlooked; and then subsequent inquiries brought out the fact that elsewhere there were many Battalion Eagles which had similarly been retained against orders. An additional discovery was made at the same time, that the Fourth-Battalion Eagles had been supplied surreptitiously, through some official at the Ministry of War, entirely without Napoleon’s knowledge.

It made Napoleon excessively angry. He complained bitterly to Marshal Berthier at the way in which the department which had to do with the standards of the Army had been mismanaged. “La partie des drapeaux des régiments,” he declared, “est aujourd’hui dans un grand chaos.” To the Minister of War, General Clarke, Duc de Feltre, Napoleon sent a stinging letter of rebuke.

With the letter went the draft of yet another decree, to be communicated to every corps in the service.

NAPOLEON’S FINAL ORDER

“I only give,” wrote Napoleon now, “one Eagle per regiment of infantry, one per regiment of cavalry, one per regiment of artillery, one per regiment of special gendarmerie. None to the departmental companies or guards of honour.

“No corps may possess an Eagle which has not been bestowed by my own hand.

“All regiments, further, of whatever denomination, if they did not receive the Eagle they are authorised to possess from the hand of the Emperor in person, either directly on parade, or through a regimental deputation, must return it to the Ministry of War for the will of his Majesty to be declared as to that Eagle.

“All other corps are to carry ‘fanions,’ ordinary flags. Infantry regiments reduced below 1,000 men in strength, and cavalry regiments of less than 500 men, cannot retain their Eagle, and must return it to the dépôt. They will be accorded a standard [drapeau] without the Eagle.

“All the infantry regiments now in possession of an Eagle per battalion, and cavalry with one per squadron, are to send the extra-regulation Eagles at once to Paris, to be kept [déposées] at the Invalides until they can be placed in the ‘Temple of Glory’ [the Church of the Madeleine, then being rebuilt].” “Jusqu’à ce qu’elles puissent être misées dans le Temple de la Gloire,” was what Napoleon wrote.

Three of the British trophy-Eagles now at Chelsea, it may be remarked in passing, bear the number “82.” They came into our hands in February 1809, at the surrender of Martinique to a conjoint British military and naval expedition. The 82nd was one of the regiments referred to as out of the way of direct inspection; in garrison across the Atlantic. It had not obeyed the order of 1808 to return its Second and Third Battalion Eagles to Paris—with the result that three Eagles at Chelsea represent the misfortune of this one regiment.

“The First Battalion,” ordered Napoleon in his decree of 1811, “is to carry the Eagle: the other battalions will have each a fanion, quite plain, as follows: 2nd Battalion, White; 3rd, Red; 4th, Blue. Where certain regiments may possess additional battalions, these are to have, the 5th a Green fanion, the 6th a Yellow fanion.”[21]

In 1813, in Napoleon’s conscript army levied to replace the host destroyed in Russia, the newly raised Line regiments, and “Provisional-Regiments,” made up of the amalgamated dépôt battalions of various corps, had to earn their Eagles on the battlefield. “No newly raised regiment,” ordered Napoleon, “is to receive an Eagle until after his Majesty has been satisfied with its service before the enemy.”

THE ONLY NAMES ALLOWED

The flags issued in 1808, and after that, to go with the Regimental Eagles, were much more elaborate than those of the Champ de Mars. They had white diamond-shaped centre panels, similar to those in the flags presented on the Field of Mars, but with Imperial crowns embroidered in gold on the red and blue upper corners of the flag, and golden Eagles on the lower corners. Gold embroidered wreaths of laurel, encircling the Imperial monogram “N.” divided off the crowns above from the Eagles below. A border of gold fringe round the entire flag, embroidered with bees, was another new enrichment. In these flags the regimental battle-honour inscriptions on the reverse side of the white centre space in the former flags appeared in a revised from. Only victories of importance since the institution of the Empire, and at which Napoleon had commanded in person, were admitted. Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Eckmühl, Essling, Wagram, constituted the full list from which selection was made. One regiment alone was allowed to record an earlier victory:—the Imperial Guard. They preserved their “Marengo” honour. Inscriptions such as “Le 75e arrive et bât l’ennemi,” “J’étais tranquille, le 32e était là,” and the others which had been allowed on the flags of the Field of Mars, recalling deeds of the Army of Italy, disappeared from the revised pattern of 1808. A new inscription was specially authorised for the flag of one regiment, in honour of a feat of great distinction during the Wagram campaign. The 84th of the Line was permitted to inscribe “Un contre dix—Grätz, 1809”—but that only lasted for three years; the inscription was ordered to be taken off in 1811.

The design of the flag introduced in 1808 held until 1814. A less elaborate design was adopted for the Eagle-standards of the “Hundred Days,” two specimens of which are in this country—the Waterloo trophies at Chelsea.

Attractive and handsome as the new flag was, the Army, as before, looked on it as but an appendage, as merely “l’ornement de l’Aigle.” The Eagle at the head of the staff, by itself, was all that nine soldiers out of ten troubled about. Not a few regiments, indeed, when on service, removed the flags altogether from their Eagle-poles and displayed as their standard the Eagle only. Particularly was this the case in Spain, where many regiments were in the field continuously, in some instances, for over six years—from 1808 to 1814. Asked one day after the Peninsular War about the inscription and battle-honours on the flag of his regiment, an infantry chef de bataillon frankly confessed that he had “never set eyes on it!” The silken flag, he explained, “had been removed from the Eagle-pole before he first joined as a lieutenant, and had always, as he understood, been kept at the dépôt of the corps in France, rolled up and locked away in the regimental chest. The Eagle on its bare pole was all he had ever seen.”

Said another officer: “We never spoke of the regiment’s ‘colours,’ and never saw them. We spoke only of ‘the Eagle.’”

WHEN NAPOLEON MET AN EAGLE

This may be added. Napoleon was scrupulously exact in showing respect to the Eagle of a regiment whenever he passed one; whether on the line of march, or in bivouac, under a sentry, with the Eagle-Guard near at hand, resting horizontally on a support of piled muskets with bayonets fixed. If on horseback, Napoleon always uncovered and bowed low; if on the line of march, he sometimes stopped his carriage in passing, and got out, saluted the Eagle, and said a few words about the regiment’s battle record to the Eagle-Guard.

Between the review on the Field of Mars in 1804 and the overthrow on the plains of Leipsic in 1814 the number of regiments in the Grand Army increased continuously, requiring the presentation of many new Eagles. Forty-four were presented in the period to the infantry alone; to the regiments of the Line bearing numbers from the 113th to 156th; besides others to the regiments of the “Middle Guard” and “Young Guard,” and to two additional regiments of Cuirassiers. In every case Napoleon, in accordance with the stipulation that he so insisted on, made the presentation in person, with his own hand.

In not a few instances, indeed, the ceremony took place on campaign; and for one of these exceptionally interesting occasions we have available the notes of an eye-witness. It was at the presentation of the Eagle of the 126th Regiment of the Line, in Germany, in 1813.

Napoleon made his appearance in his campaigning uniform, the dark green undress of the Chasseurs of the Guard, and mounted as usual on a grey charger. His staff, all brilliant in full dress, attended him. Approaching the scene at a canter, they all slowed down to a walk as they neared where the regiment stood, with its battalions parading every available man, and drawn up to form three sides of a hollow square. The new Eagle, enveloped in the leather casing in which it had been brought from France, lay on a pile of drums on one flank of the First Battalion, and a little in advance. The fourth, or open, side of the square was for the Imperial staff, who drew up there, while the Emperor by himself rode into the middle of the square. As Napoleon reined up, the regimental drums beat the Appel, and the officers of the regiment stepped to the front, with swords at the carry, and formed in line before the Emperor.

Marshal Berthier, Chief of the Head-quarter Staff, then rode across to where the Eagle lay. He dismounted to receive it at the hands of the First Porte-Aigle, the Eagle being uncased at the same time. Berthier saluted the Eagle; then, holding it erect with both hands, the marshal bore it ceremoniously along in front of the row of officers, who saluted with lowered swords as the Eagle passed, the drums of the regiment now beating a long roll. Halting close in front of Napoleon, Berthier inclined the Eagle forward in salute, and the Emperor, on his side, uncovered and bowed in return. Then, drawing his glove from his left hand, Napoleon raised his hand and extended it towards the Eagle. He held the reins, according to his custom, in his right hand. Napoleon began his address to the corps in a deep, impressive tone:

AT A PRESENTATION IN THE FIELD

“Soldiers of the 126th Regiment of the Line, I entrust to you the Eagle of France! It is to serve to you ever as your rallying-point. You swear to me never to abandon it, but with life! You swear never to suffer an affront to it for the honour of France! You swear ever to prefer death for it to dishonour! You swear!” The last words were pronounced with a peculiar stress, in a very solemn tone, with intense energy.

Instantly the officers of the regiment replied. Holding their swords on high, with one voice they shouted: “We swear!”

The next moment the words were taken up and repeated enthusiastically by the men: “We swear!”

Berthier, on that, formally handed the Eagle over to the colonel of the regiment, and the Emperor, raising his hand to his hat in salute to the Eagle, turned to rejoin the Staff and ride off elsewhere.

On the afternoon before the three days’ battle of Leipsic opened, on October 15, 1813, Napoleon, on the Marchfeldt, in the very presence of the enemy, presented with these formalities new Eagles to three newly raised regiments.

CHAPTER VII
BEFORE THE ENEMY AT ASPERN AND WAGRAM

Napoleon’s regimental Eagles made their début on the battlefield in the Wagram campaign of 1809, when Austria challenged Napoleon to a second trial of strength in her premature attempt to achieve the liberation of Germany. The gallant deeds of the regiments that fought round the Eagles in that war are commemorated on the standards of the French Army to-day by the legend “Wagram, 1809,” a name and date that stand as the comprehensive memento of a conflict that lasted four months, and included no fewer than ten fiercely fought battles. They are superabundant as a fact; it would almost need a book by itself to tell the full story. It must suffice therefore to take here only these, picked out at random, as typical of the rest.

