Plan of the Battle of BARROSA
The second grenadier platoon divided the Eagles from the first three of the flag-trophies, borne in file, one by one, in the same way as the Eagles. The first in date of capture led; a French Republican standard taken in fight at Sir Ralph Abercombie’s victory at Alexandria, ten years before, and kept ever since at the War Office: “the Invincible’s standard.” “As it is falsely called,” adds the reporter; right for once. “So tattered is it,” he continues, “that the mottoes are not legible; a bugle in the centre was the only figure we could distinguish.” Two flags taken by Wellington’s men in the Peninsula accompanied the Alexandria flag: “a Fort Standard,” as it is described, and the battalion colour, or “fanion,” of the Second Battalion of Napoleon’s 5th of the Line.[23]
THE TROPHY FLAGS PARADED
In rear of the colour of the 5th marched the third grenadier platoon, and the last three trophies sent to England by Wellington. Two were a pair of tattered German standards, the flags of the two battalions of a Prussian regiment in Napoleon’s service, composed of unfortunate soldiers levied compulsorily during the French occupation of their country, and tramped off to Spain to meet their fate under British bullets. Each flag bore the legend “L’Empereur des Français au Régiment Prussien” on one side, and “Valeur et Discipline” on the other, and was mounted on a staff with a steel pike-head instead of an Eagle. They were silken flags of the ordinary Napoleonic pattern. The third flag of the group was that of a “provisional regiment”; also with a steel pike-head to its staff.
From the Tilt Yard orderly-room the trophies and their escort-guard set off, as before, in slow time, the bands playing “God save the King!” The sergeants, carrying the Eagles and Flags between the files of grenadiers, marched in the intervals between the four divisions “in double open-order with arms advanced.” Right round the square they now passed, close along the lines of the troops drawn up, “the immense multitude rending the air with huzzas.” In front of the First Guards, in front of the recruiting parties, in front of the long line of Coldstreamers, along each of the three sides of the square, paced the procession with martial pomp to the stately music of the two bands as they led the way. Then it proceeded along the fourth side of the square until it came face to face with the King’s Guard, all standing with ordered arms, not at the present.
There was a brief pause in front of the Colour of the King’s Guard.
That was the supreme moment of the display. Now took place the formal act of obeisance to the victors; the formal act of abasement and humiliation for the vanquished. Amid redoubled cheering from all sides, the Eagles and the other flags were, one and all, formally dipped and prostrated. “The captured standards saluted and were lowered to the ground in token of submission.”
PROSTRATED IN THE DUST
The procession turned away in front of the King’s Guard and led round in front of the three Royal Dukes, seated on their chargers, a little in advance of the Commander-in-Chief and Horse Guards Staff, at the centre of the parade-ground. Again, as they now passed before the Royal trio, the hapless Eagles of Napoleon and the other French flags in turn were one by one made to pay homage, bowed grovelling to the dust; the crowd of onlookers shouting themselves hoarse “with,” as we are told, “truly British huzzas.”