At a quarter to ten came on the scene the first of the actors in the day’s proceedings, the “King’s Guard” of the day, “in their best uniforms, and with sprigs of oak and laurel in their hats.” Marching up, headed by the combined bands of the First Guards and the Coldstreamers, with the regimental colour of the First Guards, they formed on the right, along the open side of the square, facing towards the Horse Guards. Following them, a few moments later, came the picked detachment appointed as the “trophy-escort,” furnished jointly by the grenadier companies of the First Guards and the Coldstreamers. All were in review-order full dress, “wearing long white gaiters, with oak and laurel leaves in their hats.” A captain of the First Guards was in command; and the detachment was made up of two subalterns, four sergeants, and ninety-six rank and file. They took post on the left of the King’s Guard. As the trophy-escort halted, up came another detachment of Guards, a hundred strong, with the Life Guards; marching across the square and through the Horse Guards archway to line the way thence to the doors of the Chapel Royal.
GETTING READY FOR THE PRINCES
Towards ten o’clock privileged spectators were admitted within the square, “to stand at an appointed spot”: several veteran generals, “in their best uniforms and powdered,” as a newspaper reporter remarks; Lord Liverpool the War Minister; the Earl Marshal; the Speaker; the Spanish and Portuguese Ambassadors, both gorgeously attired; and “a number of beautiful and elegant ladies of distinction.”
The Horse Guards clock struck ten, and as the last clanging stroke died away “the authorities” came clattering on to the ground on horseback: Sir David Dundas, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Governor of Chelsea Hospital, at the head of a number of other plumed and cocked-hatted generals in full uniform, together with the Head-quarters Staff at the Horse Guards. Prominent in the glittering array of gold-laced red coats, “mounted on a cream-coloured Arab,” was General Sir John Doyle, Colonel of the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers; the regiment whose prowess at Barrosa had won the great trophy of the day—“the Eagle with the Golden Wreath.”
With Royal punctuality, as the clock chimed the half-hour, amid cheers from the crowd and the spectators filling the windows of the Horse Guards and Admiralty and other Government offices overlooking the ground, came riding up the three Princes who were to preside at the ceremony—the Dukes of York, Cambridge, and Gloucester.
The display began forthwith.
Preceded by the two Guards’ bands playing the “Grenadiers’ March,” the trophy-escort of grenadiers crossed the Parade at a slow step, and marched in four divisions, or “platoons,” to the old Tilt Yard orderly-room under the Horse Guards. There the trophies had been taken beforehand to be in readiness for the ceremony. The grenadiers halted before the doors, and the trophies, twelve in number, were brought out by Lifeguardsmen from the Tilt Yard Guard and committed to the charge of twelve picked sergeants—six of the First Guards, six of the Coldstreamers—selected to bear them to the Chapel Royal.
THE CAPTURED EAGLES TAKE POST
The trophy-bearers carrying the Eagles then took post according to the date of the capture of each trophy; the earliest taken of the Eagles leading. In advance of all, immediately after the band, marched the three officers with swords drawn; the captain and the two subalterns. Then, with their flanking grenadiers as escort, a file to each trophy, came, one after the other, three Battalion Eagles of Napoleon’s 82nd of the Line, surrendered at the capitulation of Martinique in 1809. Immediately in rear marched No. 1 platoon of grenadiers; in the interval between the first trophy-group and the second. That consisted of the Regimental Eagle of the French 26th of the Line, surrendered at Martinique at the same time as the Eagles of the 82nd, and then that of the 66th of the Line, surrendered at the capitulation of Guadaloupe in 1810, with, just behind them, the all-important trophy of the day, the first Napoleonic Eagle captured—or, at any rate, taken possession of—by British soldiers on the battlefield: “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath”—that Eagle of Napoleon’s 8th Regiment of the Line, won in hand-to-hand fight by the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers at Barrosa.
Five of the Eagles had their silken tricolor flags still attached to the poles. The Barrosa Eagle had none: it showed simply a bare pole topped by the wreathed Eagle. The wreath, according to a newspaper reporter present, was “an honour conferred on the regiment for fine conduct at the battle of Talavera, where they were opposed to the 87th; and, by a singular coincidence of circumstances, these regiments met in conflict at Barrosa and recognised each other.” As we shall see, the statement was a freak of journalistic imagination, without a scrap of fact behind the story, although, strangely, the legend holds to this day and reappears periodically in print. Adds the reporter, as to the appearance of the Eagle, recording this time what he actually saw: “The Eagle is fixed on a square pedestal, and standing erect on one foot; the other raised as if grasping something; its wings expanded. It is about the size of a small pigeon, and appears to be made of bronze, or of some composition like pinchbeck, gold-gilt.” The “something” which the talons of the Eagle appeared to be grasping was the “thunderbolt,” which was missing, having been either knocked out of its place in the scuffle on the battlefield, or stolen later by somebody for a relic. The wreath was really of gold. A couple of its leaves picked up on the field after the battle and given to Major Hugh Gough, the gallant commander of the 87th at Barrosa, are now in possession of one of that officer’s descendants.