OTHER EAGLES IN ENGLAND FROM BATTLEFIELDS OF SPAIN
Napoleon’s Eagles made a second appearance before the London populace
in the following year. That was on September 30, 1812, and the Horse
Guards Parade was again the scene of the display--this time with more
elaborate ceremonial, and with the added presence of yet greater
personages. Queen Charlotte herself this time witnessed the reception
ceremony, with four of the Princesses; and the Prince Regent in person,
“mounted on a white charger,” attended, to be publicly done obeisance
to by the humbled standards of the enemy. Four of his Royal brothers,
the Dukes of Clarence, York, Cambridge, and Sussex, accompanied the
Prince Regent. Only the poor old King, blind and insane, was absent of
the Royal family, remaining in his seclusion at Windsor Castle.
The Queen and Princesses watched the scene from the windows of the
Levée Room at the Horse Guards, looking down over the Parade; the
Prince Regent was on the ground and took the salute. The Eagles this
time were five in number; and four French flags, one of exceptional
interest, the garrison-standard of Badajoz, were with them in the
procession.
The military display was on the grandest scale possible; the _ensemble_
making up, as we are told, “a spectacle grand and impressive beyond
anything ever beheld.” The First and Second Life Guards were present,
“drawn up in a line reaching from the Foreign Office nearly to Carlton
House,” with their bands in State dress and their standards. All three
regiments of Foot Guards took part, with the State Colour of the First
Guards, and three bands. Horse and Foot Artillery from Woolwich were
also there; forming by themselves one side of the great hollow square
which occupied the wide space of the ground, the scene of the reception
of “the Eagle with the Golden Wreath.” Ninety grenadiers, drawn from
the three regiments of Foot Guards, thirty from each, formed the
trophy-escort, which, as before, accompanied the Eagles and captured
standards round the square at a slow march--the five Eagles in advance
by themselves, borne by as many Guards’ sergeants between files of
grenadiers with fixed bayonets.
[Sidenote: THE EAGLES ARE HUMBLED AGAIN]
Again the trophies of Napoleon were spared nothing in the humiliation
that they had to undergo. Twice were they lowered to the dust before
the Queen; twice to the Prince Regent; eight times before the standards
of the Life Guards; three times before the standards of the Guards
and the King’s Colour of the First Guards, “the immense concourse of
spectators rending the air with their huzzas” every time the trophies
went down. Then, as before, the trophies were paraded across Whitehall
to the Chapel Royal, and solemnly “churched” and hung up there, before
the Royal family and “all the Cabinet Ministers and the leading members
of the nobility in London.”
They were this time all Wellington’s trophies. Two of the Eagles
were spoils from the battle of Salamanca--“dreadfully mutilated and
disfigured in the conflict,” according to a newspaper reporter’s
account, “one of them having lost its head, part of the neck, one leg,
half the thunderbolt, and the distinctive number; the other without one
leg and the thunderbolt.” Two had been taken in Madrid “in more perfect
state and without their flags.” The last of the five had been “found on
the way to Ciudad Rodrigo, in the bed of a river, dried up in summer,
having been thrown away some months before during Masséna’s retreat.”
The four Eagles which still bore distinctive numbers were, we are told,
“those of the 22nd, 13th, and 51st and the 39th.” Of the standards, the
garrison flag of Badajoz looked “like a sieve, a great part of it quite
red with human blood”; the four other colours “were so mutilated that
not a letter or device was legible.”
How we came by the trophies so displayed in London on that Wednesday
forenoon is our story.
The two Salamanca Eagles were--and are, for they have a place to-day
among our Chelsea Hospital trophies--mementoes of one of the most
dramatic episodes of a battle in which there were many.
[Sidenote: WELLINGTON AND SALAMANCA]
Salamanca, it may be said incidentally--the battle, like Waterloo,
was fought on a Sunday, on July 22, 1812--was, in Wellington’s own
eyes, his _chef d’œuvre_, his masterpiece, although it may be rather
overlooked now perhaps by most of us and the world at large, eclipsed
in the dazzling splendour of the last crowning victory of Waterloo. It
was at Salamanca that Wellington, in the words of a French officer,
speaking, of course, in general terms, “defeated 40,000 men in forty
minutes.” The victory was held in such estimation by Wellington himself
that he selected it in preference to all his other victories to be
displayed over again in a sham fight on the Plain of Saint-Denis in the
presence of the three Allied Sovereigns during the occupation of Paris
in 1815 after Waterloo. Of it he wrote at the time: “I never saw an
army receive such a beating.”
Upwards of 6,000 prisoners were taken, including one general and 136
other officers. Six thousand of the enemy, at the lowest computation,
were left dead or wounded on the field of battle. Three French
generals were killed and three wounded. Marshal Marmont himself, the
enemy’s commander-in-chief, was among the wounded; grievously maimed
by a bursting shell as he galloped to rally one of his broken columns.
“Spurring furiously to the point of danger, he was struck by the
fragment of a shell, which shattered his left arm and tore open his
side.” Marmont bore the arm in a sling for the rest of his life. He was
carried off the field under fire, on a stretcher made of a soldier’s
great-coat with a couple of muskets thrust through the armholes to
give it shape, under the escort of a squad of grenadiers. Eleven
cannon--melted down at Woolwich Arsenal in 1820 as a cheap way of
making new field-guns for the British Army--with the two Eagles and six
stand of colours, were the trophies of the day.
The two Salamanca trophy Eagles at Chelsea Hospital are the spoils of
the fiercest cavalry charge that British horsemen ever delivered on a
battlefield; the death-ride--for 1,200 of Napoleon’s infantry--of the
Heavy Brigade, which annihilated an entire French division in less
than a quarter of an hour. It came about as one of the results of that
opening false move on the part of the French commander which cost
France in the end the loss of the battle.
[Sidenote: MARMONT’S FATAL BLUNDER]
Marmont, after a series of ably conducted manœuvres in the
neighbourhood of Salamanca, had forced Wellington, on July 22, into a
position so unfavourable that the British commander decided to retire
towards the Portuguese frontier under cover of darkness during the
following night. But at the last moment the French marshal overreached
himself. Taking in the difficulties that confronted his opponent he
attempted to anticipate him and cut him off from his base by barring
the one line of retreat that was open to Wellington. In doing that,
Marmont gave his game away. He rashly divided his force in the presence
of the enemy, separating his left wing to a distance from the main body
and marching off a whole division of infantry, cavalry, and artillery
to occupy the road to Ciudad Rodrigo.
The fault was flagrant, and Wellington seized eagerly at the chance all
unexpectedly offered him. He was at breakfast when Marmont’s troops
began their false move and the aide de camp whom he had posted on
the look-out hurriedly came to him with the news. “I think they are
extending to the left----” the young officer began. He did not finish
the sentence.
“The devil they are!” interposed Wellington hastily, with his mouth
full. “Give me the glass!”
He took it, and for nearly a minute scanned the movements of the enemy
with fixed attention.
“By God!” he ejaculated abruptly as he lowered the glass. “That’ll do!”
He turned to another aide de camp.
“Ride off and tell Clinton and Leith to return to their former ground.”
These were the generals commanding the Fifth and Sixth Divisions, on
the right and right-centre of the British position. Then Wellington
ordered up his horse. Closing his spy-glass with a snap, he turned with
these words to his Spanish attaché, Colonel Alava: “Mon cher Alava,
Marmont est perdu!” A moment later Wellington was on horseback and his
staff also, all galloping off.
Wellington grasped the meaning of Marmont’s move. He saw his chance of
falling on in force and overpowering the detached French wing before
help could reach it.
He made his way as fast as his charger could carry him to the British
Third Division--Picton’s men, temporarily commanded by Wellington’s
brother-in-law, General Sir Edward Pakenham.
“As he rode up to Pakenham,” says an officer whose regiment was close
by, “every eye was turned on him. He looked paler than usual, but was
quite unruffled in his manner, and as calm as if the battle to be
fought was nothing more than an ordinary assemblage of troops for a
field-day.”
“Ned,” said Wellington, as he drew rein beside Pakenham, tapping him
on the shoulder and pointing in the direction of the separated French
column as its leading troops were beginning to move towards their
distant position, “Ned, d’ye see those fellows on the hill? Throw your
division in column, and at ’em and drive ’em to the Devil!”
“I will, my lord, by God!” was Pakenham’s laconic reply, and he turned
away to give the necessary orders.
[Sidenote: A FURIOUS COUNTER-ATTACK]
The two Eagles were taken in the course of Pakenham’s attack, when
the Third Division, with the Fifth advancing on one flank, was moving
forward to meet the fierce counter-attack with which the enemy, after
the first collision, attempted to make amends for their commander’s
blunder.
“We were assailed,” describes a British officer in the Third Division,
“by a multitude who, reinforced, again rallied and turned upon us
with fury. The peals of musketry along the centre continued without
intermission, the smoke was so thick that nothing to our left was
distinguishable; some men of the Fifth Division got intermingled with
ours; the dry grass was set on fire by the numerous cartridge-papers
that strewed the battlefield; the air was scorching; and the smoke
rolling onwards in huge volumes, nearly suffocated us.”
In the midst of the din and turmoil the Heavy Cavalry came suddenly on
the scene. “A loud cheering was heard in our rear; the Brigade half
turned round, supposing themselves about to be attacked by the French
cavalry. A few seconds passed, the trampling of horses was heard, the
smoke cleared away, and the Heavy Brigade of Le Marchant was seen
coming forward in line at a canter. ‘Open right and left!’ was an order
quickly obeyed; the line opened, and the cavalry passed through the
intervals, and, forming rapidly in our front, prepared for their work.”
Catastrophe for the French assailants followed at once; swift,
overwhelming, irremediable. The enemy in front had practically ceased
to exist within the next twelve minutes. The entire French division
and its supporting troops were struck down and shattered; broken to
fragments and annihilated.
There was a “whirling cloud of dust, moving swiftly forward and
carrying within its womb the trampling sound of a charging multitude.
As it passed the left of the Third Division, Le Marchant’s heavy
horsemen, flanked by Anson’s Light Cavalry, broke out at full speed,
and the next instant 1,200 French infantry, formed in several lines,
were trampled down with terrible clangour and tumult. Bewildered and
blinded they cast away their arms and ran through the openings of the
British squadron, stooping and demanding quarter, while the dragoons,
big men on big horses, rode on hard, smiting with their long,
glittering swords in uncontrollable power, and the Third Division,
following at speed, shouted as the French masses fell in succession
before this dreadful charge.”
So Napier describes the onset.
[Sidenote: CHARGING DOWN AT FULL GALLOP]
Startled and aghast at what they saw coming at them, the French
attempted hastily to form squares. But Le Marchant’s impetuous
squadrons were too quick for them. They came swooping down, the
troopers galloping their hardest, with loosened reins, all racing
forward, charging down with the irresistible sweep of an avalanche, and
crashed into the midst of the ill-fated infantrymen before the squares
could be formed.
Down on the enemy the cavalry thundered, 1,200 flashing British
sabres. Three of the finest regiments of the British Army formed the
brigade--the 3rd Dragoons, the “King’s Own”; the 4th, “Queen’s Own”;
the 5th Dragoon Guards--strong and burly men on big-boned horses,
and with sharp-edged swords. “_Nec aspera terrent_” was--and is--the
fearless motto of the gallant “King’s Own,” who showed the way; and
they flinched at nothing that day. “_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_”
was--and is--the motto of the 5th, who closed the column; and dead
and wounded and prisoners were the vestiges they left in rear on that
stricken field.
General Edward Le Marchant, a daring and capable soldier--“a most
noble officer,” was what Wellington called him--led them.
[Sidenote: FOUR REGIMENTS CUT TO PIECES]
A French regiment a little in advance, the ill-fated 62nd of the Line,
was the first to face the British, and to go down. They did not attempt
to form square. They had, indeed, no time to do so. Yet they were
in a formation sufficiently formidable. The 62nd was a regiment of
three battalions, and stood formed up in a column of half-battalions,
presenting six successive lines closely massed one behind the other.
Their front ranks opened fire just before the leading horsemen reached
them, but it did not check the British onset even for a moment. The
cavalry bore vigorously forward at a gallop and burst into and through
their column, riding it down on the spot. Nearly the whole regiment was
killed, wounded, or taken; leaving the broken remnants to be carried
off as prisoners by the infantry of the Third Division as these raced
up in rear, clearing the ground before them.
The 62nd were disposed of by the cavalry in less than two minutes.
According to French official returns, the unlucky regiment, out of
a total strength that morning of 2,800 of all ranks in its three
battalions, lost 20 officers and 1,100 men in killed alone; the
survivors who escaped capture not being sufficient to form half a
battalion.
