THAT TERRIBLE MIDNIGHT AT THE INVALIDES
The Battalion Eagles of 1804, those of the second and third battalions
withdrawn by the decree of 1808, together with the Light Cavalry
(Hussar, Chasseur, and Dragoon) Eagles recalled in the autumn of 1805,
and a number of Light Infantry Eagles returned to the Ministry of War
at the end of 1807, perished in the flames of the great holocaust of
trophy-flags at the Invalides on the night of March 30, 1814, the night
of the surrender of Paris to the Allies.
It was on that tragic Wednesday night that the great sacrifice was
made, amid the bowed and weeping old soldiers of France, the veterans
of a hundred battlefields, on the most terrible and mournful occasion
in the wide-ranging annals of the great institution which the Grand
Monarque, in the full pride of his power, at the topmost pinnacle of
his renown, founded and opened in person with grandiose martial pomp
and State display. All was over for France on that night--
“Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to conquer and to bleed:
The power and glory of the war
Had passed to the victorious Czar.”
The two marshals charged with the defence of Paris, Marmont and
Mortier, had on that afternoon placed the submission of the capital
in the hands of Alexander of Russia on the heights of Montmartre,
whence, and from the Buttes Chaumont and the other northern heights
from right to left, 300 loaded cannon pointed threateningly down over
the vanquished and panic-stricken city, supported by the bayonets
and sabres of 120,000 men, Russians and Prussians, Bavarians,
Würtemburgers, and Austrians, flushed and exultant in their hour of
supreme triumph, the soldiers of all the nations of the Continent at
war with Napoleon.
[Sidenote: NAPOLEON WITHIN TWELVE MILES]
It was at ten o’clock on that fateful night for France that the great
destruction of trophies at the Invalides took place. Napoleon had set
his last stake, had attempted his desperate last manœuvre, and had
failed. He had been foiled and baffled when within reach almost of his
goal. At that very hour indeed, only twelve miles away, he had just
been stopped in his wild midnight gallop, his final forlorn-hope effort
to reach the capital, by the news that all hope was past, that the
worst had happened, that Paris had fallen.
Only forty-eight hours before, on Monday night, at Saint-Dizier, a
small town 170 miles away, had Napoleon suddenly realised the gravity
of the catastrophe impending over Paris. He was at that moment in
the act of dealing the Allies a counter-stroke which he confidently
believed would save the situation and bring the enemy’s advance to a
general stand. Just a week before, he had abruptly turned back in his
retreat towards the capital and had boldly started to march across the
rear of the Allies in the direction of the Rhine. He would sever their
communications; he would cut the enemy off from their base. Calling out
the _levée en masse_ of the peasantry all over Eastern France, and at
the same time rallying to him the garrisons of the French fortresses
in Alsace and Lorraine, with 100,000 men at his disposal, led by Ney,
Macdonald, Victor, and Oudinot, while two other marshals, Marmont
and Mortier, held the enemy at bay in front of Paris, he was looking
forward to checkmate the Allies at the last moment and paralyse their
advance on the capital. It was a daring and masterly project; but the
Fortune of War was against Napoleon. He had sent word of his plans
to Marie Louise at the Tuileries, together with instructions to his
brother Joseph, Governor of Paris, but on the way a Cossack patrol
captured the bearer of the vitally important documents. Napoleon’s
despatch for once was not in cypher, and its full import was apparent
instantly. It was carried to the Czar Alexander, and forthwith laid
before a hastily convened Russian council of war. Another letter, taken
at the same time, laid bare the critical condition of affairs inside
Paris itself; describing how all was in confusion there, and that
treachery to the cause of the Empire was at work within the city. The
council of war decided to pay no heed to Napoleon’s counter-stroke,
and, instead, to march at once on Paris in full force. Marmont and
Mortier, it was known, could barely muster 6,000 regulars. With
Blücher’s Prussians, at that moment on the point of joining them,
the Allies could bring into line not far short of 150,000 men. This
final plan was agreed to on the afternoon of Friday, March 24, and the
general advance began at once.