This is the achievement that “Wagram, 1809,” inscribed in golden letters on the silken tricolor standard of the present-day 65th of the Line, serves to recall.

Napoleon’s 65th was one of the regiments of Marshal Davout’s corps at Ratisbon, where Davout had been stationed on the eve of the outbreak of the war. He was hastily recalled on the Austrians opening hostilities and advancing in greatly superior force. Davout fell back at once, leaving behind him the 65th to hold the very important bridge over the Danube at Ratisbon for forty-eight hours, until the bulk of his corps had gained a sufficient start on their way.

The 65th had not long to wait for the enemy. Within twelve hours of the marshal’s retirement the Austrians swooped down on Ratisbon to seize the bridge. Two of their army corps led the advance. One took possession of the city, sending troops forward to secure the bridge. Part of the other crossed the Danube in the neighbourhood of the city in boats, in order to cut off and capture the French troops left behind. It was expected that in the presence of so overpowering an enemy the single French regiment holding the bridge would not venture to make a serious defence. The Austrians did not know the 65th.

To oppose the first comers three battalions of the 65th barricaded and loopholed the houses nearest the bridge on that side. The remaining battalion held a fortified outwork, or bridge-head, across the river.

For a whole day the battalions in the city held the Austrians at bay, resisting desperately in the streets and from house to house. Four hundred Austrian prisoners, together with an Austrian regimental standard and three other flags, testified to the way they did their duty. The battalion holding the bridge-head on the farther side of the river made meanwhile a no less stubborn resistance and kept the enemy off until nightfall. Then, however, it was found that their ammunition was exhausted. The three battalions fighting the city were by that time in a no less desperate plight. They on their side had been forced back to their last defences among the houses immediately surrounding the approach to the bridge. Still, though, they kept up a fierce resistance, at the last using cartridges taken from the cartouche-boxes of the Austrian prisoners and their own dead and wounded comrades. They held out until further defence of the bridge was impossible, until indeed further resistance at all was hopeless.

HOW WERE THEY TO SAVE THE EAGLE?

But the regimental Eagle? What was to become of that? The Eagle of the 65th must at all cost be kept from being surrendered into an enemy’s hands. What was to be done? At first it was suggested that an officer, known to be a good swimmer, should try to swim down the river with it in the dark until he could land safely on the farther bank, after which he should do his best to make his way to wherever Napoleon might be, there to render personally into his hands the sacred Eagle. But the other surviving officers were loth to part with their treasured standard in that way. The risk of a man getting through the Austrians who were swarming on the other side of the Danube was considered too great. It was then suggested to sink it in the Danube, noting the spot, so as to be able to fish it up again on some future day. Colonel Coutard, in command of the 65th, however, was against that. They might never be able, or have time, to find it at the bottom of a deep and swiftly flowing river like the Danube. He proposed to conceal the Eagle in the ground, burying it in some secret place. There it might without difficulty be recovered later on and brought back to France. The colonel’s proposal was assented to, and then a further suggestion was made. Their Eagle should be given a fitting shroud by wrapping round it the captured Austrian flags they had taken that afternoon. That would preserve the trophies also for future days when the fortune of war again favoured the regiment. The idea was eagerly taken up, and the Eagle was buried in a cellar, wrapped up in the Austrian flags.

WRAPPED UP IN CAPTURED FLAGS

After that, at the very last, just as the Austrians were about to launch another attack it was impossible to withstand, Colonel Coutard had the chamade beaten, and the 65th surrendered. They were granted, as they well deserved, the honours of war, and were for the time being confined under guard in the city. Their captivity, however, was not for long. Their release came about in a very few days on the Austrian troops hurriedly evacuating Ratisbon before Napoleon’s triumphant advance.[22] The Eagle was now dug up, and Colonel Coutard, with a deputation from the regiment, waited on Napoleon on his arrival, to present the Eagle before him, still wrapped up in the three captured Austrian flags.

In recognition of the endurance that the 65th had shown, the colonel was created a Baron of the Empire; crosses of the Legion of Honour were distributed broadcast among all ranks; forty soldiers who had shown exceptional gallantry in the fighting were, as a reward, specially transferred to the Old Guard.

Such is the fine story that the battle-honour “Wagram, 1809,” lettered in gold on the regimental tricolor of the present-day 65th of the Line in the French Army commemorates, and care is taken that every young soldier on joining is made acquainted with it.

Equally fine as an exploit, and yet more renowned for the exceptional honour that Napoleon paid to the Eagle of the regiment, was the splendid heroism that the 84th of the Line displayed at Grätz in Styria. That episode of the campaign, indeed, is commemorated by a double battle-honour on the flag of the 84th of the modern French Army. Both “Wagram, 1809,” and “Un contre dix—Grätz, 1809” are inscribed in golden letters on its tricolor. Napoleon himself, as has been said, bestowed the honour of the unique inscription on the regimental flag. He had also the words “Un contre dix” incised on the square tablet supporting the Eagle itself. Here is the story of the exploit as related by one of Napoleon’s staff officers in the campaign, Colonel Lejeune:

KEPT OFF WITH THE BAYONET

“Amongst all these battles and victories there was one action so remarkable and so brilliant that I feel impelled to describe it here from the accounts of eye-witnesses. During the taking of Grätz by General Broussier, and when the struggle was at its fiercest, Colonel Gambin of the 84th Regiment was ordered, with two of his battalions, to attack the suburb of St. Leonard, where he made from four to five hundred prisoners. This vigorous assault led General Guilay on the enemy’s side to imagine he had to deal with a whole army, and he hurried to the aid of the suburb with considerable forces. Gambin did not hesitate to attack them, and he took from them the cemetery of the Graben suburb, but was in his turn invested by the Austrian battalions, and found it impossible to rejoin the main body of the French. He accepted the situation, spent the whole of the night in fortifying the cemetery and the adjoining houses, and, his ammunition being exhausted, he actually kept at bay some 10,000 assailants with the bayonet alone, even making several sorties to carry off the cartouches on the dead bodies with which his attacks had strewn the ground near the cemetery. General Guilay now directed the fire of all his guns and five fresh battalions on this handful of brave men, who had already for nineteen hours withstood a whole army. General Broussier was at last able to send Colonel Nagle of the 92nd, with two battalions, to the aid of the 84th. The enemy vainly endeavoured to prevent the two regiments from meeting. Colonel Nagle overthrew every obstacle, got into the cemetery, and after embracing each other the two officers, with their united forces, flung themselves upon the Austrians, took 500 of them prisoners, with two flags, and carried the suburb of Graben by assault, finding no less than 1,200 Austrian corpses in the streets. When the Emperor heard of this feat of arms, he was anxious to confer the greatest distinction he could on the 84th Regiment, and ordered that its banner should henceforth bear in letters of gold the proud inscription, ‘One against ten.’”

Seldom indeed did the soldiers of Napoleon encounter a more determined enemy than the Austrians proved themselves in the war of 1809. At Aspern, the battle on the Danube near Vienna, where Napoleon experienced his first defeat on the Continent, more than one Eagle came within an ace of being taken. The Eagle of the 9th of the Line, for instance, to save it from what appeared to be imminent capture, was actually buried on the battlefield in the middle of the fighting. “Our colonel,” wrote one of the men of the 9th, “took the Eagle of the regiment, pulled it from its staff, and, after digging a hole in the ground with a pioneer’s tool, buried and concealed there our rallying signal to prevent it from falling into the enemy’s hands.” It was, though, after all, an unnecessary precaution. The hard-pressed 9th were rescued at the last moment, whereupon the Eagle made its reappearance.

VICTIMS OF A PANIC IN THE DARK

Three other Eagles, less fortunate, are now in the Austrian Army Museum at Vienna; those of the 35th of the Line and of the 95th and 106th. The Eagle of the 35th was taken on the Italian frontier near Lake Garda, in a surprise attack at daybreak on the camp of the Viceroy, Eugène Beauharnais, by the troops of the Archduke John. The other two fell into Austrian hands on the night of the opening attack at Wagram, victims of a panic that suddenly seized one of the French columns. It had led the attack on the centre of the Austrian position with brilliant success.

Two thousand prisoners and five standards had been taken, and the French were advancing exultantly, when the Austrians counter-attacked with fresh troops, headed by the Archduke Charles in person. The French resisted stubbornly, and at first successfully. They held their own until, in the midst of furious hand-to-hand fighting, they were suddenly charged by cavalry. It was late evening, and in the gathering dusk a sudden panic seized a regiment on the flank. The panic spread instantly to the whole of the attacking column. All order was lost forthwith. The soldiers gave way in confusion, broke up, and went racing back headlong, a mob of fugitives, down the steep ascent that a few minutes before they had so gallantly won. As they went back in a tumultuous rush, fresh French troops, coming up to their support, “in the darkness mistook the retreating host for enemies and fired upon it; they, in their turn, were overthrown by the torrent of fugitives.” The Austrian prisoners taken in the advance escaped, the captured Austrian standards were recaptured, and two Eagles disappeared in the dark amid the turmoil. Those are the two now at Vienna.

Fortunately for Napoleon the Austrian leaders did not realise the smashing nature of the blow they had dealt. The fate of Napoleon’s Empire otherwise might have been decided on that night. Unaware that the panic had “spread an indescribable alarm through the French centre as far as the tent of the Emperor, they stopped the advance, sounded the recall, and fell back to their original positions.”

Of the Eagle-bearers of four regiments at Aspern, the 2nd, 16th, 37th, and 67th of the Line, not one came through the day alive, but the Eagles were saved. They were the four regiments that took the village of Aspern and held it all day and till after dark—12,000 men against 80,000 enemies. The village was the all-important key of the battlefield. Its defence was of supreme moment, for only part of Napoleon’s army had been able to get across the Danube as yet, the main bridge of boats having been broken down and swept away.

