IN THE SECOND CAMPAIGN
JENA AND THE TRIUMPH OF BERLIN
The curtain rises this time on an act in the War Drama of the Eagles
unique in the startling incidents of its historic _dénoûment_.
Prussia, in September 1806, threw down the gage to Napoleon and drew
the sword for a trial of strength, with the full assurance of victory.
There was no doubt in Germany as to the issue; not the least anxiety
was felt. No troops in the world, declared one and all, could stand up
to the Prussian Army. It was easy, they said at Potsdam and Berlin, to
account for what had happened last year on the Danube. Any sort of army
could have won in that war. Timidity and want of skill in the Austrian
generals, deficient training in the men, had been, beyond dispute, the
reason of the disasters. It would be otherwise now. Napoleon would have
to meet this time the Army of Prussia; the best drilled and smartest
soldiers in the world, organised and trained under the system that the
Great Frederick had originated and himself brought to perfection.
“His Majesty the King,” said one of the Prussian generals, addressing
a parade at Potsdam, “has many generals better than Napoleon!” In the
Prussian Army, from veteran field-marshal to drummer-boy, there were
no two opinions as to what must be the outcome of a clash of arms with
France. The wings of Napoleon’s Eagles would be clipped once for all.
But to hurl defiant words was not enough. Yet further to display
contempt for their French foes, the young officers of the Prussian
Guard marched one night in procession through the streets of Berlin to
demonstrate in front of the French Embassy. Shouting out insults and
jeers, they brandished their swords before the windows of the mansion
and made a show of sharpening the blades on the Ambassador’s doorsteps.
The Prussian King’s ultimatum went forth, couched in language there was
no mistaking, and the Royal Guard Corps set out from the capital for
the frontier with flags displayed and their bands playing triumphal
airs, chanting songs of the victories of the Great Frederick, and
shouting themselves hoarse with cries of “Nach Paris!” All over Prussia
it was the same. The marching regiments tramped through the towns and
villages, their colours decked with flowers, their bands playing, and
with the swaggering gait of victors returning from conquest.
[Sidenote: A REPLY WITHIN A WEEK]
The Prussian ultimatum, delivered on September 1, haughtily demanded
a reply from France within a week. It was accepted with alacrity.
Napoleon had foreseen all and laid his plans. “Marshal,” he said to
Berthier, with a grim smile, as he read the ultimatum, “they have given
us a rendezvous for the 8th; never did Frenchman refuse such an appeal.”
The Eagles never swooped to more deadly purpose, with results more
amazing and more dramatic, than in that campaign.
Within three days of the firing of the first shot, a Prussian division
of 9,000 men had been routed with heavy loss at Schleitz in Thuringia;
and Murat’s cavalry had captured elsewhere great part of the Prussian
reserve baggage-trains and pontoon equipment. On the fourth day of the
war, at Saalfeld in Thuringia, 1,200 Prussian prisoners were taken and
30 guns. In the battles of Jena and Auerstadt, both fought on the same
day, October 14, 20,000 Prussian prisoners, 200 guns, and 25 standards
were spoils to the Eagles. At Erfurth, on the next day, a Prussian
field-marshal with 14,000 men, 120 guns and the whole of the grand
park of the reserve artillery of the army were taken. At Halle 4,000
Prussian prisoners were taken, with 30 guns; at Lübeck 8,000 prisoners
and 40 guns. Magdeburg, one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, with
immense magazines and 600 guns on the ramparts garrisoned by 16,000
troops, surrendered after a few hours’ partial bombardment. Stettin, a
first-class fortress mounting 150 guns, with a garrison of 6,000 men,
surrendered without firing a shot. The strong fortress of Cüstrin on
the Oder, with 4,000 men in garrison and 90 cannon on the ramparts,
surrendered, also without firing a shot, to a solitary French infantry
regiment with four guns. The fortress of Spandau, garrisoned by 6,000
men, hauled down its flag and opened its gates to a squadron of French
hussars, no other French troops being within many miles, bluffed into
surrender. Within twelve days of Jena, Napoleon had made his entry as a
conqueror into Berlin, and the Prussian Army had ceased to exist. “We
have arrived in Potsdam and Berlin,” announced Napoleon in a Bulletin
to the Grand Army, “sooner than the renown of our victories! We have
made 60,000 prisoners, taken 65 standards, including those of the Royal
Guard, 600 pieces of cannon, 3 fortresses, 20 generals, half of our
army having to regret that they have not had an opportunity of firing a
shot. All the Prussian provinces from the Elbe to the Oder are in our
hands.” Before the end of the year, in little more than three months
from the firing of the first shot, a total of 100,000 prisoners, 4,000
cannon, 6 first-class fortresses, and many smaller ones, were in the
hands of the victors.
[Sidenote: RUIN, SWIFT AND IRREPARABLE]
Never had the world witnessed such an overthrow in war, so complete
and appalling a catastrophe. Two battles sufficed to prostrate Prussia
and annihilate the model army of Frederick the Great: the twin battles
of Jena and Auerstadt, both fought, as has been said, on the same
day, October 14, and within ten miles of one another. Jena was fought
under Napoleon’s own eye; Auerstadt by Marshal Davout, practically
single-handed, with his one army corps confronting the King and
Blücher with the main Prussian army. The Prussian generals indeed
gave themselves into Napoleon’s hands at the outset. They separated
their main army into two bodies out of touch with each other, in the
immediate presence of the enemy. Ruin, swift and irreparable, was the
penalty. At Jena, Prince Hohenlohe’s army was flung roughly back and
dashed to pieces, its scattered remnants flying in wild disorder. At
Auerstadt, Davout defeated numbers nearly double his own, through the
confused tactics of the Prussian generals. Immediately after that
came on the _débâcle_. The Prussian Auerstadt army was falling back,
disheartened and demoralised, but still in fair military formation to
a large extent, when, all of a sudden, not having had up to then the
least inkling of what had happened at Jena, the retreating troops came
upon the shattered fragments of Hohenlohe’s battalions, streaming in
wild confusion across their path; masses of fugitives running for
their lives in frantic panic before the sabres of Murat’s pursuing
cavalry. That ended everything for the Prussian army in five minutes.
The sight of their fugitive comrades struck confusion and sheer fright
into the retreating columns from Auerstadt. All order was instantly
lost: the soldiers threw away their arms and spread over the country in
headlong rout. And there was no means of stopping it. In their blind
self-confidence the Prussian generals had made no arrangements in
the event of a reverse. No line of retreat had been arranged for, no
rallying-point had been thought of. “The disaster of a single day made
an end of the Prussian army as a force capable of meeting the enemy in
the field.”
For the Eagles it was a day of adventures on both battlefields. Swiftly
alternating rushes forward, the Eagles showing the way at the head
of their regiments at one moment; hasty halts to form in rallying
squares, the Eagles in the midst, the next moment, to check the
incessant Prussian cavalry counter-charges--that was what the fighting
on the French side was like, all through the day, at both Jena and
Auerstadt. At one time the Eagles were leading forward charging lines
of exultantly cheering men, firing fast and racing forward at the _pas
de charge_; immediately afterwards they were standing fast, each the
centre of a mass of breathless and excited soldiers, surging round and
closing up to form square, with bristling bayonets levelled on every
side, to hold the ground they had won against the charging squadrons of
Prussian horsemen that came at them, thundering down impetuously at the
gallop.
[Sidenote: “LEAD OUT YOUR EAGLE!”]
“I want to see the Eagles well to the front to-day!” said Napoleon
to several regiments in turn, as he rode at early dawn along the
lines of Marshal Soult’s two foremost divisions who were to open the
attack at Jena. To them the task had been appointed to push forward
in advance, and hold the exits from the narrow defiles through which
the French troops had to pass, before reaching the Prussians on the
high ground beyond, in order to give time to the main army, following
close in rear, to deploy and form in battle order. “Lead out your
Eagle, Sixty-fourth!” Napoleon said to one of the regiments told off
to go forward in the forefront of all. “I wish to-day to see the Eagle
of the Sixty-fourth lead the battle on the field of honour!” How that
Eagle led its regiment, how those who fought under it did their duty,
the prized honour of special mention in the Jena Bulletin of the Grand
Army, and a shower of crosses of the Legion of Honour, distributed
among all ranks, bore testimony. Five times did the Eagle of the 34th,
the regiment fighting next to the 64th, lead a charge, each charge
crossing bayonets with the enemy, twice in hand-to-hand fight with the
picked corps of the Prussian Grenadiers.
It was on the battlefield of Jena that Marshal Ney won his historic
sobriquet of “The Bravest of the Brave.” He personally led forward his
attack, with, at either side of him, the Eagles of the 18th of the
Line, the 32nd, and the 96th. Carried away by his impetuous valour,
soon after the opening of the battle, Ney made his attack with only at
hand the three regiments of his First Division. The other two divisions
of Ney’s corps had not yet reached the field. A regiment of cuirassiers
headed the column, and at their first charge captured 13 Prussian guns;
but the Prussian cavalry, charging back at once to recover the guns,
overpowered the cuirassiers.
“The Prussian cavalry broke the French horse, and enveloped the
infantry in such numbers as would inevitably have proved fatal to
less resolute troops; but the brave marshal instantly formed his men
into squares, threw himself into one of them, and there maintained
the combat by a rolling fire on all sides, till Napoleon, who saw his
danger, sent several regiments of horse, under Bertrand, who disengaged
him from his perilous situation.”
Ney’s other troops then joined the marshal, coming up with their Eagles
gleaming through the battle-smoke: the Eagles of the 39th and the
69th, of the 76th, the 27th, and the 59th. Ney, extricated from his
difficulties, went on again at once. “With intrepid step he ascended
the hill, and, after a sharp conflict, stormed the important village
of Vierzehn-Heiligen, in the centre of the Prussian position. In vain
Hohenlohe formed the flower of his troops to regain the post; in
vain these brave men advanced in parade order, and with unshrinking
firmness, through a storm of musketry and grape; the troops of Lannes
came up to Ney’s support, and the French established themselves in such
strength in the village as to render all subsequent attempts for its
recapture abortive.”
[Sidenote: LET THEM COME ON!]
This was the spirit in which, at Jena, Ney’s men fought under the
Eagles. One instance will suffice. The 76th of the Line, after the
village of Vierzehn-Heiligen had been taken, were in the act of
advancing across the open to a fresh attack, when a charge of Prussian
cavalry swept fiercely down on them. The regiment formed in square,
each battalion rallying round its Eagle, held up aloft for all to
gather round. The Prussians had come up suddenly. They were within
150 yards before the 76th were ready. Then the 76th were ordered to
“present” and fire. Instead of doing that, the men, as if moved by one
common impulse, took off their shakos, stuck them on their bayonets,
and waved them in the air, with defiant cheers of “Vive l’Empereur!”
“Donnez feu, mes enfants! Donnez feu!” (“Fire, men, fire!”) shouted out
their colonel, Lannier, anxious lest the enemy should get too near.
“We have time: at fifteen paces, Colonel; wait and see!” came back in
answer from the ranks. They did wait, and, at just fifteen paces, fired
a crashing volley which so staggered the Prussians that, leaving half
their men on the ground, they turned and galloped back.
The regiments of Lannes’ corps, with the fiery marshal cantering at
their head and waving them on, cocked hat in hand, entered the battle
with drums beating and the Eagles proudly displayed in the centre of
the leading lines.
[Sidenote: “HERE IS THE COU-COU!”]
One regiment lost 28 officers and 400 men. It had made good its first
attack and was advancing to a second, when it was charged in the open
by the Prussian cavalry, while in the act of forming square. It all
but lost its Eagle. The Eagle-bearer was cut down, and the Eagle was
broken from its staff in the trampling tumult of horsemen intermingled
with infantry, savagely fighting with their bayonets. A soldier saved
the Eagle, and in the hurry of the moment stuffed it into the pocket
of his long overcoat. Then he went on fighting. Apparently the man had
no time or opportunity to think of the Eagle again. The regiment was
re-forming towards the close of the battle, when Napoleon himself,
riding across the ground near them, with his quick glance, missed the
Eagle. He cantered up to the spot, and, on being told by an officer
that he did not know where it was, angrily accused the men of having
lost their Eagle on the field. He began upbraiding them indignantly:
“What is this? Where is your Eagle? You have brought disgrace on the
Army by losing your Eagle!” Those were his opening words. He was rating
the men angrily, when he was abruptly interrupted by a voice from the
ranks. “No, your Majesty, no! they did not get it: they only got a
piece of the bâton! Here is the Cou-cou! I put it in my pocket!” The
soldier drew out the Eagle as he spoke and held it up. There was a
loud outburst of laughter from the soldiers at the unexpected turn of
events, amid which Napoleon, without a word more, turned and rode off
elsewhere.
At Auerstadt, where 30,000 French faced and defeated 60,000 Prussians,
the fighting was even fiercer than at Jena. Recklessly the Prussian
horsemen, led in person by the dauntless Blücher, repeatedly charged
down on the French, who formed in square everywhere to beat them back,
They did so at all points, and the Prussians only wrecked themselves
beyond recovery by their efforts. In vain did the Prussian cavalry, as
at Jena, gallop up to the French bayonets again and again. “In vain
these gallant cavaliers, with headlong fury, drove their steeds up to
the very muzzles of the French muskets. In vain they rode round and
enveloped their squares: ceaseless was the rolling fire which issued
from those flaming walls: impenetrable the hedge of bayonets which, the
front rank kneeling, presented to their advances.” Erect in the centre
of each French battalion square glittered its Eagle, raised on high
defiantly above the smoke as the volleys flashed out all round.
Marshal Davout was seen at every point wherever the regiments were
hardest pressed. From square to square the marshal galloped, as
opportunity offered in the intervals of the Prussian attacks, “his face
begrimed with sweat and powder-smoke, his spectacles gone,[11] his bald
head bleeding from a wound, his uniform torn, a piece of his cocked hat
shot away,” to exhort the men to stand fast and hold their ground. To
one regiment he called out, as he reined up beside its square: “Their
Great Frederick said that God gave the victory to the big battalions.
He lied! It’s the stubborn soldiers who win battles; that’s you and
your general to-day!” Davout personally brought up support at one
point to rescue a sorely pressed division of four regiments, General
Gudin’s,[12] holding the village of Herrenhausen, on the right of the
battlefield; a post of vital importance to the fate of the day. Taken
by a brilliant dash forward early in the battle, the village was held
to the last, in spite of the utmost endeavours of the Prussians to
regain it.
[Illustration: MARSHAL DAVOUT.]
[Sidenote: AT BAY BEHIND A BARRICADE]
The French kept the post at the cost of half their numbers. One
regiment, the 85th, on the side of the village fronting the Prussians,
lost two-thirds of its men and was forced back and compelled to abandon
the outskirts. It kept the Prussians at bay, however, within the
village, behind a barricade of overturned carts, farm implements, and
cottage furniture heaped together. Close behind the firing line across
the village street the Eagle-bearer took his stand, amidst a hail of
bullets, mounted on a wheelbarrow and brandishing the Eagle and calling
on the men to stand firm and fire low.
Marshal Davout brought up his First Division of five regiments to
rescue Gudin, heading them sword in hand as he galloped forward. In
doing so he received his wound and had a narrow escape of his life.
“One bullet went through the marshal’s hat just above the cockade.”[13]
The 111th of the Line, of Davout’s Third Division, had three
Eagle-bearers shot down in succession, a fresh officer coming forward
to carry the Eagle as his predecessor fell. All the drummer-lads of the
regiment were killed, whereupon Drum-Major Mauser, dropping his staff,
picked up a drum and beat it as the regiment advanced in its final
charge. He ran forward close beside the Eagle until he in turn fell
shot dead. This was in storming the village of Spielberg, nearly at
the close of the battle.
“The corps of Marshal Davout performed prodigies,” wrote Napoleon in
the Fourth Bulletin of the campaign, commending with warmth “the rare
intrepidity of the brave corps.” He ordered 500 crosses of the Legion
of Honour to be distributed in Davout’s corps, directing that when the
army reached Berlin, Davout and the Third Corps should take precedence,
and their Eagles lead the triumphal entry through the streets of the
Prussian capital. At a special review of Davout’s corps, calling
the marshal and his generals round him, he declared his unbounded
admiration of the feat of arms they had achieved. “Sire,” replied
Davout, deeply moved at Napoleon’s words, “the soldiers of the Third
Corps will always be to you what the Tenth Legion was to Caesar.”
At the attack on Halle, three days after Jena, the 32nd of the Line,
near the Eagle of which regiment Ney had ridden at Jena, distinguished
themselves brilliantly. The Prussian Reserve Army Corps was holding
Halle and making a gallant effort in a rearguard fight to safeguard
the passage there over the river Saale. Led by the commander of Ney’s
First Division, General Dupont, in person, they stormed the bridge in
the face of a tremendous fire of grape and case shot. Then, backed up
by their comrades in Ney’s First Division, the 18th and 96th and 9th
Light Infantry, they fought their way through the city and, breaking
open the gates, stormed the heights beyond, foremost throughout in the
attack. Four times the Eagle-bearer of the 32nd was shot down: each
time a fresh officer sprang forward to lead the regiment on. The 97th
of the Line, while fighting their way through the streets of Halle at
another point, found the Prussian cannon mounted at a barricade too
deadly to face in the open, and the regiment recoiled in confusion.
Taking the Eagle from the Eagle-bearer, Colonel Barrois called forward
the grenadier company. Leading them on himself on horseback, holding up
the Eagle with his right hand, he went straight at the barricade, which
was stormed without touching a trigger.
[Sidenote: ACROSS A CONQUERED LAND]
Thenceforward there was only left for the Eagles to choose the slain;
to parade in triumph across a conquered land. “Veni, Vidi, Vici,”
sums up the story of the after-events of the war for the Eagles of
Napoleon. The army of the great Frederick committed suicide after Jena.
Its resistance collapsed: the army that had gone forth in September
to cross the Rhine and dictate peace at the gates of Paris had ceased
to exist within six weeks. How completely indeed the _moral_ of the
Prussians had been shattered, this story, from a report from Marshal
Lannes to Napoleon, serves to show. “Three hussars,” related Lannes,
“having lost their way towards Grätz, found themselves in the midst of
an enemy’s squadron. They boldly drew their carbines and, levelling
them at the enemy, called out that the Prussians were surrounded, and
must surrender at discretion. The Prussians obeyed. The commander of
the squadron, without apparently a thought of resistance, ordered
his men to dismount, and they surrendered their arms to those three
hussars, who brought them all in prisoners of war.”
General Lassalle, with a handful of hussars, as has been said,
captured the fortress of Stettin, with 150 guns on its walls and a
garrison of 6,000 men, by sheer effrontery. He rode up to the main
gate and demanded the surrender within five minutes; and the governor
capitulated on the spot. “If your hussars take strong fortresses like
that,” wrote Napoleon to Murat, on hearing the news, “I have nothing
to do but break up my artillery and discharge my engineers.” Prince
Hohenlohe with 14,000 men and 50 guns, his troops including the Royal
Prussian Guard and six regiments of Guard cavalry, laid down their
arms at Prentzlau. A few miles away, 8,000 more Prussians surrendered
on the same day to a French brigade of dragoons. The unfortunates
were remnants of the troops beaten at Jena, and had been relentlessly
pursued for ten days.
The 7th Hussars forwarded to Napoleon as their spoils from a three
days’ chase, 7 Prussian cavalry standards; those of the Anspach and
Bayreuth Dragoons; the Queen of Prussia’s regiment; and 4 standards
of the Light Cavalry of the Guard. Marshal Lannes sent Napoleon 40
Prussian standards taken between Jena and Berlin. Bernadotte and Soult
presented 82 more trophies, the spoils of Blücher’s army, forced to
surrender at Lübeck after a forlorn-hope fight in the course of which
the city was stormed.
[Sidenote: “THE FINEST FEAT OF ARMS”]
Marshal Ney took the fortress of Magdeburg without having a single
siege-gun, and with only 11,000 men at hand to deal with 24,000 in the
garrison and 700 guns on the ramparts, some of these being the heaviest
artillery of the time. It was perhaps the most surprising event of the
war. The taking of Magdeburg, wrote Junot, “is the finest feat of arms
that has illustrated this campaign.” Ney had been ordered to blockade
Magdeburg until a sufficient army was available for the siege of the
fortress, which Napoleon expected would be a long and difficult affair.
But so tedious a task as a blockade was not at all to Ney’s taste.
To hasten matters he sent for half a dozen mortars, taken at Erfurt,
and began throwing shells into the suburbs on the side nearest him.
The bombardment caused a scare among the townsfolk. Panic-stricken at
seeing their houses set on fire and destroyed by the bursting shells,
they hastened to General Kleist, the governor of Magdeburg, an elderly
and nervous old gentleman of between seventy and eighty years of
age, and implored him to ask terms of the French marshal. Dismayed
himself at the prospect of a siege, with disorder rampant among the
military--nearly half the garrison was made up of fragments of fugitive
regiments from Jena who had fled to Magdeburg for shelter from the
pursuing French--Kleist, losing his nerve in the face of the alarming
situation, agreed to negotiate for terms. Ney’s reply was a demand for
instant surrender, whereupon the wretched governor, although he had
more than enough good troops at disposal, without counting the Jena
fugitives, to have made a stubborn defence, tamely hoisted the white
flag.
The march out of the garrison of Magdeburg was a repetition of the
Austrian humiliation of Ulm on a lesser scale. The standards of the
Black Eagle in their turn had at Magdeburg publicly to acknowledge
defeat before the Eagles of Napoleon.
[Sidenote: THE GARRISON LAYS DOWN ARMS]
Ney drew up his 11,000 men in a great hollow square outside the Ulrich
gate of the fortress. His troops were drawn up along three sides of
the square; the fourth side, that nearest the city, being left open.
In front of the regiments stood their Eagles, all paraded as at Ulm,
the Eagle-guards beside them, and the regimental officers standing in
line with their swords at the carry. The Prussians marched out and, to
the music of the French bands, passed in procession along the three
inner sides of the square, and in front of Marshal Ney and his staff.
The miserable Kleist led them, and then took his stand beside Ney, to
answer the marshal’s questions as to who and what the various regiments
were, as each set of downcast Prussians trailed past. They tramped by,
with their muskets on their shoulders unloaded and without bayonets,
and with their colours furled. The hapless prisoners, after they had
defiled past, were at once marched away under escort on the road to
Mayence. Twenty generals, 800 other officers, 22,000 infantry, and
2,000 artillerymen, with 59 standards, underwent the humiliation of the
defilade.[14] There were several painful scenes at the laying down of
the arms. “Their soldiers openly insulted their officers,” describes
one of the French lookers-on. “Most of them looked terribly ashamed of
themselves; the faces of not a few were streaming with tears.”
At Magdeburg, as in the other surrenders elsewhere, it was not the
personal courage of the officers and soldiers that was wanting--there
were men by thousands in the various garrisons ready to give their
lives for the honour of their country; it was the generals in command
whose nerve lacked. The generals were men past their prime, and mostly
physically incapable of enduring hardships. They had been appointed to
their posts, in accordance with the system in vogue in Prussia, for the
sake of the emoluments.
“The overthrow of Jena,” to use the words of a modern writer, “had been
caused by faults of generalship, and cast no stain upon the courage
of the officers; the surrender of the Prussian fortresses, which
began on the day when the French entered Berlin, attached the utmost
personal disgrace to their commanders. Even after the destruction of
the army in the field, Prussia’s situation would not have been hopeless
if the commanders of the fortresses had acted on the ordinary rules
of military duty. Magdeburg and the strongholds upon the Oder were
sufficiently armed and provisioned to detain the entire French army,
and to give time to the King to collect upon the Vistula a force as
numerous as that which he had lost. But whatever is weakest in human
nature--old age, fear, and credulity--seemed to have been placed at the
head of the Prussian defences.” Küstrin on the Oder, “in full order for
a long siege, was surrendered by the older officers, amidst the curses
of the subalterns and the common soldiers: the artillerymen had to be
dragged from their guns by force.”
At Magdeburg, indeed, before the march out, the younger officers of the
garrison mobbed General Kleist, hooting at him and cursing him to his
face; some of them, further, being with difficulty stopped from acts of
personal violence.
There yet remained one day more for the Eagles. The triumphal parade of
the victorious Eagles through Berlin was the crowning humiliation that
Napoleon imposed on vanquished Prussia.
[Sidenote: MARSHAL DAVOUT IN BERLIN]
Davout’s corps, as Napoleon had promised, marched through the Prussian
capital first of all. The marshal was waited on as he entered by the
Burgomeister and civic authorities, humbly bowing before him, and
offering in token of submission the keys of Berlin. The offer, however,
was declined. “You must present them later,” was the reply; “they
belong to a greater than I!” After marching through Berlin, Davout
camped a mile beyond the city, posting his artillery “in position as
for war, pointed towards the place as in readiness to bombard it.” The
soldiers were then allowed to go about Berlin in parties. They behaved
very quietly, and made eager sightseers, we are told. The shops,
which had been closed during the march through, reopened later, and
the people went about the streets as usual, “mortified and subdued in
demeanour, but apparently very curious to see what they could of the
French officers.”
Augereau’s corps, and then those of Soult, Bernadotte, and Ney made
their triumphal entry and march through Berlin in turn, on different
days later on, bands playing and Eagles displayed at the head of the
regiments--the people turning out on each occasion in crowds to line
the streets and gaze at the show, “expressing great surprise at the
small size of our men and the youth of most of the officers.” Marshal
Ney’s corps brought with them their fifty-nine trophies from Magdeburg,
and, after parading them through the streets of Berlin, ceremoniously
presented them to Napoleon in public, in front of the statue of
Frederick the Great.
Napoleon himself made his triumphal entry into Berlin on October 28,
three days after Davout’s march through. He rode from Charlottenburg
through the Brandenburg Gate and along Unter-den-Linden to the Royal
Palace, at the head of the Old Guard and six thousand cuirassiers in
gleaming mail. Squadrons of Gendarmerie d’Elite and Chasseurs of the
Guard and the Horse Grenadiers, in their huge bear-skins, led the long
procession, all in _grande tenue_, with their bands playing and the
Eagles glittering in the brilliant sunshine of a perfect autumn day.
Napoleon came next, “riding by himself, twenty paces in front of the
staff, with impassive face and a stern expression,” passing amid dense
silent crowds, “the men all wearing black, as in mourning; the women
mostly with handkerchiefs to their eyes.” The people lined both sides
of the roadway, and filled the windows of all the houses overlooking
the route. All Berlin, young and old, was in the streets that day,
staring at the spectacle in mute silence, looking on dumbly, pale-faced
and miserable of aspect. Not a mutter of abuse was heard, not the least
sign was apparent of the deadly hatred to their conqueror that one and
all felt. With rage and despair in their hearts, with compressed lips
and clenched fists at their sides, the men watched the splendid array
sweep proudly past them in all the insolent pomp of victorious war.
[Sidenote: NAPOLEON RIDES THROUGH]
For once, on that historic occasion, Napoleon discarded his customary
wear of the green undress uniform of his pet corps, the Chasseurs of
the Guard. He entered Berlin as the head of a conquering army, wearing
the full-dress uniform of a French general, crimson plumed cocked hat
with blue and white aigrette, blue coat heavily embroidered with gold,
and with glittering bullion epaulettes, and the blue and gold sash of
a general round his waist. Four marshals, Berthier, Lannes, Davout,
and Augereau, riding abreast, followed Napoleon, immediately in front
of the Imperial Staff, a cavalcade of a hundred and more brilliantly
decorated officers, all in their most gorgeous parade uniforms, in
celebration of the day. The keys of the city were presented to the
conqueror, and accepted by him, as Napoleon passed through the
Brandenburg Gate. Ten thousand infantry of the Old Guard, in a vast
solid column of glistening bayonets, marched, twenty abreast, in rear
of the staff. Their famous band playing triumphantly, with the Eagle
of the Grenadiers of the Old Guard above its flag of crimson silk
and gold, heading the veterans. They also were all in the full-dress
uniform they wore on gala-day parades before the Tuileries. By
Napoleon’s special order, the Old Guard on all campaigns carried in
their knapsacks their full-dress uniform, specially for donning on
occasions such as that at Berlin.
But the cup of humiliation for the miserable citizens of the Prussian
capital was not yet full. They had yet another military spectacle with
a significance of its own to witness; one the deep humiliation of which
they felt more bitterly even than Napoleon’s triumphant ride in person
through their streets. The citizens of Berlin had to look on their own
officers of the Royal Prussian Guard being led in procession through
their midst under the armed escort of Napoleon’s grenadiers. That was
Napoleon’s way of settling accounts for that August night of wanton
insult to France, for the sharpening of the sword-blades on the steps
of the French Embassy.
[Sidenote: THE PRISONERS FARMED OUT]
Nor, too, did Napoleon spare the Prussian prisoners of the rank and
file. Writing from Berlin to the Minister of the Interior in Paris,
he gave directions that the Prussian captives should be made use of
as hewers of wood and drawers of water for their conquerors. They
were to be farmed out to municipalities and district councils in the
Departments. “Their services should be turned to account at a trifling
expense in the way of wages for the benefit of our manufacturers and
cultivators and replace our conscripts called to serve in the ranks of
the Grand Army.”
Napoleon stayed in Berlin for four weeks, while the marshals were
leading the Eagles through Eastern Prussia towards the Polish frontier.
Russia had taken up the cause of her defeated neighbour, and the armies
of the Czar were on the move to rescue what was left of the Prussian
army. Less than 15,000 men were all that remained in the field to show
fight, of 200,000 soldiers who, not two months before, had been on the
march against France in full anticipation of victory.
In the Royal Palace of Berlin Napoleon received with elaborate
ceremony the deputation of the French Senate sent from Paris specially
to congratulate the victor of Jena in the enemy’s capital. He took
advantage of the unique occasion for the formal presentation and
handing over to their charge, for conveyance to Paris, of the trophies
of the war--340 Prussian battle-flags and standards.[15] Forty of the
trophies presented to the Senate on that day at Berlin are now among
the array of trophies grouped round Napoleon’s tomb in the Invalides.
Napoleon handed over to the charge of the deputation at the same time,
for transfer to the Invalides, his own personal spoil--the sword of
Frederick the Great. It was removed--all the world knows the story of
the unpardonable outrage--by Napoleon’s own hand from its resting-place
on the royal tomb at Potsdam. “I would rather have this,” he said to
the officers beside him in the royal vault as he took possession of the
sword, “than twenty millions. I shall send it to my old soldiers who
fought against Frederick in the campaign in Hanover. I will present it
to the Governor of the Invalides, who will guard it as a testimonial of
the victories of the Grand Army and the vengeance that it has wreaked
for the disaster of Rosbach. My veterans will be pleased to see the
sword of the man who defeated them at Rosbach!”
[Sidenote: FREDERICK THE GREAT’S SWORD]
The trophies started for France forthwith under military escort, and
Paris went mad with exultation at the sight of them. On the day of the
State Procession which escorted the trophies from the Tuileries to
the Invalides it proved almost impossible to keep back the enormous
crowds that thronged the streets along the route, in spite of cordons
of gendarmerie and regiments of dragoons. Deputations of veterans and
National Guards, with the Eagles of the Departmental Legions, led the
way. Then came Imperial carriages with exalted official personages.
The trophies had their place next, displayed in clusters of flags all
round a gigantic triumphal car. Marshal Moncey, the acting Governor
of Paris, rode a few paces behind the car of Prussian standards,
holding up the trophy of trophies before the eyes of the wildly
cheering onlookers--Frederick the Great’s sword. A gaily attired
train of generals and staff officers attended the marshal. The rear
of the procession was brought up by the battalions of the Guard of
Paris, their Eagles being borne amid rows of gleaming bayonets. Salvos
of artillery from the Triumphal Battery greeted the arrival of the
trophies at the Invalides, where the veterans awaited them, drawn up on
parade before the Gate of Honour. As Napoleon had specially directed,
the Hanoverian War veterans of the Invalides met and escorted Marshal
Moncey to the chapel at the head of other specially nominated veterans,
who bore, marching in procession, the Prussian trophy-standards. The
trophies were deposited with an elaborate display of ceremonial in
front of the High Altar, after which Fontanes, the Public Orator of
the Empire, delivered an address full of glowingly eloquent passages
on the glorious achievements of the Grand Army and the “resplendent
magnificence of the leader who had led the Eagles to surpassing
triumphs!”
THE TWELVE LOST EAGLES OF EYLAU
Napoleon passed from the victorious fields of Prussia to the rough
experiences of the Eylau and Friedland campaigns, which followed as the
sequel to Jena on the plains of the Polish frontier. The Eagles there
had to undergo under fire vicissitudes of fortune that were a foretaste
of the fate in store for some of them later on, at the hands of the
same enemy, in the Moscow campaign. No fewer than fourteen of the
Eagles borne in triumph through Berlin after Jena were on view within a
twelvemonth as spoils of war in the Kazan Cathedral at St. Petersburg.
The Eagle of Marshal Ney’s favourite regiment in the battle-days
of the Ulm campaign, the 9th Light Infantry, was the first to meet
adventures in the Polish War. It was on the occasion of the surprise
of Bernadotte’s army corps, at Möhringen near the Vistula, in the last
week of January 1807. The Grand Army was lying in winter quarters to
the north of Warsaw, awaiting the reopening of the campaign in the
early spring, when the Russian army, breaking up unexpectedly from its
cantonments beyond the Vistula in the depth of winter, made a dash at
Bernadotte’s outlying troops, posted by themselves at some distance
from the main army and scattered in detachments over a wide tract of
country for reasons of food-supply. Bernadotte only got news of the
enemy’s approach just in time; practically at the eleventh hour. He
was rapidly concentrating his corps at Möhringen, but barely half his
troops had been able to reach the point of danger when the Russians
struck their blow. He was able with the troops nearest at hand to avert
destruction, but the escape was a narrow one and his losses were very
heavy, all his baggage falling into the hands of the enemy. Fortunately
for the French the Russian advanced guard attacked prematurely and was
beaten back, after which Bernadotte made good his retreat to a safer
neighbourhood.
[Sidenote: FOUR TIMES TAKEN AND RETAKEN]
The 9th Light Infantry were in the forefront of the fighting, which
was at the closest quarters, the soldiers on both sides meeting man
to man. Four Eagle-bearers of the 9th fell, one after the other. Four
times the Eagle was taken by the Russians and recaptured at the point
of the bayonet. A fifth time the Eagle-bearer went down, and on his
fall this time the Eagle disappeared, while the 9th were driven back,
broken and in disorder. They were quickly rallied again, however, and
led once more to the charge, “going forward to the combat with the
fury of despair.” This time their impetuous onset forced the Russians
to give ground. Advancing with shouts of victory, they stormed the
village of Psarrefelden, immediately in front of them, and there
seized part of a Russian ammunition train. While searching for fresh
cartridges in one of the enemy’s ammunition wagons to replenish their
empty cartouche-boxes an officer, to his surprise, came upon the lost
Eagle. It had been broken from its staff in the last fight round it,
and its Russian captor, probably having enough to do to look after
himself without carrying it about, had apparently thrust it hastily
into the ammunition wagon on top of the cartridges. At any rate there
the Eagle of the 9th Light Infantry was found, and so it was regained.
The broken staff and flag were missing and were never seen again, but
the all-important Eagle had been recovered. It was hurriedly mounted on
a hop-pole, found leaning against a peasant’s hut near by, which was
improvised for a staff, and on that the Eagle was carried to the close
of the fighting that day, after which the 9th retreated with the rest
of Bernadotte’s corps.
Napoleon specially decorated the lieutenant who recovered the Eagle,
and who also had led more than one of the charges to rescue it in the
earlier fighting. He gave him the cross of the Legion of Honour with
a money grant. He further recorded the recovery of the Eagle--though
without mentioning how it was got back--in the 55th Bulletin of the
Grand Army, dated Warsaw, January 29, 1807:
“The Eagle of the 9th Light Infantry was taken by the enemy, but,
realising the deep disgrace with which their brave regiment would be
covered for ever, and from which neither victory nor the glory acquired
in a hundred combats could have removed the stigma, the soldiers,
animated with an inconceivable ardour, precipitated themselves on the
enemy and routed them and recovered their Eagle.”
So Napoleon wrote history.
[Sidenote: ON THE FIRST DAY AT EYLAU]
Two Eagles met their fate in the first day’s fighting at Eylau--in the
preliminary combat on February 7, which formed the opening phase of the
terrific encounter next day. At Eylau--a small township some twenty-two
miles to the south of Königsburg--Napoleon in person commanded with
80,000 men in the field, and met with his first serious check in a
European war. In following up the Russian rearguard on the afternoon of
the 7th, as it fell slowly back to rejoin its main body, drawn up in
position on the farther side of Eylau, on ground chosen beforehand by
the Russian leader for making a stand, two of Napoleon’s battalions,
while pressing hotly forward after the enemy over the open plain,
some two miles from Eylau, were overpowered and cut to pieces. They
had charged and were driving in the nearest Russians to them, when a
Russian cavalry regiment, the St. Petersburg Dragoons, unexpectedly
came on the scene. Sweeping round amidst the tumult of the fighting,
the dragoons rode into them on the flank. The two battalions were
slaughtered almost to a man within five minutes, before help could
get to them, and their Eagles were snatched up and borne away. It was
an act of expiation for the St. Petersburg Dragoons. On the previous
day Murat’s pursuing hussars had charged and broken them, putting
them to flight, and in a wild panic they had ridden over one of their
own regiments, trampling their comrades down, with loss of life. To
retrieve their character the St. Petersburg Dragoons now went savagely
at the two French battalions, riding them down with reckless daring and
relentless fury, giving no quarter. Their capture of two of Napoleon’s
Eagles in one charge, the taking of two Eagles by a single regiment,
stands on its own account as a unique achievement.
[Illustration: Sketch Plan of the Battlefield of EYLAU]
Eylau--the historic battle of February 8, 1807--was fought in the depth
of winter; in the midst of a flat expanse of a desolate snow-plain
and ice-bound marshes; under dreary lowering skies of leaden grey;
amid howling gusts of piercing wind, with driving snow-storms sweeping
intermittently across the field of battle. A hundred and fifty thousand
men on both sides faced each other at the break of day, after passing
the night with their outposts within shot of one another, the soldiers
all lying in an open bivouac on the snow, round their watch-fires,
wrapped up in their cloaks, the only shelter from the bitter cold. They
fronted each other in the grey dawn “within half-cannon shot, their
immense masses distributed in dense columns over a space in breadth
less than four miles. Between them lay the field of battle, a wide
stretch of unenclosed ground, rising on the Russian side to a range
of small hills. All over the plain, ponds and marshes intersected the
ground, but far and wide all was now covered over with ice and deep
snow.”
Napoleon began the battle with a fierce cannonade, opening a terrific
fire all along the line with no fewer than 350 guns. The Russians
replied at once, firing back even more furiously and with yet more
guns. For almost an hour nearly 800 cannon belched forth shot and shell
on either side; an artillery duel perhaps unparalleled in war. Then, in
the midst of the cannonade, Napoleon launched his first attack. Fifteen
thousand men of Augereau’s corps moved out from the centre of the
French line to storm the Russian position. They went forward, massed in
two immense columns, with, in support, a third column of one of Soult’s
divisions.
[Sidenote: GOING FORWARD TO THEIR DOOM]
They went forward to their doom: to meet disaster, swift, terrible,
overwhelming, and to leave two of their Eagles in the hands of the
enemy as mementos of their fate. Yet they were not given up; neither
of those Eagles was surrendered. They remained on the field amid the
dead; left behind because there was not a man living of their regiments
to defend them. They lay where they fell, surrounded by the soldiers
who had died in their defence; lying on the snow for the Cossacks to
pick up and carry away. They were the Eagles of the 14th and the 24th
of the Line.
The Russians turned their guns on Augereau’s corps directly it
commenced its advance; it was sheer massacre for the French, as the
fierce tornado of cannon-balls crashed into the thick of the densely
massed columns. Whole companies were swept away, mowed down, on every
side. “Within a quarter of an hour, half of the corps were struck
down.” The rest, though, with stolid endurance, held firmly on their
way. The soldiers went doggedly on; only halting for a moment now and
again to close up their shattered ranks. At that moment, as they were
nearing the Russian position, a furious snow-storm burst over the
battlefield, the snow blowing right in the faces of the French. “It
was impossible,” one of the survivors told, “to see anything at all in
front; we could at times barely see a foot before us.” All, in spite
of that, however, laboured bravely to get forward; without wavering,
and regardless of the merciless fire of the Russian guns, which never
ceased for one moment.
[Sidenote: OVERWHELMED IN A SNOWSTORM]
Then, as the snow-blinded soldiers struggled on, when the storm of
whirling snow was at its worst, all in an instant the catastrophe
happened. Without warning, coming from nowhere, as it seemed, an
enormous mass of Russian horse, dragoons and Cossacks, charged
suddenly, amid an infernal din of furious shouting, into them. “So
thick was the snow-storm, and so unexpected the onset, that the
assailants were only a few feet off, and the long lances of the
Cossacks almost touching the French infantry when they were first
discerned.” The Russians swept down on all sides of the two divisions;
charging them in front and flanks and rear at once, the dragoons
sabring them right and left, the Cossacks stabbing at them with their
long eighteen-foot lances.
“The combat was not of more than a few minutes’ duration; the corps,
charged at once by foot and horse with the utmost vigour, broke and
fled in the wildest disorder back into Eylau, closely pursued by the
Russian cavalry and Cossacks, who made such havoc, that the whole,
above 15,000 strong, were, with the exception of 1,500 men, taken or
destroyed; and Augereau himself, with his two generals of divisions,
Desjardins and Heudelet, was desperately wounded.”
Cut off in one part of the field and hemmed in, the 24th of the Line,
“one of the finest regiments in the Grand Army, and itself almost equal
to a brigade,” as a French officer speaks of it, was destroyed to a
man. It refused to turn its back to the enemy, and stood its ground to
face its fate. The 24th were slaughtered as they stood in their ranks.
Colonel Sémelé and a devoted band of soldiers fought round the Eagle to
the last, and fell dead beside it. A Cossack picked the Eagle up and
rode off with it.
The 14th had led the attack. It had lost heavily from the Russian
cannonade, but was still pressing on when the cavalry came charging
down. The regiments next following it, however, had suffered still more
heavily from the artillery fire. They were swept away _en masse_ by the
Cossack rush. Thus the 14th were cut off and left by themselves, barely
half a battalion of men in numbers, in the midst of the raging torrent
of Cossacks and dragoons. The survivors hastily threw themselves into
a square on and round a low elevation or hillock of snow. There, with
their Eagle in their midst, they stood at bay, refusing to retire
without direct orders from their marshal.
[Sidenote: ISOLATED AND SURROUNDED]
Marbot, in his memoirs, describes the fate of the 14th, to which he
was sent with a message from Napoleon. He was one of Augereau’s aides
de camp. It was just after the wounded marshal had been carried back
to the churchyard of the village of Eylau, the centre of the French
position, whence Napoleon, on horseback, among his personal suite,
had witnessed the disaster. All could see the 14th standing there,
isolated and surrounded; “we could see that the intrepid regiment,
surrounded by the enemy, was brandishing the Eagle in the air, to show
that it still held its ground and wanted help.” Napoleon, “touched by
the grand devotion of these brave men, resolved to try to save them.
He gave orders that an officer should be sent to tell them to try to
make their way back towards the army. Cavalry would charge out to help
them. It looked,” says Marbot, “almost impossible to get through the
thronging Cossacks; but Napoleon’s command had to be obeyed.”
“A brave captain of engineers named Froissart, who, though not an
aide de camp, was on Augereau’s staff, happened to be nearest him,
and was told to carry the order to the 14th. Froissart galloped off:
we lost sight of him in the midst of the Cossacks, and never saw him
again or heard what became of him. The marshal, seeing that the 14th
did not move, then sent an officer named David. He had the same fate
as Froissart; we never heard of him again. Probably both were killed
and stripped, and could not be recognised among the many corpses which
covered the ground. For the third time the marshal called, ‘The officer
for duty!’ It was my turn.”
Marbot had seen his two predecessors go off with their swords drawn, as
though they intended to defend themselves against attacks on the way.
He had remarked that, and now proposed another method for himself.
“To attempt defence was madness; it meant stopping to fight amidst a
multitude of enemies. I went otherwise to work. Leaving my sword in its
scabbard, I considered myself rather as a rider who is trying to win
a steeple-chase and goes as quickly as possible by the shortest line
towards the appointed goal without troubling about what is to right or
left of his path. My goal was the hillock on which stood the 14th, and
I resolved to get there without taking heed of the Cossacks. I tried to
put them out of my mind entirely. The plan answered to perfection.”
“Lisette [Marbot’s charger], flying rather than galloping, moving more
lightly than a swallow, darted over the intervening space, leaping the
heaps of dead men and horses, the ditches, the broken gun-carriages,
the half-extinguished bivouac fires. Thousands of Cossacks swarmed over
the plain. The first who caught sight of me behaved like sportsmen
who, while beating, start a hare and tell of its whereabouts to
each other with shouts of ‘Your side!’ None of the Cossacks tried
to stop me. Perhaps it was because of the amazing speed of my mare;
perhaps--probably--because there were so many of them swarming round
that each thought I could not escape from his comrades farther on. At
any rate I got through them all, and without scratch either to myself
or to my mare, and managed to reach where the 14th stood.
[Sidenote: “AT LAST I WAS IN THE SQUARE!”]
“I found them in square on top of their hillock, but the slope all
round was very slight, and the Russian cavalry had been able to attack
them with several charges. All, though, had been beaten off, and the
regiment stood surrounded by a circle of dead horses and dragoons. The
corpses indeed formed a kind of rampart round our men, and made by now
their position almost inaccessible to mounted men. So I found, for in
spite of the help of our men, I had much difficulty in getting across
this horrible entrenchment. At last, however, I was in the square.”
The major of the 14th was the senior officer left alive, and to him
Marbot gave Napoleon’s order. But it was absolutely impossible to carry
it out; there were too few men left to make the attempt possible. They
would be overpowered, said the major to Marbot, before they had gone
half a dozen steps. They were past hope now, unless the cavalry could
cut their way to them at once. Marbot must save himself and get back
at once. He must take their Eagle back with him and deliver it into
Napoleon’s own hands. “I see no means left of saving the regiment,”
were the major’s words. “Return to the Emperor, and bid him farewell
from the 14th of the Line. We have faithfully obeyed his orders in
defence of the Eagle. Bear him back his Eagle which he entrusted to us,
which now we have no hope of defending longer. It would add too much
to the bitterness of death for us to see it fall into the hands of the
enemy.” The major handed the Eagle to Marbot and then saluted it, amid
shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!” from the men round.
Marbot took the Eagle, and, as the only means of preserving it during
his ride back, tried to break it off from its stout pole so as to
conceal it under his cloak. He was in the act of leaning forward to
get a purchase in order to break the oaken staff, when he was suddenly
rendered powerless by the wind of a grape-shot. It was a marvellous
escape from death. The shot actually went through his hat, within a
quarter of an inch of his head. It deprived him, as he describes,
of all power and sensation, although he still remained fixed in his
saddle, his eyes witnessing the last scene, the fate of the 14th. The
square was finally rushed by a swarm of Russian grenadiers, as Marbot
says, who came charging up to the spot--“big men with mitre-shaped caps
bound in brass.
[Sidenote: FIGHTING TO THE LAST MAN]
“These men hurled themselves furiously on the feeble remains of the
14th. Our poor fellows had little strength left for resistance,
weakened as they were by hardships and privations. They had for days
been only existing on potatoes and melted snow, and on that morning
had not had time to prepare even that wretched meal. Yet they made
bravely what fight they could with their bayonets, and when, as too
soon happened, the square was broken, they tried to hold together in
groups, fighting back to back and keeping up the unequal fight to the
last man.”
Those nearest Marbot, so as not to be bayoneted from behind, stood
all round him with their backs to the mare, hemmed in by a ring of
Russians, some shooting down the hapless Frenchmen, others killing them
with the bayonet.
Marbot, recovering his senses, got at the last moment an unexpected
chance of escape. His mare, Lisette, he says, “of a notoriously savage
temper,” was pricked by a bayonet apparently, for she suddenly sprang
forward, lashing out and kicking and biting. She crashed through the
nearest Russians and galloped off with Marbot on her back towards
Eylau. He was mistaken by the Cossacks, he thought, for a Russian
officer, and rode on until suddenly Lisette collapsed beneath him,
and Marbot rolled off into the snow, where he lay insensible for some
hours. He lay there until a marauder on the field after the battle
tried to strip him of his gold-laced uniform. That roused him, and he
cried for help, which came; but the Eagle of the 14th had disappeared.
Two Eagles of St. Hilaire’s division of Soult’s corps were taken at
about the same time that the 14th met its fate. One was that of the
10th Light Infantry, ridden down while hastening forward to support
Augereau. The 10th missed its way in the snow-storm and, blundering
close under the Russian guns, was “decimated by grape.” Immediately
after that, while reeling under the shock, and trying to re-form its
ranks, the Russian dragoons dashed into it. They burst into its midst
at full gallop, “unseen until they were actually among us.” No help
was near, and in less than three minutes the luckless 10th Light
Infantry had ceased to exist. The second of Soult’s Eagles that was
lost at Eylau was that of a battalion of the 28th of the Line, which
also perished, victims to the sabres of the Russian horsemen. It was
a little later in the day, just after the 28th had made a successful
bayonet charge on the Russian infantry. They were in the midst of their
combat when the dragoons dashed into them, rode through them, and
scattered them, bearing off the Eagle, snatched from the hands of the
Eagle-bearer, who was cut down in the _mêlée_.
[Sidenote: “THE FIRST GRENADIER OF FRANCE”]
The Heart of the “First Grenadier of France” nearly went to St.
Petersburg at the same time, The 46th and 28th together formed General
Levasseur’s division in Soult’s corps, and both were overwhelmed at
the same time by the Russian dragoons. The more fortunate 46th saved
both their Eagle and the silver casket in which the heart of La
Tour d’Auvergne was kept enshrined. The casket was worn, strapped on
a velvet shield, on the chest of the senior grenadier sergeant of
the First Battalion, whose station was next the Eagle-bearer. It was
with the 46th, then known as the 46th Demi-Brigade, that the heroic
“Premier Grenadier de France” was serving as a captain when he met
his death in the year of Hohenlinden, while in the act of capturing
an Austrian standard. The 46th of the Line of the modern French Army
keeps up to-day the traditional practice, first ordered by Moreau, the
victor of Hohenlinden, of calling his name first of all at regimental
parades. It was revived some thirty years ago, after being in desuetude
since 1809. “Immediately the Colonel has saluted the flag,” describes
one of the officers of the regiment, “the Captain commanding the
colour-company steps forward and, facing the men, calls in a loud voice
‘La Tour d’Auvergne,’ on which the senior sergeant of the company
steps out two paces and replies, in a loud voice also, ‘Mort au Champ
d’Honneur!’--‘Dead on the Field of Honour!’”
The heart of La Tour d’Auvergne in its silver casket was ceremoniously
deposited by the regiment at the Invalides in 1904, eight years ago.
The 25th of the Line saved its Eagle, but lost on the field every
single one of its officers. A plainly built obelisk with the brief
inscription, “To the Memory of the Officers of the 25th,” was erected
by Napoleon to commemorate their fate at Eylau.
Two Eagles of Davout’s corps were lost at Eylau. One was that of the
18th--the sole loss of an Eagle in the battle, as it so happens, that
it suited Napoleon’s purpose to admit publicly. This is what he said of
it in his Eylau Bulletin--the 58th Bulletin of the Grand Army:
“The Eagle of one of the battalions of the 18th Regiment is missing. It
has probably fallen into the hands of the enemy, but no reproach can
attach to this regiment in the predicament in which it was placed. It
is a mere accident of war. The Emperor will give the 18th another Eagle
when it has taken a standard from the enemy.”
Comments on this, by the way, a British officer, Colonel Sir Robert
Wilson, who was attached to the Russian army as British military
commissioner:
“Admirable! the accidental loss of _one_ Eagle and only one! Colonel
Beckendorff, then, did not carry _twelve_ Eagles (and, moreover,
several colours from which the Eagles had been unscrewed) to
Petersburg, where they now are for the inspection of the world!”
Napoleon made no other open reference to the loss of Eagles at Eylau;
but, as he showed a little later, he felt what had happened. On the
other hand, outside France, many people disbelieved the Russian
official despatches. “The number of Eagles said to be taken,” wrote the
editor of a London newspaper, “is astounding, indeed incredible.”
[Sidenote: TWO MORE EAGLES LOST]
The 18th lost their Eagle in the fierce fighting on the extreme right
of the battlefield, where, after storming the village of Serpallen,
Morand’s division captured a Russian battery, bayoneting the gunners.
As they took the guns a Russian cavalry brigade came hastening to
the spot to the rescue. Taking the 18th on the flank, the Russians
rode them down, breaking the regiment up and scattering it. The Eagle
disappeared in the midst of the fight. The Eagle of the 51st of the
Line was the other that was lost in Davout’s corps. That was taken by
the Prussian division which fought at Eylau; the last remnant of the
Jena army still combating in the field. The Prussians, some 12,000 in
number, had made good their escape to the Polish frontier and reached
the battlefield of Eylau at the close of the fight, in time to strike
in and take vengeance for their countrymen. They were, however,
deprived in the end of their trophy. The captured Eagle of the 51st was
claimed from them by the Russian general after the battle, and sent
with the eleven others to St. Petersburg, where it now is.
Two others of Davout’s Eagles which came through at Eylau had narrow
escapes. They were those of the 17th and 30th of the Line. The 17th
was one of the regiments ridden down by Towazysky’s dragoons, the
troopers who carried off the Eagle of the 18th. In their charge the
dragoons broke up the 17th as well, and the Eagle was left with only a
few men near by to defend it. They were in the midst of the dragoons as
the Russians galloped through, slashing with their sabres at all within
reach. As the only means of saving the Eagle, Locqueneux, a _fourrier_,
or quartermaster-sergeant, “thrust the Eagle under the snow and stood
on it shouting for help. Colonel Mallet heard the cry and ran to the
rescue. With a few men who rallied to the spot he succeeded in getting
the Eagle away from among the _débris_ of the 17th.” At roll-call next
morning only one man in five answered to his name. Napoleon, on his
ride over the field, happening to pass by while the muster was being
held, the gallant _fourrier_ was brought before him and presented with
a lieutenant’s commission and an annuity of 2,000 francs. The Eagle of
the 30th of the Line, another of Morand’s regiments, was saved from
capture in like manner by the personal devotion of another _fourrier_,
Morin by name. All round him men were falling, and he himself had been
severely wounded, but the brave fellow had just strength enough to bury
the Eagle under the snow. He fainted from loss of blood as he did it.
Morin was found next morning just alive, outstretched over where the
precious Eagle lay concealed. He was able to make signs and indicate
that it was lying underneath the snow, and then he died.
[Sidenote: FOUR CUIRASSIER EAGLES TAKEN]
Four cavalry Eagles, those of cuirassier regiments, made up the tale of
twelve lost by Napoleon in the two days at Eylau. Platoff’s Cossacks
of the Don captured the four. They swooped down on Murat’s cavalry,
while out of hand and partially dispersed after breaking through the
Russian centre, at the close of Murat’s desperate charge at the head of
seventy squadrons to save the survivors of the massacre of Augereau’s
ill-fated battalions. Of one cuirassier regiment only 18 men managed to
regain their own lines, leaving 530 of their comrades on the field to
be stripped of their shining armour by the Cossacks.
The Eagle of the Old Guard led a charge at Eylau at the head of the
Grenadiers. The Guard came into action to beat back a daring Russian
counter-attack on the centre of Napoleon’s position, which immediately
followed the annihilation of Augereau’s corps. Napoleon himself gave
the order for the Guard to go forward. “The Emperor,” describes
Caulaincourt, who was on Napoleon’s staff, and near him throughout,
“standing erect in the stirrups, his glass at his eye, was the first to
realise that the black shadow steadily drawing near through the veil
of the snow-storm must be the columns of the Russian reserve.[16] He
immediately sent against them two battalions of the Grenadiers of the
Guard commanded by General Dorsenne.” It was just after Murat had been
ordered to make his charge.
Dorsenne--“Le Beau Dorsenne,” he was universally called; he had the
reputation of being the handsomest man in the whole of the Grand
Army--started off on the instant, rapidly deploying his men into lines
as he moved forward, and with the Eagle of the Grenadiers of the Guard
in advance of the centre of the front line. The Old Guard moved out
in stately order, marching with clockwork precision, muskets at the
support--held erect at the side and steadied and supported with one
arm held stiffly across. One of the officers who rode beside Dorsenne
suggested to the general as they were nearing the Russians to open
fire. “Non!” was the haughty answer. “Grenadiers l’arme à bras! La
Vieille Garde ne se bât qu’à la baïonette!” (“No! Arms at the support!
The Old Guard only fights at the point of the bayonet!”)
They reached the Russians, who, on their side, seemed for the moment
as if spellbound at the sight of them. The nearest Russians stopped
short. They stood stock-still, rooted in the ground as it were, gazing
at the sudden apparition of the solid wall of 2,000 veteran giants in
their huge towering bear-skins. The next instant the battalion guns
of the Guard, which accompanied the advance on either flank, opened
with a burst of fire at short range into the thick of the Russians. At
once, down came the gleaming rows of bayonets, and, like one man, the
Old Guard sprang forward and charged into the enemy. A moment before
the bayonets crossed a squadron of the Chasseurs of the Guard, the men
on duty as Napoleon’s own personal escort, sent forward by the Emperor
himself to assist the Grenadiers, dashed into the rear of the Russian
column, and “drove it forward on our Grenadiers, who received it with
fixed bayonets.”