[Sidenote: NAPOLEON’S BLANK DISMAY]
Napoleon knew nothing of what was happening until late on the night of
the 27th, the following Monday. Then he was suddenly made aware of the
full position. “Nothing,” exclaimed the doomed Emperor in blank dismay,
“but a thunderbolt can save us now.” The Allies then had not turned
back! The enemy nearest him, whom he had planned to attack next day,
believing them to be the Russian main army, was only--he discovered
at the last moment--a cavalry division, sent back to delude him and
prevent his finding out what was really going on. And the troops
advancing on Paris were already three clear days ahead of him! Napoleon
counter-marched his whole force at once to hasten to the rescue of the
capital. They would take the route by Sens, Troyes, and Fontainebleau,
making a sweep to keep clear of the enemy’s columns, and approach
Paris by the south bank of the Seine. It was a long march of fully 180
miles, but there was no other way open. Marmont and Mortier, to whom
the news of Napoleon’s intended approach was sent off immediately, must
manage to hold out in front of the city on the north bank until the
Emperor arrived.
Fresh news, however, and yet more serious, as to the imminence of
the grave peril threatening Paris, reached Napoleon during Tuesday
night. Leaving the army to follow, he pressed forward ahead of the
troops by himself in his travelling-carriage, escorted only by the Old
Guard. They hurried forward with feverish eagerness all that night
and the next day, the men of the Guard panting along at the double in
their effort to keep up. With hardly a halt, they struggled along,
famishing--most of the men had tasted no cooked food for the past five
days--shoeless most of them, plodding and splashing barefoot through
the mud, ankle deep; under a pitiless downpour of rain all the time.
By Wednesday evening, the 30th, they had reached Troyes, after a forty
miles march without a stop. There, still worse news reached Napoleon.
Marmont and Mortier had been disastrously defeated at Meaux, and in
consequence their defence of the northern heights outside the city was
all but hopeless.
[Sidenote: AT FULL GALLOP FOR PARIS]
Napoleon, on that, abandoned his travelling-carriage for a light
post-chaise, which set off at a gallop. He must now risk a ride
practically unattended, in the desperate hope of being able to evade
hostile patrols and get by stealth into the city. Once there, he
would himself take charge of the defence. The men of the Old Guard
were left behind at Troyes. They were worn out and unable, from sheer
exhaustion, to go a step farther. Only a troop of Cuirassiers rode with
the post-chaise, and most of these had to give up and drop back as the
chaise raced forward, Napoleon himself from time to time calling from
the windows to the postillions to keep on flogging the horses and go
faster and faster. At every stopping-place to change horses the Emperor
sent off a courier to tell Paris to hold out; and at each post-house
he received still more alarming messages from the city. Now he heard
that the Empress and his little son had had to fly from Paris. Then
he learned that the whole city was in a state of complete panic, with
affrighted peasants from all round crowding in; the shops and banks all
shut; the theatres closed, a thing that had not happened even at the
height of the Reign of Terror; everywhere chaos and hopeless despair.
After that came the news that the enemy were advancing so fast that
they were expected at any moment before the City barriers.
At ten o’clock Napoleon arrived at the village of Fromenteau, near
the Fountains of Juvisy, twelve and a half miles from Paris. The
post-chaise had to stop there again for a relay of fresh horses. As it
drew up, a party of soldiers passed by, coming from the direction of
the capital. Not knowing who was in the chaise, some of them shouted
out to the occupants, Napoleon, and Caulaincourt, who had been riding
with the Emperor: “Paris has surrendered!”
The dread news struck Napoleon like a bullet between the eyes. “It is
impossible! The men are mad!” he hissed out, gripping at the cushions
of his seat. Then he turned to his companion: “Find an officer and
bring him to me!”
One rode up, as it happened, at that moment, a General Belliard.
Napoleon questioned him eagerly, and he gave the Emperor sufficient
details to leave no doubt of what had befallen. Great drops of sweat
stood on Napoleon’s forehead. He turned, quivering with excitement, to
Caulaincourt. “Do you hear that?” he ejaculated hoarsely, fixing a gaze
on his companion under the light of the lamps, the bare memory of which
made Caulaincourt shudder ever after to his dying day.
