The war drama of the Eagles

by Edward Fraser

The Last Attack and After: The Eagles of the Guard

THE EAGLES OF THE GUARD

In the third episode in the story of Waterloo we strike another note. How the Eagles of the Guard fared in the closing hour of the battle, when Napoleon staked his last desperate throw and lost—that final phase remains to tell.

Fourteen Eagles of the Guard were on the field. All came safely through the battle and survived the risks and perils of the night retreat that followed, to recross the frontier with the rallied remnants of the stricken host. Only three, however, are now in existence: one at the Invalides; the other two in private keeping in France. The remaining eleven were, some of them at any rate, destroyed by the officers on the final disbanding of the Grand Army, refusing to give them up to the emissaries of the Bourbon régime sent to receive them for conveyance to Vincennes, where as many as could be got hold of among the regimental Eagles underwent their fate by fire.

Five Eagles went forward in the great last-hope attack of the Guard against the centre of Wellington’s position, the overthrow of which cost Napoleon the battle. They were the Eagles of the 3rd and 4th Grenadiers of the Guard, and of three regiments of the Chasseurs of the Guard, the 1st, 3rd, and 4th. All five are among those that have disappeared since Waterloo.

Close beside the Eagle of the 3rd Grenadiers it was that Marshal Ney fought so heroically, as he led in person the historic grand attack of the Imperial Guard. His fifth horse was shot under Ney in the advance, and he then drew his sword and strode forward on foot alongside the Eagle-bearer. So he led until the column reeled back and broke under the sudden attack of the British Guards across the crest-line of the slope. At that moment Ney lost his footing, and fell in the confusion. “He disappeared,” says a French officer, “just at the moment that the Guard gave way. But he was up again in a moment, and with voice and gesture strove his hardest to rally them.” It was to no purpose. The great column wavered, swayed, and then fell apart in disorder. “Mitraillée, fusillée, reduit à quinze ou seize cent hommes, la Garde recule!” Ney was swept off his feet in the retreat, and borne backwards; carried away in the rush of the fugitives, struggling helplessly in the crowd. “Bathed in perspiration, his eyes blazing with indignation, foaming at the mouth, his uniform torn open, one of his epaulets cut away by a sabre-slash, his star of the Legion of Honour dented by a bullet, bleeding, muddy, heroic, holding a broken sword in his hand, he shouted to the men, ‘See how a Marshal of France dies on the battlefield!’ But it was in vain: he did not die.”

NEY’S LAST HEROIC EFFORT

Then Ney, mounting a trooper’s horse, made for a regiment near, whose men were falling back in fair order, with their Eagle borne defiantly in their midst—the 8th of the Line. With them was a battalion of the 95th, also displaying their Eagle gallantly as they, too, tried to withdraw in regular formation. Ney made them face about, and put himself at their head. He appealed to them in the words he had used just before, when trying to rally the Guard: “Suivez moi, camarades. Je vais vous montrer comment meurt un Maréchal de France sur le champ de bataille!” The men turned to face the enemy, with a shout of “Vive le Maréchal Ney!” They charged forward towards where some of the red-coats of Kempt’s and Pack’s infantry showed themselves in the van of the pursuers. But at the same instant some horsemen of a Prussian hussar regiment dashed at them at a gallop. The sight of the horsemen was too much for their shattered nerves. They turned their backs and ran off panic-stricken. Ney’s last rallied band broke and fled, with cries of “Sauve qui peut!”

Yet not quite all. A small band of the men of the 8th kept round their Eagle, and retired in order, still holding it up. Chef de Bataillon Rullière, of the 95th, snatched the Eagle of that regiment from its bearer, broke the staff, and carried off the Eagle concealed under his coat.

Ney’s sixth horse was shot under him as the men turned. Again getting to his feet he staggered on in the midst of the crowd of fugitives until he at last found his way into one of the rallying squares formed in rear by some of the survivors of the Guard. There now, beside the Eagle of the 4th Chasseurs of the Guard, Ney made his last stand at Waterloo—at bay, desperate. He fought in the square, “shoulder to shoulder with the rest, shooting and thrusting with a musket and bayonet he got hold of,” as the square slowly made its retreat off the field, until in the darkness it broke up, and the men dispersed. The devotion of a mounted officer who met the marshal on foot, utterly worn out and by himself, and gave up his horse to him, enabled Ney in the end to reach a place of safety.

Napoleon was watching the Second Column of the Guard at the moment of its disaster. How the overwhelming catastrophe burst on his gaze, abruptly and all unexpectedly, makes one of the most dramatic of historic scenes. At that moment Napoleon was about to lead in person the reserve of the Guard, three battalions which he had retained near him throughout, to reinforce the fighting line.

“While they were being marshalled for the attack—one battalion deployed, with a battalion in close column on either side—he kept his glass turned upon the conflict in which he intended to bear a part.

“Suddenly his hand fell.

NAPOLEON IS HORROR-STRICKEN

“‘Mais ils sont mêlée!’ he ejaculated in a tone of horror, his voice hollow and quavering. He addressed his aide de camp, Count Flahault, who was under no illusion as to what troops were meant. The sun had just set. There was no radiance to prevent all men seeing what was going on out there in the north-west.”

Immediately on that followed the general collapse: the almost instantaneous break up of the French army all along the line.

“First the trampled corn in rear was sprinkled, then it was covered, with a confused mass of men moving south; behind and among them the sabres of Vivian’s hussars and Vandeleur’s dragoons rose and fell, hacking and hewing on every side.

“‘La Garde recule!’ sounded like a sob in the motionless ranks of the Old Guard (the three battalions near Napoleon), and sped with astonishing swiftness to every part of the field. ‘La Garde recule!’ cried the men of Allix, Donzelot, and Marcognet, and began to melt away from the vantage ground they had recently so nobly won. ‘La Garde recule!’ whispered Reille’s columns, still unbroken on the left. Far on the right, Durutte’s battalions, suddenly confronted by the heads of Ziethen’s columns, where they had been told to look for Grouchy’s, caught up the word. Next, the uneasy murmur, ‘Nous sommes trahis!’ was heard—for was there not treason? Had not General Bourmont and his staff, and other officers, openly gone over to the enemy? ‘La Garde recule!’ Oh fatal cry! soon swelling into one still more dreadful—last tocsin of the soldier’s agony—‘Sauve qui peut!’ Papelotte and La Haye were abandoned, and from the east, as already from the west, the wreck of the Last Army rolled towards the Charleroi road.”

The Eagle that was close beside Napoleon at that most awful moment of his life, as he saw his Guard break and fall back in confusion, is at the Invalides now. It is the Eagle of the 2nd Grenadiers of the Guard; one of the three reserve battalions that were forming up to go forward at the moment of the catastrophe.

WATERLOO

THE FINAL PHASE

Sketch Plan to show the attack and the defeat of the columns of the Guard.

Napoleon watched the panic begin to spread over the field for a brief moment. Then he roused himself to try to meet the impending crash. First he formed the Guard battalions nearest him into square. Then he sent off his last remaining gallopers, in the futile hope that it might be possible to rally the men of the nearest divisions to him before they had time to scatter. But the effort was hopeless: it was beyond possibility to stem the raging torrent of frantic soldiers, now in full flight on every side, racing past in the direction of Jemmapes. The lie that he had sent round just before the Guard started on its charge, that Grouchy had arrived, recoiled on his own head. The panic-stricken soldiers would not be stopped. “They had been told that Grouchy had arrived. They had found instead Ziethen’s terrible Prussians. Now they would listen to nothing. The fugitives streamed past, rushing on and bellowing as they went that they had been betrayed and that all was lost!”

NAPOLEON SHELTERS IN A SQUARE

After that Napoleon rode into the nearest square, and took shelter in its midst. It was that of the Second Battalion of the 2nd Chasseurs of the Guard. The square moved off at once towards La Belle Alliance, and, turning there into the Charleroi road, took its way back towards Rossomme, half a mile in rear, where the two battalions of the 1st and 2nd Grenadiers of the Old Guard had remained all day.

At Rossomme Napoleon passed to the square of the First Battalion of the 1st Grenadiers of the Old Guard. The two battalions of the Guard there had already formed in squares of their own accord, with their Eagles held on high in their midst. They were joined by the 1st Chasseurs of the Guard, coming up from Caillou, a short distance in rear. The three squares held their ground firmly, beating off the headmost of the Prussian attacks. They remained halted until, on some of the Prussian artillery nearing the place, Napoleon himself gave the order to move away in retreat.

At a slow step, the drums rolling out the stately “Grenadier’s March,” sullen and defiant, the Old Guard, with Napoleon in the midst of the square of the 1st Grenadiers, set forth on their last journey. Their Eagle was still borne on high in their midst—close beside Napoleon. It is the Eagle that is now treasured in Paris by the descendants of General Petit, the commander of the Grenadiers at Waterloo—the Eagle of the Adieu of Fontainebleau; the same Eagle that led the Guard at Austerlitz and Jena, at Eylau and Friedland, at Wagram, and throughout all the horrors of the retreat from Moscow. It escorted Napoleon off the field after Waterloo.

