[18] The Old Guard was recruited from the élite of the Line. After every battle soldiers who had been particularly prominent in the fighting were specially transferred to the Old Guard; a form of advancement much coveted among the rank and file. At all times there was great competition to enter the Guard, and every regimental colonel kept “waiting lists,” in anticipation of vacancies, on which names were sometimes down for years. Service in the Old Guard meant, in addition to the prestige of enrolment in so favoured a corps, life amid the gaieties and pleasures of Paris, with increased pay and personal privileges; and the highly estimated honour of a special weekly inspection by the Emperor himself in the Courtyard of the Carrousel, at which Napoleon invariably walked in and out among the ranks, talking to the men; and any Guardsman who had a grievance might then personally lay it before the Emperor. The private in the Guard drew seven sous a day as compared with the one sou pay of the private of the Line. Off duty, the private of the Guard ranked on an equality with a sergeant of the Line, and in army social circles was entitled to be addressed by the Linesmen he met as “Monsieur.”
Only men of unblemished record were qualified for admission to the Old Guard. A colonel of a Line regiment on one occasion sent a man into the Guard who turned out a mauvais sujet. Napoleon ordered the unfortunate colonel to be publicly reprimanded on parade, and confined to his quarters for three days; and further had his name and offence put in General Army Orders, issued for universal circulation from the War Office, and posted up at the head-quarters of every regiment throughout the service.
[19] Baron Lejeune, on the Imperial staff at Wagram, who was clever with his pencil, was specially desired by Napoleon to design the costume for the Eagle-Guard, as he himself relates. “Anxious to confer distinction on those brave fellows who had taken part in the actual defence of the flag, the Eagle of their regiment, Napoleon conceived the idea of giving them a costume and equipment which should mark them out as specially honoured, and at the same time be suitable to the duties they had to perform. The Emperor therefore sent for me and asked me to make a sketch of a costume such as he wished to give to what he called his ‘Eagle-Guard,’ or those non-commissioned officers whose office it was to surround and defend the actual standard-bearers. The chief weapons of each were to be a pistol, a sword, and a lance, so that in the heat of the battle they would never have to trouble themselves about loading a gun. There was to be gold on their epaulettes, sword-belts, and helmets. I made a drawing and took it to the Emperor, and he sent it to the Minister of War with his own instructions on the subject.”
[20] Colonel Lejeune was again called in to design the decoration for the Order, and has recorded what Napoleon said to him. “‘The Order of the Golden Fleece,’ he said, ‘is typical of victory; my Eagles have triumphed over the Golden Fleeces of the King of Spain and the Emperors of Germany, so I mean to create for the French Empire an Imperial Order of the Three Golden Fleeces. The sign of this order shall be my own Eagle with outspread wings, holding in each of its talons one of the ancient Golden Fleeces it has carried off; whilst hanging from its beak it will proudly display the Fleece I now institute.’ He then took a pen and roughly marked out the size I was to make my drawing.... I made the drawings as desired, and he issued the order accordingly. The institution of the new Order was duly announced in the Moniteur; but the terms of the treaty of peace compelled him to suppress a distinction the chief aim of which had been to humiliate the conquered countries of Spain and Austria.”
[21] They were to be merely identifying tokens. “If by misfortune,” Napoleon went so far as to say, “fanions should fall into the enemy’s hands, it will be apparent from their plain appearance that their capture is a matter of no account.” “Une affaire sans conséquence” were Napoleon’s words.
[22] It was during the battle at Ratisbon that Napoleon, according to the story, was wounded for the only time in his life, and had to dismount, and, in the sight of the dismayed soldiers, have his wound dressed by a surgeon, the news causing consternation through the ranks of the whole army far and wide. Indeed, only this year there was placed in the Army Museum at the Invalides, as an historic relic of the highest interest, “the fragment of a shell that struck Napoleon at Ratisbon on the 23rd of April, 1809, and gave him the only wound he ever received in battle.” The truth is revealed in M. Combes’ journal, which, after telling how Napoleon carefully concealed everything which might detract from his reputation among his soldiers for invulnerability, enumerates his wounds in detail. After his death half a dozen scars were found on his body. There was the mark of a wound on his head, a hole above his left knee, either from a bayonet or a lance, the mark of the injury received at Ratisbon, another on one hand, and on the body the scars of sword cuts and slashes.
[23] As to this last trophy, it was unfortunate from our point of view—since Fate willed that the 5th of the Line should lose its colours to an enemy—that one of the original Battalion Eagles of the corps had previously, in accordance with Napoleon’s order of 1808, been returned to Paris. The half-winged Eagle of the 5th would have made a notable trophy for Chelsea Hospital. While heading an attack on an Austrian field-work in Masséna’s battle at Caldiero on the Venetian frontier in November 1805, the Eagle was smashed from its staff by a grape-shot and dashed violently to the ground, with one wing shattered. At the same time the battalion recoiled before the terrific fire with which its charge was met. The Eagle saved the honour of the corps. Picking its battered remains up and waving it at arm’s-length above his head, with a shout of “Come on, comrades! follow the Eagle,” one of the officers rushed with it through the mêlée to the front and led the forlorn-hope onset that stormed the post. After that, the Eagle, lashed to the stump of its broken pole, went through the battle to the end, doing its part in rallying the battalion round it, to keep at bay greatly superior numbers of the enemy until relief arrived. There had been almost a mutiny in the 5th in 1808 when they were ordered to return their battle-scarred ensign to the Invalides, but the order was obeyed. Otherwise the half-winged Eagle would have been at Chelsea now.
[24] The present imitation Eagle at Chelsea was specially cast in brass from a mould of one of other trophies; one of the Eagles of the 82nd being used as the model. The imitation wreath was made from a sketch by an old officer of the Hospital staff. The Eagle and wreath were specially reproduced in order that the Barrosa Eagle trophy should be represented among the Peninsular and Waterloo Eagles displayed together at the head of the catafalque on the occasion of the lying-in-state at Chelsea of the remains of the Duke of Wellington, seven months after the theft. The dummy is in the Chapel at Chelsea now, with a brass tablet beneath it notifying that it is not the original Eagle, set up where the Barrosa Eagle used to be, in front of the organ-loft. The existing staff, however, is genuine. It is the Eagle-pole that the thief threw away in his fright; the staff actually borne by the Porte-Aigle of Napoleon’s 8th of the Line under fire at Austerlitz and Friedland; the identical staff inclined in salute with the Eagle to Napoleon on the throne on the Day of the Eagles on the Field of Mars.
[25] In a letter from an officer of the 87th, published in the London papers, it is stated that the regiment also captured the Eagle of the French 47th, but “the man who had charge of it was obliged to throw it away, from excessive fatigue and a wound. We had been under arms for thirty-two hours before the action began.”
[26] The successor to the 8th of the Line of the Grand Army in the Army of the Third Napoleon was, in its turn, no less unfortunate than its predecessor. The Eagle of the 8th of the Line of the Army of the Second Empire is now at Potsdam, one of the spoils of the war of 1870–1. It was carried through the streets of Berlin in the triumphal parade of the Prussian troops on their return home after the war, and after that, was deposited over the vault of Frederick the Great in the Church at Potsdam in the presence of the old Kaiser Wilhelm, Moltke, Von Roon, and other leaders of the victorious host. It bears these “battle-honours,” inscribed on its silken flag, among them “Talavera”: