Following on his adoption of the Eagle for the cognisance of the Empire at large, Napoleon announced that the Eagle would in future be the battle-standard of the Army. He had, though, as to that Eagle, yet another thought in his mind. For his soldiers he desired the French Eagle to represent the military standard of Ancient Rome, the historic emblem of Caesar’s legionaries, with its resplendent traditions of world-wide victory. That intention, furthermore, Napoleon went out of his way to emphasise significantly through the place and moment that he chose for the promulgation of the Army Order appointing the Eagle of the Caesars as the battle-standard of the French Empire. The Imperial rescript was dated from the Camp of the “Army of the Ocean” at Boulogne; from amidst the vast array of soldiers mustered there for the threatened invasion of England. At the same time Isabey’s design for one Eagle would suffice as a model for the other. It sufficiently suggested the Roman type. Like Charlemagne, had not Napoleon led his army across the Alps? like Caesar, was he not about to lead it across the Straits? “The Eagle with wings outspread, as on the Imperial Seal, will be at the head of the standard-staves, as was the practice in the Roman army--(_placée au sommet du bâton, telle que la portaient les Romains_). The flag will be attached at the same distance beneath the Eagle, as was the Labarum.” So Napoleon wrote in his preliminary instructions from Boulogne to Marshal Berthier, Head of the Etat-Major of the “Army of England,” at that moment on duty at the War Office in Paris. The Eagle, Napoleon directed, was of itself to constitute the standard: “_Essentiellement constituer l’étendard_,” were Napoleon’s words. He set a secondary value on the flag which the Eagle surmounted. The flag to Napoleon was a subsidiary adjunct. [Sidenote: THE FLAG OF MINOR ACCOUNT] Flags, of course, would come and go. They could be renewed, he wrote, as might be necessary, at any time; every two years, or oftener. The Eagle, on the other hand, was to be a permanency. It was to be for all time the standard of its corps: also, to add still further to its sacrosanct nature and _éclat_, every Eagle would be received only from the hands of the Emperor.[1] Every Battalion of Foot and Squadron of Horse was to have its Eagle, which, on parade and before the enemy under fire, would be in the special charge of the battalion or squadron sergeant-major, with an escort of picked veteran soldiers; “men who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield in at least two combats.”