“The Prussian cavalry broke the French horse, and enveloped the infantry in such numbers as would inevitably have proved fatal to less resolute troops; but the brave marshal instantly formed his men into squares, threw himself into one of them, and there maintained the combat by a rolling fire on all sides, till Napoleon, who saw his danger, sent several regiments of horse, under Bertrand, who disengaged him from his perilous situation.”
Ney’s other troops then joined the marshal, coming up with their Eagles gleaming through the battle-smoke: the Eagles of the 39th and the 69th, of the 76th, the 27th, and the 59th. Ney, extricated from his difficulties, went on again at once. “With intrepid step he ascended the hill, and, after a sharp conflict, stormed the important village of Vierzehn-Heiligen, in the centre of the Prussian position. In vain Hohenlohe formed the flower of his troops to regain the post; in vain these brave men advanced in parade order, and with unshrinking firmness, through a storm of musketry and grape; the troops of Lannes came up to Ney’s support, and the French established themselves in such strength in the village as to render all subsequent attempts for its recapture abortive.”
LET THEM COME ON!
This was the spirit in which, at Jena, Ney’s men fought under the Eagles. One instance will suffice. The 76th of the Line, after the village of Vierzehn-Heiligen had been taken, were in the act of advancing across the open to a fresh attack, when a charge of Prussian cavalry swept fiercely down on them. The regiment formed in square, each battalion rallying round its Eagle, held up aloft for all to gather round. The Prussians had come up suddenly. They were within 150 yards before the 76th were ready. Then the 76th were ordered to “present” and fire. Instead of doing that, the men, as if moved by one common impulse, took off their shakos, stuck them on their bayonets, and waved them in the air, with defiant cheers of “Vive l’Empereur!” “Donnez feu, mes enfants! Donnez feu!” (“Fire, men, fire!”) shouted out their colonel, Lannier, anxious lest the enemy should get too near. “We have time: at fifteen paces, Colonel; wait and see!” came back in answer from the ranks. They did wait, and, at just fifteen paces, fired a crashing volley which so staggered the Prussians that, leaving half their men on the ground, they turned and galloped back.
The regiments of Lannes’ corps, with the fiery marshal cantering at their head and waving them on, cocked hat in hand, entered the battle with drums beating and the Eagles proudly displayed in the centre of the leading lines.
“HERE IS THE COU-COU!”
One regiment lost 28 officers and 400 men. It had made good its first attack and was advancing to a second, when it was charged in the open by the Prussian cavalry, while in the act of forming square. It all but lost its Eagle. The Eagle-bearer was cut down, and the Eagle was broken from its staff in the trampling tumult of horsemen intermingled with infantry, savagely fighting with their bayonets. A soldier saved the Eagle, and in the hurry of the moment stuffed it into the pocket of his long overcoat. Then he went on fighting. Apparently the man had no time or opportunity to think of the Eagle again. The regiment was re-forming towards the close of the battle, when Napoleon himself, riding across the ground near them, with his quick glance, missed the Eagle. He cantered up to the spot, and, on being told by an officer that he did not know where it was, angrily accused the men of having lost their Eagle on the field. He began upbraiding them indignantly: “What is this? Where is your Eagle? You have brought disgrace on the Army by losing your Eagle!” Those were his opening words. He was rating the men angrily, when he was abruptly interrupted by a voice from the ranks. “No, your Majesty, no! they did not get it: they only got a piece of the bâton! Here is the Cou-cou! I put it in my pocket!” The soldier drew out the Eagle as he spoke and held it up. There was a loud outburst of laughter from the soldiers at the unexpected turn of events, amid which Napoleon, without a word more, turned and rode off elsewhere.
At Auerstadt, where 30,000 French faced and defeated 60,000 Prussians, the fighting was even fiercer than at Jena. Recklessly the Prussian horsemen, led in person by the dauntless Blücher, repeatedly charged down on the French, who formed in square everywhere to beat them back, They did so at all points, and the Prussians only wrecked themselves beyond recovery by their efforts. In vain did the Prussian cavalry, as at Jena, gallop up to the French bayonets again and again. “In vain these gallant cavaliers, with headlong fury, drove their steeds up to the very muzzles of the French muskets. In vain they rode round and enveloped their squares: ceaseless was the rolling fire which issued from those flaming walls: impenetrable the hedge of bayonets which, the front rank kneeling, presented to their advances.” Erect in the centre of each French battalion square glittered its Eagle, raised on high defiantly above the smoke as the volleys flashed out all round.
Marshal Davout was seen at every point wherever the regiments were hardest pressed. From square to square the marshal galloped, as opportunity offered in the intervals of the Prussian attacks, “his face begrimed with sweat and powder-smoke, his spectacles gone,[11] his bald head bleeding from a wound, his uniform torn, a piece of his cocked hat shot away,” to exhort the men to stand fast and hold their ground. To one regiment he called out, as he reined up beside its square: “Their Great Frederick said that God gave the victory to the big battalions. He lied! It’s the stubborn soldiers who win battles; that’s you and your general to-day!” Davout personally brought up support at one point to rescue a sorely pressed division of four regiments, General Gudin’s,[12] holding the village of Herrenhausen, on the right of the battlefield; a post of vital importance to the fate of the day. Taken by a brilliant dash forward early in the battle, the village was held to the last, in spite of the utmost endeavours of the Prussians to regain it.
