SOME WHO HAD MET BEFORE
They knew, too, not a few of them, the stamp of men they were about to meet. Never before that day, of course, had Napoleon met British soldiers on the battlefield; but there were others present who had, and a good many of them.
Many a French regiment at Waterloo had old scores of their own to settle, past days to avenge. The 8th of the Line, the fate of whose “Eagle with the Golden Wreath” at Barrosa has been recorded, were on the field, and dipped their glittering new Eagle, received at the “Champ de Mai,” in salute as they passed Napoleon that morning. So too did the 82nd, whose former battalion Eagles from Martinique are at Chelsea now; the 13th of the Line and the 51st, who lost their regimental Eagles in the Retiro arsenal of Madrid; the 28th, who met their fate, and lost their Eagle under the bullets of the British 28th in the Pyrenees. Others were there who had fought against Wellington in Spain, and, more fortunate, had preserved their Eagles. Among these were the 47th, who on the battlefield at Barrosa lost and regained their Eagle; and the 105th, mindful yet of their terrible Salamanca experience of what dragoon swords in strong hands could do. The 105th were destined, soldiers and Eagle alike, to undergo a fate more fearful still, ere the sun should set that day.
Two of the regiments that paraded before Napoleon to meet the soldiers of Wellington had met under fire the sailors of Nelson at Trafalgar: the 2nd of the Line, now in Jerome Bonaparte’s division of Reille’s Army Corps, and the 16th, serving with the Sixth Corps. A third regiment, the 70th, which did duty as marines at Trafalgar, was with Grouchy, not many miles away; as was the 22nd of the Line, whose Eagle, taken at Salamanca, is at Chelsea Hospital, and the 34th, whose drum-major’s staff is to this day a prized trophy of the British 34th (now the First Battalion of the Border Regiment), won in Spain, when, as it so befell, two regiments bearing the same number crossed bayonets on the battlefield.[42]
The famous 84th of the Line were at Waterloo, with their proud legend, “Un contre dix,” restored at the “Champ de Mai,” flaunting proudly on their new silken flag as the Eagle bent in salute to Napoleon; also, the hardly less widely renowned 46th, the corps of the First Grenadier of France, La Tour d’Auvergne, whose name was called at the head of the list at that morning’s roll-call and answered with the customary answer, “Dead on the Field of Honour”; also, too, Napoleon’s former-time favourite, the 75th, mindful still on that last day of their glorious youth when “Le 75me arrive et bât l’ennemi”—a motto that an earlier colonel of the corps had proposed once to replace on the flag by “Veni, Vidi, Vici.”
The Old Guard paraded in their fighting kit, with, as usual, in their knapsacks their full-dress uniforms, carried in readiness to be put on for Napoleon’s triumphal entry into Brussels.
Drouet d’Erlon rode past at the head of the First Army Corps; Count of the Empire in virtue of his rank as a general; once upon a time the little son of the postmaster at Varennes, where Louis Seize and Marie Antoinette so pitifully ended their attempted flight, harsh old Drouet, ex-sergeant of Condé dragoons, from whom he inherited his talent for soldiering. General Reille led past the Second Corps. He, curiously, had had something of a naval past. He had hardly forgotten that other battle-day morning, when he galloped on to the field of Austerlitz, and reported himself to the Emperor as having come direct from Cadiz, put ashore from the doomed French fleet of Admiral Villeneuve just a week before it sailed to fight Trafalgar. Both Reille and his men, above all others, were burning with excitement and eagerness that day to get at the enemy. They had missed taking part either at Ligny or Quatre Bras, through contradictory orders which had kept them marching and counter-marching between the two battlefields; unable to reach either in time. Smarting under the reproach that they had been useless in the campaign, though the pick of the Line was in their ranks, the men one and all were burning to retrieve their reputation.
Count Lobau—he took his name from the island in the Danube which played so vital a part in the battle of Aspern—was at the head of the Sixth Corps, the third of Napoleon’s grand divisions of the army at Waterloo. Formerly General Mouton, Napoleon renamed him when he made him a Count for his skill and heroism at Aspern. “Mon Mouton,” said Napoleon of him once as he watched the general in action, “est un lion.”
NAPOLEON IN HIGH SPIRITS
Napoleon himself was in the highest spirits, full of pride and confidence. In that mood had he announced his intention of holding the review. There was no need to hurry, he said; Blücher and Wellington had been driven apart. The parade would pass the time while waiting for the soaked ground to get dry, and make it easier for the guns to move from point to point. And there was also this. The spectacle would have assuredly a disquieting effect on the Dutch and Belgians in Wellington’s army. Many of the men in front of him had served with the Eagles in former days: all stood nervously in awe, it was notorious, of the mighty name and reputation of Napoleon. Hesitating, as some were known to be, between their fears and their patriotism, the influence of the imposing spectacle might well—believed Napoleon—turn the scale and induce them to come over.