That the great sacrifice had not been made in vain, was speedily apparent. In the course of the morning after the bonfire, a little before noon on Thursday, March 31, within two hours of the entry into Paris of the vanguard of the Allied armies, a Russian aide de camp presented himself at the Invalides, and, in the name of the Allied sovereigns, demanded a statement of the trophies kept there. The officer came up on horseback, accompanied by a mounted man of the National Guard, and an armed escort of Russian dragoons. The main gate was open as usual, and the Russian officer rode through without taking notice of the gate-sentry’s challenge. He was only stopped by a rush of the pensioners’ day-guard, called out by the sentry’s shout of alarm—“Aux armes!” The guard turned out and faced the aide de camp with lowered halberds. The Russian colonel protested, but the officer on duty refused to let him pass without orders from his own chief, and General Darnaud, the Lieutenant-Governor, was sent for. That officer came, and the Russian dismounted and explained his mission. He had orders, he said, to “take cognisance” of the trophies of the Invalides. General Darnaud replied bluntly: “Very good, I will permit you to visit the Hôtel. Come with me!” The general added: “As to the trophies, sir, we have dealt with them according to the laws of war!” “On en avait agi suivant les lois de guerre!” were his words. The Russian did not seem to grasp the general’s meaning, and stood still for a moment, staring blankly at him. On that, Madame Darnaud, the Lieutenant-Governor’s wife, who had followed into the courtyard immediately after her husband, interposed. She addressed the officer, speaking volubly and angrily, but only to draw down on herself from the Russian the uncivil rejoinder that he had not come there to talk to a woman! After that, the general, accompanied by some of the men of the main guard with shouldered halberds, formally conducted the officer inside the Invalides, the party taking their way along the colonnade round the Court of Honour, in the midst of which could be seen the wide burnt-out space where the fire had been, the pungent smell of the fumes from which still hung about the place, and so into the Chapel of St. Louis. There the scene that met the Russian aide de camp’s eyes seemed to stagger him: bare blank walls, the gallery stripped and defaced; with empty and broken metal sockets here and there to show where the flags had been fastened up. The interior had been entirely cleared from end to end along the sides. It was absolutely unrecognisable to any who had seen it before. The Russian officer, who had visited the Invalides six or seven years previously, after Tilsit, could only gaze round dumbly, utterly taken aback. He muttered something, but did not speak aloud. Then, glaring round savagely into the eyes of those about him, he turned away abruptly, and was conducted to the Outer Court, where he remounted his horse, and rode off hastily in the direction whence he had come.
THE WALLS STRIPPED AND BARE
All Napoleon’s trophies, however, did not perish at the Invalides. Some of the Grand Army’s captured flags, as it so chanced, escaped destruction on that night, and are at the Invalides now. They are in the Chapel and in the Salle Turenne, besides half a hundred in the Crypt, grouped round Napoleon’s tomb. The forty-five Austrian flags taken at Ulm are beside Napoleon’s tomb, with nine other flags. Presented by the Emperor to the Senate, as has been told, the Ulm trophies, during the night of March 30, were hastily taken down from where they had been hung in the Grand Salon for the past nine years, and hidden in a vault below. They made a second public appearance on the occasion of Napoleon’s funeral at the Invalides in 1840, when they were placed at the head of the coffin. They have ever since been kept beside the tomb.
The Austerlitz trophies met another fate. Kept at Notre Dame, they disappeared mysteriously from there in the early morning of the day of the entry of the Allies into Paris. At three in the morning of March 31 an urgent message from the Prefect of the Seine was delivered at Notre Dame, calling on the Cathedral authorities to take down and conceal the Austerlitz trophies at once. The Chapter met hastily in the Archbishop’s room, and the flags were all down within half an hour. They have never been seen since, nor was their fate ever accounted for.
HOW FIFTY-ONE FLAGS WERE SAVED
At the Luxembourg Palace were displayed 110 trophies, the spoils of the Eagles, won from all the nations of Europe and presented to the Corps Legislatif by Napoleon. They were safely removed on the night of March 30, and were hidden securely. Brought out and set up again a year later, on Napoleon’s return from Elba, the authorities forgot about hiding them again in the confusion after Waterloo. As the result more than half of them are now in Berlin. Blücher sent a party of staff officers to seize the entire collection, but a sharp-witted functionary hoodwinked the Prussians on their arrival. They went back to get written orders, and before they returned, as many as possible of the trophies had been pulled down and got out of the way. One of the attendants managed the affair on his own initiative, a hall-porter named Mathieu. He was able to save and hide as many as fifty-one of the flags, and they have since been forwarded to the Invalides. The other fifty-nine trophies the Prussians seized and carried off. Two Austrian standards taken by Napoleon at Marengo escaped destruction by having been previously lent from the Invalides to an artist, Charles Vernet, for a battle-picture he had been commissioned to paint for Napoleon. They were in Vernet’s studio in March 1814. His son, Horace Vernet, returned them in later days to the Invalides, where they now are.
In addition, it would seem, at least a moiety of the Invalides trophies were kept back at the last moment by some of the veterans themselves. Several of the old soldiers, it would appear, after stripping down the flags from the walls, instead of carrying all out into the courtyard to the bonfire, retained and hid a few of them on their own account, to smuggle them outside afterwards and keep them in concealment.[37]
CHAPTER XII
THE EAGLES OF THE LAST ARMY
The Eagles came back to France with the return of Napoleon from Elba; to lead the last Army to the campaign of the Hundred Days.
They “flew from steeple to steeple across France,” in Napoleon’s expressive phrase, “from the shores of Fréjus until they alighted on the towers of Notre Dame.” The enthusiasm that greeted their reappearance spread like wild-fire; it blazed up like an exploding magazine. The rapturous acclamation and enthusiasm with which the Eagles were welcomed back was the measure of the prevailing discontent and resentment among the soldiers at the harsh and unworthy treatment they had received during the ten months of the restored régime.