The Battalion Eagles of 1804, those of the second and third battalions withdrawn by the decree of 1808, together with the Light Cavalry (Hussar, Chasseur, and Dragoon) Eagles recalled in the autumn of 1805, and a number of Light Infantry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—

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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!”

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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