He found out his mistake all too soon. Daylight disclosed dense swarms of Austrians, Prussians, and Russians in front of Vandamme, on his flanks, and closing on his rear; outnumbering him nearly four to one. It was a desperate position, for the only road by which Vandamme might retreat was held by the enemy. Little time was left to him to deliberate what to do. He was in the act of forming up his columns in a mass to try to fight his way through, when the enemy attacked in overpowering force. Before noon that day, out of 30,000 men, 10,000 had fallen. Seven thousand more were wounded or prisoners. The rest were fugitives, flying for shelter and hiding-places in the woods round the battlefield. All the French guns and baggage had been taken, and Vandamme himself was a prisoner, together with many officers of rank. The “annals of modern warfare record few instances of defeat more complete than that of Vandamme at Kulm.”

The only regiment that kept its order was the 17th, and it before the crisis had lost heavily. Its colonel and two of the chefs de bataillon had been killed; the two others were wounded. Only some 1,700 of the 4,000 men remained. It rested with Major Fantin, as senior officer, to save those that were left and the Eagle.

The 17th were on the extreme right of the battle, where they had been posted as support to Vandamme’s artillery. They held their ground as long as possible, but the enemy closed in on them, overlapping them on both flanks, and then stormed and captured the guns. The 17th were isolated and in imminent peril—surrender or destruction were the only alternatives before them.

Looking round, the major, as he describes, marked a wooded hill some little way off, and decided to make for that. There was just time to get away before the enemy closed in on them. He sent off all his tirailleurs, about 400 men, to skirmish and hold in check the advancing Austrians. As they went off he shouted to the rest: “En haut l’Aigle! Ralliement au drapeau!” (“Display the Eagle! All rally to the standard!”) The men of the regiment formed round him quickly, and the major pointed out the wooded hill to them with his sword. “All of you disperse at once,” he told them, “and make your way there as quickly as you can. You will find the Eagle of the regiment there, and me with it!” The 17th broke up and scattered, and, under the protection of the skirmishers, aided by the opportune mist which hung low over the ground after the heavy rains of the past week, they made off in groups in the direction pointed out. All just got past the enemy in time, Major Fantin and two officers accompanying the Eagle.

An hour later, “nos débris,” as the major puts it, were straggling up the hill, where they again rallied round the Eagle. The skirmishers, cleverly withdrawn at the right moment, evaded the enemy also, and most of them joined their comrades on the hill, where all silently drew together. They then moved off, to halt for concealment in a wooded glade behind. They stayed there, keeping quiet and lying down beside their arms, for several hours; off the track of the pursuit, and undiscovered by the enemy. “We were all very hungry and without anything but what cartridges we had still left.”

At nightfall they moved away in the direction in which Dresden was judged to be, without having a single map or anything to guide them. They marched all night, mostly by a forest road, and keeping their direction by means of occasional glimpses of the stars seen through rifts in the cloudy sky overhead. More than once they had to halt as the enemy were heard on the move not far off. They groped their way forward with extreme caution, not a light being struck, and the necessary words of command being spoken in an undertone, until after midnight. Then they suddenly came into the open round a bend of the road, and discovered, not half a mile off in front, the numerous watch-fires of a large body of troops. “The column halted at the sight like one man and stood in absolute silence. Who were those in front of us? Friends or the enemy?”

Two scouts were sent forward to try to find out. They were away for half an hour; an interval of intense suspense and anxiety to the others. At the end of the time the two scouts came rushing back. They brought unexpectedly good news. It was a French bivouac: that of the 14th Army Corps—Marshal St. Cyr’s. So the 17th and their Eagle were saved.

Other Eagles that got away from the rout at Kulm and rejoined the army owed their safety to the determination of small groups of officers and men who cut their way through the enemy. “Officers fought with their swords, privates with their bayonets and the butts of their muskets: and as the struggle was to escape and not to destroy, a push and wrestle, or a blow, which might suffice to throw the individual struck out of the way of the striker, prevented in many instances the more deadly thrust.” Finally, as the 17th had done, they found shelter among the woods and ravines of the neighbourhood, and lay low there until the enemy had moved off towards Töplitz, whereupon they made their way to Dresden. The cavalry saved their Eagles by cutting their way through the enemy. They suffered heavy losses, but succeeded in their effort. Their commander, General Corbineau, “presented himself, wounded and covered with blood, before Napoleon”; it was his arrival that announced the disaster. The Eagles of the 33rd and the 106th of the Line taken at Kulm are at Vienna.

