In one battle the Eagle of Napoleon’s Irish Legion was only just kept from being to-day among the trophies displayed in the Garrison Church of Potsdam over the tomb of Frederick the Great. It was immediately after Macdonald’s defeat on the Katzbach. The Irish Legion was one of the regiments in one of Macdonald’s divisions, that of General Puthod. They had had a hard fight of it, and their retreat was barred by the river Bober in flood. Under stress of the continuous attacks of the Prussians in ever-increasing force, the 12,000 men of Puthod’s Division had been reduced to barely 5,000. They had used up their last cartridges, and had been driven back to the river-bank, where the Prussian army closed in on them “in a half-moon.” The Prussians halted for one moment until they realised that the troops before them had no more ammunition. Then, aware that they had their foe at their mercy, they rushed forward, cheering exultantly, to deliver the coup de grâce. “All of a sudden,” describes an Irish officer, “30,000 men ran forward on their prey, of whom none but those who knew how to swim could attempt to escape.” The greater number of the French, all the same, jumped into the river, and took the risk of drowning rather than surrender. Less than five hundred got across the stream, and after that they had to wade waist-deep for half a mile over flooded marshes under a pitiless fire from the Prussian batteries. In the end only 150 men reached dry ground alive. Among the survivors were just 40 men of the Irish Legion, with their Eagle—Colonel Ware, eight officers, the Eagle-bearer, and thirty privates. The Irish remnant made their way eventually to Dresden, and reported themselves to Napoleon.
THE IRISH EAGLE’S FIRST ESCAPE
That adventure, by the way, was the Irish Eagle’s second escape from falling into an enemy’s hands since Napoleon presented it to the Legion on the Field of Mars. On the first occasion it came within an ace of being now among our British trophy Eagles at Chelsea; of, indeed, being the first Napoleonic Eagle to be brought as spoil of war to England. The Irish Legion was in garrison at Flushing in 1809, when the fortress surrendered to the British Walcheren Expedition. On the night before the final capitulation, Major Lawless of the Irish Legion took charge of the Eagle, and in a rowing-boat made a risky passage among the British ships of war in front of the batteries. He escaped up the Scheldt to Antwerp, where he delivered the Eagle personally to Marshal Bernadotte. Napoleon sent for the major to Paris, decorated him for saving the Eagle, with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and promoted him lieutenant-colonel.
In the disaster on the Bober also, a soldier of the 134th of the Line saved the Eagle of another regiment, the 147th. The two regiments, as the Prussians charged down on them after their cartridges gave out, in desperation rushed to meet their assailants with the bayonet. They were overpowered and hurled back in confusion to the bank of the river, all intermingled in the mêlée. The Eagle-bearer of the 147th fell dead, shot down, and a Prussian officer made for the Eagle. A soldier of the 134th bayoneted the officer as he got to it, picked up the Eagle, and, seeing only more Prussians round him, flung himself, still holding on to the Eagle, into the river. The man could not swim, and was fired at as he floundered in the water, but he was not hit. Unable to reach the other side, he somehow got on to a shallow patch, and, still holding fast to the Eagle, kept his footing there, until, to get away from the hail of bullets all round him, he again risked drowning by trying to drift downstream. He managed to keep his head above water, and got over to a bed of rushes, fringing the farther bank. Creeping in there, still holding on closely to the Eagle, the brave fellow hid for six hours until dark, embedded in mud to his armpits most of the time. After nightfall he worked his way through and crawled ashore. Finally, after wandering across country for eight days, feeding on berries and what he could pick up, in constant peril of discovery among the hostile peasants and parties of Prussian dragoons scouring the district, the heroic soldier at length found his way to Dresden. There he was brought before Marshal Berthier, to whom he delivered the Eagle.
AT THE COST OF HIS LIFE
At the battle of the Katzbach the colonel of the 132nd of the Line threw away his life under the mistaken impression that he saw the Eagle of his regiment captured by the enemy. He was short-sighted, and suddenly missed it in the middle of a charge. Thinking he saw the Eagle being carried off by a party of Prussians he rode straight through the enemy at them, to fall mortally wounded halfway, with his horse shot beneath him. Some of the men saw the colonel fall, and charged after him. They got to him and carried him off the field, and in the retreat until a place of safety was reached, where the survivors of the regiment had rallied. There the officers came round to bid farewell to their dying chief. The Eagle-bearer of the regiment was among them, and he, to the amazement of all, produced the Eagle from his havresac, broken from its staff, and held it up before the eyes of the dying colonel. No enemy’s hand, he declared, had contaminated it. Finding himself and the Eagle, he explained, in imminent danger of capture, he had wrenched the Eagle off the staff and hidden it—his act causing the disappearance which the colonel had marked, and which had resulted in his fatal dash among the enemy.
The 17th of the Line saved their Eagle and themselves after Vandamme’s defeat at Kulm, and made their way to safety, as one of the officers relates, after an extraordinary series of adventures. They had joined Vandamme’s army at the beginning of the first day’s fighting—the battle lasted three days—coming in after a week’s march from Dresden, through pouring rain most of the time. They numbered four battalions, 4,000 men in all. Vandamme was successful on the first two days and the 17th by themselves routed an Austrian regiment and captured a gun. On the evening of the second day the French advanced again, driving the enemy before them into the valley of Kulm. They bivouacked on the ground they had won, anticipating a final triumph on the morrow. But during that night two Russian and Prussian army corps reinforced the Austrian columns unknown to the French.
One of the officers of the 17th, Major Fantin des Odoards, during the night had his suspicions aroused about the enemy, and made a discovery; but Vandamme would not listen to him.
He was unable to sleep, says Major Fantin, and, learning from a patrol that mysterious sounds were being heard in the direction in which the Austrians had retreated, he left the bivouac and went out alone beyond the outposts, to creep in the dark towards the Austrian watch-fires. At times, as he crawled forward, describes the major, he lay flat and listened with his ear to the ground. In the end he felt certain that he heard the tramp and stir of a vast number of men, and also the rumble of artillery wheels moving across the front. Apparently, from the direction the unseen troops were taking, they were marching to cut off the retreat of the army from Dresden, Napoleon’s base of operations throughout the campaign.
Major Fantin returned to the bivouac and went at once to report to the general, finding him asleep. He aroused Vandamme and told what he had heard and suspected; only, however, to be rebuffed and rudely answered that he was quite mistaken. Vandamme, a surly and ill-conditioned boor to deal with at all times, awoke in a vile temper. “You are a fool!” was what he said in reply. “If the enemy are on the move at all, they are in retreat, trying to escape me. To-morrow will see them flying, or my prisoners.” With that Vandamme terminated the interview, and turned over and went to sleep again.