They had seized Aspern at the outset, but had been forced to fall back before an Austrian counter-attack, returning after that to recapture it, and hold it until the end.

Marshal Masséna led the onset that retook the village. “The Austrians,” describes a French officer, “had entered Aspern, and it was absolutely necessary to dislodge them. Masséna therefore, who had had all his horses killed, marched on foot with drawn sword at the head of the Grenadiers of the Molitor division, forced his way into the village, crowded as it was with Austrians, drove them out, and pursued them for some twelve or fourteen yards beyond the houses. But here the French troops found themselves face to face with the strong force under Hiller, Bellegarde, and Hohenzollern, advancing rapidly in their direction. It was hopeless for the division to attempt to engage such superior numbers in the open plain, so Masséna recalled the pursuers, and ordered them to hold Aspern. The enemy, ashamed apparently of this first defeat, returned to the charge with 80,000 men and more than a hundred pieces of cannon, which were soon pointed on the village.”

AT BAY IN THE BURNING VILLAGE

It was impossible to stop the onrush of the Austrians. In spite of every effort of Masséna, who with his artillery “opened fire upon the densely packed masses of men, every shot working terrible havoc amongst them,” they swarmed forward to the outskirts of the village. A life-and-death struggle in defence began. “In a very few minutes the village was completely surrounded by troops; and hidden from view in the dense clouds of smoke from the cannon, the musketry, and the fires which at once broke out, the combatants, almost suffocated by the smoke, crossed bayonets without being able to see each other; but neither side gave way a step, and for more than an hour the terrible attack and desperate defence went on amongst the ruins of the burning houses.”

It was during the Austrian opening attack on the outskirts of Aspern that at one point a French regiment—the number of the regiment is not given in any account—was forced apart from the rest, and driven back in disorder beyond the village. Its colonel was killed, and, though the Eagle was kept from falling into the enemy’s hands, the regiment fell back in confusion. Napoleon witnessed the check and galloped to intercept the troops as they were retreating. Riding into the midst of the fugitives, he personally rallied them, and then called angrily for the colonel. There was no answer from any one, and in high anger Napoleon again called for the colonel. Then somebody made the reply that the colonel was dead. “I know that!” answered Napoleon sharply. “I asked where he was!” “We left him in the village.” “What! you left your colonel’s body in the hands of the enemy? Go back instantly, find it, and remember that a good regiment should always be able to produce both its Colonel and its Eagle!” Napoleon’s stinging rebuke did its work. The men at once re-formed and turned back. Charging forward with a rush, they forced their way through to where the colonel had fallen and recovered the body. Then they joined in with the other defenders at the village, and did their duty to the end. The colonel’s body was brought back and laid before Napoleon next morning.

MARSHAL MASSENA UNDER FIRE

The fearful contest in Aspern went on until four in the afternoon, by which time the Austrians had succeeded in taking half the village. They could not, however, get beyond that. “Masséna still held the church and cemetery, and was struggling to regain what he had lost. Five times in less than three hours he took and retook the cemetery, the church, and the village, without being able to call to his aid the Legrand division, which he was obliged to hold in reserve to cover Aspern on the right and keep the enemy from getting in on that side. Throughout this awful struggle Masséna stood beneath the great elms on the green opposite the church, calmly indifferent to the fall of the branches brought down upon his head by the showers of grape-shot and bullets, keenly alive to all that was going on, his look and voice, stern as the quos ego of Virgil’s angry Neptune, inspiring all who surrounded him with irresistible strength.”

Even when the sun went down “the struggle was far from being over, and the awful battle was still raging in the streets and behind the walls of the village of Aspern. The enemy, irritated at the stubborn resistance of so small a body of troops, redoubled their efforts to dislodge them before nightfall, and went on fighting by the light of the conflagrations alone. The history of our wars relates no more thrilling incident than this long and obstinate struggle, in which our troops, disheartened by the ever-fresh difficulties with which they had to contend, worn out by fatigue, and horrified by the carnage round them, were kept at their posts by the example and exhortations of Masséna and his officers alone. General Molitor had lost some half of his men, and the enemy were hurrying up from every side. The struggle was maintained under these terrible conditions until eleven o’clock, when we remained masters of Aspern and of the whole line between it and Essling.”

Five regiments of the French Army of to-day commemorate a splendid Eagle-incident in the name “Wagram, 1809,” on their colours; the final charge of Macdonald’s column which saved and decided the battle for Napoleon, besides gaining a marshal’s bâton for the Scottish officer who achieved the feat. That was on the final battlefield of Wagram itself, the outcome of which tremendous encounter settled the fate of the war. It was the culminating event of the battle. The crisis was at hand for both armies when the order was given to Macdonald to go forward. On the Austrian side the powerful and fresh corps of the Archduke John was rapidly nearing the scene, and the fortune of the day yet wavered in the balance. Napoleon, as his last hope and final effort to break the stubborn Austrian array of the Archduke Charles’ host which still confronted him, defiant still after ten hours of charges and counter-charges, holding out tenaciously in a strong position, massed his reserves and sent them at the centre of the Austrians, to press forward in a vast column of closely formed battalions. They went at the enemy with all the daring of a forlorn hope.

MACDONALDS’S COLUMN ADVANCES

“Moving steadily forward through the wreck of guns, the dead, and the dying, this undaunted column, preceded by its terrific battery incessantly firing, pushed on half a league beyond the front at other points of the enemy’s line. In proportion as it advanced, however, it became enveloped in fire; the guns were gradually dismounted or silenced, and the infantry emerged through their wreck to the front. The Austrians drew off their front line upon their second, and both, falling back, formed a sort of wall on each side of the French column, from whence issued a dreadful fire of grape and musketry on either flank of the assailants. Still Macdonald pushed on with unconquerable resolution: in the midst of a frightful storm of bullets his ranks were unshaken; the destiny of Europe was in his hands, and he was worthy of the mission. The loss he experienced, however, was enormous; at every step huge chasms were made in his ranks, whole files were struck down by cannon-shot, and at length his eight dense battalions were reduced to 1,500 men. Isolated in the midst of enemies, this band of heroes was compelled to halt. The Empire rocked to its foundations: it was the rout of a similar body of the Guard at Waterloo that hurled Napoleon to the rock of St. Helena.”

THE BATTLE WON AT LAST

The five regiments which formed the spear-point of the attack had paraded that morning 6,000 strong. They numbered now, the survivors, less than 300. They were at the extreme point of the advance, but were held fast and unable to go farther. The enemy were on every side of them, for in the last moments they had pressed on beyond touch of the troops that were following next. The Austrians saw their chance to charge them and annihilate them before the approach of French supports to the main column could get near. But General Broussier, the Brigadier in command of the leading troops, knew his work and his men. As they halted he rapidly rallied the fragments of the nearest regiments and formed them in a single square. They drew up under the feu d’enfer of cannon and musketry, three deep in front, with, in the centre, held up on high, the five Eagles of the regiments; so as not to weaken the front, the firing line, “the Eagles were held up only by men who had been wounded.” Broussier marked the massing of the Eagles in the midst; and, as the firing round them for one moment seemed to lull, raising his voice, he called out for all to hear: “Soldiers, swear to die here to the last man round your Eagles!” “Jurez moi, soldats, de mourir tous, jusqu’au dernier, autour de vos Aigles!” were the Brigadier’s words. But there was fortunately no need for all to die. At that moment reinforcing troops came up, with the Young Guard at their head. The column, on that, moved forward again with a steady front, “and the Archduke, despairing now of maintaining his position, when assailed at the crisis of the day by such a formidable accession of force in the now broken part of his line, gave directions for a general retreat.” The Eagles had done their part and the battle of Wagram was won.

CHAPTER VIII
“THE EAGLE WITH THE GOLDEN WREATH” IN LONDON

There are thirteen of Napoleon’s Eagles in England, among the trophies of the British Army at Chelsea Royal Hospital; or, to speak strictly, twelve Eagles and a “dummy” Eagle, the later reproduction of a very famous trophy, gone now, unfortunately, to the melting-pot of a thieves’ kitchen. It is with the dummy Eagle, as it may be called for short, without disrespect to its gallant custodians, and five of the twelve Eagles at Chelsea, that we are for the immediate moment concerned. That represents the first of Napoleon’s trophies won by British soldiers in hand-to-hand fight—the once celebrated “Eagle with the Golden Wreath.”

The story opens on Saturday morning, May 18, 1811, a day that was a great occasion for Londoners. For the first time, on that Saturday, trophies taken from Napoleon were publicly displayed in the British Capital, and no pains were spared to make the most of the event. An elaborate and dramatic ceremonial was ordained for the occasion by the authorities at the instance of the Prince Regent. It was like nothing else of the kind ever witnessed or heard of in England before.

WHAT LONDON HAD SEEN BEFORE

On many another day in bygone times London had been the scene of stately martial pageants in which the victor’s spoils from many battlefields were borne in triumph, amid blare of trumpets and clash of drums, to be deposited with due ceremony in their allotted resting-places. So had it been when the Marlborough trophies from Blenheim and Ramillies, the captured flags from Dettingen, Louisburg, and Minden, were borne along the crowded streets, preceded by bands playing triumphant music and accompanied by armed escorts of Foot and Horse. Another Saturday, seventeen years before, May 17, 1794, had been the last occasion of trophy-flags being displayed in London, when the captured French Republican standards of the garrison of Martinique were publicly carried through the streets by Life Guards and Grenadiers, with the band of the First Guards leading the way and the Tower guns booming out an artillery feu de joie, from St. James’s Palace to St. Paul’s, to be received at the great west doors of the Cathedral by the Dean and Chapter, and laid up “as a lasting memorial of the success of his Majesty’s Arms.” Some of the flags then displayed hang in the Hall of Chelsea Hospital to-day.

