The remaining Eagles had by now been assembled for preservation under the protection of what troops of the main column, which Napoleon accompanied, still continued under arms. Further effort to rally the shattered host was beyond possibility. Only portions of the two army corps of Marshals Victor and Oudinot, called in from holding the line of communications, still retained military formation, together with the reduced battalions of the Old Guard which had kept near Napoleon throughout. To save the remaining Eagles, the officers of broken-up and disbanded regiments, with some devoted soldiers who stood by them, took personal charge of the Eagles, and carried them with their own hands. Banding together and marching in company side by side, they tramped on, plodding through the snow day and night for 200 miles; the collected Eagles all massed in the centre. They attached themselves to the column of the Old Guard, and kept their way close by Napoleon.
A survivor of the retreat from Moscow, in his memoirs, describes how he saw Napoleon and the Eagles pass by him on the way to the Beresina on the morning of November 25:
“Those in advance seemed to be generals, a few on horseback, but the greater part on foot. There was also a great number of other officers, the remnant of the Doomed Squadron and Battalion, formed on the 22nd and barely existing at the end of three days. Those on foot dragged themselves painfully along, almost all of them having their feet frozen and wrapped in rags or in bits of sheep’s-skin, and all nearly dying of hunger. Afterwards came the small remains of the Cavalry of the Guard. The Emperor came next, on foot, and carrying a staff. He wore a large cloak lined with fur, and had a red velvet cap with black-fox fur on his head. Murat walked on foot at his right, and on his left the Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy. Next came the Marshals Berthier—Prince of Neufchatel—Ney, Mortier, Lefebvre, with other marshals and generals whose corps had been annihilated.
“The Emperor mounted a horse as soon as he had passed; so did a few of those with him: the greater part of them had no horses to ride. Seven or eight hundred officers and non-commissioned officers followed, walking in order and perfect silence, and carrying the Eagles of their different regiments, which had so often led them to victory. This was all that remained of 60,000 men.
“After them came the Imperial Guard on foot, marching also in order.”
Four Eagles were lost in the fighting at the passage of the Beresina, where a whole division of Marshal Victor’s corps (General Partonneaux’s) was cut off and compelled to surrender. On the last night, when either massacre under the Russian guns or laying down their arms was all that was left to them, they broke up and buried their Eagles in the ground underneath the snow. The officers of one regiment, it is told, broke up their Eagle before burying it, burned the flag at their last bivouac fire, mixed the ashes with thawed snow, and swallowed the concoction.
NAPOLEON AND THE “SACRED SQUADRON” ON THE WAY TO THE BERESINA.
From the picture by H. Bellangé.
WHEN THE LAST HOPE WAS GONE