FOOTNOTES
[1] “The Eagle for each standard,” said Napoleon, going into details with Berthier, “must be made ‘strong and light’—‘Il convient de la rendre à la fois solide et légère.’” “An Eagle looking to its left, with wings half expanded, and with its talons grasping a thunderbolt, as in the old Roman standard,” was the approved design: the bird measuring eight inches from head to feet, and in the spread of its wings from tip to tip, nine and a half inches. Below the thunderbolt, as base and support, was a tablet of brass, three inches square; bearing in raised figures the number of the regiment. The weight of the whole—the Eagle was to be of copper, gilded over—was just three and a half pounds avoirdupois, and a stout oaken staff was provided, eight feet long and painted bleu impérial, to which the silken regimental colour was attached; the flag being thirty-five inches along the staff and thirty-three lengthwise, in the fly.
[2] The drawings made and laid before Napoleon at Saint-Cloud are in existence, preserved among the archives of the Ministry of War in Paris.
[3] All armies, as a fact, owe to Napoleon the introduction of the practice of inscribing on the colours of a regiment the names of battles in which that regiment has won honour; nowadays an essential feature of the war-flags of all nations. It originated after Napoleon’s first campaign as General Bonaparte, at the head of the Army of Italy; and, together with the inscriptions of quotations of passages from his despatches, was introduced by him as a device to aid in developing military spirit and a sense of esprit de corps among the soldiers. The Directory promptly censured the innovating young general for acting without having first referred the matter to Paris. They sent orders that all such inscriptions were to be forthwith deleted from the flags. Napoleon, however, refused to obey; and the regiments of his Army supported him. One and all protested against the removal of their titles to fame, the first appearance of which on their flags had been hailed with enthusiasm. In the result the Directory deemed it advisable to accept the situation; and after that, in turn, the flags of the regiments of the other Republican armies elsewhere were authorised to display similar decorations of their own. The practice in due course was adopted in the other armies of Europe.
[4] The sending of an invitation to the Pope had been finally decided on in July, after a series of protracted discussions in the Imperial Council of State.
[5] One of the Eagles so presented by Napoleon on that afternoon is now at Madrid. It is a trophy that is absolutely unique. Upwards of a hundred and thirty of Napoleon’s Eagles, the spoils of war, now decorate cathedrals, chapels, and arsenals in the capitals of Europe; but there is only one French naval Eagle now in existence, the trophy at Madrid; the Eagle of a line-of-battleship named the Atlas.
Every French line-of-battleship was represented on the Champ de Mars and received its Eagle. “Tous les vaisseaux,” to quote the words of M. Le Brun, in his Guerres Maritimes de France, “étaient gratifiés d’une aigle et d’un drapeau à leur nom, donnés par l’Empereur à son couronnement, ou avaient assisté et prêté serment des députations du port et de l’Armée Navale; chaque vaisseau avait envoyé sa députation composée de trois officiers, trois officiers mariners, et quatre gabiers ou matelots.”
The Eagle of the Atlas was received on the Field of Mars by the ship’s deputation of three officers, three warrant officers, and four seamen, sent from Toulon, where the Atlas then was in harbour with Admiral Villeneuve’s fleet, which Nelson was watching. The Atlas crossed the Atlantic in the Toulon fleet with Nelson in pursuit, returned to Europe, fought in the indecisive battle off Cape Finisterre in July 1805, and was so shattered in the fight, in which the ship only just escaped capture, that she was left behind for repairs at Ferrol when Villeneuve put to sea finally, to meet his fate at Trafalgar. The Atlas had to remain there and fell into the hands of the Spaniards in 1808, at the time of the national uprising against Napoleon. Thus the naval Eagle passed into Spanish possession.
The crew of the Atlas were taken by surprise, while the ship was in dock at Ferrol, by the Spanish regiment of Navarre in garrison there when the news of the Rising of May 2 at Madrid reached Galicia. They were trapped and pounced down upon. The ship was seized by a sudden assault, the officers and men being made prisoners to the provincial Junta, before they had a chance of concealing or making away with their Eagle.
In other cases elsewhere, undoubtedly, the naval Eagles were somehow disposed of surreptitiously. It is very remarkable that not a single French naval Eagle came into British hands on board the thirty odd ships of the line which we captured between 1805 and 1814 during the war with Napoleon. At Trafalgar, according to a French officer on board the French flagship, the Bucentaure, they had one. Describing the approach of the Victory, at the outset of the battle, says the officer: “A collision appeared inevitable. At that moment Villeneuve seized the Eagle of the Bucentaure and displayed it to the sailors who surrounded him. ‘My friends,’ he called out, ‘I am going to throw this on board the English ship! We will go and fetch it back or die!’ (‘Mes amis, je vais la jetter à bord du vaisseau Anglais! Nous irons la reprendre ou mourir!’) Our seamen responded to these noble words by their acclamations.” Admiral Villeneuve, all the same, did not throw any Eagle on board the Victory; nor was one found in the Bucentaure during the forty-eight hours that the ship was in our possession after the battle, previous to her wreck in the storm at the entrance to Cadiz harbour. None too were found on board any of Nelson’s other prizes. As to that, also, what was done with, or became of, the Eagles of the five battalions serving as marines in the French fleet at Trafalgar, officers and men of which were taken prisoners by us—those of the 2nd of the Line, the 16th, 67th, 70th, and 79th?