Cheering triumphantly, the charging squadrons dashed on. They came
full tilt on a second French regiment, the 22nd, catching it in the
act of forming square. The front face of the square was already drawn
up and met the troopers with a hasty volley which brought down some of
the men and horses. But that made little difference. The next moment
the cavalry were on them. The mass of the square in rear made but a
weak effort at resistance. They swayed back, broke their ranks, and
fell apart in utter confusion. Slashed down right and left, as had
been the case with the 62nd, in little more than a minute only groups
of fugitives were left, to be made prisoners by the British infantry,
following in rear of the horsemen.
The cavalry raced on then to attack a third French regiment. In turn it
attempted to make a stand, but only to be dealt with in like manner.
It, too, was caught before its square could be formed, and was ridden
down.
Yet another French battalion confronted the British troopers after
that. It had had time to take advantage of a small copse, an open wood
of evergreen oaks, where it formed its ranks in _colonne serrée_, to
await attack, and make a stand. “The men reserved their fire with much
coolness, until the cavalry came within twenty yards. Then they poured
it in on the concentrated mass of men and horses with deadly effect.
Nearly a third of the dragoons came to the ground, but the remainder
had sufficient command of their horses to dash forward. They succeeded
in breaking the French ranks and dispersing them in utter confusion
over the field.”
All the time the infantry in rear were racing on with exultant cheers,
finishing off the horsemen’s work as fast as they came up. It was
an easy task. Further fight had been scared out of the French under
the stress of the fearful experience they had gone through. “Such as
got away from the sabres of the horsemen,” says one of the British
officers, “sought safety amongst the ranks of our infantry; and,
scrambling under their horses, ran to us for protection, like men who,
having escaped the first shock of a wreck, will cling to any broken
spar, no matter how little to be depended on. Hundreds of beings,
frightfully disfigured, in whom the human face and form were almost
obliterated--black with dust, worn down with fatigue, and covered with
sabre-cuts and blood--threw themselves among us for safety. Not a man
was bayoneted--not one even molested or plundered. The invincible old
Third on this day surpassed themselves; for they not only defeated
their terrible enemies in a fair stand-up fight, but saved them when
total annihilation seemed the only thing.”
The two Salamanca Eagles were taken now. They fell to two infantry
officers as their actual captors: one to an officer of a regiment of
the Third Division, and the other to an officer of the Fifth Division,
which had come into the fight, and were following the cavalry, partly
mingled with Pakenham’s men.
[Sidenote: TAKEN IN HAND-TO-HAND FIGHT]
The first Eagle--that of the hapless French 62nd, whose fate has been
told--fell to Lieutenant Pierce of the 44th, a regiment in the Fifth
Division. He came on the Eagle-bearer while in the act of unscrewing
the Eagle from its pole in order to hide it under his long overcoat and
get away with it. Pierce sprang on the Frenchman, and tussled with him
for the Eagle. The second Porte-Aigle joined in the fight, whereupon
three men of the 44th ran to their officer’s assistance. A third
Frenchman, a private, added himself to the combatants, and was in the
act of bayoneting the British lieutenant, when one of the men of the
44th, Private Finlay, shot him through the head and saved the officer’s
life. Both the Porte-Aigles were killed a moment later--one by
Lieutenant Pierce, who snatched the Eagle from its dead bearer’s hands.
In his excitement over the prize Pierce rewarded the privates who had
helped him by emptying his pockets on the spot, and dividing what money
he had on him amongst them--twenty dollars. A sergeant’s halberd was
then procured, on which the Eagle was stuck and carried triumphantly
through the remainder of the battle. Lieutenant Pierce presented it
next morning to General Leith, the Commander of the Fifth Division, who
directed him to carry it to Wellington. In honour of the exploit the
44th, now the Essex Regiment, bear the badge of a Napoleonic Eagle on
the regimental colour, and the officers wear a similar badge on their
mess-jackets.
The second Eagle taken was that of the 22nd of the Line. It was
captured by a British officer of the 30th, Ensign Pratt, attached
for duty to Major Cruikshank’s 7th Portuguese, a Light Infantry (or
Caçadores) battalion, serving with the Third Division. He took it to
General Pakenham, whose mounted orderly displayed the Eagle of the 22nd
publicly after the battle, “carrying it about wherever the general went
for the next two days.”