So, too, had it been in London in yet earlier times, in the far off, unhappy days of Civil War in England, when the citizens of those periods, in turn, saw the spoils of Bosworth, and of Marston Moor and Naseby, of Worcester, Preston, and Dunbar, paraded through their midst, escorted by mail-clad men-at-arms, on the way to be hung up exultingly in St. Paul’s Cathedral or in Westminster Hall. With his own Royal banners from Marston Moor and Naseby drooping down overhead from the roof of Westminster Hall, Charles the First faced his judges and heard his fate. But never before in London had so elaborately designed a ceremony attended the display of trophies taken from any enemy, as that planned for the Royal Depositum, as it was officially styled, of the first of the captured Eagles of Napoleon to be received in England.

There was to be a special display of trophies the London newspapers announced some days beforehand. The newspapers had not spared themselves in working up public interest. At the outset they had told how, on the night of March 24, Captain Hope, First A.D.C. to General Graham, had arrived in London with the Barrosa despatches and a “French Eagle with a wreath of gold,” which, it was stated, “the general trusted his aide de camp might be permitted to lay at his Majesty’s feet.” Then Londoners were informed that the Barrosa Eagle was a trophy of unusual importance, and was being kept at the War Office, to be presented to the Prince Regent at the next levée. It was announced a week later that his Royal Highness had been so desirous of seeing it at once, that the War Minister, the Earl of Liverpool, instead of waiting five weeks for the levée, had already presented it to the Prince at Carlton House. On that came the official notification that “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath,” as the trophy was everywhere styled, together with a number of other French trophies, which had been previously received and had been some time stored away at the War Office pending instructions as to their disposal, would be deposited in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, (now the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution). “The Royal Depositum ceremony will be very grand, and the martial music appropriate to the occasion, and as the orders have been issued by direction of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, the Chapel will be thronged with nobility.” So one journal notified; another remarking that “in addition to the great religious and military ceremony, an anthem is to be performed after the manner of the Te Deum.”

A GRAND MARTIAL CEREMONY

Thus popular interest was aroused and kept alive in advance, and the selected Saturday morning proving fine and pleasant, with the prospect of a genial and sunny forenoon, Londoners turned out in large numbers to see the show.

To the Brigade of Guards it fell to carry out the ceremony of the military reception of the Eagles.

The “Parade in St. James’s Park,” which we know now as the Horse Guards Parade, was the appointed place for the display, and as the clock struck nine the preliminaries opened with the arrival of a large body of Guards’ recruits who were to keep the ground. From quite an early hour a crowd had been gathering there and along the side of the Park. Soon afterwards the first of the troops designated to attend the ceremony began to arrive. These were several companies of the First Guards and Coldstreamers “in undress, with side arms.” They formed line along either side of the parade-ground; on one side “extending from the corner of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s garden to the Egyptian gun”; on the opposite side, “from the Admiralty towards the Park.” To right and left of the archway under the Horse Guards leading to Whitehall were drawn up the “recruiting parties stationed in the Home District.”

At a quarter to ten came on the scene the first of the actors in the day’s proceedings, the “King’s Guard” of the day, “in their best uniforms, and with sprigs of oak and laurel in their hats.” Marching up, headed by the combined bands of the First Guards and the Coldstreamers, with the regimental colour of the First Guards, they formed on the right, along the open side of the square, facing towards the Horse Guards. Following them, a few moments later, came the picked detachment appointed as the “trophy-escort,” furnished jointly by the grenadier companies of the First Guards and the Coldstreamers. All were in review-order full dress, “wearing long white gaiters, with oak and laurel leaves in their hats.” A captain of the First Guards was in command; and the detachment was made up of two subalterns, four sergeants, and ninety-six rank and file. They took post on the left of the King’s Guard. As the trophy-escort halted, up came another detachment of Guards, a hundred strong, with the Life Guards; marching across the square and through the Horse Guards archway to line the way thence to the doors of the Chapel Royal.

GETTING READY FOR THE PRINCES

Towards ten o’clock privileged spectators were admitted within the square, “to stand at an appointed spot”: several veteran generals, “in their best uniforms and powdered,” as a newspaper reporter remarks; Lord Liverpool the War Minister; the Earl Marshal; the Speaker; the Spanish and Portuguese Ambassadors, both gorgeously attired; and “a number of beautiful and elegant ladies of distinction.”

The Horse Guards clock struck ten, and as the last clanging stroke died away “the authorities” came clattering on to the ground on horseback: Sir David Dundas, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Governor of Chelsea Hospital, at the head of a number of other plumed and cocked-hatted generals in full uniform, together with the Head-quarters Staff at the Horse Guards. Prominent in the glittering array of gold-laced red coats, “mounted on a cream-coloured Arab,” was General Sir John Doyle, Colonel of the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers; the regiment whose prowess at Barrosa had won the great trophy of the day—“the Eagle with the Golden Wreath.”

With Royal punctuality, as the clock chimed the half-hour, amid cheers from the crowd and the spectators filling the windows of the Horse Guards and Admiralty and other Government offices overlooking the ground, came riding up the three Princes who were to preside at the ceremony—the Dukes of York, Cambridge, and Gloucester.

The display began forthwith.

Preceded by the two Guards’ bands playing the “Grenadiers’ March,” the trophy-escort of grenadiers crossed the Parade at a slow step, and marched in four divisions, or “platoons,” to the old Tilt Yard orderly-room under the Horse Guards. There the trophies had been taken beforehand to be in readiness for the ceremony. The grenadiers halted before the doors, and the trophies, twelve in number, were brought out by Lifeguardsmen from the Tilt Yard Guard and committed to the charge of twelve picked sergeants—six of the First Guards, six of the Coldstreamers—selected to bear them to the Chapel Royal.

THE CAPTURED EAGLES TAKE POST

The trophy-bearers carrying the Eagles then took post according to the date of the capture of each trophy; the earliest taken of the Eagles leading. In advance of all, immediately after the band, marched the three officers with swords drawn; the captain and the two subalterns. Then, with their flanking grenadiers as escort, a file to each trophy, came, one after the other, three Battalion Eagles of Napoleon’s 82nd of the Line, surrendered at the capitulation of Martinique in 1809. Immediately in rear marched No. 1 platoon of grenadiers; in the interval between the first trophy-group and the second. That consisted of the Regimental Eagle of the French 26th of the Line, surrendered at Martinique at the same time as the Eagles of the 82nd, and then that of the 66th of the Line, surrendered at the capitulation of Guadaloupe in 1810, with, just behind them, the all-important trophy of the day, the first Napoleonic Eagle captured—or, at any rate, taken possession of—by British soldiers on the battlefield: “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath”—that Eagle of Napoleon’s 8th Regiment of the Line, won in hand-to-hand fight by the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers at Barrosa.

Five of the Eagles had their silken tricolor flags still attached to the poles. The Barrosa Eagle had none: it showed simply a bare pole topped by the wreathed Eagle. The wreath, according to a newspaper reporter present, was “an honour conferred on the regiment for fine conduct at the battle of Talavera, where they were opposed to the 87th; and, by a singular coincidence of circumstances, these regiments met in conflict at Barrosa and recognised each other.” As we shall see, the statement was a freak of journalistic imagination, without a scrap of fact behind the story, although, strangely, the legend holds to this day and reappears periodically in print. Adds the reporter, as to the appearance of the Eagle, recording this time what he actually saw: “The Eagle is fixed on a square pedestal, and standing erect on one foot; the other raised as if grasping something; its wings expanded. It is about the size of a small pigeon, and appears to be made of bronze, or of some composition like pinchbeck, gold-gilt.” The “something” which the talons of the Eagle appeared to be grasping was the “thunderbolt,” which was missing, having been either knocked out of its place in the scuffle on the battlefield, or stolen later by somebody for a relic. The wreath was really of gold. A couple of its leaves picked up on the field after the battle and given to Major Hugh Gough, the gallant commander of the 87th at Barrosa, are now in possession of one of that officer’s descendants.

Plan of the Battle of BARROSA

The second grenadier platoon divided the Eagles from the first three of the flag-trophies, borne in file, one by one, in the same way as the Eagles. The first in date of capture led; a French Republican standard taken in fight at Sir Ralph Abercombie’s victory at Alexandria, ten years before, and kept ever since at the War Office: “the Invincible’s standard.” “As it is falsely called,” adds the reporter; right for once. “So tattered is it,” he continues, “that the mottoes are not legible; a bugle in the centre was the only figure we could distinguish.” Two flags taken by Wellington’s men in the Peninsula accompanied the Alexandria flag: “a Fort Standard,” as it is described, and the battalion colour, or “fanion,” of the Second Battalion of Napoleon’s 5th of the Line.[23]

THE TROPHY FLAGS PARADED

In rear of the colour of the 5th marched the third grenadier platoon, and the last three trophies sent to England by Wellington. Two were a pair of tattered German standards, the flags of the two battalions of a Prussian regiment in Napoleon’s service, composed of unfortunate soldiers levied compulsorily during the French occupation of their country, and tramped off to Spain to meet their fate under British bullets. Each flag bore the legend “L’Empereur des Français au Régiment Prussien” on one side, and “Valeur et Discipline” on the other, and was mounted on a staff with a steel pike-head instead of an Eagle. They were silken flags of the ordinary Napoleonic pattern. The third flag of the group was that of a “provisional regiment”; also with a steel pike-head to its staff.

From the Tilt Yard orderly-room the trophies and their escort-guard set off, as before, in slow time, the bands playing “God save the King!” The sergeants, carrying the Eagles and Flags between the files of grenadiers, marched in the intervals between the four divisions “in double open-order with arms advanced.” Right round the square they now passed, close along the lines of the troops drawn up, “the immense multitude rending the air with huzzas.” In front of the First Guards, in front of the recruiting parties, in front of the long line of Coldstreamers, along each of the three sides of the square, paced the procession with martial pomp to the stately music of the two bands as they led the way. Then it proceeded along the fourth side of the square until it came face to face with the King’s Guard, all standing with ordered arms, not at the present.

There was a brief pause in front of the Colour of the King’s Guard.