[Sidenote: THE EAGLE OF THE OLD GUARD]
Just before that it was that the Eagle of the Old Guard had its
adventure. A shell dropped right in front of it and burst. The
fragments smashed the Eagle pole in two places, just above and below
the hands of the Eagle-bearer. The Eagle fell to the ground at the feet
of the Russians. But they had not time to get hold of it. Instantly
Lieutenant Morlay, the Eagle-bearer, sprang forward and recovered it.
Picking the Eagle up, with the flag and fragment of pole that was left,
Morlay snatched hold of a grenadier’s musket and jammed the piece of
the staff into the muzzle beside the bayonet. He carried the Eagle in
that manner throughout the rest of the battle.[17]
[Sidenote: AT MIDNIGHT AFTER THE BATTLE]
A hundred and fifty thousand combatants had faced one another at
daybreak. An hour before midnight, when the last shots were fired,
50,000 men lay dead or wounded on the field. “Never,” if we may recall
the grim picture of the scene next day that Alison has drawn, “was
spectacle so dreadful as that field presented on the following morning.
Above 50,000 men lay in the space of two leagues, weltering in blood.
The wounds were, for the most part, of the severest kind, from the
extraordinary quantity of cannon-balls which had been discharged
during the action and the close proximity of the contending masses to
the deadly batteries, which spread grape at half-musket shot through
their ranks. Though stretched on the cold snow and exposed to the
severity of an Arctic winter, the sufferers were burning with thirst,
and piteous cries were heard on all sides for water, or assistance
to extricate the wounded men from beneath the heaps of slain or load
of horses by which they were crushed. Six thousand of these noble
animals encumbered the field, or, maddened with pain, were shrieking
aloud amidst the stifled groans of the wounded. Broken gun-carriages,
dismounted cannon, fragments of blown-up caissons, scattered balls, lay
in wild confusion amidst casques, cuirassiers, and burning hamlets,
casting a livid light over a field of snow. Subdued by loss of blood,
tamed by cold, exhausted by hunger, the foemen lay side by side, amidst
the general wreck. The Cossack was to be seen beside the Italian; the
gay vine-dresser from the banks of the Garonne lay athwart the stern
peasant from the plains of the Ukraine.”
When Napoleon took his ride over the field, “the men exhibited none of
their wonted enthusiasm; no cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ were heard; the
bloody surface echoed only with the cries of suffering or the groans of
woe.”
[Sidenote: THE “TEMPLE OF VICTORY”]
Sixteen Russian standards were sent to Paris after Eylau; Napoleon’s
set-off to the twelve Eagles taken to St. Petersburg. They were to be
hung, he directed, temporarily at the Invalides, until such time as
the conversion of the former Church of the Madeleine into Napoleon’s
grandiose “Temple of Victory” should be effected--a project that was
fated never to be accomplished. There, designed Napoleon, all the
trophies of the Grand Army would find their final resting-place,
in a splendid edifice, designed externally after the Parthenon at
Athens. Within, the trophies would be displayed, amidst colonnades
of Corinthian pillars of marble and granite and a mass of decorative
sculptures, statues of marshals and generals who had met their death
in battle, and bas-reliefs of famous colonels, before a lofty marble
curule chair, which Napoleon would occupy as a throne on great
occasions. “It is a Temple I desire,” he laid down, writing from his
camp in Poland, “not a church; and everything must be made in a chaste,
severe, and durable style, and be suitable for solemnities at all times
and all hours.”
Two more Eagles had yet to go to St. Petersburg before the war was
over--the Eagle of the 15th of the Line and another. They were the
spoils that the beaten Russian army carried off from the battle of
Friedland, fought some six months after Eylau, on July 14. Napoleon
won one of his most famous victories at Friedland, and one that he
afterwards recorded on the colours of all the regiments that fought in
the battle; but the defeated army carried back with them two more of
his Eagles.
The Eagle of the 15th of the Line, a regiment of Marshal Ney’s corps,
was lost in a bayonet charge while fighting the Russian Imperial Guard.
The second Eagle was left among the dead in the repulse of a column of
Marshal Lannes’ corps in the earlier part of the battle. “A column of
3,000 men advanced straight against Friedland. They were permitted to
approach close to the Russian cannon without a single shot being fired,
when suddenly the whole opened with grape, and with such effect that in
a few minutes a thousand men were struck down, the column routed, and
the Eagle taken.”
One of the regiments of the column saved itself as it fell back by
rallying round its Eagle. As at Eylau, so at Friedland the Russian
dragoons dashed down among the broken battalions while trying to
re-form under the murderous cannonade. The 50th of the Line had been
near the head of the column, and more than half of its men had been
shot down. The dragoons were cutting their way through to the Eagle,
when Adjutant Labourie snatched it from its wounded bearer, and,
holding it up, shouted to the men: “Rally round the Eagle. We must
defend it to the death!” A small square hastily formed round him, and,
stubbornly resisting, they kept the Russian dragoons off and fought
their way back to safety with the Eagle.
[Sidenote: GOLDEN WREATHS FOR THE EAGLES]
The Peace of Tilsit closed the war within a month of Friedland.
The welcome-home of Paris to the Old Guard, and public decoration
of the Eagles with crowns of gold, was the curtain-scene and grand
_finale_ of the Jena-Friedland drama. To all the regiments of the Grand
Army under fire at Jena, Friedland, and Eylau, wreaths of gold, to be
affixed round the necks of their Eagles, were voted by the Municipality
of Paris. The wreaths were to be publicly presented to each regiment on
its return to France.
The Guard were the first to receive theirs, and their arrival in the
capital was made the occasion of a series of civic fêtes; announced
officially as being “offered in tribute to the Glory of the Grand
Army.” Wednesday, November 25, 1807, was the day on which the Guard
were due to reach Paris. All had been made ready to accord them a
magnificent reception.
The Prefect of the Seine, at the head of the City magistrates and
the Municipal Councillors of Paris, all in their robes and chains
and glittering insignia of office, escorted by a mounted cohort of
National Guards, met the returning veterans at the Barrier on the
Strasburg road. Marshal Bessières led the Guard, who marched up with
bands playing and resplendent in their full-dress uniforms, horse
and foot and artillery--12,000 men in all. A gigantic triumphal arch
was set up beyond the Barrier, wide enough for twenty men to march
through abreast. It was the approach to a wide arena on which the
troops drew up, massed in front of a lofty platform, decked out with
flags and wreaths of evergreens and bright-coloured hangings. There the
Prefect took his place with his _entourage_ as the soldiers drew near.
Grand-stands to accommodate a crowd of sightseers surrounded the arena.
The Old Guard marched in and drew up in close order, on which the
proceedings opened with the civic address. “Heroes of Jena, of Eylau,
of Friedland,” began the Prefect, “conquerors of a splendid peace,
immortal thanks are your due from France! We salute you, Eagles of
war, the symbols of the might of our noble-hearted Emperor! You have
made known throughout the world, with his great name, the glory of
victorious France!” So, in grandiloquent style, the address commenced.
At its close the regiments of the Guards defiled past the platform in
turn--Carabineers and Cuirassiers, Chasseurs, Dragoons, and Hussars,
and the battalions of veteran Grenadiers. Round the neck of each Eagle,
as its corps came up, the Prefect hung a wreath of laurel-leaves in
gold.
Then came the triumphal march through the streets of Paris to the
Tuileries, amid cheering crowds, nearly beside themselves with
excitement and enthusiasm, and with difficulty kept back from breaking
through the rows of National Guards who lined the pavement, to hug the
grim bearskin-hatted warriors. The Eagles deposited with ceremony in
the Imperial Guardroom of the Palace of the Tuileries, the horsemen
dismounted in the Square of the Carrousel, muskets were piled, and all
marched off to the Champs Elysées. An immense banquet awaited them
there, under vast marquees--shelter that the men appreciated, for it
turned out a miserably wet afternoon.
[Sidenote: BANQUETED BY THE CITY OF PARIS]
The banquet in the Champs Elysées was the first in the round of
festivities with which Paris welcomed home the “Victors over Europe.”
The fêtes lasted over three days, and terminated in a grand reception
given by the Senate to all ranks of “Our Invincible Guard” in the
Gardens of the Luxembourg.[18]