The next moment the words were taken up and repeated enthusiastically by the men: “We swear!”
Berthier, on that, formally handed the Eagle over to the colonel of the regiment, and the Emperor, raising his hand to his hat in salute to the Eagle, turned to rejoin the Staff and ride off elsewhere.
On the afternoon before the three days’ battle of Leipsic opened, on October 15, 1813, Napoleon, on the Marchfeldt, in the very presence of the enemy, presented with these formalities new Eagles to three newly raised regiments.
CHAPTER VII
BEFORE THE ENEMY AT ASPERN AND WAGRAM
Napoleon’s regimental Eagles made their début on the battlefield in the Wagram campaign of 1809, when Austria challenged Napoleon to a second trial of strength in her premature attempt to achieve the liberation of Germany. The gallant deeds of the regiments that fought round the Eagles in that war are commemorated on the standards of the French Army to-day by the legend “Wagram, 1809,” a name and date that stand as the comprehensive memento of a conflict that lasted four months, and included no fewer than ten fiercely fought battles. They are superabundant as a fact; it would almost need a book by itself to tell the full story. It must suffice therefore to take here only these, picked out at random, as typical of the rest.
This is the achievement that “Wagram, 1809,” inscribed in golden letters on the silken tricolor standard of the present-day 65th of the Line, serves to recall.
Napoleon’s 65th was one of the regiments of Marshal Davout’s corps at Ratisbon, where Davout had been stationed on the eve of the outbreak of the war. He was hastily recalled on the Austrians opening hostilities and advancing in greatly superior force. Davout fell back at once, leaving behind him the 65th to hold the very important bridge over the Danube at Ratisbon for forty-eight hours, until the bulk of his corps had gained a sufficient start on their way.
The 65th had not long to wait for the enemy. Within twelve hours of the marshal’s retirement the Austrians swooped down on Ratisbon to seize the bridge. Two of their army corps led the advance. One took possession of the city, sending troops forward to secure the bridge. Part of the other crossed the Danube in the neighbourhood of the city in boats, in order to cut off and capture the French troops left behind. It was expected that in the presence of so overpowering an enemy the single French regiment holding the bridge would not venture to make a serious defence. The Austrians did not know the 65th.
To oppose the first comers three battalions of the 65th barricaded and loopholed the houses nearest the bridge on that side. The remaining battalion held a fortified outwork, or bridge-head, across the river.
For a whole day the battalions in the city held the Austrians at bay, resisting desperately in the streets and from house to house. Four hundred Austrian prisoners, together with an Austrian regimental standard and three other flags, testified to the way they did their duty. The battalion holding the bridge-head on the farther side of the river made meanwhile a no less stubborn resistance and kept the enemy off until nightfall. Then, however, it was found that their ammunition was exhausted. The three battalions fighting the city were by that time in a no less desperate plight. They on their side had been forced back to their last defences among the houses immediately surrounding the approach to the bridge. Still, though, they kept up a fierce resistance, at the last using cartridges taken from the cartouche-boxes of the Austrian prisoners and their own dead and wounded comrades. They held out until further defence of the bridge was impossible, until indeed further resistance at all was hopeless.