Innsbrück, the capital of the Tyrol, and the head-quarters of the Austrian army corps garrisoning the country, was the immediate prize of the victory. It was there that this incident took place.
TWO LOST FLAGS ARE FOUND
One of Ney’s regiments, the 76th, had fought in the Tyrol six years before; in Masséna’s campaign of 1799, in one of the battles of which—at Senft in the Grisons, on August 22—two of its battalions lost their colours. An officer of the regiment, while visiting the arsenal at Innsbrück after Ney’s capture of the city, came across the two flags there, in tatters from bullet-holes, hung up as trophies. He made known his discovery, and the place was quickly filled with the soldiers of the regiment, eager to see the old flags. “They crowded round them and kissed the fragments of their old colours, with tears in their eyes.”
Ney had the flags removed at once. He restored them to the custody of the regiment with his own hand at a grand parade in the presence of the rest of his army, which the marshal attended with his staff, all in full uniform. The old colours were received with an elaborate display of military ceremonial. They were borne along the lines while the regimental band played a stately march, and the Eagles of both battalions were formally dipped in salute to them.
On receiving Ney’s report, Napoleon thought fit to give the recovery of the flags a Bulletin to itself. Relating how they had been lost in battle, and the “affliction profonde” of the regiment in consequence, he set forth how they had been found and handed back by Marshal Ney to the regiment “with an affecting solemnity that drew tears from the eyes of both the old soldiers and the young conscripts, proud of having had their share in regaining them!” “Le soldat Français,” concluded the Bulletin, “a pour ses drapeaux un sentiment qui tient de la tendresse; ils sont l’objet de son culte, comme un présent reçu des mains d’une mère.” A medal was specially struck to commemorate the event; and Napoleon, in addition, specially commissioned an artist, Meynier, to paint a picture for him of Marshal Ney presenting the recovered colours to the regiment. The painting is now in one of the galleries of Versailles.
The Midnight Battle by the Danube
TRAPPED BY NAPOLEON’S FAULT
A startling and dramatic episode of the first campaign of the Eagles comes next. It took place during the second stage of the war; in the midst of Napoleon’s impetuous advance on Vienna down the Danube valley after Ulm. Intent on dealing a shattering blow at the advanced army corps of the Russians, which had reached Lower Austria and was making an effort to cover the capital, Napoleon made a false move, and left one of the headmost French divisions in an exposed position, temporarily isolated. It got trapped by the Russians at Dürrenstein, or Dirnstein, on the north side of the Danube, to the west of and about seventy miles up the river from Vienna; and was all but annihilated. There was nearly twenty hours of continuous fighting, including a night battle of the fiercest and most desperate character in which three Eagles were temporarily lost; fortunately to be recovered later among the dead on the battlefield.[8]
It was on an extemporised corps, specially placed under the command of Marshal Mortier, that the blow fell.
