The Eagle of the Empire: A Story of Waterloo

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

How well Marteau remembered that frightful conflict. The Fifth-of-the-Line had not waited to be attacked. It had gone forward. The Colonel had been shot down. Officer after officer had fallen. The advancing line had wavered, hesitated, halted. The Eagle-bearer fell. Eager hands caught the staff. The Austrian fire was concentrated upon it. The color guard was shot to pieces. The Eagle itself had the tip of its right wing shot away. Mortal men could do no more. The regiment began to give back.

It was Marteau who sprang to the front, he and young Pierre, who had attached himself to the officer in a sort of unofficial way. It was Marteau who seized the Eagle; it was he who rallied the line. The new men formed up like veterans, the old men settled in their places, cool and ready. They returned the Austrian fire, they checked the Austrian advance, they stood ready while the troops behind them ran for their lives. Napoleon, whose eye nothing escaped, saw it all. He even recognized Marteau carrying the Eagle.

The Fifth-of-the-Line made good that defense until the time came for the retreat. Then it retired slowly, fighting every step of the way down the low hill to the bridge. The men dropped by scores. The Austrians, seeing victory in reach, pressed closer. A charge at the last minute by the cuirassiers of the Emperor Francis' guard almost completed the annihilation of the first battalion of the regiment. The survivors sought to form a square, under a withering gun fire, to meet the uplifted sabers of the heavy cavalry. There were not enough of them left. They were ridden down. Two hundred and fifty of the four hundred who went into that fight lay dead on that field. Of the survivors scarce a handful got across the river. Some of the unhurt men, disdaining quarter and unable to fly, fought until they fell. The wounded, of whom there were many, were all captured out of hand.

Marteau, with the Eagle, had stood nearest the enemy. They had swarmed about him at last. He found himself alone, save for the boy, Pierre. He could see the red-faced, excited, shouting, yelling, passion-animated Austrian soldiers crowding upon him. His sword was broken, his pistols empty and gone. He was defenseless. Retreat was cut off. The Eagle staff had been shot away. The flag torn to pieces. Hands were stretched out to seize it. He could not escape with it, yet it must not fall to the enemy. It was the tradition of the service that the Eagles were to be preserved at all hazards—not the flag, that was a mere perishable adjunct to the Eagle, but the Eagle itself. The river ran but a few feet away. Thrusting aside the nearest Austrian with the stump of his blade, Marteau cleared a path for a second, and into the swift deep waters he hurled the sacred emblem.

He, at least, he thought swiftly, had a right to dispose of it thus, for out of the waters of the Elster he had brought it, so into the waters of the Aube he threw it.

With cries of rage, for the Eagle was the most precious spoil of war, and the regiment or the officer seizing it was distinguished above all others, the Austrians would have cut him down where he stood with arms crossed, facing the enemy, but officers who had ridden up had seen the exploit and had interfered. He had been made a prisoner and Pierre with him. He just had time to whisper to the boy to mark well the spot where the Eagle had disappeared in the waters before they marched away.

While under guard with other prisoners at Salzburg he had heard the story of the end. How Napoleon, trusting the defense of Paris to Marmont and Mortier, had resolved on the bold move of cutting the communications of the allies with his little army, and how the allies had decided to disregard their rear and march on Paris; how Marmont and Mortier had battled for the capital, how the Emperor, hearing of their straits, had begun that mad march toward his beloved city; how he had ordered every soldier that could be reached to march in that direction; how he had stopped at a wayside inn one night for a few hours' rest, after a furious day's ride, only to be told that Marmont and Mortier had gone over to the enemy, that Paris was lost!

The prisoners had learned how the Emperor, not yet despairing, had striven to quicken the spirits of his marshals and soldiers for a last try; how the marshals and great officers had failed him. They had all heard of those lonely hours at Fontainebleau, of the farewell to the Guard, of the kiss on the Eagle, which he surrendered to General Petit, of the abdication, of the exile to Elba, of the restoration of King Louis.

It had made Marteau ill, frightfully so, and but for the tender nursing and loving care of young Pierre he had died. The lad had been devotion itself, but Marteau missed more than anything else the companionship, the sage advice, the bon camaraderie of old Bullet-Stopper. He had never seen him or heard from him after that day at the bridge-head at Arcis. Where was he now?

Oh, yes, those days and their tidings would never be forgot. They all came back to the young officer, as with his humble but devoted companion he stood there on the heights above Grenoble looking at the white flag.