They left the chaise, and looking across the Seine Napoleon saw to
the north and east, in the direction of Villeneuve Saint-Georges, the
glare of the enemy’s watch-fires. Marshal Berthier now came up in a
second post-chaise which had been following the Emperor’s. Speaking
excitedly, Napoleon declared that he would go on to Paris. He set off
walking rapidly along the road in the dark, leaving the horses to be
put to and the post-chaise to pick him up. Berthier and Caulaincourt
attended him, and General Belliard and some dragoons followed at a few
paces behind. Napoleon rejected every remonstrance and refused to turn
back. “I asked them,” exclaimed Napoleon, talking half to himself, half
to his companions, “to hold out for only twenty-four hours! Miserable
wretches! Marmont swore that he would be cut to pieces rather than
yield! And Joseph ran away: my own brother! To surrender the capital
to the enemy: what poltroons!” So he went on in a breathless torrent
of words. He added finally: “They have capitulated: betrayed their
country; betrayed their Emperor; degraded France! It is too terrible!
Every one has lost his head! When I am not there they do nothing but
add blunder to blunder.”
[Sidenote: “MISERABLE WRETCHES!”]
But to go on, with Paris in the hands of an army of 150,000 men,
was out of the question. Napoleon had to bow to the inevitable. He
at length yielded to the protests of the others. He stopped beside
the Fountains of Juvisy. “He sat down on the parapet of one of the
fountains,” described Labédoyère, an eye-witness, “and remained above
a quarter of an hour with his head resting on his hands, lost in the
most painful reflections.” Then he rose, went back to the post-chaise,
and, telling General Belliard to rally all the men he could at Essonne,
set off to drive to Fontainebleau. He reached there at six next morning.
Between ten o’clock on Wednesday night and six o’clock on Thursday
morning the tragedy at the Invalides was enacted. Its opening scene
took place just as Napoleon’s post-chaise was drawing up in the village
of Fromenteau. Its final scene took place just as the post-chaise was
entering the courtyard of Fontainebleau.
The Capitulation of Paris was signed before the Barrier of La Villette
at five in the afternoon. Its first article laid down that the French
army must evacuate Paris within twelve hours: before five o’clock next
morning. The last clause recommended the city to the mercy of the
Allied Sovereigns, and of the Czar Alexander in particular.
All day long the booming of cannon and rattle of musketry had dinned
in the ears of the trembling and terrified Parisians, ever steadily
drawing nearer. The marshals, Marmont and Mortier, had made their last
stand, and, resisting desperately to the last, in a struggle in which
the Allies lost two to every one of the defenders, so ferocious was the
contest, had been beaten back into the city. They carried back with
them, so gallantly had they counter-attacked at one point, the standard
of the Second Squadron of the Russian Garde du Corps--now a trophy in
the present collection at the Invalides.
[Sidenote: BEYOND ALL HOPE NOW]
The outnumbered and exhausted troops could make no further fight,
although, to the end, many of the soldiers were for holding out to
the last cartridge. The _Générale_ had beaten to arms at two in the
morning; at six, with sunrise, the enemy’s guns opened fire; from then
until late in the afternoon the fighting had gone on incessantly.
All was over by four o’clock. From east to west, from Charenton and
Belleville, right round to Neuilly, the Allies, the Russians, Blücher’s
Prussians, and the Austrians, had captured every position capable of
defence, one after the other, by sheer weight of numbers, and had
carried at the point of the bayonet every place of vantage held by the
French. Woronzeff and the Prince of Würtemburg had stormed Romainville,
La Villette, and La Chapelle. Langeron and the Russian Imperial Guard
were masters of the heights of Montmartre and the Buttes Chaumont,
looking down directly on Paris. Eighty-six guns had been taken from the
marshals since the morning; nearly six thousand soldiers and National
Guards had fallen, killed or wounded, facing the foe. A six-miles
long line of batteries and battalions on the side of the Allies had
closed in to within short musket range of the Paris barriers. Already
the Russian cannon were opening fire on the city, and their shells
were bursting over the central streets of Paris; falling, some in the
Chaussée d’Antin and on the Boulevard des Italiens.
