MARSHAL DAVOUT.
AT BAY BEHIND A BARRICADE
The French kept the post at the cost of half their numbers. One regiment, the 85th, on the side of the village fronting the Prussians, lost two-thirds of its men and was forced back and compelled to abandon the outskirts. It kept the Prussians at bay, however, within the village, behind a barricade of overturned carts, farm implements, and cottage furniture heaped together. Close behind the firing line across the village street the Eagle-bearer took his stand, amidst a hail of bullets, mounted on a wheelbarrow and brandishing the Eagle and calling on the men to stand firm and fire low.
Marshal Davout brought up his First Division of five regiments to rescue Gudin, heading them sword in hand as he galloped forward. In doing so he received his wound and had a narrow escape of his life. “One bullet went through the marshal’s hat just above the cockade.”[13]
The 111th of the Line, of Davout’s Third Division, had three Eagle-bearers shot down in succession, a fresh officer coming forward to carry the Eagle as his predecessor fell. All the drummer-lads of the regiment were killed, whereupon Drum-Major Mauser, dropping his staff, picked up a drum and beat it as the regiment advanced in its final charge. He ran forward close beside the Eagle until he in turn fell shot dead. This was in storming the village of Spielberg, nearly at the close of the battle.
“The corps of Marshal Davout performed prodigies,” wrote Napoleon in the Fourth Bulletin of the campaign, commending with warmth “the rare intrepidity of the brave corps.” He ordered 500 crosses of the Legion of Honour to be distributed in Davout’s corps, directing that when the army reached Berlin, Davout and the Third Corps should take precedence, and their Eagles lead the triumphal entry through the streets of the Prussian capital. At a special review of Davout’s corps, calling the marshal and his generals round him, he declared his unbounded admiration of the feat of arms they had achieved. “Sire,” replied Davout, deeply moved at Napoleon’s words, “the soldiers of the Third Corps will always be to you what the Tenth Legion was to Caesar.”
At the attack on Halle, three days after Jena, the 32nd of the Line, near the Eagle of which regiment Ney had ridden at Jena, distinguished themselves brilliantly. The Prussian Reserve Army Corps was holding Halle and making a gallant effort in a rearguard fight to safeguard the passage there over the river Saale. Led by the commander of Ney’s First Division, General Dupont, in person, they stormed the bridge in the face of a tremendous fire of grape and case shot. Then, backed up by their comrades in Ney’s First Division, the 18th and 96th and 9th Light Infantry, they fought their way through the city and, breaking open the gates, stormed the heights beyond, foremost throughout in the attack. Four times the Eagle-bearer of the 32nd was shot down: each time a fresh officer sprang forward to lead the regiment on. The 97th of the Line, while fighting their way through the streets of Halle at another point, found the Prussian cannon mounted at a barricade too deadly to face in the open, and the regiment recoiled in confusion. Taking the Eagle from the Eagle-bearer, Colonel Barrois called forward the grenadier company. Leading them on himself on horseback, holding up the Eagle with his right hand, he went straight at the barricade, which was stormed without touching a trigger.
ACROSS A CONQUERED LAND
Thenceforward there was only left for the Eagles to choose the slain; to parade in triumph across a conquered land. “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” sums up the story of the after-events of the war for the Eagles of Napoleon. The army of the great Frederick committed suicide after Jena. Its resistance collapsed: the army that had gone forth in September to cross the Rhine and dictate peace at the gates of Paris had ceased to exist within six weeks. How completely indeed the moral of the Prussians had been shattered, this story, from a report from Marshal Lannes to Napoleon, serves to show. “Three hussars,” related Lannes, “having lost their way towards Grätz, found themselves in the midst of an enemy’s squadron. They boldly drew their carbines and, levelling them at the enemy, called out that the Prussians were surrounded, and must surrender at discretion. The Prussians obeyed. The commander of the squadron, without apparently a thought of resistance, ordered his men to dismount, and they surrendered their arms to those three hussars, who brought them all in prisoners of war.”
General Lassalle, with a handful of hussars, as has been said, captured the fortress of Stettin, with 150 guns on its walls and a garrison of 6,000 men, by sheer effrontery. He rode up to the main gate and demanded the surrender within five minutes; and the governor capitulated on the spot. “If your hussars take strong fortresses like that,” wrote Napoleon to Murat, on hearing the news, “I have nothing to do but break up my artillery and discharge my engineers.” Prince Hohenlohe with 14,000 men and 50 guns, his troops including the Royal Prussian Guard and six regiments of Guard cavalry, laid down their arms at Prentzlau. A few miles away, 8,000 more Prussians surrendered on the same day to a French brigade of dragoons. The unfortunates were remnants of the troops beaten at Jena, and had been relentlessly pursued for ten days.