THE SQUARE OF THE OLD GUARD AT BAY AFTER WATERLOO.

From the picture by H. Bellangé.

THE OLD GUARD MARCH AWAY

The Grenadiers of the Guard escorted Napoleon for four miles from the battlefield, beating back repeated efforts that were made by Prussian cavalry to break up their ranks. To maintain their formation to the last was their only hope of safety; and terrible were the measures they took to safeguard themselves and keep their ranks intact. Friend or foe who attempted to get in among them was mercilessly shot down. “Nous tirons,” describes General Petit, “sur tout ce qui presentaient, amis et ennemis, de peur de laisser entrer les uns avec les autres.” They took their way along the Charleroi road; the 2nd Grenadiers marching on the chaussée itself, the 1st Grenadiers to the left of the road. With marvellous calmness and cool courage did the veterans proceed on their way. “Every few minutes they stopped to rectify the alignment of the faces of the square, and to keep off pursuit by means of rapid and well-sustained musketry.”

Erckmann-Chatrian’s soldier of the 25th, who was amongst the fugitives streaming across country on either side of the high-road, tells how he heard from afar the stately drum-beat of their march. “In the distance La Grenadière sounded like an alarm-bell in the midst of a conflagration. Yet, indeed, this was much more terrible—it was the last drum-beat of France! This rolling of the drums of the Old Guard sounding forth in the midst of disaster had in it something infinitely pathetic as well as terrible.”

And of the scene with Napoleon in the square of the Grenadiers as it tramped its way along, we have this from Thiers: “With sombre but calm countenance, he rode in the centre of the square, his far-seeing glance as it were probing futurity and realising that more than a battle had been lost that day. He only interrupted his gloomy meditations to inquire now and again for his lieutenants, some of whom were among the wounded near him. The soldiers all round seemed stupefied by the disaster. The men moved stolidly on, almost without a word to one another. Napoleon alone seemed to be able to speak; occasionally addressing a few words to the Major-General (Soult), or to his brother Jerome, who rode beside him. Now and again, when harassed by the Prussian squadrons, the square would halt, and the side that was attacked fired on the assailants, after which the sad and silent march was resumed.”

Throughout the march, keeping their position at a little distance from the squares of the Grenadiers, rode the Horse-Grenadiers and the Mounted Chasseurs of the Guard. One of the finest displays of soldierly endurance ever made, perhaps, was that given by the Horse-Grenadiers of the Guard as the magnificent regiment left the field, “moving at a walk, in close columns and in perfect order; as if disdaining to allow itself to be contaminated by the confusion that prevailed around it.” So describes a British officer who saw them ride away. They beat off all attacks and kept steadily and compactly together. “They literally walked from the field in the most orderly manner, moving majestically along, with their Eagle in their midst, as though merely marching to take up their ground for a field-day.” This, further, is what a British officer of Light Dragoons, who came up with them in the pursuit, says of their heroic demeanour: “Seeing the men of our brigade approach, they halted, formed line, and fired a volley—a rare thing for dragoons—and waited a few minutes, as much as to say, ‘We are ready to receive your charge if you are so disposed’; then finding we did not advance, they again continued their slow retreat.”

A FAMOUS EAGLE NOW IN FRANCE

The Eagle of the Horse-Grenadiers has disappeared since Waterloo: that of the Mounted Chasseurs of the Guard is in existence, in France, in the custody of a member of the Bonaparte family. It was preserved by General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment, who commanded the Chasseurs at Waterloo. Carried in safety to France, the Eagle was then taken to America, when the General, on whose head a price had been placed, escaped across the Atlantic in the autumn of 1815. He presented it later to Joseph Bonaparte, in the possession of whose representatives the Eagle is now. It still bears attached to the staff the green silk guidon-shaped flag, inscribed “Chasseurs de la Garde,” and embroidered with gold and silver laurel-leaves, which it bore at Waterloo.

Napoleon quitted the square of Grenadiers about two miles from Jemmapes. By that time the Prussians had ceased their attacks on the Guard for easier prey elsewhere. He rode on at a little distance ahead; the battalions of the Guard at the same time re-forming into columns of march. They kept with the Emperor until the neighbourhood of Jemmapes was reached. There Napoleon and Soult and the others quitted the road, betaking themselves across the fields to make their way as best they could to Charleroi, whence Napoleon was able to continue his flight in a post-chaise.

Yet another of the Waterloo Eagles of the Guard with a story to be told of it was that of the 2nd Chasseurs—one of the Eagles that have now disappeared. How the Eagle was saved from capture, and finally brought through to safety, recalls a remarkable and dramatic incident of the battle.

The 2nd Chasseurs was one of the twelve battalions of the Young Guard detached by Napoleon late in the afternoon to assist General Lobau and the Sixth Army Corps to keep off the Prussian flank attack. Between them they saved the army from an even worse catastrophe than that which actually befell Napoleon at Waterloo—from having to surrender. For nearly an hour after the rout had become general, the Sixth Corps, and the battalions of the Young Guard assisting it, by their heroic resistance, prevented the Prussians from breaking in on the only line of retreat open to the defeated army, and enabled Napoleon to get clear away.

TO SAVE THE REST OF THE ARMY

“Lobau,” to quote the words of a modern military writer, “recognised to the full that he alone interposed between the Prussians and the French line of retreat. If he failed, retreat would be cut off, and the army taken in rear as well as in front and flank; not a man would get away. The fate of the Army, the Emperor, of France, rested on Lobau at the supreme moment, and splendidly he did his duty. Dusk had given way to dark, only illuminated by the blazing ruins of Planchenoit, before Lobau retired, but by that time the rear of the flying army had cleared the point of peril, and comparative safety was assured. Still steady, and in good order, he took post on the high-road to close the line of flight and block pursuit, and the gallant remnant of the Sixth Corps and the Young Guard had to bear the full fury of the combined advance of the enemy. Nothing at Waterloo can surpass for coolness, courage, and determination the heroic resistance of Lobau.”

It was in the village of Planchenoit that the 2nd Chasseurs fought side by side with the other battalions of the Guard in that quarter under the leadership of General Pelet, to whom Napoleon had specially entrusted the defence of the post. Planchenoit was defended foot by foot at the point of the bayonet against ever-increasing numbers of the Prussians. The 2nd Chasseurs were the last troops of all to quit, after contesting the village house by house, cottage by cottage, fighting the Prussians man to man among the bushes and walls of the gardens, and finally in the churchyard, where they made their last stand at bay, desperately combating among the tombstones. Fresh Prussians kept coming up to join in the attack, but the 2nd Chasseurs, their Eagle defiantly displayed in the midst of the battling throng, resisted stubbornly. When at the last they drew off, the whole of Planchenoit was a mass of flames, blazing from end to end.

There remained a rough half-mile of open ground before they could get to the Charleroi road—the line of retreat along which, by that time, a large proportion of the fugitives from the main army had got away. The 2nd Chasseurs, in rear of all, as they left their last shelter in Planchenoit and were beyond the churchyard walls, were swept down on by a furious rush of Prussian cavalry, and half the regiment was cut to pieces. The moon was rising by that time, and the Prussians had sufficient light for their deadly work.

The survivors, broken up, and thrown in irremediable disorder, could after that only run for their lives. But they still bore their Eagle among them. It was draped under a black cloth. Somebody, in some house in the village, as they were falling back to the churchyard, had, it would appear, caught up a strip of crape or black cloth, and hastily wrapped it round the Eagle to conceal it in that way from hostile eyes. The Eagle-bearer refused to break the Eagle from the staff, and hide it under his coat, as others had done elsewhere with other Eagles.

With the Eagle so covered, a small party of devoted soldiers were accompanying their standard as the survivors of the Prussian charge hastened towards the Charleroi road, when there came yet another attack from the Prussian horse, who charged among them and trampled them down as the troopers slashed mercilessly at the fugitives. At that moment the Eagle and its guardians found themselves near the General. They were isolated and cut off in the midst of the wild mêlée. Pelet caught sight of them, desperately striving to protect the Eagle-bearer, who was frantically clutching at the Eagle-staff as he held on to it and tried to get through.

“SAVE YOUR EAGLE OR DIE ROUND IT!”

Pelet made for the group, shouting at the top of his voice: “Rally, Chasseurs! Rally on me! Save your Eagle or die round it!” (“A moi, Chasseurs! A moi! Sauvons l’Aigle ou mourons autour d’elle!”)

In the midst of the frenzied tumult his cry for help was somehow heard by the men ahead. They turned back in their flight and fought their way to the threatened Eagle. Others pressed round to join them, until by degrees was formed a compact body between two and three hundred in number, who with their bayonets kept the cavalry back as they fought their way towards the high-road step by step.

