At Dresden, where Marshal St. Cyr had to surrender, a month after Leipsic, the terms granted by the Austrian general conducting the siege allowed the troops to return to France with their arms, their baggage, and their Eagles, seven in number. Superior authority, however, cancelled the privilege. The garrison had already started on their march when, to their utter consternation, the capitulation was abruptly annulled by the Austrian Generalissimo, Schwartzenberg, with the result that the hapless troops were compelled to yield themselves prisoners at discretion. The soldiers were defenceless and could only submit to their hard fate. They did not, however, let their seven Eagles pass into the enemy’s hands. Five of the seven were broken up, and the flags torn to pieces and divided among the regiments. Two of the Eagles, those of the 25th of the Line and the 85th, were concealed intact by two officers, who kept them from discovery for months, while they were prisoners in Hungary. After the Peace, in the following year, they brought them back to France—to meet there the doom that awaited all the Eagles of Napoleon of which the officials of the Bourbon régime got possession.
One memento of the Winter Campaign in Eastern France is now at the Invalides—the Eagle of the 5th of the Line. It was found in the river Aube at Arcis after the battle there, which, in its result, decided the fate of Napoleon; its outcome being the immediate march of the Allied armies on Paris. The 5th was one of the regiments of the rearguard column, under Oudinot, half of which was drowned in the river in trying to get across at night, after stubbornly holding out in the town all the afternoon in order to enable Napoleon to cross the river in safety. The 5th was one of the regiments that sacrificed themselves. Its Eagle-bearer was among the drowned, and his Eagle sank with him. It remained in the bed of the stream until long afterwards, when it was accidentally discovered, and fished up.
The 132nd of the Line of the modern army of France commemorates on its flag a feat of arms done under the Eagle of the old 132nd of Napoleon’s Army, after having been saved from the Prussians at the Katzbach, and again at Leipsic. It was in one of the fights in the closing campaign in Eastern France. The proud legend inscribed in golden letters, “Rosny, 1814: Un contre huit,” commemorates how the regiment, single-handed, held at bay and beat off an enemy eight times its force, saving itself for the third time, and its Eagle.
THE GRAND ARMY’S LAST PARADE
The surviving Eagles of the war, the last to face the enemy in the north of those presented on the Field of Mars, paid their last salute to the War Lord at Napoleon’s final review of the remnants of the Grand Army at Rheims on March 15, 1814.
A pitiful, a moving, sight was that hapless military spectacle: the closing parade before Napoleon of his last remaining soldiers.
This is how Alison describes it: “How different from the splendid military spectacles of the Tuileres or Chammartin, which had so often dazzled his sight with the pomp of apparently irresistible power! Wasted away to half the numbers which they possessed when they crossed the Marne a fortnight before, the greater part of the regiments exhibited only the skeletons of military array. In some, more officers than privates were to be seen in the ranks; in all, the appearance of the troops, the haggard air of the men, their worn-out uniforms, and the strange motley of which they were composed, bespoke the total exhaustion of the Empire. It was evident to all that Napoleon was expending his last resources. Besides the veterans of the Guard—the iron men whom nothing could daunt, but whose tattered garments and soiled accoutrements bespoke the dreadful fatigue to which they had been subjected—were to be seen young conscripts, but recently torn from the embraces of maternal love, and whose wan visages and faltering steps told but too clearly that they were unequal to the weight of the arms they bore. The gaunt figures and woeful aspect of the horses, the broken carriages and blackened mouths of the guns, the crazy and fractured artillery wagons which defiled past, the general confusion of arms, battalions, and uniforms, even in the best appointed corps, spoke of the mere remains of the vast military army which had so long stood triumphant against the world in arms. The soldiers exhibited none of their ancient enthusiasm as they defiled past the Emperor; silent and sad they took their way before him: the stern realities of war had chased away its enthusiastic ardour. All felt that in this dreadful contest they themselves would perish, happy if they had not previously witnessed the degradation of France!”[35]
What is indeed the most interesting of all the Eagles, the most famous battle-standard in the world, which for a time was at the Invalides, is at present preserved in private hands in Paris—the Eagle of Napoleon’s Old Guard, the Eagle of the “Adieu of Fontainebleau.” It is treasured with devoted care in the family of the officer who commanded the Grenadiers of the Guard in the retreat from Moscow, at Fontainebleau, and at Waterloo—General Petit. It is kept in the house, in Paris, in which the old general died, in the room he used as his salon. General Petit refused to be parted from the Eagle of his regiment during his lifetime; he kept it with him wherever he went, always in his personal care. It was at the Invalides while General Petit was in residence there as Governor of the Hospital.
THE OLD GUARD AT FONTAINEBLEAU
On that never-to-be-forgotten April forenoon of 1814, in the Court of the White Horse of the Château of Fontainebleau, Napoleon embraced the standard, and taking the Eagle in his hands, kissed it in front of the veteran Grenadiers of the Old Guard. His travelling carriage, to convey the fallen Emperor on the first stage of his journey to Elba, was in waiting, close by, ready to start. Twelve hundred Grenadiers of the Guard stood with presented arms all round the courtyard; drawn up in a great hollow square as a guard of honour to render to the master they adored the parting salute.