Mortier after that left the troops, and with an aide de camp galloped back through the pass in order to hasten up Dupont. But the Second Division was still at a distance. Dupont’s men were still a long way beyond Dürrenstein and could not arrive for some time yet. Mortier could only tell them not to lose a moment, and then retrace his own steps. On his way back, to his amazement, he came upon a second Russian column in great strength in the act of debouching from a side pass and entering Dürrenstein. It had come round by a track among the hills on the north to take Gazan’s division in rear, and interpose between it and Dupont’s reinforcing troops. At considerable personal risk the marshal managed to evade discovery by the Russians. By following a devious by-path he at length got back to where Gazan’s division was; as before, in hot action and slowly forcing the Russians back.
TOO LATE TO CLEAR THE PASS
Mortier stopped the advance at once. He faced his troops about, and, while keeping off his original enemy, retreated; closing his columns and rushing all back as fast as possible to repass the defile of Dürrenstein and confront the new enemy on the further side, in a position he might hold until Dupont could reinforce him. But it was already too late. The French reached the entrance of the pass on the near side to find it already occupied by the Russians, who were pouring through in dense masses. There were nearly 20,000 of them on that side of him and 15,000 on the other, his former foes now fast closing in from behind hard on his heels. Mortier’s reduced ranks numbered barely 4,000 all told.
Owing to the high, steep rocks on one hand, and the river on the other, it was impossible to push past the Russians on either flank. All that could be done was to attack in front and try to cut a way through. That; or to surrender! With reckless impetuosity the French attacked, firing furiously and flinging themselves on the Russian bayonets; while their rearguard, facing round, kept their first foes back. For two long hours they fought like that; their ranks swept by the enemy’s cannon on each side. At length they forced the entrance to the pass: but they could get no farther. They had by then lost all their guns but two: but they still had all their Eagles. With bullet-holes through some of them, and their silken flags shot away or torn to tatters, the Eagles did their part. Now they were rallying-centres; now they were leading charges. There was hardly a battalion in which the first standard-bearer had not gone down.
All were fighting almost without hope, holding out in sheer despair as long as they had cartridges left, when, as that dreadful November afternoon was drawing to its close, suddenly, from beyond the far end of the pass was heard the booming of a distant cannonade. The soldiers heard it and hope revived. It could only be Dupont! Help, then, was coming! The despairing rank and file took heart again—but the hour of rescue was not yet.
They had four long hours more to go through; every hour making their terrible situation worse. At nightfall “our cavalry gave way, our firing slackened, our bayonets, from incessant use, became bent and blunted. The confusion became terrible. Things, indeed, could hardly have got worse.” So an officer describes. The enemy, in places, had got right in among them, but “our soldiers, being the handier and more agile, had an advantage over the great clumsy Russians.” Here and there “the men were so close, that they seized each other by the throat.” In the midst of the fiercest of the fighting the tall figure of the marshal was conspicuous. He was seen amid the flashes from the muskets “at the head of a party of grenadiers, sword in hand, laying about him like any trooper.”
“YOUR DUTY IS TO SAVE THE EAGLES!”
The Battalion-Eagles of the 100th, with their Porte-Aigles and a handful of soldiers, got cut off together, amid a surging mêlée of Russians. The major of the regiment, Henriot by name, the senior surviving officer—the colonel of the 100th, as also the colonel of the 103rd, had fallen earlier in the fight—saw what was happening and the extreme peril of the Eagles. Calling for volunteers, he got together some of his men, cut his way through to the Eagles, and rescued them. Major Henriot, after that, having saved the Eagles for the moment, determined as a last resource to attempt a forlorn-hope charge; to get beyond the enemy and reach Dupont with them. It might be possible to save them under the cover of darkness. One of the Porte-Aigles of the 6th Light Infantry with his Eagle, near by at the moment, joined the devoted band of men that the intrepid major now managed to rally round the Eagles of the 100th. With half a dozen stirring words Henriot called on them to follow him. “Comrades, we must break through! They are more than we, but you are Frenchmen: you don’t count numbers! Remember, your duty is to save the Eagles of France!” (“Souvenez vous qu’il s’agit de sauver les Aigles Françaises!”)
There was a hoarse shout in reply: “We are all Grenadiers! Pas de charge!”
They dashed at the Russians, Henriot leading, and, after fighting their way through the pass and nearly to Dürrenstein, fell to a man. Yet the three Eagles did not fall into Russian hands, thanks to the darkness. They were found next morning by French search-parties under a heap of dead, where the last survivors, fighting back to back, had fallen while making their final stand.