At four o’clock Marmont, who had been the soul of the defence,
fighting, now on horseback, now on foot, using his sword at times--“the
marshal was seen everywhere in the thickest of the fight, a dozen or
more soldiers were bayoneted at his side, and his hat was riddled
with bullets”--at four o’clock Marmont repassed within the barriers
to announce that further defence was impossible. He was scarcely
recognisable, we are told--“he had a beard of eight days’ growth; the
great-coat which covered his uniform was in tatters; from head to foot
he was blackened with powder-smoke.” Then had to be done the only thing
that was left to do. Marmont and Mortier held a hasty conference, and
after it a trumpeter and an aide de camp carrying a white flag rode out
through the firing line to the nearest advanced post of the Allies. The
officer was taken before the Czar Alexander on the plateau of Chaumont,
and Paris surrendered. The last sounds that were heard on the French
side as the firing ceased came from a battalion of the Imperial Guard
which had been serving under Marmont, from a scanty remnant of veterans
stubbornly resisting at bay to the last--shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!”
[Sidenote: THE FLAG OF THE POLYTECHNIC]
The old pensioners of the Invalides manfully did their duty, and bore
their part in the defence all day, as well as they were able. All
who could carry a musket had gone out to the barriers; others did
their best by helping to bring up ammunition. Most of them fought
at the Barrière du Trône on the Vincennes road, assisting the brave
lads of the Polytechnic School to hold the post and man a battery of
eight-and-twenty cannon in front of the barrier; until a headlong
charge of Russian cavalry, Pahlen’s dragoons with some Cossacks,
swooped down from the flank, annihilating the devoted band of gunners.
Those of the boys who were left, however, saved the school flag,
presented to the Polytechnic just ten years before by the Emperor with
his own hand, on the Day of the Eagles on the Field of Mars. With the
Invalides’ veterans and some of the National Guards, the survivors
held the barrier throughout the day to the end, beating back repeated
attempts of the Russians to storm the gate. The lads, finally, after
learning that Marmont had capitulated, made their way back to the
school, and there burned their precious standard to save it from
falling into the enemy’s hands. Those who were left of the veterans
hastened back to the Invalides at the same time, overcome with anxiety
to learn what was to happen to their own priceless treasures within the
Hospital, the trophy flags. There were at the Invalides at that time,
by one account, 1417 trophy flags; according to another account--which
included apparently in the total the returned Battalion and Light
Infantry and Cavalry Eagles--altogether 1,800 standards.
Within the walls of the Invalides all was deep gloom and hopeless
despondency among those in charge. Even at nightfall, as it would
appear, the authorities had not made up their minds how the trophies
were to be disposed of.
It is a hapless and pitiful story from first to last. Some time
previously, while the Allied armies were still being kept at bay on
the plains of Champagne, the Governor of the Invalides, old Marshal
Serrurier, a distinguished veteran of the Revolutionary Army, had
applied to the Minister of War for instructions as to the disposal of
the trophies at the Invalides in the event of the enemy advancing on
Paris. The only answer he received was a formal letter to the effect
that the matter would have to go before the Emperor. At that time
Napoleon was in the midst of his last forlorn-hope attempt to stem the
tide of invasion; in the midst of a life-and-death struggle, fighting
desperately day after day at one place or another. The Ministry of War
apparently pigeon-holed the application after that, and forgot all
about the trophies at the Invalides until the actual day of the attack
on Paris--until that Wednesday forenoon.
[Sidenote: FORGOTTEN UNTIL TOO LATE]
Then, when already Marmont’s outer line of defence had been forced,
and the last fight for the inner heights overlooking the city was
raging furiously, almost within sight from the Invalides, a letter
from the War Minister was handed to Serrurier. It “trusted that the
Marshal had taken steps for the safety of the trophies; especially
for the preservation of Frederick the Great’s sword. The flags,”
continued the letter, “had best be detached from their staves, and
rolled up carefully. The War Minister is sure that your Excellency
will do all that is possible. The road to the Loire is open.” Such
were the instructions sent to the Invalides after the eleventh hour!
Then, during the afternoon, when the enemy’s bombshells, fired from the
plateau of Chaumont, were falling in the heart of the city, a single
artillery wagon, or fourgon, a vehicle barely large enough to remove
a small percentage of what there was to carry away, drew up at the
main gates of the Invalides. It brought also ten more trophy flags,
collected from somewhere in Paris. In the general confusion nobody,
it would seem, even inquired what they were or where they came from.