Two more Eagles, it was widely reported in the Army, came into the
possession of other regiments of the Third and Fifth Divisions. One of
them is said to have “wanted its head and number”; but what became of
them is unknown. Possibly the existence of these particular trophies
was merely camp gossip. According to one story, an officer picked
up one of the Eagles during the battle and “carried it about in his
cap for some days.” No Eagles, however, reached head-quarters after
Salamanca except those of the 62nd and 22nd, which in due course were
sent to England.[27]
[Sidenote: ONE THAT JUST ESCAPED]
One Eagle narrowly evaded capture at the hands of the Hanoverian
Dragoons of the King’s German Legion in the pursuit after Salamanca.
It escaped--to find its way to Chelsea Hospital on a later day, as the
famous trophy of our own 1st Dragoons, the “Royals,” at Waterloo. What
took place when the Eagle of the 105th of the Line so nearly fell into
the enemy’s hands after Salamanca is a story that in its incidents
stands by itself.
General Anson’s cavalry brigade, made up of British Light Dragoons
and the Hanoverians, was sent in chase to follow and break up the
wreck of the defeated army. It came upon the French rearguard in the
act of taking post at a place called Garcia Hernandez. In front were
several squadrons of cavalry; in rear the 105th of the Line. The three
battalions of the regiment were moving in column, with guns in the
intervals. Not seeing the French infantry and guns at first, owing
to an intervening ridge, Anson rode for the cavalry and drove them
in. “Their squadrons fled from Anson’s troopers, abandoning three
battalions of infantry, who in separate columns were making up a hollow
slope, hoping to gain the crest of some heights before the pursuing
cavalry could fall on, and the two foremost did reach higher ground,
and there formed in squares.” The squares at once opened fire on the
horsemen, and for a moment checked them.
[Sidenote: A SQUARE CHARGED AND BROKEN]
The Hanoverian Dragoons were the nearest of the pursuers to the
rearmost of the French squares, and there was no way to ride past
without exposing their flank at close range. Captain Von Decken, who
was leading the dragoons, on the spur of the moment took the daring
decision to attack the square with the single squadron he had with him,
then and there. Without an instant’s hesitation the gallant captain
charged, regardless of the fierce fusillade that met him at once, from
which his men went down all round. They dropped fast under fire. By
twos, by threes, by tens, all round they fell; yet the rest of them,
surmounting the difficulties of the ground, hurled themselves in a mass
on the column and went clean through it.
The gallant Von Decken was among the first to go down, shot dead a
hundred yards from the square. But a leader no less heroic was at
hand. Instantly Captain Von Uslar Gleichen, in charge of the left
troop, dashed to the front. He rode out to the head of the squadron,
inciting his men by voice and gesture and example. Another French
volley smote hard on the squadron, but the intrepid troopers galloped
through it, and, bringing up their right flank, swept on towards the
enemy’s bayonets, making to attack the square on two sides. The two
foremost ranks of the French were on the knee with bayonets to the
front, presenting a deadly double row of steel. In rear the steady
muskets of four standing ranks were levelled at the horsemen. The
dragoons pressed on close up, and some were trying, in vain, to beat
aside the bayonets before them, and make a gap through, when an
accident at the critical moment gave the opportunity. A shot from the
kneeling ranks, apparently fired unintentionally, as it is said, killed
a horse, and caused it with its rider to fall forward, right across
and on top of the bayonets. Thus a lane was unexpectedly laid open to
the cavalry. They seized the chance instantly and crowded in through.
The square was broken. It was cleft apart: its ranks were scattered
and dispersed. All was over in a few moments. Within three minutes the
entire battalion had been either cut down under the slaughtering swords
of the dragoons or had been made prisoners.
Immediately on that another Hanoverian captain, Von Reitzenstein, came
sweeping by with the second squadron, riding for the second French
square. These met the charge with a bold front and rapid volley, but
their _moral_ had been shaken by the startling and horrible scene
they had just beheld. The front face of the second square gave way as
the horsemen got close, and four-fifths of that battalion were either
sabred on the spot or made prisoners.
