“I did not see the Eagle and Colour (for there were two Colours, but only one with an Eagle) until we had been probably five or six minutes engaged. It must, I should think, have been originally about the centre of the column, and got uncovered from the change of direction. When I first saw it, it was perhaps about forty yards to my left, and a little in my front. The officer who carried it, and his companions, were moving with their backs towards me, and endeavouring to force their way through the crowd.
“I gave the order to my squadron, ‘Right shoulders forward! Attack the Colour!’ leading direct on the point myself. On reaching it I ran my sword into the officer’s right side, a little above the hip-joint. He was a little to my left side, and he fell to that side, with the Eagle across my horse’s head. I tried to catch it with my left hand, but could only touch the fringe of the flag; and it is probable it would have fallen to the ground, had it not been prevented by the neck of Corporal Styles’ horse, who came close up on my left at the instant, and against which it fell. Corporal Styles was standard-coverer: his post was immediately behind me, and his duty to follow wherever I led.
“When I first saw the Eagle, I gave the order ‘Right shoulders forward! Attack the Colour!’ and on running the officer through the body I called out twice together, ‘Secure the Colour! Secure the Colour! It belongs to me!’ This order was addressed to some men close to me, of whom Corporal Styles was one.
“On taking up the Eagle I endeavoured to break the Eagle off the pole, with the intention of putting it into the breast of my coat, but I could not break it. Corporal Styles said, ‘Pray, sir, do not break it,’ on which I replied, ‘Very well. Carry it to the rear as fast as you can. It belongs to me!’”
Taking hold of the Eagle, Corporal Styles turned away. He had a fight to get through with it, and had, we are told, literally to cut his way back to safety.
Captain Clark-Kennedy, who received two wounds and had two horses killed under him, was given the C.B. He was granted later, as an augmentation to his family arms, the representation of a Napoleonic Eagle and flag; with for crest a “demi-dragoon holding a flag with an Eagle on it.” Corporal Styles was appointed to an ensigncy in the West India Regiment. The Royal Dragoons wear the device of a Napoleonic Eagle as collar-badge, and bear an Eagle embroidered on their standard.
WHERE ANOTHER FLAG WAS FOUND
As with the 45th, so with the 105th—both battalions of each regiment lost their colours; the regimental Eagle and the “fanion” of the second battalion. The “fanion” of the 105th, described as “a dark blue silken flag, with on it the words ‘105me Régiment d’Infanterie de Ligne,’” came into British possession in a manner that is not clear. It was not taken in fight by the Royals. Was it picked up on the field after the battle by some camp-follower and sold? Its existence and whereabouts remained unknown until some twenty-four years afterwards. As it happened, curiously, General Clark-Kennedy, as he then was, himself lighted upon it by chance, hanging in the hall of Sir Walter Scott’s home at Abbotsford. How it got there, in spite of all inquiries, the general was unable to discover.
Two other Eagles, it would appear, had adventures at Waterloo.
One, according to an unconfirmed story, was taken and lost by the Inniskillings, who charged the 54th and 55th of the Line, stationed at the rear of Bourgeois’ Brigade, just after the Royals attacked the leading battalion of that column. A trooper named Penfold claimed to have taken the Eagle of one of the two regiments. “After we charged,” he said, “I saw an Eagle which I rode up to, and seized hold of it. The man who bore it would not give it up, and I dragged him along by it for a considerable distance. Then the pole broke about the middle, and I carried off the Eagle. Immediately after that I saw a comrade, Hassard, in difficulties, and, giving the Eagle to a young soldier of the Inniskillings, I went to his aid. The Eagle got dropped and lost.”