The three days of battle at Leipsic, between October 16 and 19, 1813, cost Napoleon 60,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, and 300 guns; but not more than 6 Eagles were among the trophies of battalion-flags and squadron-colours taken or found on the field, now at Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg.

One Eagle was lost during the first day’s fighting at Leipsic—taken on the 16th by Blücher from Ney’s corps; but no others were lost until the end. The 80,000 men who were able to make good their retreat with Napoleon across the bridge over the Elster before it was prematurely blown up, through a non-commissioned officer’s blunder, carried their Eagles with them. What colour-trophies came into the possession of the Allies were taken amid the final scenes of carnage; from cut-off battalions of the three divisions left behind on the right bank of the river, victims of the destruction of the bridge. They were mostly captured in the ferocious hand-to-hand fighting which marked the closing phase of the battle in the suburbs of Leipsic. The French defended themselves there to the last with the courage of despair among the fortified villas and loopholed garden walls. “Pressed upon by superior numbers, and fighting, now in the streets, now in the houses, now through gardens or other enclosures, the single end which they could accomplish or which in point of fact they seemed to desire, was that they might sell their lives at the dearest rate possible.” Two at least of the Eagles now at Berlin were hastily buried in gardens during the last stand, and were dug up there later when the ground was being turned over.

Forced to give back before their ever-increasing enemies, not a few of the French “preferred death to captivity, and fought to the last. These, retiring through by-lanes and covered passages, made their way to the river, some where the ruins of the bridge covered its banks, some above and others below that point, and, plunging into the deep water, endeavoured to gain the opposite shore by swimming, an attempt in which comparatively few succeeded.”

The three doomed divisions of Lauriston, Regnier, and Poniatowski, who were cut off by the blowing up of the bridge, had, as it happened, not many Eagles among them to lose. They were largely made up of newly raised conscript regiments to whom Napoleon had not yet awarded Eagles; regiments not yet entitled to carry Eagles, according to the later regulations that Napoleon had laid down. Only four of the newly raised regiments altogether, so far during the campaign in Germany, had qualified for the honour. They had received their Eagles with the customary ceremony at the hands of Napoleon: three of them on October 15, the day before the battle of Leipsic opened. The fourth had received its Eagle at Dresden a month earlier. Two of these four Eagles only were lost to the enemy at Leipsic.

The Eagle-bearers of four or five other regiments among those cut off by the bridge disaster tried to swim across the Elster with their Eagles. Their fate is unknown; probably they were drowned in the attempt. Other Eagle-bearers, before surrendering, were seen to fling their Eagles into the river to sink there.

How one Eagle, during the battle on the 18th, was momentarily lost, and then regained by a splendid act of valour, is told by Caulaincourt, who was on Napoleon’s staff, and witnessed the gallant deed that won the Eagle back. In the midst of the fighting, a number of Saxon regiments abandoned Napoleon’s cause and went over en masse to the enemy. To signalise their defection they turned on the nearest French regiment and mobbed it; attacking it at close quarters with the bayonet. Thrown into confusion by the unexpected onslaught, the French were for the moment broken and forced back, whereupon the Saxons, making for the Eagle, got possession of it. “A young officer of Hussars,” relates Caulaincourt, “whose name I forget, rushed headlong into the enemies’ ranks. In the charge some of the miserable renegades had carried off one of our Eagles. The gallant young officer rescued it, but at the cost of his life. He threw the Eagle at the Emperor’s feet, and then he himself fell, mortally wounded and bathed in blood. The Emperor was deeply moved. ‘With such men,’ he exclaimed, ‘what resources does not France possess!’”

The regiments left by Napoleon to garrison the fortresses in Germany, at Stettin, at Magdeburg, Torgau, Dantzic, and elsewhere, previous to surrendering took steps to prevent their Eagles falling into the hands of their adversaries. In every case they destroyed them, smashing the Eagles into small fragments, which were either distributed among officers and men, or else thrown into the ditch of the fortress. In more than one case they melted the Eagles down, and broke up and buried the metal, while the flags were burned.

At Dresden, where Marshal St. Cyr had to surrender, a month after Leipsic, the terms granted by the Austrian general conducting the siege allowed the troops to return to France with their arms, their baggage, and their Eagles, seven in number. Superior authority, however, cancelled the privilege. The garrison had already started on their march when, to their utter consternation, the capitulation was abruptly annulled by the Austrian Generalissimo, Schwartzenberg, with the result that the hapless troops were compelled to yield themselves prisoners at discretion. The soldiers were defenceless and could only submit to their hard fate. They did not, however, let their seven Eagles pass into the enemy’s hands. Five of the seven were broken up, and the flags torn to pieces and divided among the regiments. Two of the Eagles, those of the 25th of the Line and the 85th, were concealed intact by two officers, who kept them from discovery for months, while they were prisoners in Hungary. After the Peace, in the following year, they brought them back to France—to meet there the doom that awaited all the Eagles of Napoleon of which the officials of the Bourbon régime got possession.

