Napoleon made no other open reference to the loss of Eagles at Eylau; but, as he showed a little later, he felt what had happened. On the other hand, outside France, many people disbelieved the Russian official despatches. “The number of Eagles said to be taken,” wrote the editor of a London newspaper, “is astounding, indeed incredible.”

TWO MORE EAGLES LOST

The 18th lost their Eagle in the fierce fighting on the extreme right of the battlefield, where, after storming the village of Serpallen, Morand’s division captured a Russian battery, bayoneting the gunners. As they took the guns a Russian cavalry brigade came hastening to the spot to the rescue. Taking the 18th on the flank, the Russians rode them down, breaking the regiment up and scattering it. The Eagle disappeared in the midst of the fight. The Eagle of the 51st of the Line was the other that was lost in Davout’s corps. That was taken by the Prussian division which fought at Eylau; the last remnant of the Jena army still combating in the field. The Prussians, some 12,000 in number, had made good their escape to the Polish frontier and reached the battlefield of Eylau at the close of the fight, in time to strike in and take vengeance for their countrymen. They were, however, deprived in the end of their trophy. The captured Eagle of the 51st was claimed from them by the Russian general after the battle, and sent with the eleven others to St. Petersburg, where it now is.

Two others of Davout’s Eagles which came through at Eylau had narrow escapes. They were those of the 17th and 30th of the Line. The 17th was one of the regiments ridden down by Towazysky’s dragoons, the troopers who carried off the Eagle of the 18th. In their charge the dragoons broke up the 17th as well, and the Eagle was left with only a few men near by to defend it. They were in the midst of the dragoons as the Russians galloped through, slashing with their sabres at all within reach. As the only means of saving the Eagle, Locqueneux, a fourrier, or quartermaster-sergeant, “thrust the Eagle under the snow and stood on it shouting for help. Colonel Mallet heard the cry and ran to the rescue. With a few men who rallied to the spot he succeeded in getting the Eagle away from among the débris of the 17th.” At roll-call next morning only one man in five answered to his name. Napoleon, on his ride over the field, happening to pass by while the muster was being held, the gallant fourrier was brought before him and presented with a lieutenant’s commission and an annuity of 2,000 francs. The Eagle of the 30th of the Line, another of Morand’s regiments, was saved from capture in like manner by the personal devotion of another fourrier, Morin by name. All round him men were falling, and he himself had been severely wounded, but the brave fellow had just strength enough to bury the Eagle under the snow. He fainted from loss of blood as he did it. Morin was found next morning just alive, outstretched over where the precious Eagle lay concealed. He was able to make signs and indicate that it was lying underneath the snow, and then he died.

FOUR CUIRASSIER EAGLES TAKEN

Four cavalry Eagles, those of cuirassier regiments, made up the tale of twelve lost by Napoleon in the two days at Eylau. Platoff’s Cossacks of the Don captured the four. They swooped down on Murat’s cavalry, while out of hand and partially dispersed after breaking through the Russian centre, at the close of Murat’s desperate charge at the head of seventy squadrons to save the survivors of the massacre of Augereau’s ill-fated battalions. Of one cuirassier regiment only 18 men managed to regain their own lines, leaving 530 of their comrades on the field to be stripped of their shining armour by the Cossacks.

The Eagle of the Old Guard led a charge at Eylau at the head of the Grenadiers. The Guard came into action to beat back a daring Russian counter-attack on the centre of Napoleon’s position, which immediately followed the annihilation of Augereau’s corps. Napoleon himself gave the order for the Guard to go forward. “The Emperor,” describes Caulaincourt, who was on Napoleon’s staff, and near him throughout, “standing erect in the stirrups, his glass at his eye, was the first to realise that the black shadow steadily drawing near through the veil of the snow-storm must be the columns of the Russian reserve.[16] He immediately sent against them two battalions of the Grenadiers of the Guard commanded by General Dorsenne.” It was just after Murat had been ordered to make his charge.

Dorsenne—“Le Beau Dorsenne,” he was universally called; he had the reputation of being the handsomest man in the whole of the Grand Army—started off on the instant, rapidly deploying his men into lines as he moved forward, and with the Eagle of the Grenadiers of the Guard in advance of the centre of the front line. The Old Guard moved out in stately order, marching with clockwork precision, muskets at the support—held erect at the side and steadied and supported with one arm held stiffly across. One of the officers who rode beside Dorsenne suggested to the general as they were nearing the Russians to open fire. “Non!” was the haughty answer. “Grenadiers l’arme à bras! La Vieille Garde ne se bât qu’à la baïonette!” (“No! Arms at the support! The Old Guard only fights at the point of the bayonet!”)

They reached the Russians, who, on their side, seemed for the moment as if spellbound at the sight of them. The nearest Russians stopped short. They stood stock-still, rooted in the ground as it were, gazing at the sudden apparition of the solid wall of 2,000 veteran giants in their huge towering bear-skins. The next instant the battalion guns of the Guard, which accompanied the advance on either flank, opened with a burst of fire at short range into the thick of the Russians. At once, down came the gleaming rows of bayonets, and, like one man, the Old Guard sprang forward and charged into the enemy. A moment before the bayonets crossed a squadron of the Chasseurs of the Guard, the men on duty as Napoleon’s own personal escort, sent forward by the Emperor himself to assist the Grenadiers, dashed into the rear of the Russian column, and “drove it forward on our Grenadiers, who received it with fixed bayonets.”

THE EAGLE OF THE OLD GUARD