THE EAGLE-TROPHIES OF LEIPSIC
The three days of battle at Leipsic, between October 16 and 19, 1813, cost Napoleon 60,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, and 300 guns; but not more than 6 Eagles were among the trophies of battalion-flags and squadron-colours taken or found on the field, now at Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg.
One Eagle was lost during the first day’s fighting at Leipsic—taken on the 16th by Blücher from Ney’s corps; but no others were lost until the end. The 80,000 men who were able to make good their retreat with Napoleon across the bridge over the Elster before it was prematurely blown up, through a non-commissioned officer’s blunder, carried their Eagles with them. What colour-trophies came into the possession of the Allies were taken amid the final scenes of carnage; from cut-off battalions of the three divisions left behind on the right bank of the river, victims of the destruction of the bridge. They were mostly captured in the ferocious hand-to-hand fighting which marked the closing phase of the battle in the suburbs of Leipsic. The French defended themselves there to the last with the courage of despair among the fortified villas and loopholed garden walls. “Pressed upon by superior numbers, and fighting, now in the streets, now in the houses, now through gardens or other enclosures, the single end which they could accomplish or which in point of fact they seemed to desire, was that they might sell their lives at the dearest rate possible.” Two at least of the Eagles now at Berlin were hastily buried in gardens during the last stand, and were dug up there later when the ground was being turned over.
AMIDST THE ROUT AT LEIPSIC
Forced to give back before their ever-increasing enemies, not a few of the French “preferred death to captivity, and fought to the last. These, retiring through by-lanes and covered passages, made their way to the river, some where the ruins of the bridge covered its banks, some above and others below that point, and, plunging into the deep water, endeavoured to gain the opposite shore by swimming, an attempt in which comparatively few succeeded.”
The three doomed divisions of Lauriston, Regnier, and Poniatowski, who were cut off by the blowing up of the bridge, had, as it happened, not many Eagles among them to lose. They were largely made up of newly raised conscript regiments to whom Napoleon had not yet awarded Eagles; regiments not yet entitled to carry Eagles, according to the later regulations that Napoleon had laid down. Only four of the newly raised regiments altogether, so far during the campaign in Germany, had qualified for the honour. They had received their Eagles with the customary ceremony at the hands of Napoleon: three of them on October 15, the day before the battle of Leipsic opened. The fourth had received its Eagle at Dresden a month earlier. Two of these four Eagles only were lost to the enemy at Leipsic.
The Eagle-bearers of four or five other regiments among those cut off by the bridge disaster tried to swim across the Elster with their Eagles. Their fate is unknown; probably they were drowned in the attempt. Other Eagle-bearers, before surrendering, were seen to fling their Eagles into the river to sink there.
How one Eagle, during the battle on the 18th, was momentarily lost, and then regained by a splendid act of valour, is told by Caulaincourt, who was on Napoleon’s staff, and witnessed the gallant deed that won the Eagle back. In the midst of the fighting, a number of Saxon regiments abandoned Napoleon’s cause and went over en masse to the enemy. To signalise their defection they turned on the nearest French regiment and mobbed it; attacking it at close quarters with the bayonet. Thrown into confusion by the unexpected onslaught, the French were for the moment broken and forced back, whereupon the Saxons, making for the Eagle, got possession of it. “A young officer of Hussars,” relates Caulaincourt, “whose name I forget, rushed headlong into the enemies’ ranks. In the charge some of the miserable renegades had carried off one of our Eagles. The gallant young officer rescued it, but at the cost of his life. He threw the Eagle at the Emperor’s feet, and then he himself fell, mortally wounded and bathed in blood. The Emperor was deeply moved. ‘With such men,’ he exclaimed, ‘what resources does not France possess!’”
The regiments left by Napoleon to garrison the fortresses in Germany, at Stettin, at Magdeburg, Torgau, Dantzic, and elsewhere, previous to surrendering took steps to prevent their Eagles falling into the hands of their adversaries. In every case they destroyed them, smashing the Eagles into small fragments, which were either distributed among officers and men, or else thrown into the ditch of the fortress. In more than one case they melted the Eagles down, and broke up and buried the metal, while the flags were burned.
KEPT FROM THE HANDS OF THE FOE