The war drama of the Eagles

by Edward Fraser

The little column of officers with their Eagles passed the Beresina with the Guard, and thus escaped that last catastrophe, the crowning horror of the bridge disaster, when 24,000 ill-fated human beings were sent to their account; either killed in the fighting with the Russians, or drowned in the river, jammed together on the burning bridge, while the Russian guns from the rear thundered on them with shot and shell.

The officer-escort with the Eagles tramped on until Wilna was reached; until after Napoleon had left the army and set off for Paris. Then, on the final falling apart of the remnants of the stricken host, the officers themselves dispersed, to escape as best they could individually and get to the Niemen; breaking up the Eagle-poles and concealing the Eagles and flags in knapsacks or under their uniforms. The dispersal, says one officer, was at Napoleon’s own instance. “He ordered all the officers who had no troops to make the best of their way at once to the Niemen, considering that their services had best be saved for the future army he was going to Paris to raise and organise.” That is one story. According to another officer, utter despair at their frightful position, abandoned by their chief, was the cause of the break-up at Wilna and the final débâcle. “Until then a few armed soldiers, led by their officers, had still rallied round the Eagles. Now, however, the officers began to break away, and the soldiers became fewer and fewer, and those left were finally reduced, of necessity, some to conceal the Eagles in knapsacks, others to make away with them.” Some of the officers fell dead on the way to the Niemen, struck down suddenly by the cold, and their Eagles remained with them. Others who died, with their last strength tried to put their charges beyond reach of the enemy by scraping or digging holes in the frozen ground, and burying the Eagles.[34]

THE EAGLE OF THE OLD GUARD

The Eagle of the Old Guard recrossed the Niemen at Kovno, while Ney was making his final stand, defending the gate of the town; the marshal fighting musket in hand at the last, with less than twenty soldiers. That Eagle was still carried openly—the only one still so displayed—carried defiantly aloft on its staff, borne to the last with its escort in military formation, in the midst of the ranks of the 400 men of the Old Guard who were all that were able to reach the frontier.

At Bay in Northern Germany—1813

There were yet dark days in store for the Eagles after the retreat from Moscow was over. The tale of their misfortunes was not yet ended. There was yet to be the sequel to the great catastrophe; further humiliations in the War in Germany of 1813, and the Winter Campaign of 1814 in Eastern France, which followed as the consequence and result of the overthrow in Russia.

No fewer than fifteen of the Eagles that the devotion of their officers brought through the retreat from Moscow are now—making allowance for difficulties of identification, owing to defective records—among the trophies of victory to be seen at Berlin and Potsdam, in Vienna, and also at St. Petersburg. Those in Germany are mostly kept in the Garrison Church of Potsdam, suspended triumphantly above the vault in which lies the sarcophagus of Frederick the Great. They were placed there of set purpose as an act of retribution, as a votive offering to the manes of the Great Frederick; as a Prussian rejoinder to Napoleon’s act of wanton desecration after Jena. The four trophy Eagles at Vienna are in the Imperial Arsenal Museum there. Two of them are the spoils of Kulm; displayed together with the keys of Lyons, Langres, Troyes, and the fortress of Mayence, which were surrendered during the march of the Allies on Paris. The Russian trophy Eagles of 1813 are at St. Petersburg, displayed with the Eagles which fell into Russian hands in the retreat from Moscow.

What the annihilation of the Grand Army in Russia meant for Europe, with what dramatic rapidity its import for the vassal states of Napoleon was realised and turned to account, is a familiar story. Prussia led the revolt at once, and all Northern Germany rose in arms en masse to commence the “War of Liberation,” joining hands with Russia as the pursuing armies of the Czar crossed the frontier. Then Austria, after negotiations rendered abortive at the last by Napoleon’s infatuated pride and overweening self-confidence, threw her sword into the balance and turned the scale decisively against France. Napoleon’s hastily raised conscript levies, outnumbered and outmanœuvred, were defeated on battlefield after battlefield, and driven in rout across the Rhine to their final surrender at the gates of Paris; and then came the abdication of Fontainebleau.

THE EAGLES DIED HARD

Yet, with all that, in those dark hours of their fate the Eagles died hard. The trophy-collections of Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg testify to that. Only a percentage of the Eagles which faced their fate on the battlefield became spoils to the victors. Marshal Macdonald’s army, routed by Blücher on the Katzbach, thanks to the devotion of the regimental officers and some of their men, saved all its Eagles from the enemy except three. Ney’s army, no less roughly handled at Dennewitz, managed to retain in like manner all its Eagles except three. Vandamme’s army, annihilated and dispersed at Kulm, saved its Eagles all but two. Oudinot was routed at Gross Beeren, with the loss of guns and many prisoners; Gérard underwent the same fate near Magdeburg; Bertrand was surprised and defeated with heavier losses still; but not one Eagle was left as spoil of these disasters in the hands of the victorious foe.