The driver’s instructions were merely that “they were to go away with
the Invalides trophies.” The ten flags were taken out and stacked in a
corridor for the time being, while the fourgon waited unheeded at the
gate until after dark.
What steps Marshal Serrurier took during the afternoon to secure
adequate transport is unknown; or, indeed, what he did with himself
all that time. The Governor was seen just before the dinner-hour in
the Corridor d’Avignon, in an out-of-the-way part of the building, in
conference with the Lieutenant-Governor and an adjutant-major. Another
officer, Adjutant Vollerand, was with them, holding in his hands
Frederick the Great’s sword and sash. Apparently they did not want to
be observed, and were discussing how to hide the relics or bury them
within the precincts of the Invalides. After that nothing more was seen
of Serrurier at the Invalides until between nine and ten at night, some
hours after the Capitulation, and when it had become known that the
Allies intended to occupy Paris in force, and that their troops would
enter and take possession of the city early next morning. Then the
Governor reappeared.
A few minutes after nine o’clock the veterans of the Invalides, who
had been restlessly pacing about the halls and corridors during the
evening, or standing about in dejected groups in the courtyards, not
knowing what they were to do, were suddenly summoned to muster at once
in the Grand Court, or Cour d’Honneur. All turned out from the wards
and paraded, forming up by the light of lanterns. All but those who
were bedridden were brought out, the maimed and cripples being led out,
or hobbling out on their crutches, together with the survivors of those
who had fought so gallantly at the barriers during the day, their faces
still begrimed with powder-smoke, their clothes torn and stained,
some without their hats, their arms in slings, or with bandages over
recent wounds. Then the tall, spare figure of the Governor, a grim,
hard-featured old warrior, white-haired, over seventy years of age, was
seen emerging from his quarters, with the senior staff-officers of the
Hospital following in rear. Serrurier harangued the pensioners briefly.
He told them that the enemy would enter the city next day and would
present themselves at the Invalides to enforce the giving up of the
trophies. What did the men of the Invalides desire should be done?
[Sidenote: “LET US BURN THEM HERE!”]
There was a pause for a moment; a dead silence, as the old
soldiers gazed dumbfoundedly at one another. Then one man stepped
out to the front and spoke up for the rest. A battle-scarred old
sergeant-pensioner of the Grenadiers of the Old Guard answered the
Governor on behalf of his comrades, his reply, greeted as it was by
vociferous shouts of approval on every side, voicing the unanimous wish
of the veterans. “If they will not let us keep our banners, let us burn
them here! We will swallow the ashes!” The order to make a bonfire of
the trophies then and there was issued forthwith.
Anything that came to hand for fuel was eagerly seized, and a great
pile speedily made of broken-up stools and mess-tables and forms,
hauled out from the barrack-rooms withindoors. They were stacked in
a heap just in front of the pedestal on which it had been intended to
erect an equestrian statue of the heroic Marshal Lannes, who died from
his wounds at Aspern in the arms of Napoleon. Meanwhile, parties of
men ran inside with ladders, and set to work to strip the dining-halls
and the Chapel of the rows of flags hanging up there. They bore them
outside, roughly bundled together in their arms; some, silently, with
frowning, stern-set faces and set teeth; others beside themselves with
rage, and cursing savagely aloud; others sullenly muttering oaths; not
a few of the old fellows with tears streaming down their cheeks. They
carried the trophies out and heaped them up into an immense funeral
pyre. The battalion and other Eagles shared the fate of the captured
trophies--standards, some of these, that had been borne under fire in
the thick of triumphant battle at Austerlitz, and Jena, at Auerstadt
and Friedland--to save them on the morrow from falling into the hands
of those in whose defeat and humiliation they had had their part. The
fire was lighted and the masses of tattered silk blazed up furiously.
When the flames were at their fiercest, Marshal Serrurier stepped
forward and with his own hand flung into the midst of the fiery mass
the sword of Frederick the Great.