One memento of the Winter Campaign in Eastern France is now at the Invalides—the Eagle of the 5th of the Line. It was found in the river Aube at Arcis after the battle there, which, in its result, decided the fate of Napoleon; its outcome being the immediate march of the Allied armies on Paris. The 5th was one of the regiments of the rearguard column, under Oudinot, half of which was drowned in the river in trying to get across at night, after stubbornly holding out in the town all the afternoon in order to enable Napoleon to cross the river in safety. The 5th was one of the regiments that sacrificed themselves. Its Eagle-bearer was among the drowned, and his Eagle sank with him. It remained in the bed of the stream until long afterwards, when it was accidentally discovered, and fished up.

The 132nd of the Line of the modern army of France commemorates on its flag a feat of arms done under the Eagle of the old 132nd of Napoleon’s Army, after having been saved from the Prussians at the Katzbach, and again at Leipsic. It was in one of the fights in the closing campaign in Eastern France. The proud legend inscribed in golden letters, “Rosny, 1814: Un contre huit,” commemorates how the regiment, single-handed, held at bay and beat off an enemy eight times its force, saving itself for the third time, and its Eagle.

The surviving Eagles of the war, the last to face the enemy in the north of those presented on the Field of Mars, paid their last salute to the War Lord at Napoleon’s final review of the remnants of the Grand Army at Rheims on March 15, 1814.

A pitiful, a moving, sight was that hapless military spectacle: the closing parade before Napoleon of his last remaining soldiers.

This is how Alison describes it: “How different from the splendid military spectacles of the Tuileres or Chammartin, which had so often dazzled his sight with the pomp of apparently irresistible power! Wasted away to half the numbers which they possessed when they crossed the Marne a fortnight before, the greater part of the regiments exhibited only the skeletons of military array. In some, more officers than privates were to be seen in the ranks; in all, the appearance of the troops, the haggard air of the men, their worn-out uniforms, and the strange motley of which they were composed, bespoke the total exhaustion of the Empire. It was evident to all that Napoleon was expending his last resources. Besides the veterans of the Guard—the iron men whom nothing could daunt, but whose tattered garments and soiled accoutrements bespoke the dreadful fatigue to which they had been subjected—were to be seen young conscripts, but recently torn from the embraces of maternal love, and whose wan visages and faltering steps told but too clearly that they were unequal to the weight of the arms they bore. The gaunt figures and woeful aspect of the horses, the broken carriages and blackened mouths of the guns, the crazy and fractured artillery wagons which defiled past, the general confusion of arms, battalions, and uniforms, even in the best appointed corps, spoke of the mere remains of the vast military army which had so long stood triumphant against the world in arms. The soldiers exhibited none of their ancient enthusiasm as they defiled past the Emperor; silent and sad they took their way before him: the stern realities of war had chased away its enthusiastic ardour. All felt that in this dreadful contest they themselves would perish, happy if they had not previously witnessed the degradation of France!”35

What is indeed the most interesting of all the Eagles, the most famous battle-standard in the world, which for a time was at the Invalides, is at present preserved in private hands in Paris—the Eagle of Napoleon’s Old Guard, the Eagle of the “Adieu of Fontainebleau.” It is treasured with devoted care in the family of the officer who commanded the Grenadiers of the Guard in the retreat from Moscow, at Fontainebleau, and at Waterloo—General Petit. It is kept in the house, in Paris, in which the old general died, in the room he used as his salon. General Petit refused to be parted from the Eagle of his regiment during his lifetime; he kept it with him wherever he went, always in his personal care. It was at the Invalides while General Petit was in residence there as Governor of the Hospital.

On that never-to-be-forgotten April forenoon of 1814, in the Court of the White Horse of the Château of Fontainebleau, Napoleon embraced the standard, and taking the Eagle in his hands, kissed it in front of the veteran Grenadiers of the Old Guard. His travelling carriage, to convey the fallen Emperor on the first stage of his journey to Elba, was in waiting, close by, ready to start. Twelve hundred Grenadiers of the Guard stood with presented arms all round the courtyard; drawn up in a great hollow square as a guard of honour to render to the master they adored the parting salute.