There was yet, near by, the third battalion in its square. Its numbers
had been added to by such fugitive survivors from the first and second
squares as had been able to reach the place and get inside. The third
squadron of the Dragoons dealt with the third square in the same way,
riding boldly at it, and breaking in with deadly results, as before.
How the Eagle of the 105th was saved--it was with the first battalion
in the square first broken--is not on record. It did, however, somehow,
evade capture--hidden hastily perhaps beneath the coat of somebody
in the handful of men who got away in the _mêlée_. Only the broken
Eagle-pole was left, to be picked up among the dead after the fight:
Described a British officer who went over the ground after the fight:
“The contest ended in a dreadful massacre of the French infantry. The
105th bravely stood their ground, but the ponderous weight of the heavy
cavalry broke down all resistance; and arms lopped off, heads cloven
to the spine, or gashes across the breast and shoulders showed the
fearful encounter that had taken place.”
[Sidenote: SPOILS TAKEN IN ANOTHER WAY]
The third of the trophy Eagles paraded in London before the Prince
Regent was that of Napoleon’s 39th of the Line. It had been picked up
in the dried-up bed of the river Ceira, one of the tributaries of the
Douro. Apparently the Eagle had been dropped, owing to the fall of its
bearer during the night action of Foz d’Aronce on June 15, 1811, when
Ney’s corps of Masséna’s army, then retreating from Torres Vedras, was
roughly handled and driven across the river by Wellington’s Third and
Light Divisions.
The fourth and fifth of the Eagles were found at Madrid on Wellington’s
occupation of the city after Salamanca--stored away in the French
arsenal and army dépôt there, to which uses the ancient Royal
Palace of the Buen Retiro, just outside the walls of Madrid, had
been converted.[28] Seventeen hundred men held the Retiro, and the
approaches to the arsenal had been fortified by order of Napoleon, but
the garrison surrendered without firing a shot. They gave up to the
victors 180 brass cannon, 900 barrels of powder, 20,000 stand of arms,
muskets and bayonets, together with the Eagles of the 13th and 51st of
the Line, which had been laid up at the Retiro for safe custody while
the two regiments were operating in a wild part of the country against
the Spanish guerrillas.[29]
The last Eagles taken by Wellington in the Peninsular War came into our
hands in the battles of the Pyrenees.[30] Neither of them is now in
existence. One was taken by our 28th in the combat of the Pass of Maya.
The 28th, supporting the 92nd Highlanders in the fighting, overwhelmed
with a series of fierce volleys an unfortunate French regiment, which
was afterwards discovered to be the French 28th--a curious coincidence.
The Eagle of the 28th, the senior corps of its brigade, was found on
the battlefield, and was brought to England and hung in the Chapel
Royal, Whitehall. It disappeared from there in circumstances already
related. The second French Eagle was that of the 52nd of the Line,
presented by Wellington, as has been told, to the Spanish Cortes. That
also has since been entirely lost sight of.
[Sidenote: NAPOLEON’S ORDER OF RECALL]
This also may be added. Early in 1813 a special order was issued by
Napoleon to the army in Spain requiring the Eagles of most of the
regiments to be sent back to France. Napoleon at that time was in
Paris, engaged in getting together a new Grand Army to replace that
destroyed in Russia. The regiments in Spain, he said, would be so
weakened by the intended withdrawal of their third, fourth, and fifth
battalions (which he was recalling in order to send them to Germany for
the coming campaign there), that the Eagles--in charge of the first
battalions which were remaining in Spain--would be exposed to undue
risk. “In future,” he wrote, “there will in Spain be only one Eagle to
each brigade, that of the senior regiment of the brigade.” The Eagles
withdrawn from Spain, added the order, would “in the end rejoin the
battalions with the Grand Army in Germany, as soon as these had been
reconstituted afresh as regiments, with a sufficient force of men to
ensure the safety of the Eagles.” All the cavalry Eagles were recalled:
“No regiment of Cavalry in Spain is to retain its Eagle. Those who have
not done so are immediately to send theirs to the dépôt.”
It was due to this order mainly that at Vittoria, after the
overwhelming rout of the French army, only one Eagle-pole--with its
Eagle gone--fell into British hands, although there had been on the
field upwards of 70,000 French soldiers (of whom 55,000 were infantry),
and the French lost everything--in the words of one of their own
generals (Gazan), “all their equipages, all their guns, all their
treasure, all their stores, all their papers.”[31]