For half the night the veterans stood round and watched the flames
complete the work of destruction. They stood massed round in a densely
packed throng of sullen, gloomy, brokenhearted men. They stayed there
until long after midnight, gazing, in a state of dull despair, at the
fire; while some now and again stirred up the glowing fuel and made
the flames leap up afresh, roaring and crackling and casting a dull
red throbbing glare over the old walls and rows of windows all round,
and gleaming on the lofty gilded dome of the Invalides, in itself an
intended memento of victory. On first seeing the golden domes of the
Kremlin as he approached Moscow, Napoleon had sent orders to Paris to
have the dome of the Invalides gilded as a memorial of his achievement
of the goal of the campaign! Most of the veterans stood there
throughout the greater part of that cold March night, watching until
the fire had died down and only a great heap of smouldering cinders
remained; all that was left of the trophies of victorious France.
[Sidenote: THE TROPHIES OF TWO CENTURIES]
Among the vast array of foreign trophies at the Invalides that perished
on that night were English flags nearly two centuries old, the remains
of the spoil of some forty-four English banners of Charles the First’s
soldiers, triumphantly carried to Paris from the Ile de Rhé in November
1627 and hung in Notre Dame. Others flags destroyed there, too, dated
from the wars of the Grand Monarque; spoils won on the battlefield by
the famous Condé and Turenne; also trophies taken from William the
Third at Steenkirk and Landen and elsewhere; the British and Dutch
and Danish and Bavarian ensigns won by Turenne’s great successor,
Marshal Luxembourg, “le Tapissier de Notre Dame,” as they dubbed him
at Versailles, for the almost innumerable trophies sent by Luxembourg
to be hung up in the Cathedral of Paris, with State processions and Te
Deums in the presence of the King. Other British battle-spoils, the
trophies of France, which passed out of existence at the Invalides on
that night were these: a flag taken at Fontenoy by the Irish Brigade;
the regimental colours surrendered by the garrison of Minorca which
Admiral Byng failed to rescue; those of another British garrison of
Minorca of the time of the Great Siege of Gibraltar, when France, for
the second time, wrested the island from England; four British and
Hessian regimental flags surrendered to Washington at Yorktown and sent
by Congress as a gift to the King of France; flags taken by the French
from British West India garrisons in the same war; besides British
naval ensigns also taken during the American War, with other British
ship-flags, some of which indeed dated from the earlier battle times
of Duguay Trouin and Jean Bart. Destroyed at the Invalides also on
that Wednesday night was a British naval ensign from Trafalgar. It had
been hoisted on board one of Nelson’s prizes, the _Algéciras_. In the
storm after the battle the ship was in imminent peril of wreck, and the
French prisoners on board were liberated in order to help to save her.
They used their freedom to overpower the small British prize-crew and
carried the vessel off into Cadiz, whence the British ensign, hoisted
originally in triumph over the French tricolor during the battle of two
days before, on the _Algéciras_ being captured, was sent as a trophy to
Paris. There were also destroyed at the Invalides at the same time the
ensign of Lord Cochrane’s famous brig-of-war, the _Speedy_, captured in
the Mediterranean in 1801, and those of three British line-of-battle
ships, the _Berwick_, the _Swiftsure_, and the _Hannibal_, taken within
the previous twenty years.
[Sidenote: SPOILS TAKEN IN NAVAL FIGHTS]
Most of the trophies won by Napoleon and the Grand Army all over
Europe, and by the Armies of the Republic and Consulate before
that, perished in the holocaust: the spoils of Valmy and Fleurus
and Jemmapes; of Hohenlinden; of Dego and Mondovi; of Rivoli and
Montenotte; of Castiglione, Lodi, and Arcola; of Zurich and Marengo,
and other victories. On that night, too, passed out of existence the
famous flag of the Army of Italy presented by Napoleon, and bearing
inscribed on it the names of eighty triumphs on the battlefield and the
detailed record of the taking of 150,000 prisoners, 170 standards, 550
siege-guns, and 600 pieces of field artillery; the Horse-tail banners
of the Mamelukes, taken by Napoleon at the battle of the Pyramids; the
historic standard of the Knights of St. John, won in hand-to-hand fight
outside the main gate of Valetta. Most of the 340 Prussian standards
Napoleon sent to Paris after the Jena campaign, together with the sword
and Black Eagle sash of Frederick the Great, as well as the recovered
French trophies of the Seven Years’ War, originally won by Frederick at
Rosbach, the standards of Frederick the Great’s Guards, and Austrian
spoils taken by the Prussians at Leuthen, Kolin, and Hohenfriedburg,
all of which had been carried off to Paris by Napoleon--these were
among the war-treasures destroyed at the Invalides on that night. With
them went into the flames the Grand Army’s Russian trophies from Eylau
and Friedland, the Austrian trophies from Eckmühl and Wagram, besides
many Spanish and Portuguese trophies taken before Wellington landed in
the Peninsula to turn the tide of war.