That was the supreme moment of the display. Now took place the formal act of obeisance to the victors; the formal act of abasement and humiliation for the vanquished. Amid redoubled cheering from all sides, the Eagles and the other flags were, one and all, formally dipped and prostrated. “The captured standards saluted and were lowered to the ground in token of submission.”

PROSTRATED IN THE DUST

The procession turned away in front of the King’s Guard and led round in front of the three Royal Dukes, seated on their chargers, a little in advance of the Commander-in-Chief and Horse Guards Staff, at the centre of the parade-ground. Again, as they now passed before the Royal trio, the hapless Eagles of Napoleon and the other French flags in turn were one by one made to pay homage, bowed grovelling to the dust; the crowd of onlookers shouting themselves hoarse “with,” as we are told, “truly British huzzas.”

After that the trophy procession marched across to the Horse Guards archway, and through to Whitehall and the Chapel Royal; between Life Guards on one side and more Foot Guards on the other, drawn up to keep a lane open through the immense crowd of people who had gathered there, and thronged the wide roadway. “The procession,” says our reporter, “moved off the Parade amid the acclamations of many thousand spectators and entered the Chapel as the clock was striking eleven, which [sic] was crowded by all the beauty and fashion in Town.” Another reporter speaks of the Chapel Royal as being “exceedingly crowded in all parts with nobility and gentlemen and ladies of distinction.”

“The religious part of the ceremony,” we are told, “was solemn and impressive.” It comprised Morning Prayer and a sermon by the Sub-Dean. “Previous to the commencement of the Te Deum, a pause was made, when three grenadier sergeants entered at each door by the sides of the Altar with the Eagles on black poles about 8 feet high. They took their stations in front of the Altar. Each party was guarded by a file of grenadiers, commanded by two officers; the whole of them with laurel-leaves in their caps as emblems of Victory. At the same instant the five French flags and Bonaparte’s honourable standard entered the upper gallery at the back of the Altar, all carried by grenadier sergeants.

“The whole remained presented for some time for the gratification of the beholders, after which the Eagles were placed in brass sockets on each side of the Altar, suspended by brass chains. The five flags were suspended from the front of the second gallery, and Bonaparte’s honourable standard placed over the door of the second gallery, behind the others.”

The trophies, with others won at Salamanca and Waterloo, and subsequently laid up in the Chapel Royal, were removed later to Chelsea Royal Hospital, where all, except “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath,” are now kept treasured amid befitting surroundings.

STOLEN FROM CHELSEA AT MIDDAY

“The Eagle with the Golden Wreath” disappeared from Chelsea Hospital in broad daylight. It was displayed in the Chapel, affixed in front of the organ-loft over the doorway, until it suddenly vanished from there a little after midday on Friday, April 16, 1852, in the absence of the pensioner-custodian of the Chapel during the Hospital dinner-hour. How it was stolen was apparent; but the thief was never traced. The thief, attracted undoubtedly by the widely told story that the wreath was of gold, made his way into the Chapel by the roof, which was undergoing repairs at the time, to which he got access by a workman’s ladder. He got inside by the trap-door on the leads above the organ-loft. There, with a saw, he cut through the Eagle-pole near where it was fastened to the organ-loft, and, secreting it under his coat, made his escape by the way he had come, unseen by anybody. The Eagle-pole was found outside, in front of the building, with the Eagle and wreath wrenched off. For some reason the Royal Hospital authorities of the day offered a reward of only a sovereign, and though the London police did their best, the malefactor was never discovered.[24]

At Barrosa Napoleon’s 8th of the Line was in the French column that made its attack on the right. It was one of the regiments that charged forward across the plain at the foot of Barrosa ridge, to break through General Graham’s second brigade and drive it back to the edge of the cliffs by the seashore, while the French left attack seized the ridge itself, and beat back the British first brigade in the act of hastening to regain that unwisely abandoned position. The Eagle went down in the fierce counter-attack with which Graham’s men on the plain, the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers in the front line, met the French onset.

“IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP THEM”

What befell the 8th of the Line is told by one of their own officers in his Journal de Guerre—Lieutenant-Colonel Vigo-Roussillon, in command of the First Battalion, with which was the Eagle.

Just before the critical moment, says Colonel Roussillon, the 8th, who were on the flank of the French second line, lost touch with the regiment next them, and had in consequence to meet the 87th by themselves. They fired their hardest as the British troops came on, “but could not stop them, ever advancing to a bayonet attack.”

They came on silently, steadily, irresistibly. “Their officers,” adds one of Victor’s staff, “kept up all the time the old custom of striking with their canes those of the men who fell out of the ranks. Our own non-commissioned officers,” he adds, “placed as a supernumerary rank, crossed their muskets behind the squads, thus forming buttresses which kept the ranks from giving way. Several of the French officers, also, picked up the muskets of the wounded, and flung themselves into the gaps made in the ranks of the men.”

“I saw the English line,” describes Colonel Roussillon again, “at sixty paces continuing to advance at a slow step without firing. It seemed impossible to stop them; we had not sufficient men.”

Apparently he then caught sight of General Graham, leading the British line.

“Under the influence of a sort of despair, I urged forward my charger, a strong Polish horse, against an English mounted officer who seemed to be the colonel of the nearest regiment coming on at us. I got up to him, and was about to run him through with my sword, when I was held back by a sense of compassion and abandoned the murderous thought. He was an officer with white hair and a fine figure, and had his hat in his hand, and was cheering on his men. His calmness and noble air of dignity irresistibly arrested my arm.”

Such is the lieutenant-colonel’s own account. But did he really get quite close to the general? Graham was the last man in the world to let him get back unfought!

“I then,” as Vigo-Roussillon continues, “quickly galloped back to my own men, and was riding along the line, telling them to meet the enemy with our bayonets, and drive them back, when a bullet from an English marksman broke my right leg.

“I managed to dismount and tried to pass through in rear of the line, but it was impossible to walk. The ground was covered with thick bushes, and I was crippled and in great pain. All I could do was to sit down where I was, calling on the men to fire again. A moment later I was enveloped in smoke; and at the same instant the English charged in among us.

“I called out my loudest, cheering on my men; and now two soldiers tried to lift me up and carry me. But both were shot down.

“For the time we held our own, and kept the enemy back; but some of the English got round us. Seeing themselves outflanked, the battalion began to give ground. Then came a second furious charge from the English, and that broke us.”

“FIGHTING WITH THEIR FISTS”

The fight, man to man, went on desperately for several minutes—some of the British soldiers, as yet another French officers relates, fighting with their fists. “Many of the Englishmen broke their weapons in striking with the butts or bayonets; but they never seemed to think of using the swords they wore at their sides. They went on fighting with their fists.”

It was in the final mêlée that “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath” was taken; after a sharp and fierce hand-to-hand fight round it.

Colonel Roussillon himself was at almost the same moment struck down, and lay insensible for a space among the dead near by. He was recovering his senses and trying to stand up, when, as he tells, a British sergeant saw him and ran at him with his halberd. He parried the thrust, and kept the sergeant off, and then a British officer came up. To him the Commandant of the First Battalion of the 8th surrendered his sword.

The fight for the Eagle—on one hand to take it, on the other to keep it—was furious; desperately and heroically contested by both sides.

First, a gallant Irish boy, from Kilkenny, Ensign Edward Keogh of the 87th, caught sight of it, borne on high above the fray. There had been no unscrewing of the Eagle of the 8th, no trying to break it from its pole. “See that Eagle, sergeant!” called Keogh to Sergeant Masterton, among the foremost, close by his officer; and then he dashed straight into the thick of the party round the Eagle, sword in hand. The brave lad cut his way through, with Masterton and four or five privates close behind him. He got close up to the “Porte-Aigle,” crossed swords with him, and got a grip of the Eagle-pole. But he could not wrench it from the no less brave Frenchman’s hands before he went down with half a dozen musket bullets and bayonet stabs in his body.

Porte-Aigle Guillemin, as the gallant French Eagle-bearer of the 8th was named, fell dead at the same moment, shot through the head by one of the British privates.

HOW THE TUSSLE ENDED

Instantly other Frenchmen rushed up to save the Eagle, and formed round it hastily. One of the British privates who seized hold of the staff was slashed to death, and the French recovered it. The fight round the Eagle went on for some minutes. In that time no fewer than seven French officers and sub-officers fell dead in defence of the Eagle. An eighth officer, Lieutenant Gazan, clung to the pole to the last, regardless of wounds that nearly hacked him to pieces. Finally the Eagle was torn from his grasp by Sergeant Masterton, at the end the sole unwounded survivor of the attacking British party. Gazan “survived miraculously,” and lived to be decorated by Napoleon for his devoted courage. Masterton seized the Eagle and kept it. So “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath” became a British trophy.

From the crossing of the bayonets in the final charge to the taking of the Eagle, the mêlée lasted about fifteen minutes.

The remnant of the 8th were saved by a rally to the spot by the French 54th, after another regiment, the 47th, had attempted its rescue in vain. The 47th lost their Eagle in the mêlée, but recovered it. “The man who had charge of it was obliged to throw it away, from excessive fatigue and a wound,” explains a British officer. The 8th lost at Barrosa their Colonel (Autié) and the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Second Battalion, killed; Vigo-Roussillon, of the First Battalion, wounded; and 17 other officers and 934 of the rank and file killed or wounded. The Moniteur, the official Paris newspaper under the Napoleonic régime, in reporting the battle of April 5, referred to the loss of the Eagle in these terms: “A battalion of the 8th, having been charged in wood-covered ground, and the Eagle-bearer being killed, his Eagle has not been found since.”

The battalion that fared so hardly had to pay the regulation penalty. Napoleon gave the 8th no other Eagle. He held rigidly to his rule, and set his face relentlessly against a second presentation. They must present him first with a standard taken on the battlefield from the enemy. But with Wellington’s men opposed to them to the end, the 8th got few chances in that direction. They had to fight without an Eagle to the close of the Peninsular War.

