Note 27 — Chapter IX · OTHER EAGLES IN ENGLAND FROM BATTLEFIELDS OF SPAIN

Southey, in his History of the Peninsular War, makes this ugly suggestion in regard to the Eagle trophies of Salamanca: “It is said that more than ten were captured, but that there were men base enough to conceal them and sell them to persons in Salamanca who deemed it good policy, as well as a profitable speculation, to purchase them for the French.” It may be, as to that, that Marmont’s army lost more than the two Eagles now at Chelsea. It is of course possible that camp followers and Spanish peasants of the locality, wandering over the battlefield to strip and plunder the dead on the day after the battle, when Wellington and the army were miles away, picked up Eagles on the scene of so tremendous a disaster for the French. They might easily traffic in them with French agents at Salamanca, well aware of their value if they could be secretly restored to their regiments. It is, however, inconceivable that British soldiers could have acted as alleged and been guilty of the dastardly crime that Southey hints at. Four Eagle-poles, with screw tops and the Eagles gone, were found on the field by British burying-parties; but those were all, and one of the four may have been the pole of the Eagle of the 62nd.