[Sidenote: AFTER DUPONT’S SURRENDER]
One French Eagle which perished on that night was the survivor of a
disaster: Dupont’s surrender at Bailen in Andalusia in 1808,[36] at
the outset of the Spanish insurrection; that cruel humiliation for
the arms of France, the news of which came on Europe with all the
startling effect of a thunderclap, and drove Napoleon nearly frantic
in his furious indignation. It had been one of three Eagles taken by
the Spaniards, that of the 24me Légère, and had been recovered by the
daring of an officer of the regiment, one of the prisoners, Captain
Lanusse. Confined in a prison-hulk at Cadiz, he escaped to shore
one night, managed to find out where his regiment’s flag was kept,
displayed as a Spanish trophy, got hold of it, and then made his way
outside the city into the lines of the besieging French army. There
he presented the Eagle to Marshal Soult, who forwarded it direct to
Napoleon. Lanusse, as his reward, was promoted a _chef de bataillon_ of
the 8th of the Line, and fell to the bayonet of a British soldier of
the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers at Barrosa. The recovered Eagle Napoleon
sent to the Invalides.
By morning all that remained of the proud trophies of France at the
Invalides was a heap of grey ashes, fragments of charred flag-poles,
and scraps of partly molten metal. The _débris_ was raked up at
daylight, and shovelled into the artillery fourgon of the previous
afternoon, which had been standing all night outside the main gate
of the Invalides. The artillery wagon drove off with it to the Seine
near by and emptied the heap into the river. That was the end of the
night’s destruction.
[Sidenote: ALL THAT WAS DREDGED UP]
Some portion of the _débris_ was recovered from the Seine a year
afterwards, and is preserved in the Chapel of the Invalides now. In
June 1815 a workman, doing some repairs by the riverside, discovered a
portion of a flag under water, and on hearing of that, two patriotic
young Frenchmen, an engineer and a journalist, privately set to work
soon afterwards to see if they could fish up anything that might
be worth preserving. At the time the Allies were in possession of
Paris, during the second occupation, after Waterloo, and the two
young men had to proceed cautiously. They were successful in the end
in recovering portions of 183 trophies, metal spear-head ornaments,
from ensign-staves mostly. Seventy-eight were later identified as of
Austrian origin; one as part of a British flag; two as having belonged
to Russian standards; various fragments as the remains of thirty-nine
Prussian standards; four from Spanish flags with Bourbon fleurs-de-lis;
and two fragments of Turkish standards from Egypt. The remainder of the
salvage it was impossible to identify.
That the great sacrifice had not been made in vain, was speedily
apparent. In the course of the morning after the bonfire, a little
before noon on Thursday, March 31, within two hours of the entry into
Paris of the vanguard of the Allied armies, a Russian aide de camp
presented himself at the Invalides, and, in the name of the Allied
sovereigns, demanded a statement of the trophies kept there. The
officer came up on horseback, accompanied by a mounted man of the
National Guard, and an armed escort of Russian dragoons. The main
gate was open as usual, and the Russian officer rode through without
taking notice of the gate-sentry’s challenge. He was only stopped
by a rush of the pensioners’ day-guard, called out by the sentry’s
shout of alarm--“Aux armes!” The guard turned out and faced the aide
de camp with lowered halberds. The Russian colonel protested, but
the officer on duty refused to let him pass without orders from his
own chief, and General Darnaud, the Lieutenant-Governor, was sent
for. That officer came, and the Russian dismounted and explained his
mission. He had orders, he said, to “take cognisance” of the trophies
of the Invalides. General Darnaud replied bluntly: “Very good, I will
permit you to visit the Hôtel. Come with me!” The general added: “As
to the trophies, sir, we have dealt with them according to the laws of
war!” “On en avait agi suivant les lois de guerre!” were his words.