Napoleon passed slowly round the square and inspected the ranks, man by man, looking intently into the scarred and war-worn, weather-beaten old faces, each one of which was familiar to him. Their station on every battlefield had been close at hand to where he took up his post. Night after night, in every campaign from Austerlitz to those last dreadful weeks, he had slept in their midst; his tent always pitched in the centre of the camp of the Imperial Guard. That had been Napoleon’s invariable custom in war. They had shared with him that last forlorn-hope march to save Paris, until, completely worn out and footsore, exhausted nature forbade their attempting to go farther. With tears streaming from their eyes the old soldiers, before whose bayonets in the charge no Continental foe had ever stood, mutely returned Napoleon’s last wistful, pathetic look of farewell.

He addressed a few touching words to them, standing in the centre of the square. Next he turned to General Petit, near at hand, and before them he took the general in his arms, as representing all, and kissed him on the cheek. “I cannot embrace you all,” exclaimed Napoleon in a voice broken with emotion, yet which all could hear distinctly, “so I embrace your General!” Then he motioned to the Porte-Aigle, standing all the while before him, with the Eagle held in the attitude of salute.

“Bring me the Eagle,” he said, “that I may embrace it also!” “Que m’apporte l’Aigle, que je l’embrasse aussi!” were Napoleon’s words.

The Porte-Aigle advanced and again inclined the Eagle forward to the Emperor. Napoleon took hold of it, embraced and kissed it three times, tears in his eyes, and displaying the deepest emotion.

“Ah, chère Aigle,” he exclaimed, “que les baisers que je te donne retentissent dans la postérité.”

The Eagle-bearer then stepped back a pace.

“Adieu, mes enfants! Adieu, mes braves! Entourez moi encore une fois!” were Napoleon’s closing words as the historic scene terminated.

The old soldiers all stood utterly broken down, weeping bitter tears, overcome with grief, as Napoleon made his way to the carriage; the members of the Household bowing low as he passed, and kissing his hand, were all also in tears.

Finally, amid a mournful cry of “Vive l’Empereur!” Napoleon drove away.

As soon as Napoleon’s carriage was beyond the precincts, the Grenadiers of the Guard solemnly lowered the Imperial Standard, flying above the Château. There, in the courtyard, they burned it. Then, mixing the ashes in a barrel of wine that was brought out, they handed round the liquor in bowls and drank off the draught, pledging Napoleon with cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” So it is related by one who was an eye-witness and a partaker; one of the officers of the Old Guard.

Kept safely in concealment for ten months by General Petit, during the Bourbon Restoration period in 1814, the Eagle of the Old Guard appeared once more after the return from Elba. It faced the enemy for the last time at Waterloo. Something of that will be said further on. General Petit kept close beside it all through the retreat, during that night of horror after Waterloo; a faithful band of devoted veterans accompanying him and surrounding the Eagle. So it made its final return to France, to be preserved for the rest of his life by the man who, above all others, had most right to be custodian of the Eagle of the Old Guard.

The Bourbon War Minister ordered it to be given up, to be burned at the artillery dépôt at Vincennes with the other Eagles that the Restoration officials were able to get hold of. General Petit flatly and indignantly refused to part with the Eagle of the Old Guard. He was able, as before, to conceal it successfully, in spite of every effort to discover its whereabouts, until after the Revolution of 1830. Then, at the last, it was safe.

Faded and frayed away in parts, the gold embroidery on it dulled and tarnished from the lapse of years, and torn here and there round the jagged bullet-holes in the silk, is now, in its old age, the Flag of the Old Guard. As it was at first—as it was when it made its débût at the opening of its career, on that December afternoon on the Field of Mars—the flag is of rich crimson silk, fringed with gold, sprinkled over on both sides with golden bees, and with, at the corners, encircled in golden laurel-wreaths, the Imperial cypher, the letter “N.” In shape it was—and of course is still—almost a square: a metre deep, vertically, on the staff, and some half-dozen inches more than that lengthwise, horizontally, in the fly. On one side, in the centre, the Napoleonic Eagle is displayed, a gold embroidered Eagle poised on a thunderbolt. Inscribed round the Eagle in letters of gold is the legend:

“GARDE IMPÉRIALE

L’Empereur Napoléon
au 1^er Régiment des
Grenadiers à Pied.”

On the other side are inscribed these fifteen names of Napoleon’s great days in war, also in golden letters: “Marengo; Ulm; Austerlitz; Jéna; Berlin; Eylau; Friedland; Madrid; Eckmühl; Essling; Wagram; Vienna; Smolensk; Moskowa; Moscow.”