In answer to Doran Henderson's letter in FE20 concerning the Eagle of the 4ème de Ligne during the 1805 Campaign I hope that the following notes may prove of interest. Firstly let me apologise for the misprint that appeared in my original article in Wargames Illustrated No. 72, and which I missed when proofing the text (although it is correct in my original manuscript). The Regiment which MAY (and thus also may NOT) have lost an Eagle at Krems was the 4ème Legere. As I stated in the original article (note 12) "There is some doubt over the loss of this Eagle". The source for the possible loss of the 4ème's Eagle (given in Part III of the article in Wargames Illustrated No 75) is Charrie's seminal study Drapeaux et Etendards de la Revolution et de L'Empire (Paris 1982), which records exactly that the "...une aigle a peut-etre ete prise par les russes...". From virtually any other secondary source I would be prepared to discount this but from Charrie I am prepared to take it seriously. Problematically there is no record of a replacement Eagle being made and presented and neither is any Eagle recorded in the Russian trophy collections, as is the case with most other Napoleonic trophies. Contemporty Source? I have not yet discovered the contemporary source for the claim of the loss/capture of this Eagle - Marbot makes no mention of it for example and even Fraser in his long discourse on the Eagles at Krems (The war Drama of the Eagles, London 1912, pp 80-95) makes no mention of the Eagle of the 4ème Legere. However as the 22nd Bulletin of the Grand Army praises the 4ème Legere (along with the 9ème Legere and the 32ème and 100ème de Ligne) for their actions at Krems it would seem slightly unlikely that the Eagle was permanently lost. Perhaps like several other Eagles, on this and other occasions, the Eagle was temporarily lost and later recovered ? The Eagle of the 4ème de Ligne is, however, a completely different case. There is absolutely no doubt that the 1ère Batallion of the 4ème de Ligne lost its Eagle at the Battle of Austerlitz (Eagles were still battalion eagles at this time). The 4ème together with the 24ème Legere formed one of the Brigades of Vandamme's Division of Soult's Corps, and was thus part of the assault on the Pratzen heights. The Division took the brunt of the attack by the Russian Guard and was forced to recoil. The 1ère battalion of the 4ème had not completed it square when the Russian Guard Cavalry hit them. In three minutes the battalion had ceased to exist as a cohesive body (Why does it always take three minutes to destroy a battalion? Poetic licence?), the Eagle falling to the Russian Chevalier Guard, commanded by the Czar's brother Grand Duke Constantine - a point which caused Napoleon particular chagrin since the titular colonel of the 4ème was his brother Joseph. In Russia Despite the fact that the Chasseurs of the Guard shortly afterwards overthrew the Chevalier Guard and captured the Grand Duke, the Eagle was not recovered and was returned to Russia where until the Revolution it hung until the Revolution in Kazan Cathedral in Leningrad - it is now in The Hermitage. The Eagle of the 1ère Battalion of the 24ème Legere also went down to the Russian charge. Neither the 4ème nor the 24ème claim to have seen their Eagles fall and certainly their subsequent actions point to their telling the truth. The morning after the battle the remnants of the Regiments scoured the field for their Eagles and the survivors of the 4ème's 1er battalion discovered the 24ème Legere's Eagles hidden beneath the body of it bearer - it was restored to the battalion with due ceremony. Napoleon was furious at the loss and submitted the 4ème to a gruelling interrogation as to the circumstances of their dishonour, even the fact that the 4ème had taken two Austrian Colours in the battle seemed not to mollify him and only after the officers and men had sworn that not one of them had seen the Eagle fall did Napoleon relent and agree to the presentation of a replacement. The new Eagle was presented on 21st November 1806. The loss was never recorded in the Grand Army's periodic bulletins although the disaster which overtook the battalion is mentioned in the 30th Bulletin. Subsequent losses by other units are nonetheless recorded in the Bulletins. Unlucky 4ème As a point of interest the 4ème was particularly unlucky with its Eagles: the 1st Battalion lost its Eagle at Austerlitz, becoming the first to do so under Napoleon's eye; the 2nd Battalion had a wing shot from its Eagle at Eylau on 2nd February. 1807; and the 3rd Battalion lost its Eagle to the Austrian Regiment Nr. 60 at Wagram on 6th July 1809 (a loss omitted from my original compilation in Wargames Illustrated No. 72); the Regiment did, however, bring its Eagle safe back from Russia, although the staff and colour were burnt - replacements were not presented until December 1813! To anyone interested in this incident I would recommend Fraser's book cited above which although dated in many ways is a mine of information and anecdotes regarding the Eagles and Eagle-bearers. For example Fraser devotes five pages to the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Eagle of the 4ème, and no less than seven pages to the subsequent events concerning its replacement (or not, which was always a serious possibility, since many lost Eagles were not replaced). Incidentally if any FE reader has further information on the fate of the Eagles of the 4ème legere at Krems I'd be most interested to learn more of the incidents. For collectors of minutiae all of the colours of the 4ème de Ligne were of the 'Modele Challiot' , the 4ème Legere used the 'Modele Picot'. Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #21 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com