WATERLOO EPISODE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 260, 1 October 1936, Page 4

WATERLOO EPISODE

PUT EAGLE IN SCOTS GREYS’ BADGE. The grave of Charles Ewart, the sergeant of the Royal Scots Greys, who single-handed captured the eagle of a French regiment at Waterloo, is believed to have been found, after a search for almost ten years, under the cobbles of a yard in Salford (says the Manchester Guardian). A flat tombstone which has been exposed at the site of an old churchyard hears the simple inscription, “In memory of Ensign Charles Ewart, who died March 23, 1846, aged 77 years. Ewart's achievement was one of the

great episodes ill the story of the Napoleonic Wars. . He forced his grey charger through line after line of French infantrymen, cut down the standard-bearer and fought his way back to his own troop with the eagle, the regiment’s most treasured possession. The eagle became the badge of the Greys. Ewart himself was made an ensign, and later when he returned to his native Scotland he was entertained at a banquet in Edinburgh, at which his praise was sung by Sir Walter Scot, among others. When he retired from the army he went to live at Davyhulme, then a small hamlet a few miles from Manchester, and it was a popular belief for some time that he was buried in a churchyard near there. About ten years ago an effort to trace his grave

was begun by members of It was discovered that lie .bad been buried in the gravevnrd of a. little Swedenborgian chuicli .in Salford close to the present site of Saliord ,a As Va tL St A'ars’'passed the churchyard disappeared. It was paved over and became a courtyard. The church, too, changed ‘hands several times and to-day forms part of business premises. Old plans were consulted, and the position of the grave having been located the surface of the yard was broken and the grave uncovered.