The Russian did not seem to grasp the general’s meaning, and stood
still for a moment, staring blankly at him. On that, Madame Darnaud,
the Lieutenant-Governor’s wife, who had followed into the courtyard
immediately after her husband, interposed. She addressed the officer,
speaking volubly and angrily, but only to draw down on herself from the
Russian the uncivil rejoinder that he had not come there to talk to a
woman! After that, the general, accompanied by some of the men of the
main guard with shouldered halberds, formally conducted the officer
inside the Invalides, the party taking their way along the colonnade
round the Court of Honour, in the midst of which could be seen the wide
burnt-out space where the fire had been, the pungent smell of the fumes
from which still hung about the place, and so into the Chapel of St.
Louis. There the scene that met the Russian aide de camp’s eyes seemed
to stagger him: bare blank walls, the gallery stripped and defaced;
with empty and broken metal sockets here and there to show where the
flags had been fastened up. The interior had been entirely cleared from
end to end along the sides. It was absolutely unrecognisable to any who
had seen it before. The Russian officer, who had visited the Invalides
six or seven years previously, after Tilsit, could only gaze round
dumbly, utterly taken aback. He muttered something, but did not speak
aloud. Then, glaring round savagely into the eyes of those about him,
he turned away abruptly, and was conducted to the Outer Court, where he
remounted his horse, and rode off hastily in the direction whence he
had come.
[Sidenote: THE WALLS STRIPPED AND BARE]
All Napoleon’s trophies, however, did not perish at the Invalides.
Some of the Grand Army’s captured flags, as it so chanced, escaped
destruction on that night, and are at the Invalides now. They are
in the Chapel and in the Salle Turenne, besides half a hundred in
the Crypt, grouped round Napoleon’s tomb. The forty-five Austrian
flags taken at Ulm are beside Napoleon’s tomb, with nine other flags.
Presented by the Emperor to the Senate, as has been told, the Ulm
trophies, during the night of March 30, were hastily taken down from
where they had been hung in the Grand Salon for the past nine years,
and hidden in a vault below. They made a second public appearance on
the occasion of Napoleon’s funeral at the Invalides in 1840, when they
were placed at the head of the coffin. They have ever since been kept
beside the tomb.
The Austerlitz trophies met another fate. Kept at Notre Dame, they
disappeared mysteriously from there in the early morning of the day of
the entry of the Allies into Paris. At three in the morning of March
31 an urgent message from the Prefect of the Seine was delivered at
Notre Dame, calling on the Cathedral authorities to take down and
conceal the Austerlitz trophies at once. The Chapter met hastily in the
Archbishop’s room, and the flags were all down within half an hour.
They have never been seen since, nor was their fate ever accounted for.
[Sidenote: HOW FIFTY-ONE FLAGS WERE SAVED]
At the Luxembourg Palace were displayed 110 trophies, the spoils
of the Eagles, won from all the nations of Europe and presented to
the _Corps Legislatif_ by Napoleon. They were safely removed on the
night of March 30, and were hidden securely. Brought out and set up
again a year later, on Napoleon’s return from Elba, the authorities
forgot about hiding them again in the confusion after Waterloo. As the
result more than half of them are now in Berlin. Blücher sent a party
of staff officers to seize the entire collection, but a sharp-witted
functionary hoodwinked the Prussians on their arrival. They went back
to get written orders, and before they returned, as many as possible
of the trophies had been pulled down and got out of the way. One of
the attendants managed the affair on his own initiative, a hall-porter
named Mathieu. He was able to save and hide as many as fifty-one of the
flags, and they have since been forwarded to the Invalides. The other
fifty-nine trophies the Prussians seized and carried off. Two Austrian
standards taken by Napoleon at Marengo escaped destruction by having
been previously lent from the Invalides to an artist, Charles Vernet,
for a battle-picture he had been commissioned to paint for Napoleon.
They were in Vernet’s studio in March 1814. His son, Horace Vernet,
returned them in later days to the Invalides, where they now are.
In addition, it would seem, at least a moiety of the Invalides trophies
were kept back at the last moment by some of the veterans themselves.
Several of the old soldiers, it would appear, after stripping down the
flags from the walls, instead of carrying all out into the courtyard to
the bonfire, retained and hid a few of them on their own account, to
smuggle them outside afterwards and keep them in concealment.[37]