There are thirteen of Napoleon’s Eagles in England, among the trophies of the British Army at Chelsea Royal Hospital; or, to speak strictly, twelve Eagles and a “dummy” Eagle, the later reproduction of a very famous trophy, gone now, unfortunately, to the melting-pot of a thieves’ kitchen. It is with the dummy Eagle, as it may be called for short, without disrespect to its gallant custodians, and five of the twelve Eagles at Chelsea, that we are for the immediate moment concerned. That represents the first of Napoleon’s trophies won by British soldiers in hand-to-hand fight—the once celebrated “Eagle with the Golden Wreath.”
The story opens on Saturday morning, May 18, 1811, a day that was a great occasion for Londoners. For the first time, on that Saturday, trophies taken from Napoleon were publicly displayed in the British Capital, and no pains were spared to make the most of the event. An elaborate and dramatic ceremonial was ordained for the occasion by the authorities at the instance of the Prince Regent. It was like nothing else of the kind ever witnessed or heard of in England before.
WHAT LONDON HAD SEEN BEFORE
On many another day in bygone times London had been the scene of stately martial pageants in which the victor’s spoils from many battlefields were borne in triumph, amid blare of trumpets and clash of drums, to be deposited with due ceremony in their allotted resting-places. So had it been when the Marlborough trophies from Blenheim and Ramillies, the captured flags from Dettingen, Louisburg, and Minden, were borne along the crowded streets, preceded by bands playing triumphant music and accompanied by armed escorts of Foot and Horse. Another Saturday, seventeen years before, May 17, 1794, had been the last occasion of trophy-flags being displayed in London, when the captured French Republican standards of the garrison of Martinique were publicly carried through the streets by Life Guards and Grenadiers, with the band of the First Guards leading the way and the Tower guns booming out an artillery feu de joie, from St. James’s Palace to St. Paul’s, to be received at the great west doors of the Cathedral by the Dean and Chapter, and laid up “as a lasting memorial of the success of his Majesty’s Arms.” Some of the flags then displayed hang in the Hall of Chelsea Hospital to-day.
So, too, had it been in London in yet earlier times, in the far off, unhappy days of Civil War in England, when the citizens of those periods, in turn, saw the spoils of Bosworth, and of Marston Moor and Naseby, of Worcester, Preston, and Dunbar, paraded through their midst, escorted by mail-clad men-at-arms, on the way to be hung up exultingly in St. Paul’s Cathedral or in Westminster Hall. With his own Royal banners from Marston Moor and Naseby drooping down overhead from the roof of Westminster Hall, Charles the First faced his judges and heard his fate. But never before in London had so elaborately designed a ceremony attended the display of trophies taken from any enemy, as that planned for the Royal Depositum, as it was officially styled, of the first of the captured Eagles of Napoleon to be received in England.
There was to be a special display of trophies the London newspapers announced some days beforehand. The newspapers had not spared themselves in working up public interest. At the outset they had told how, on the night of March 24, Captain Hope, First A.D.C. to General Graham, had arrived in London with the Barrosa despatches and a “French Eagle with a wreath of gold,” which, it was stated, “the general trusted his aide de camp might be permitted to lay at his Majesty’s feet.” Then Londoners were informed that the Barrosa Eagle was a trophy of unusual importance, and was being kept at the War Office, to be presented to the Prince Regent at the next levée. It was announced a week later that his Royal Highness had been so desirous of seeing it at once, that the War Minister, the Earl of Liverpool, instead of waiting five weeks for the levée, had already presented it to the Prince at Carlton House. On that came the official notification that “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath,” as the trophy was everywhere styled, together with a number of other French trophies, which had been previously received and had been some time stored away at the War Office pending instructions as to their disposal, would be deposited in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, (now the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution). “The Royal Depositum ceremony will be very grand, and the martial music appropriate to the occasion, and as the orders have been issued by direction of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, the Chapel will be thronged with nobility.” So one journal notified; another remarking that “in addition to the great religious and military ceremony, an anthem is to be performed after the manner of the Te Deum.”
A GRAND MARTIAL CEREMONY
Thus popular interest was aroused and kept alive in advance, and the selected Saturday morning proving fine and pleasant, with the prospect of a genial and sunny forenoon, Londoners turned out in large numbers to see the show.
To the Brigade of Guards it fell to carry out the ceremony of the military reception of the Eagles.
The “Parade in St. James’s Park,” which we know now as the Horse Guards Parade, was the appointed place for the display, and as the clock struck nine the preliminaries opened with the arrival of a large body of Guards’ recruits who were to keep the ground. From quite an early hour a crowd had been gathering there and along the side of the Park. Soon afterwards the first of the troops designated to attend the ceremony began to arrive. These were several companies of the First Guards and Coldstreamers “in undress, with side arms.” They formed line along either side of the parade-ground; on one side “extending from the corner of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s garden to the Egyptian gun”; on the opposite side, “from the Admiralty towards the Park.” To right and left of the archway under the Horse Guards leading to Whitehall were drawn up the “recruiting parties stationed in the Home District.”