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.