The battalion that fared so hardly had to pay the regulation penalty. Napoleon gave the 8th no other Eagle. He held rigidly to his rule, and set his face relentlessly against a second presentation. They must present him first with a standard taken on the battlefield from the enemy. But with Wellington’s men opposed to them to the end, the 8th got few chances in that direction. They had to fight without an Eagle to the close of the Peninsular War.
Two days after Barrosa, when General Graham re-entered Cadiz with the Spanish army, “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath” was publicly paraded through the crowded streets, “between the regimental colours,” as the 87th marched to barracks, the church bells ringing triumphantly, and amid exultant shouts and cheers of the populace, and cries of “Long live Spain! Death to our oppressors!” At the barracks “we presented the Eagle to our gallant commander,” says one of the officers.
The Eagle was then sent to England in the custody of the officer carrying General Graham’s despatch. Its capture is commemorated to this day by the Royal Irish Fusiliers, who wear “an Eagle with a Wreath of Laurel” as a regimental badge, while a similar Eagle is embroidered in gold on the regimental colour. Also, a representation of the wreathed Barrosa Eagle was granted later on as a special augmentation to the family arms of the officer who commanded the 87th in the battle, Major Hugh Gough, on his being raised to the Peerage while Commander-in-Chief in India after the first Sikh War. “The Aiglers” was always the regiment’s sobriquet after Barrosa among their comrades in Wellington’s army; a sobriquet that has endured since then in the form of “the Aigle-Takers,” although our modern recruits are said to prefer calling themselves “the Bird-Catchers.”[25]
ONE OF THE PARIS WREATHS
It was in this way that the Barrosa trophy Eagle came by its golden wreath. The decoration, as has been said, had nothing to do with Talavera.
The wreath was one of those voted by the City of Paris to the regiments that had gone through the Jena and Polish frontier campaigns, the first of which was presented to the Imperial Guard. First of all, in the outburst of patriotic enthusiasm in France at the news of Jena, wreaths had been voted as decorations for the Eagles, by way of popular tribute to the regiments which had helped in dealing that staggering blow to the famous Prussian Army. After the crowning victory of Friedland which ended the war, in a fresh outburst of enthusiasm, golden wreaths were voted wholesale for the Eagles of all the corps that had taken part in the fighting that followed Jena, during the nine months of war, down to the final day of Friedland. It was a costly guerdon, and their proposed generosity staggered the Paris municipality when the estimate was presented. No fewer than 378 wreaths—according to the official return—had to be provided. But the vote had been carried by acclamation on its first proposal, and trumpeted all over France. Also, the Emperor had taken up with the idea warmly. The Paris authorities dared not back out, and had to go on with it in spite of the cost. They carried it out with so good a grace that, as the sequel, a suggestion came from the Tuileries that the Austerlitz battalions of the Grand Army which had not had the fortune to be in the Jena-Friedland campaign should receive wreaths as well, an Imperial hint that the authorities, shrinking from the extra expense, were so slow to fall in with, that in the end it had to be forced on them, by means of a bluntly worded letter through the Ministry of War. “Tell the Prefect of the Seine,” wrote Napoleon to the War Minister, “that I expect wreaths of gold, similar to those given for Jena and Friedland, to be provided on behalf of the City of Paris for all the regiments at Austerlitz!”
ACROSS GERMANY IN CARTS
The 8th was presented with its wreath in Paris, while on the way to take part in the Peninsular War. It was one of the regiments of the First Corps of the Grand Army, which Napoleon hastily recalled from Germany in the spring of 1808, and hurried across Europe to reinforce the troops in Spain on the first news of serious trouble being on foot in that quarter. The whole First Army Corps was recalled; starting from Berlin, where it had been quartered, and journeying by Magdeburg and Coblentz. Along the route the unfortunate German burgomasters and village authorities had to provide, not only provisions day by day, but transport vehicles for 30,000 soldiers; mostly farm-carts and wagons, each taking from four to sixteen men. The troops travelled by night and day, with only two stoppages of fifty minutes each in the twenty-four hours, for meals, and the authorities of the villages and towns named as halting-places were compelled to have hot food kept ready so that the men might fall to instantly on arrival. It was a journey the soldiers never forgot. The weather was rough and wet, the roads in places were almost impassable, and the carts continually broke down, in addition to which the peasant-drivers requisitioned for the conveyances deserted at every opportunity, usually going off at night with the horses after cutting the traces, leaving their wagon-loads of sleeping soldiers stranded by the roadside.
The 8th received its wreath at the Barrier of Pantin, on the outskirts of Paris. It arrived with the Second Division of the corps, and the troops were met by the Prefect of the Seine and the Municipal Council in State, while Marshal Victor, the commander of the Army Corps, attended the ceremony in full-dress uniform. He replied to the Prefect’s complimentary address by declaring that “these golden crowns henceforward decorating the Eagles of the First Corps will to them ever be additional incentives to victory.” One by one the regiments passed before the Prefect, who hung round each Eagle’s neck “a wreath of gold, shaped as two branches of laurel.” A triumphal march into Paris and an open-air banquet to all ranks in the Tivoli Gardens, with free tickets to the theatres after it, wound up the day.
All along the line of march through France to the Spanish frontier, banquets and elaborate festivities welcomed the regiments—and at the same time, it would appear, gave some of their entertainers more than they bargained for. The triumphal progress, from all accounts, proved such hard work for the ladies in the country towns, where public balls were in the programme every night, that at some places for the later comers—the 8th and other regiments in the Second Division of Marshal Victor’s corps—the balls had to be abandoned, “because the ladies were too tired to dance any more.” It was explained, with apologies, that they had practically been danced off their feet by the regiments of the First Division, which had preceded the Second, incessantly passing through during the previous three weeks, and that “most of the ladies, through sheer fatigue, had taken to their beds!”