More than once they had to halt and face about, as the Prussian horsemen in their repeated attempts to capture the Eagle circled round them, and dashed in at them again and again, but, “forming what is usually termed a rallying square, and lowering their bayonets, they succeeded in repulsing the charges of the cavalry.” At one point in the retreat “some guns were brought to bear upon them, and subsequently a brisk fire of musketry; but notwithstanding the awful sacrifice which was thus offered up in defence of their precious charge, they succeeded in reaching the main line of retreat, and saved alike the Eagle and the Honour of the Regiment.”

* * * * *

The Eagles of the Guard all came safely through the turmoil and horrors of the night of the rout after Waterloo. And—it seems incredible, but the fact is vouched for by several officers—so did the other Eagles of the army. All at Waterloo, it is declared, were brought back to France, except the two taken from the ill-fated 45th and the 105th of the Line by the Scots Greys and the Royals. Those two only remained as trophies in the hands of the victors. General Charras, whose good faith we have no right to impugn, declares the fact in explicit language, and another officer relates how, on the day after the battle, when the rallied remains of the army assembled at Phillippeville and Maubeuge, “the soldiers wept tears of joy at learning how many of their Eagles had been saved.”

“MAKE WAY FOR THE EAGLE!”

Says General Charras, describing how the Eagles were saved that night: “Two standards had been lost on the battlefield. There was none other lost. In the crowd of disbanded horsemen and foot-soldiers, marching and running pell-mell, some still armed, others having thrown away or broken their sabres and guns under the impulse of rage, of despair, of terror, there were to be seen, by the pale light of the moon, little groups of officers of every grade, and of soldiers, spontaneously collected round the standard of each regiment, and advancing sabre in hand, bayonet on the gun, resolute and imperturbable in the midst of the general disorder. ‘Place au drapeau!’ cried they when the rout arrested their march, and this cry always sufficed to cause the very men who had become deaf to every word of command and to all discipline to stand aside before them and open a passage. They had often to endure peril, they had often to repulse the enemy’s attacks, but they saved their conquered flags from the attempts and hands of the conqueror.”

Grouchy also saved all his Eagles—although one had its adventures in the attack on Wavre, and was nearly lost to the Prussians. The story this time is not exactly creditable to some of those concerned; but the regiment in question, it must be said, had but few old soldiers in its ranks, having been made up almost entirely of recently levied and half-trained conscripts. Also, it had just previously been very roughly handled by the Prussians on the battlefield of Ligny. There, indeed, it had been charged by cavalry, and had suffered severely. The unfortunate regiment was the 70th of the Line.

In Grouchy’s fighting at Wavre they were in Vandamme’s Division, which had orders to carry the bridge over the Dyle and storm the town, held by the Prussians in considerable force. To give the 70th a chance of getting their revenge for Ligny, and winning back the old good name of the regiment, Vandamme specially chose them for the post of honour in the attack; appointing the 70th to lead the van in the preliminary storming of the bridge. They led the attack, dashing forward bravely enough at the outset, and got halfway across. Then they stopped short, their ranks decimated by the furious fire with which the Prussians received them from the houses on the opposite bank, hesitated, went on a few paces, stopped again, and finally ran back in panic.

SAVED BY ANOTHER REGIMENT

The sight of the sudden rout maddened their leader, Colonel Maury. Stooping from his charger, he snatched hold of the Eagle from its bearer, and held it up before the men. “What! you scoundrels! You dishonoured me two days ago; you are again disgracing me to-day! Forward! Follow me!” (“Comment, canaille! Vous m’avez deshonoré avant-hier, et vous recidiviez aujourdhui! En avant! Suivez moi!”) Brandishing the Eagle the colonel turned his horse to ride back across the bridge. The drums beat the charge: the regiment followed. But all was to no purpose. As fate willed it, the gallant colonel fell, shot dead before he could get across, and at the sight of his fall panic again seized the regiment. They ran wildly back again, leaving the dead colonel’s body and the Eagle lying halfway across the bridge. The Eagle was rescued and brought back by the men of another regiment. Had it not been for the sudden rush forward of the leading company of the 22nd of the Line, the regiment supporting the 70th in the attack, the Eagle would have been taken. Several Prussian soldiers had indeed already run forward to pick it up, and their leader was in the act of doing so when the foremost of the rescuers arrived, beat back the Prussians, and recovered the fallen Eagle.

The failure of this one regiment at Wavre is the only recorded instance of bad behaviour before the enemy in the Waterloo campaign. And for it too, in view of the composition of the regiment in question, some allowance may surely be made.