Two days after Barrosa, when General Graham re-entered Cadiz with the Spanish army, “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath” was publicly paraded through the crowded streets, “between the regimental colours,” as the 87th marched to barracks, the church bells ringing triumphantly, and amid exultant shouts and cheers of the populace, and cries of “Long live Spain! Death to our oppressors!” At the barracks “we presented the Eagle to our gallant commander,” says one of the officers.

The Eagle was then sent to England in the custody of the officer carrying General Graham’s despatch. Its capture is commemorated to this day by the Royal Irish Fusiliers, who wear “an Eagle with a Wreath of Laurel” as a regimental badge, while a similar Eagle is embroidered in gold on the regimental colour. Also, a representation of the wreathed Barrosa Eagle was granted later on as a special augmentation to the family arms of the officer who commanded the 87th in the battle, Major Hugh Gough, on his being raised to the Peerage while Commander-in-Chief in India after the first Sikh War. “The Aiglers” was always the regiment’s sobriquet after Barrosa among their comrades in Wellington’s army; a sobriquet that has endured since then in the form of “the Aigle-Takers,” although our modern recruits are said to prefer calling themselves “the Bird-Catchers.”[25]

ONE OF THE PARIS WREATHS

It was in this way that the Barrosa trophy Eagle came by its golden wreath. The decoration, as has been said, had nothing to do with Talavera.

The wreath was one of those voted by the City of Paris to the regiments that had gone through the Jena and Polish frontier campaigns, the first of which was presented to the Imperial Guard. First of all, in the outburst of patriotic enthusiasm in France at the news of Jena, wreaths had been voted as decorations for the Eagles, by way of popular tribute to the regiments which had helped in dealing that staggering blow to the famous Prussian Army. After the crowning victory of Friedland which ended the war, in a fresh outburst of enthusiasm, golden wreaths were voted wholesale for the Eagles of all the corps that had taken part in the fighting that followed Jena, during the nine months of war, down to the final day of Friedland. It was a costly guerdon, and their proposed generosity staggered the Paris municipality when the estimate was presented. No fewer than 378 wreaths—according to the official return—had to be provided. But the vote had been carried by acclamation on its first proposal, and trumpeted all over France. Also, the Emperor had taken up with the idea warmly. The Paris authorities dared not back out, and had to go on with it in spite of the cost. They carried it out with so good a grace that, as the sequel, a suggestion came from the Tuileries that the Austerlitz battalions of the Grand Army which had not had the fortune to be in the Jena-Friedland campaign should receive wreaths as well, an Imperial hint that the authorities, shrinking from the extra expense, were so slow to fall in with, that in the end it had to be forced on them, by means of a bluntly worded letter through the Ministry of War. “Tell the Prefect of the Seine,” wrote Napoleon to the War Minister, “that I expect wreaths of gold, similar to those given for Jena and Friedland, to be provided on behalf of the City of Paris for all the regiments at Austerlitz!”

ACROSS GERMANY IN CARTS

The 8th was presented with its wreath in Paris, while on the way to take part in the Peninsular War. It was one of the regiments of the First Corps of the Grand Army, which Napoleon hastily recalled from Germany in the spring of 1808, and hurried across Europe to reinforce the troops in Spain on the first news of serious trouble being on foot in that quarter. The whole First Army Corps was recalled; starting from Berlin, where it had been quartered, and journeying by Magdeburg and Coblentz. Along the route the unfortunate German burgomasters and village authorities had to provide, not only provisions day by day, but transport vehicles for 30,000 soldiers; mostly farm-carts and wagons, each taking from four to sixteen men. The troops travelled by night and day, with only two stoppages of fifty minutes each in the twenty-four hours, for meals, and the authorities of the villages and towns named as halting-places were compelled to have hot food kept ready so that the men might fall to instantly on arrival. It was a journey the soldiers never forgot. The weather was rough and wet, the roads in places were almost impassable, and the carts continually broke down, in addition to which the peasant-drivers requisitioned for the conveyances deserted at every opportunity, usually going off at night with the horses after cutting the traces, leaving their wagon-loads of sleeping soldiers stranded by the roadside.

The 8th received its wreath at the Barrier of Pantin, on the outskirts of Paris. It arrived with the Second Division of the corps, and the troops were met by the Prefect of the Seine and the Municipal Council in State, while Marshal Victor, the commander of the Army Corps, attended the ceremony in full-dress uniform. He replied to the Prefect’s complimentary address by declaring that “these golden crowns henceforward decorating the Eagles of the First Corps will to them ever be additional incentives to victory.” One by one the regiments passed before the Prefect, who hung round each Eagle’s neck “a wreath of gold, shaped as two branches of laurel.” A triumphal march into Paris and an open-air banquet to all ranks in the Tivoli Gardens, with free tickets to the theatres after it, wound up the day.

All along the line of march through France to the Spanish frontier, banquets and elaborate festivities welcomed the regiments—and at the same time, it would appear, gave some of their entertainers more than they bargained for. The triumphal progress, from all accounts, proved such hard work for the ladies in the country towns, where public balls were in the programme every night, that at some places for the later comers—the 8th and other regiments in the Second Division of Marshal Victor’s corps—the balls had to be abandoned, “because the ladies were too tired to dance any more.” It was explained, with apologies, that they had practically been danced off their feet by the regiments of the First Division, which had preceded the Second, incessantly passing through during the previous three weeks, and that “most of the ladies, through sheer fatigue, had taken to their beds!”

THEY DID NOT MEET AT TALAVERA

At Talavera, the 8th, as part of a brigade of three regiments, had a passage of arms on the battlefield, first with the British 83rd; and then with the Guards; lastly with the 48th, before whose magnificent charge in the final phase of the fight they had to give ground. They did not meet the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers at all in the battle.[26]

CHAPTER IX
OTHER EAGLES IN ENGLAND FROM BATTLEFIELDS OF SPAIN

Napoleon’s Eagles made a second appearance before the London populace in the following year. That was on September 30, 1812, and the Horse Guards Parade was again the scene of the display—this time with more elaborate ceremonial, and with the added presence of yet greater personages. Queen Charlotte herself this time witnessed the reception ceremony, with four of the Princesses; and the Prince Regent in person, “mounted on a white charger,” attended, to be publicly done obeisance to by the humbled standards of the enemy. Four of his Royal brothers, the Dukes of Clarence, York, Cambridge, and Sussex, accompanied the Prince Regent. Only the poor old King, blind and insane, was absent of the Royal family, remaining in his seclusion at Windsor Castle.

The Queen and Princesses watched the scene from the windows of the Levée Room at the Horse Guards, looking down over the Parade; the Prince Regent was on the ground and took the salute. The Eagles this time were five in number; and four French flags, one of exceptional interest, the garrison-standard of Badajoz, were with them in the procession.

The military display was on the grandest scale possible; the ensemble making up, as we are told, “a spectacle grand and impressive beyond anything ever beheld.” The First and Second Life Guards were present, “drawn up in a line reaching from the Foreign Office nearly to Carlton House,” with their bands in State dress and their standards. All three regiments of Foot Guards took part, with the State Colour of the First Guards, and three bands. Horse and Foot Artillery from Woolwich were also there; forming by themselves one side of the great hollow square which occupied the wide space of the ground, the scene of the reception of “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath.” Ninety grenadiers, drawn from the three regiments of Foot Guards, thirty from each, formed the trophy-escort, which, as before, accompanied the Eagles and captured standards round the square at a slow march—the five Eagles in advance by themselves, borne by as many Guards’ sergeants between files of grenadiers with fixed bayonets.

THE EAGLES ARE HUMBLED AGAIN

Again the trophies of Napoleon were spared nothing in the humiliation that they had to undergo. Twice were they lowered to the dust before the Queen; twice to the Prince Regent; eight times before the standards of the Life Guards; three times before the standards of the Guards and the King’s Colour of the First Guards, “the immense concourse of spectators rending the air with their huzzas” every time the trophies went down. Then, as before, the trophies were paraded across Whitehall to the Chapel Royal, and solemnly “churched” and hung up there, before the Royal family and “all the Cabinet Ministers and the leading members of the nobility in London.”

They were this time all Wellington’s trophies. Two of the Eagles were spoils from the battle of Salamanca—“dreadfully mutilated and disfigured in the conflict,” according to a newspaper reporter’s account, “one of them having lost its head, part of the neck, one leg, half the thunderbolt, and the distinctive number; the other without one leg and the thunderbolt.” Two had been taken in Madrid “in more perfect state and without their flags.” The last of the five had been “found on the way to Ciudad Rodrigo, in the bed of a river, dried up in summer, having been thrown away some months before during Masséna’s retreat.” The four Eagles which still bore distinctive numbers were, we are told, “those of the 22nd, 13th, and 51st and the 39th.” Of the standards, the garrison flag of Badajoz looked “like a sieve, a great part of it quite red with human blood”; the four other colours “were so mutilated that not a letter or device was legible.”

How we came by the trophies so displayed in London on that Wednesday forenoon is our story.

The two Salamanca Eagles were—and are, for they have a place to-day among our Chelsea Hospital trophies—mementoes of one of the most dramatic episodes of a battle in which there were many.

WELLINGTON AND SALAMANCA

Salamanca, it may be said incidentally—the battle, like Waterloo, was fought on a Sunday, on July 22, 1812—was, in Wellington’s own eyes, his chef d’œuvre, his masterpiece, although it may be rather overlooked now perhaps by most of us and the world at large, eclipsed in the dazzling splendour of the last crowning victory of Waterloo. It was at Salamanca that Wellington, in the words of a French officer, speaking, of course, in general terms, “defeated 40,000 men in forty minutes.” The victory was held in such estimation by Wellington himself that he selected it in preference to all his other victories to be displayed over again in a sham fight on the Plain of Saint-Denis in the presence of the three Allied Sovereigns during the occupation of Paris in 1815 after Waterloo. Of it he wrote at the time: “I never saw an army receive such a beating.”

