The old soldiers all stood utterly broken down, weeping bitter tears, overcome with grief, as Napoleon made his way to the carriage; the members of the Household bowing low as he passed, and kissing his hand, were all also in tears.
Finally, amid a mournful cry of “Vive l’Empereur!” Napoleon drove away.
ASHES MINGLED WITH WINE
As soon as Napoleon’s carriage was beyond the precincts, the Grenadiers of the Guard solemnly lowered the Imperial Standard, flying above the Château. There, in the courtyard, they burned it. Then, mixing the ashes in a barrel of wine that was brought out, they handed round the liquor in bowls and drank off the draught, pledging Napoleon with cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” So it is related by one who was an eye-witness and a partaker; one of the officers of the Old Guard.
Kept safely in concealment for ten months by General Petit, during the Bourbon Restoration period in 1814, the Eagle of the Old Guard appeared once more after the return from Elba. It faced the enemy for the last time at Waterloo. Something of that will be said further on. General Petit kept close beside it all through the retreat, during that night of horror after Waterloo; a faithful band of devoted veterans accompanying him and surrounding the Eagle. So it made its final return to France, to be preserved for the rest of his life by the man who, above all others, had most right to be custodian of the Eagle of the Old Guard.
The Bourbon War Minister ordered it to be given up, to be burned at the artillery dépôt at Vincennes with the other Eagles that the Restoration officials were able to get hold of. General Petit flatly and indignantly refused to part with the Eagle of the Old Guard. He was able, as before, to conceal it successfully, in spite of every effort to discover its whereabouts, until after the Revolution of 1830. Then, at the last, it was safe.
THE FLAG OF THE OLD GUARD
Faded and frayed away in parts, the gold embroidery on it dulled and tarnished from the lapse of years, and torn here and there round the jagged bullet-holes in the silk, is now, in its old age, the Flag of the Old Guard. As it was at first—as it was when it made its débût at the opening of its career, on that December afternoon on the Field of Mars—the flag is of rich crimson silk, fringed with gold, sprinkled over on both sides with golden bees, and with, at the corners, encircled in golden laurel-wreaths, the Imperial cypher, the letter “N.” In shape it was—and of course is still—almost a square: a metre deep, vertically, on the staff, and some half-dozen inches more than that lengthwise, horizontally, in the fly. On one side, in the centre, the Napoleonic Eagle is displayed, a gold embroidered Eagle poised on a thunderbolt. Inscribed round the Eagle in letters of gold is the legend:
“GARDE IMPÉRIALE
L’Empereur Napoléon
au 1er Régiment des
Grenadiers à Pied.”
On the other side are inscribed these fifteen names of Napoleon’s great days in war, also in golden letters: “Marengo; Ulm; Austerlitz; Jéna; Berlin; Eylau; Friedland; Madrid; Eckmühl; Essling; Wagram; Vienna; Smolensk; Moskowa; Moscow.”