Marbot, recovering his senses, got at the last moment an unexpected chance of escape. His mare, Lisette, he says, “of a notoriously savage temper,” was pricked by a bayonet apparently, for she suddenly sprang forward, lashing out and kicking and biting. She crashed through the nearest Russians and galloped off with Marbot on her back towards Eylau. He was mistaken by the Cossacks, he thought, for a Russian officer, and rode on until suddenly Lisette collapsed beneath him, and Marbot rolled off into the snow, where he lay insensible for some hours. He lay there until a marauder on the field after the battle tried to strip him of his gold-laced uniform. That roused him, and he cried for help, which came; but the Eagle of the 14th had disappeared.
Two Eagles of St. Hilaire’s division of Soult’s corps were taken at about the same time that the 14th met its fate. One was that of the 10th Light Infantry, ridden down while hastening forward to support Augereau. The 10th missed its way in the snow-storm and, blundering close under the Russian guns, was “decimated by grape.” Immediately after that, while reeling under the shock, and trying to re-form its ranks, the Russian dragoons dashed into it. They burst into its midst at full gallop, “unseen until they were actually among us.” No help was near, and in less than three minutes the luckless 10th Light Infantry had ceased to exist. The second of Soult’s Eagles that was lost at Eylau was that of a battalion of the 28th of the Line, which also perished, victims to the sabres of the Russian horsemen. It was a little later in the day, just after the 28th had made a successful bayonet charge on the Russian infantry. They were in the midst of their combat when the dragoons dashed into them, rode through them, and scattered them, bearing off the Eagle, snatched from the hands of the Eagle-bearer, who was cut down in the mêlée.
“THE FIRST GRENADIER OF FRANCE”
The Heart of the “First Grenadier of France” nearly went to St. Petersburg at the same time, The 46th and 28th together formed General Levasseur’s division in Soult’s corps, and both were overwhelmed at the same time by the Russian dragoons. The more fortunate 46th saved both their Eagle and the silver casket in which the heart of La Tour d’Auvergne was kept enshrined. The casket was worn, strapped on a velvet shield, on the chest of the senior grenadier sergeant of the First Battalion, whose station was next the Eagle-bearer. It was with the 46th, then known as the 46th Demi-Brigade, that the heroic “Premier Grenadier de France” was serving as a captain when he met his death in the year of Hohenlinden, while in the act of capturing an Austrian standard. The 46th of the Line of the modern French Army keeps up to-day the traditional practice, first ordered by Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, of calling his name first of all at regimental parades. It was revived some thirty years ago, after being in desuetude since 1809. “Immediately the Colonel has saluted the flag,” describes one of the officers of the regiment, “the Captain commanding the colour-company steps forward and, facing the men, calls in a loud voice ‘La Tour d’Auvergne,’ on which the senior sergeant of the company steps out two paces and replies, in a loud voice also, ‘Mort au Champ d’Honneur!’—‘Dead on the Field of Honour!’”
The heart of La Tour d’Auvergne in its silver casket was ceremoniously deposited by the regiment at the Invalides in 1904, eight years ago.
The 25th of the Line saved its Eagle, but lost on the field every single one of its officers. A plainly built obelisk with the brief inscription, “To the Memory of the Officers of the 25th,” was erected by Napoleon to commemorate their fate at Eylau.
Two Eagles of Davout’s corps were lost at Eylau. One was that of the 18th—the sole loss of an Eagle in the battle, as it so happens, that it suited Napoleon’s purpose to admit publicly. This is what he said of it in his Eylau Bulletin—the 58th Bulletin of the Grand Army:
“The Eagle of one of the battalions of the 18th Regiment is missing. It has probably fallen into the hands of the enemy, but no reproach can attach to this regiment in the predicament in which it was placed. It is a mere accident of war. The Emperor will give the 18th another Eagle when it has taken a standard from the enemy.”
Comments on this, by the way, a British officer, Colonel Sir Robert Wilson, who was attached to the Russian army as British military commissioner:
“Admirable! the accidental loss of one Eagle and only one! Colonel Beckendorff, then, did not carry twelve Eagles (and, moreover, several colours from which the Eagles had been unscrewed) to Petersburg, where they now are for the inspection of the world!”