Upwards of 6,000 prisoners were taken, including one general and 136 other officers. Six thousand of the enemy, at the lowest computation, were left dead or wounded on the field of battle. Three French generals were killed and three wounded. Marshal Marmont himself, the enemy’s commander-in-chief, was among the wounded; grievously maimed by a bursting shell as he galloped to rally one of his broken columns. “Spurring furiously to the point of danger, he was struck by the fragment of a shell, which shattered his left arm and tore open his side.” Marmont bore the arm in a sling for the rest of his life. He was carried off the field under fire, on a stretcher made of a soldier’s great-coat with a couple of muskets thrust through the armholes to give it shape, under the escort of a squad of grenadiers. Eleven cannon—melted down at Woolwich Arsenal in 1820 as a cheap way of making new field-guns for the British Army—with the two Eagles and six stand of colours, were the trophies of the day.

The two Salamanca trophy Eagles at Chelsea Hospital are the spoils of the fiercest cavalry charge that British horsemen ever delivered on a battlefield; the death-ride—for 1,200 of Napoleon’s infantry—of the Heavy Brigade, which annihilated an entire French division in less than a quarter of an hour. It came about as one of the results of that opening false move on the part of the French commander which cost France in the end the loss of the battle.

MARMONT’S FATAL BLUNDER

Marmont, after a series of ably conducted manœuvres in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, had forced Wellington, on July 22, into a position so unfavourable that the British commander decided to retire towards the Portuguese frontier under cover of darkness during the following night. But at the last moment the French marshal overreached himself. Taking in the difficulties that confronted his opponent he attempted to anticipate him and cut him off from his base by barring the one line of retreat that was open to Wellington. In doing that, Marmont gave his game away. He rashly divided his force in the presence of the enemy, separating his left wing to a distance from the main body and marching off a whole division of infantry, cavalry, and artillery to occupy the road to Ciudad Rodrigo.

The fault was flagrant, and Wellington seized eagerly at the chance all unexpectedly offered him. He was at breakfast when Marmont’s troops began their false move and the aide de camp whom he had posted on the look-out hurriedly came to him with the news. “I think they are extending to the left——” the young officer began. He did not finish the sentence.

“The devil they are!” interposed Wellington hastily, with his mouth full. “Give me the glass!”

He took it, and for nearly a minute scanned the movements of the enemy with fixed attention.

“By God!” he ejaculated abruptly as he lowered the glass. “That’ll do!”

He turned to another aide de camp.

“Ride off and tell Clinton and Leith to return to their former ground.” These were the generals commanding the Fifth and Sixth Divisions, on the right and right-centre of the British position. Then Wellington ordered up his horse. Closing his spy-glass with a snap, he turned with these words to his Spanish attaché, Colonel Alava: “Mon cher Alava, Marmont est perdu!” A moment later Wellington was on horseback and his staff also, all galloping off.

Wellington grasped the meaning of Marmont’s move. He saw his chance of falling on in force and overpowering the detached French wing before help could reach it.

He made his way as fast as his charger could carry him to the British Third Division—Picton’s men, temporarily commanded by Wellington’s brother-in-law, General Sir Edward Pakenham.

“As he rode up to Pakenham,” says an officer whose regiment was close by, “every eye was turned on him. He looked paler than usual, but was quite unruffled in his manner, and as calm as if the battle to be fought was nothing more than an ordinary assemblage of troops for a field-day.”

“Ned,” said Wellington, as he drew rein beside Pakenham, tapping him on the shoulder and pointing in the direction of the separated French column as its leading troops were beginning to move towards their distant position, “Ned, d’ye see those fellows on the hill? Throw your division in column, and at ’em and drive ’em to the Devil!”

“I will, my lord, by God!” was Pakenham’s laconic reply, and he turned away to give the necessary orders.

A FURIOUS COUNTER-ATTACK

The two Eagles were taken in the course of Pakenham’s attack, when the Third Division, with the Fifth advancing on one flank, was moving forward to meet the fierce counter-attack with which the enemy, after the first collision, attempted to make amends for their commander’s blunder.

“We were assailed,” describes a British officer in the Third Division, “by a multitude who, reinforced, again rallied and turned upon us with fury. The peals of musketry along the centre continued without intermission, the smoke was so thick that nothing to our left was distinguishable; some men of the Fifth Division got intermingled with ours; the dry grass was set on fire by the numerous cartridge-papers that strewed the battlefield; the air was scorching; and the smoke rolling onwards in huge volumes, nearly suffocated us.”

In the midst of the din and turmoil the Heavy Cavalry came suddenly on the scene. “A loud cheering was heard in our rear; the Brigade half turned round, supposing themselves about to be attacked by the French cavalry. A few seconds passed, the trampling of horses was heard, the smoke cleared away, and the Heavy Brigade of Le Marchant was seen coming forward in line at a canter. ‘Open right and left!’ was an order quickly obeyed; the line opened, and the cavalry passed through the intervals, and, forming rapidly in our front, prepared for their work.”

Catastrophe for the French assailants followed at once; swift, overwhelming, irremediable. The enemy in front had practically ceased to exist within the next twelve minutes. The entire French division and its supporting troops were struck down and shattered; broken to fragments and annihilated.

There was a “whirling cloud of dust, moving swiftly forward and carrying within its womb the trampling sound of a charging multitude. As it passed the left of the Third Division, Le Marchant’s heavy horsemen, flanked by Anson’s Light Cavalry, broke out at full speed, and the next instant 1,200 French infantry, formed in several lines, were trampled down with terrible clangour and tumult. Bewildered and blinded they cast away their arms and ran through the openings of the British squadron, stooping and demanding quarter, while the dragoons, big men on big horses, rode on hard, smiting with their long, glittering swords in uncontrollable power, and the Third Division, following at speed, shouted as the French masses fell in succession before this dreadful charge.”

So Napier describes the onset.

CHARGING DOWN AT FULL GALLOP

Startled and aghast at what they saw coming at them, the French attempted hastily to form squares. But Le Marchant’s impetuous squadrons were too quick for them. They came swooping down, the troopers galloping their hardest, with loosened reins, all racing forward, charging down with the irresistible sweep of an avalanche, and crashed into the midst of the ill-fated infantrymen before the squares could be formed.

Down on the enemy the cavalry thundered, 1,200 flashing British sabres. Three of the finest regiments of the British Army formed the brigade—the 3rd Dragoons, the “King’s Own”; the 4th, “Queen’s Own”; the 5th Dragoon Guards—strong and burly men on big-boned horses, and with sharp-edged swords. “Nec aspera terrent” was—and is—the fearless motto of the gallant “King’s Own,” who showed the way; and they flinched at nothing that day. “Vestigia nulla retrorsum” was—and is—the motto of the 5th, who closed the column; and dead and wounded and prisoners were the vestiges they left in rear on that stricken field.

General Edward Le Marchant, a daring and capable soldier—“a most noble officer,” was what Wellington called him—led them.

FOUR REGIMENTS CUT TO PIECES

A French regiment a little in advance, the ill-fated 62nd of the Line, was the first to face the British, and to go down. They did not attempt to form square. They had, indeed, no time to do so. Yet they were in a formation sufficiently formidable. The 62nd was a regiment of three battalions, and stood formed up in a column of half-battalions, presenting six successive lines closely massed one behind the other. Their front ranks opened fire just before the leading horsemen reached them, but it did not check the British onset even for a moment. The cavalry bore vigorously forward at a gallop and burst into and through their column, riding it down on the spot. Nearly the whole regiment was killed, wounded, or taken; leaving the broken remnants to be carried off as prisoners by the infantry of the Third Division as these raced up in rear, clearing the ground before them.

The 62nd were disposed of by the cavalry in less than two minutes. According to French official returns, the unlucky regiment, out of a total strength that morning of 2,800 of all ranks in its three battalions, lost 20 officers and 1,100 men in killed alone; the survivors who escaped capture not being sufficient to form half a battalion.

Cheering triumphantly, the charging squadrons dashed on. They came full tilt on a second French regiment, the 22nd, catching it in the act of forming square. The front face of the square was already drawn up and met the troopers with a hasty volley which brought down some of the men and horses. But that made little difference. The next moment the cavalry were on them. The mass of the square in rear made but a weak effort at resistance. They swayed back, broke their ranks, and fell apart in utter confusion. Slashed down right and left, as had been the case with the 62nd, in little more than a minute only groups of fugitives were left, to be made prisoners by the British infantry, following in rear of the horsemen.

The cavalry raced on then to attack a third French regiment. In turn it attempted to make a stand, but only to be dealt with in like manner. It, too, was caught before its square could be formed, and was ridden down.

Yet another French battalion confronted the British troopers after that. It had had time to take advantage of a small copse, an open wood of evergreen oaks, where it formed its ranks in colonne serrée, to await attack, and make a stand. “The men reserved their fire with much coolness, until the cavalry came within twenty yards. Then they poured it in on the concentrated mass of men and horses with deadly effect. Nearly a third of the dragoons came to the ground, but the remainder had sufficient command of their horses to dash forward. They succeeded in breaking the French ranks and dispersing them in utter confusion over the field.”

All the time the infantry in rear were racing on with exultant cheers, finishing off the horsemen’s work as fast as they came up. It was an easy task. Further fight had been scared out of the French under the stress of the fearful experience they had gone through. “Such as got away from the sabres of the horsemen,” says one of the British officers, “sought safety amongst the ranks of our infantry; and, scrambling under their horses, ran to us for protection, like men who, having escaped the first shock of a wreck, will cling to any broken spar, no matter how little to be depended on. Hundreds of beings, frightfully disfigured, in whom the human face and form were almost obliterated—black with dust, worn down with fatigue, and covered with sabre-cuts and blood—threw themselves among us for safety. Not a man was bayoneted—not one even molested or plundered. The invincible old Third on this day surpassed themselves; for they not only defeated their terrible enemies in a fair stand-up fight, but saved them when total annihilation seemed the only thing.”

