HEMMED IN ON EVERY SIDE
He found out his mistake all too soon. Daylight disclosed dense swarms of Austrians, Prussians, and Russians in front of Vandamme, on his flanks, and closing on his rear; outnumbering him nearly four to one. It was a desperate position, for the only road by which Vandamme might retreat was held by the enemy. Little time was left to him to deliberate what to do. He was in the act of forming up his columns in a mass to try to fight his way through, when the enemy attacked in overpowering force. Before noon that day, out of 30,000 men, 10,000 had fallen. Seven thousand more were wounded or prisoners. The rest were fugitives, flying for shelter and hiding-places in the woods round the battlefield. All the French guns and baggage had been taken, and Vandamme himself was a prisoner, together with many officers of rank. The “annals of modern warfare record few instances of defeat more complete than that of Vandamme at Kulm.”
The only regiment that kept its order was the 17th, and it before the crisis had lost heavily. Its colonel and two of the chefs de bataillon had been killed; the two others were wounded. Only some 1,700 of the 4,000 men remained. It rested with Major Fantin, as senior officer, to save those that were left and the Eagle.
The 17th were on the extreme right of the battle, where they had been posted as support to Vandamme’s artillery. They held their ground as long as possible, but the enemy closed in on them, overlapping them on both flanks, and then stormed and captured the guns. The 17th were isolated and in imminent peril—surrender or destruction were the only alternatives before them.
“EN HAUT L’AIGLE!”
Looking round, the major, as he describes, marked a wooded hill some little way off, and decided to make for that. There was just time to get away before the enemy closed in on them. He sent off all his tirailleurs, about 400 men, to skirmish and hold in check the advancing Austrians. As they went off he shouted to the rest: “En haut l’Aigle! Ralliement au drapeau!” (“Display the Eagle! All rally to the standard!”) The men of the regiment formed round him quickly, and the major pointed out the wooded hill to them with his sword. “All of you disperse at once,” he told them, “and make your way there as quickly as you can. You will find the Eagle of the regiment there, and me with it!” The 17th broke up and scattered, and, under the protection of the skirmishers, aided by the opportune mist which hung low over the ground after the heavy rains of the past week, they made off in groups in the direction pointed out. All just got past the enemy in time, Major Fantin and two officers accompanying the Eagle.
An hour later, “nos débris,” as the major puts it, were straggling up the hill, where they again rallied round the Eagle. The skirmishers, cleverly withdrawn at the right moment, evaded the enemy also, and most of them joined their comrades on the hill, where all silently drew together. They then moved off, to halt for concealment in a wooded glade behind. They stayed there, keeping quiet and lying down beside their arms, for several hours; off the track of the pursuit, and undiscovered by the enemy. “We were all very hungry and without anything but what cartridges we had still left.”
At nightfall they moved away in the direction in which Dresden was judged to be, without having a single map or anything to guide them. They marched all night, mostly by a forest road, and keeping their direction by means of occasional glimpses of the stars seen through rifts in the cloudy sky overhead. More than once they had to halt as the enemy were heard on the move not far off. They groped their way forward with extreme caution, not a light being struck, and the necessary words of command being spoken in an undertone, until after midnight. Then they suddenly came into the open round a bend of the road, and discovered, not half a mile off in front, the numerous watch-fires of a large body of troops. “The column halted at the sight like one man and stood in absolute silence. Who were those in front of us? Friends or the enemy?”
Two scouts were sent forward to try to find out. They were away for half an hour; an interval of intense suspense and anxiety to the others. At the end of the time the two scouts came rushing back. They brought unexpectedly good news. It was a French bivouac: that of the 14th Army Corps—Marshal St. Cyr’s. So the 17th and their Eagle were saved.
Other Eagles that got away from the rout at Kulm and rejoined the army owed their safety to the determination of small groups of officers and men who cut their way through the enemy. “Officers fought with their swords, privates with their bayonets and the butts of their muskets: and as the struggle was to escape and not to destroy, a push and wrestle, or a blow, which might suffice to throw the individual struck out of the way of the striker, prevented in many instances the more deadly thrust.” Finally, as the 17th had done, they found shelter among the woods and ravines of the neighbourhood, and lay low there until the enemy had moved off towards Töplitz, whereupon they made their way to Dresden. The cavalry saved their Eagles by cutting their way through the enemy. They suffered heavy losses, but succeeded in their effort. Their commander, General Corbineau, “presented himself, wounded and covered with blood, before Napoleon”; it was his arrival that announced the disaster. The Eagles of the 33rd and the 106th of the Line taken at Kulm are at Vienna.