Napoleon quitted the square of Grenadiers about two miles from Jemmapes. By that time the Prussians had ceased their attacks on the Guard for easier prey elsewhere. He rode on at a little distance ahead; the battalions of the Guard at the same time re-forming into columns of march. They kept with the Emperor until the neighbourhood of Jemmapes was reached. There Napoleon and Soult and the others quitted the road, betaking themselves across the fields to make their way as best they could to Charleroi, whence Napoleon was able to continue his flight in a post-chaise.
Yet another of the Waterloo Eagles of the Guard with a story to be told of it was that of the 2nd Chasseurs—one of the Eagles that have now disappeared. How the Eagle was saved from capture, and finally brought through to safety, recalls a remarkable and dramatic incident of the battle.
The 2nd Chasseurs was one of the twelve battalions of the Young Guard detached by Napoleon late in the afternoon to assist General Lobau and the Sixth Army Corps to keep off the Prussian flank attack. Between them they saved the army from an even worse catastrophe than that which actually befell Napoleon at Waterloo—from having to surrender. For nearly an hour after the rout had become general, the Sixth Corps, and the battalions of the Young Guard assisting it, by their heroic resistance, prevented the Prussians from breaking in on the only line of retreat open to the defeated army, and enabled Napoleon to get clear away.
TO SAVE THE REST OF THE ARMY
“Lobau,” to quote the words of a modern military writer, “recognised to the full that he alone interposed between the Prussians and the French line of retreat. If he failed, retreat would be cut off, and the army taken in rear as well as in front and flank; not a man would get away. The fate of the Army, the Emperor, of France, rested on Lobau at the supreme moment, and splendidly he did his duty. Dusk had given way to dark, only illuminated by the blazing ruins of Planchenoit, before Lobau retired, but by that time the rear of the flying army had cleared the point of peril, and comparative safety was assured. Still steady, and in good order, he took post on the high-road to close the line of flight and block pursuit, and the gallant remnant of the Sixth Corps and the Young Guard had to bear the full fury of the combined advance of the enemy. Nothing at Waterloo can surpass for coolness, courage, and determination the heroic resistance of Lobau.”
It was in the village of Planchenoit that the 2nd Chasseurs fought side by side with the other battalions of the Guard in that quarter under the leadership of General Pelet, to whom Napoleon had specially entrusted the defence of the post. Planchenoit was defended foot by foot at the point of the bayonet against ever-increasing numbers of the Prussians. The 2nd Chasseurs were the last troops of all to quit, after contesting the village house by house, cottage by cottage, fighting the Prussians man to man among the bushes and walls of the gardens, and finally in the churchyard, where they made their last stand at bay, desperately combating among the tombstones. Fresh Prussians kept coming up to join in the attack, but the 2nd Chasseurs, their Eagle defiantly displayed in the midst of the battling throng, resisted stubbornly. When at the last they drew off, the whole of Planchenoit was a mass of flames, blazing from end to end.
There remained a rough half-mile of open ground before they could get to the Charleroi road—the line of retreat along which, by that time, a large proportion of the fugitives from the main army had got away. The 2nd Chasseurs, in rear of all, as they left their last shelter in Planchenoit and were beyond the churchyard walls, were swept down on by a furious rush of Prussian cavalry, and half the regiment was cut to pieces. The moon was rising by that time, and the Prussians had sufficient light for their deadly work.
The survivors, broken up, and thrown in irremediable disorder, could after that only run for their lives. But they still bore their Eagle among them. It was draped under a black cloth. Somebody, in some house in the village, as they were falling back to the churchyard, had, it would appear, caught up a strip of crape or black cloth, and hastily wrapped it round the Eagle to conceal it in that way from hostile eyes. The Eagle-bearer refused to break the Eagle from the staff, and hide it under his coat, as others had done elsewhere with other Eagles.
With the Eagle so covered, a small party of devoted soldiers were accompanying their standard as the survivors of the Prussian charge hastened towards the Charleroi road, when there came yet another attack from the Prussian horse, who charged among them and trampled them down as the troopers slashed mercilessly at the fugitives. At that moment the Eagle and its guardians found themselves near the General. They were isolated and cut off in the midst of the wild mêlée. Pelet caught sight of them, desperately striving to protect the Eagle-bearer, who was frantically clutching at the Eagle-staff as he held on to it and tried to get through.
“SAVE YOUR EAGLE OR DIE ROUND IT!”