The two Salamanca Eagles were taken now. They fell to two infantry officers as their actual captors: one to an officer of a regiment of the Third Division, and the other to an officer of the Fifth Division, which had come into the fight, and were following the cavalry, partly mingled with Pakenham’s men.

TAKEN IN HAND-TO-HAND FIGHT

The first Eagle—that of the hapless French 62nd, whose fate has been told—fell to Lieutenant Pierce of the 44th, a regiment in the Fifth Division. He came on the Eagle-bearer while in the act of unscrewing the Eagle from its pole in order to hide it under his long overcoat and get away with it. Pierce sprang on the Frenchman, and tussled with him for the Eagle. The second Porte-Aigle joined in the fight, whereupon three men of the 44th ran to their officer’s assistance. A third Frenchman, a private, added himself to the combatants, and was in the act of bayoneting the British lieutenant, when one of the men of the 44th, Private Finlay, shot him through the head and saved the officer’s life. Both the Porte-Aigles were killed a moment later—one by Lieutenant Pierce, who snatched the Eagle from its dead bearer’s hands. In his excitement over the prize Pierce rewarded the privates who had helped him by emptying his pockets on the spot, and dividing what money he had on him amongst them—twenty dollars. A sergeant’s halberd was then procured, on which the Eagle was stuck and carried triumphantly through the remainder of the battle. Lieutenant Pierce presented it next morning to General Leith, the Commander of the Fifth Division, who directed him to carry it to Wellington. In honour of the exploit the 44th, now the Essex Regiment, bear the badge of a Napoleonic Eagle on the regimental colour, and the officers wear a similar badge on their mess-jackets.

The second Eagle taken was that of the 22nd of the Line. It was captured by a British officer of the 30th, Ensign Pratt, attached for duty to Major Cruikshank’s 7th Portuguese, a Light Infantry (or Caçadores) battalion, serving with the Third Division. He took it to General Pakenham, whose mounted orderly displayed the Eagle of the 22nd publicly after the battle, “carrying it about wherever the general went for the next two days.”

Two more Eagles, it was widely reported in the Army, came into the possession of other regiments of the Third and Fifth Divisions. One of them is said to have “wanted its head and number”; but what became of them is unknown. Possibly the existence of these particular trophies was merely camp gossip. According to one story, an officer picked up one of the Eagles during the battle and “carried it about in his cap for some days.” No Eagles, however, reached head-quarters after Salamanca except those of the 62nd and 22nd, which in due course were sent to England.[27]

ONE THAT JUST ESCAPED

One Eagle narrowly evaded capture at the hands of the Hanoverian Dragoons of the King’s German Legion in the pursuit after Salamanca. It escaped—to find its way to Chelsea Hospital on a later day, as the famous trophy of our own 1st Dragoons, the “Royals,” at Waterloo. What took place when the Eagle of the 105th of the Line so nearly fell into the enemy’s hands after Salamanca is a story that in its incidents stands by itself.

General Anson’s cavalry brigade, made up of British Light Dragoons and the Hanoverians, was sent in chase to follow and break up the wreck of the defeated army. It came upon the French rearguard in the act of taking post at a place called Garcia Hernandez. In front were several squadrons of cavalry; in rear the 105th of the Line. The three battalions of the regiment were moving in column, with guns in the intervals. Not seeing the French infantry and guns at first, owing to an intervening ridge, Anson rode for the cavalry and drove them in. “Their squadrons fled from Anson’s troopers, abandoning three battalions of infantry, who in separate columns were making up a hollow slope, hoping to gain the crest of some heights before the pursuing cavalry could fall on, and the two foremost did reach higher ground, and there formed in squares.” The squares at once opened fire on the horsemen, and for a moment checked them.

A SQUARE CHARGED AND BROKEN

The Hanoverian Dragoons were the nearest of the pursuers to the rearmost of the French squares, and there was no way to ride past without exposing their flank at close range. Captain Von Decken, who was leading the dragoons, on the spur of the moment took the daring decision to attack the square with the single squadron he had with him, then and there. Without an instant’s hesitation the gallant captain charged, regardless of the fierce fusillade that met him at once, from which his men went down all round. They dropped fast under fire. By twos, by threes, by tens, all round they fell; yet the rest of them, surmounting the difficulties of the ground, hurled themselves in a mass on the column and went clean through it.

The gallant Von Decken was among the first to go down, shot dead a hundred yards from the square. But a leader no less heroic was at hand. Instantly Captain Von Uslar Gleichen, in charge of the left troop, dashed to the front. He rode out to the head of the squadron, inciting his men by voice and gesture and example. Another French volley smote hard on the squadron, but the intrepid troopers galloped through it, and, bringing up their right flank, swept on towards the enemy’s bayonets, making to attack the square on two sides. The two foremost ranks of the French were on the knee with bayonets to the front, presenting a deadly double row of steel. In rear the steady muskets of four standing ranks were levelled at the horsemen. The dragoons pressed on close up, and some were trying, in vain, to beat aside the bayonets before them, and make a gap through, when an accident at the critical moment gave the opportunity. A shot from the kneeling ranks, apparently fired unintentionally, as it is said, killed a horse, and caused it with its rider to fall forward, right across and on top of the bayonets. Thus a lane was unexpectedly laid open to the cavalry. They seized the chance instantly and crowded in through. The square was broken. It was cleft apart: its ranks were scattered and dispersed. All was over in a few moments. Within three minutes the entire battalion had been either cut down under the slaughtering swords of the dragoons or had been made prisoners.

Immediately on that another Hanoverian captain, Von Reitzenstein, came sweeping by with the second squadron, riding for the second French square. These met the charge with a bold front and rapid volley, but their moral had been shaken by the startling and horrible scene they had just beheld. The front face of the second square gave way as the horsemen got close, and four-fifths of that battalion were either sabred on the spot or made prisoners.

There was yet, near by, the third battalion in its square. Its numbers had been added to by such fugitive survivors from the first and second squares as had been able to reach the place and get inside. The third squadron of the Dragoons dealt with the third square in the same way, riding boldly at it, and breaking in with deadly results, as before.

How the Eagle of the 105th was saved—it was with the first battalion in the square first broken—is not on record. It did, however, somehow, evade capture—hidden hastily perhaps beneath the coat of somebody in the handful of men who got away in the mêlée. Only the broken Eagle-pole was left, to be picked up among the dead after the fight:

Described a British officer who went over the ground after the fight:

“The contest ended in a dreadful massacre of the French infantry. The 105th bravely stood their ground, but the ponderous weight of the heavy cavalry broke down all resistance; and arms lopped off, heads cloven to the spine, or gashes across the breast and shoulders showed the fearful encounter that had taken place.”

SPOILS TAKEN IN ANOTHER WAY

The third of the trophy Eagles paraded in London before the Prince Regent was that of Napoleon’s 39th of the Line. It had been picked up in the dried-up bed of the river Ceira, one of the tributaries of the Douro. Apparently the Eagle had been dropped, owing to the fall of its bearer during the night action of Foz d’Aronce on June 15, 1811, when Ney’s corps of Masséna’s army, then retreating from Torres Vedras, was roughly handled and driven across the river by Wellington’s Third and Light Divisions.

The fourth and fifth of the Eagles were found at Madrid on Wellington’s occupation of the city after Salamanca—stored away in the French arsenal and army dépôt there, to which uses the ancient Royal Palace of the Buen Retiro, just outside the walls of Madrid, had been converted.[28] Seventeen hundred men held the Retiro, and the approaches to the arsenal had been fortified by order of Napoleon, but the garrison surrendered without firing a shot. They gave up to the victors 180 brass cannon, 900 barrels of powder, 20,000 stand of arms, muskets and bayonets, together with the Eagles of the 13th and 51st of the Line, which had been laid up at the Retiro for safe custody while the two regiments were operating in a wild part of the country against the Spanish guerrillas.[29]

The last Eagles taken by Wellington in the Peninsular War came into our hands in the battles of the Pyrenees.[30] Neither of them is now in existence. One was taken by our 28th in the combat of the Pass of Maya. The 28th, supporting the 92nd Highlanders in the fighting, overwhelmed with a series of fierce volleys an unfortunate French regiment, which was afterwards discovered to be the French 28th—a curious coincidence. The Eagle of the 28th, the senior corps of its brigade, was found on the battlefield, and was brought to England and hung in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. It disappeared from there in circumstances already related. The second French Eagle was that of the 52nd of the Line, presented by Wellington, as has been told, to the Spanish Cortes. That also has since been entirely lost sight of.

NAPOLEON’S ORDER OF RECALL

This also may be added. Early in 1813 a special order was issued by Napoleon to the army in Spain requiring the Eagles of most of the regiments to be sent back to France. Napoleon at that time was in Paris, engaged in getting together a new Grand Army to replace that destroyed in Russia. The regiments in Spain, he said, would be so weakened by the intended withdrawal of their third, fourth, and fifth battalions (which he was recalling in order to send them to Germany for the coming campaign there), that the Eagles—in charge of the first battalions which were remaining in Spain—would be exposed to undue risk. “In future,” he wrote, “there will in Spain be only one Eagle to each brigade, that of the senior regiment of the brigade.” The Eagles withdrawn from Spain, added the order, would “in the end rejoin the battalions with the Grand Army in Germany, as soon as these had been reconstituted afresh as regiments, with a sufficient force of men to ensure the safety of the Eagles.” All the cavalry Eagles were recalled: “No regiment of Cavalry in Spain is to retain its Eagle. Those who have not done so are immediately to send theirs to the dépôt.”

It was due to this order mainly that at Vittoria, after the overwhelming rout of the French army, only one Eagle-pole—with its Eagle gone—fell into British hands, although there had been on the field upwards of 70,000 French soldiers (of whom 55,000 were infantry), and the French lost everything—in the words of one of their own generals (Gazan), “all their equipages, all their guns, all their treasure, all their stores, all their papers.”[31]

CHAPTER X
IN THE HOUR OF DARKEST DISASTER