Note 5 — Chapter II · THE DAY OF THE PRESENTATION ON THE FIELD OF MARS

One of the Eagles so presented by Napoleon on that afternoon is now at Madrid. It is a trophy that is absolutely unique. Upwards of a hundred and thirty of Napoleon’s Eagles, the spoils of war, now decorate cathedrals, chapels, and arsenals in the capitals of Europe; but there is only one French naval Eagle now in existence, the trophy at Madrid; the Eagle of a line-of-battleship named the Atlas.

Every French line-of-battleship was represented on the Champ de Mars and received its Eagle. “Tous les vaisseaux,” to quote the words of M. Le Brun, in his Guerres Maritimes de France, “étaient gratifiés d’une aigle et d’un drapeau à leur nom, donnés par l’Empereur à son couronnement, ou avaient assisté et prêté serment des députations du port et de l’Armée Navale; chaque vaisseau avait envoyé sa députation composée de trois officiers, trois officiers mariners, et quatre gabiers ou matelots.”

The Eagle of the Atlas was received on the Field of Mars by the ship’s deputation of three officers, three warrant officers, and four seamen, sent from Toulon, where the Atlas then was in harbour with Admiral Villeneuve’s fleet, which Nelson was watching. The Atlas crossed the Atlantic in the Toulon fleet with Nelson in pursuit, returned to Europe, fought in the indecisive battle off Cape Finisterre in July 1805, and was so shattered in the fight, in which the ship only just escaped capture, that she was left behind for repairs at Ferrol when Villeneuve put to sea finally, to meet his fate at Trafalgar. The Atlas had to remain there and fell into the hands of the Spaniards in 1808, at the time of the national uprising against Napoleon. Thus the naval Eagle passed into Spanish possession.

The crew of the Atlas were taken by surprise, while the ship was in dock at Ferrol, by the Spanish regiment of Navarre in garrison there when the news of the Rising of May 2 at Madrid reached Galicia. They were trapped and pounced down upon. The ship was seized by a sudden assault, the officers and men being made prisoners to the provincial Junta, before they had a chance of concealing or making away with their Eagle.

In other cases elsewhere, undoubtedly, the naval Eagles were somehow disposed of surreptitiously. It is very remarkable that not a single French naval Eagle came into British hands on board the thirty odd ships of the line which we captured between 1805 and 1814 during the war with Napoleon. At Trafalgar, according to a French officer on board the French flagship, the Bucentaure, they had one. Describing the approach of the Victory, at the outset of the battle, says the officer: “A collision appeared inevitable. At that moment Villeneuve seized the Eagle of the Bucentaure and displayed it to the sailors who surrounded him. ‘My friends,’ he called out, ‘I am going to throw this on board the English ship! We will go and fetch it back or die!’ (‘Mes amis, je vais la jetter à bord du vaisseau Anglais! Nous irons la reprendre ou mourir!’) Our seamen responded to these noble words by their acclamations.” Admiral Villeneuve, all the same, did not throw any Eagle on board the Victory; nor was one found in the Bucentaure during the forty-eight hours that the ship was in our possession after the battle, previous to her wreck in the storm at the entrance to Cadiz harbour. None too were found on board any of Nelson’s other prizes. As to that, also, what was done with, or became of, the Eagles of the five battalions serving as marines in the French fleet at Trafalgar, officers and men of which were taken prisoners by us—those of the 2nd of the Line, the 16th, 67th, 70th, and 79th?

At the Field of Mars all eyes were on the six hundred and fifty officers and men of the Naval Brigade as they marched round the arena to receive their Eagles. Soldiers everybody was familiar with. There was nothing particular about them which had not been seen before. But a French sailor was not often seen away from his port; and to Paris man-of-war’s men were things quite new and strange. And, besides, were they not “nos braves marins,” who were going to clear the way for the “Invasion Flotilla” and the “Army of England”; to strike the blow that should sweep from the path of the Emperor “ce terrible Nelson!” One and all gazed in wonder at the sailors: the captains in their long, swallow-tailed blue coatees barred with gold lace, white breeches, and high top-boots; the sprightly “aspirants,” or midshipmen, in cut-away jackets and little round hats with turned-up brims; the showy “Marins de la Garde,” wearing broad-topped shakos edged with yellow braid, over which tall red tufts nodded, red-cuffed and yellow-braided blue jackets, and blue trousers striped with yellow; the other sailors of the fleet in massed squads, in shiny black flat-brimmed hats, blue jackets studded with brass buttons, red waistcoats, red, white, and blue striped pantaloons, wide in the leg, “a l’Anglaise,” and shoes with round steel buckles. Such a sight the good people of Paris had never witnessed before, and they gazed at it rapturously with all their eyes, and shouted their loudest “Vive la Marine!”

There was too, in addition to the sailors, one Eagle deputation the strange appearance of which attracted special curiosity and interest that afternoon. Everybody gazed in wonder at a group of strapping-looking foreigners of all ages who marched along by themselves, got up as light infantrymen, with green tufted shakos and bright green uniforms. They belonged to one of the Emperor’s newest creations; and were the Eagle escort of Napoleon’s “Irish Legion.” They had come to the Field of Mars to receive the only Eagle that Napoleon ever gave to a foreign regiment in his service, with a flag designed specially for them, of “Irish Green,” as it was described, of silk, fringed with gold cord, inscribed on one side in letters on gold: “Napoléon, Empereur des Français, à la Legion Irlandaise,” and bearing on the other a golden harp, uncrowned, and the words “L’Indépendance d’Irlande.” Two ex-patriated men of good Irish family, refugees escaped from the penalty of treason under English law for their part in the Rising of ’98, seven years before, headed the deputation; a Captain Tennant and a Captain William Corbet. In the ranks of the regiment the deputation represented marched other Irish refugees, who had shed English blood at Wexford and Enniscorthy; fugitives from political justice before that who had had a part in the attempted raids of Hoche and Humbert; “Wild Geese” who had made their flight overseas after the fiasco of 1803; and a sprinkling of French-born Irish, some of whom had worn the red coat of the old Irish Brigade in the Royal Army of France, grandsons of the men of Fontenoy. Napoleon had enrolled his Irish Legion just a twelvemonth before, in view of a descent on Ireland from Brest simultaneously with the crossing of the Straits of Dover from Boulogne. At the request of those who first came forward to enlist, he had uniformed the corps in the “national” green, in place of the former red coat which had been the historic colour of the old French-Irish regiments ever since James the Second, under the Treaty of Limerick, carried over to France the remains of the army that had fought for him at the Boyne. The Eagle the Irish Legion received on the Field of Mars faced Wellington in Spain, and narrowly escaped falling into Blücher’s hands in Germany in 1813. It was hidden away after Fontainebleau, and reappeared during the “Hundred Days,” finally to disappear after Waterloo.