18th-19th century: losing a color or a flag

[alhoon]

Reading (in wikipedia) about the King's German Legion I came across these:

About the 5th Battalion:
"They charged into the flank and rear of the 5th line who, with their muskets unloaded, were cut to pieces. Von Ompteda [The colonel] was among those killed, a colour of the battalion was lost and only 19 men escaped back to the allied line"

About the 8th Battalion:
"On 18 June 1815, during the Battle of Waterloo, the battalion was nearly wiped out during the fighting in the center of Wellington's battle line and lost a flag."

First question:
What is the "color of the Battalion"?

Second question:
The 5th was totally destroyed. Colonel dead, 19 people surviving a charge of Cuirassiers to the flank.
The 8th was also nearly wiped out.
And yet in the description of destruction there are things like "lost a flag" and "lost a color". Were Battalion flags (and colors) so important that after the battalion being wiped out as a military unit, among the losses people/historians/military commanders count flags and colors as losses?

[Nik]

First question: the "colors" are epinomous with the unit insignia (though infantry unit traditionally has flags, and the cavalry (and its successors) has pennants.

Second question: In short: yes.

The unit flag was the most important insignia of a unit. It had an tactical use i.e. even if you can't hear an order, if the color goes forward, you go forward, if the color goes backward, so do you retreat. The final chage of the the 20th Main at Round top was initiated by the flag bear, that with his color guard went forward to collect a wounded (or captive, don't remember), and the rest of the regiment mistook the advancing color as sign of a general charge.
The flag also had a sacred meaining, often being "baptized" by the sovereign himself, and blessed by the church, so to loose also had religious implications.
Last and most important, the loosing of the flag also implied a complete rout of the unit. The flag was carried by a distinguished battle hardened veteran, protected by a color guard of veterans (often better equipped than the rank and) file, and the flag mooved directly in front or in the middle of the unit, which also took care to defend it. If the flag was lost, that meant that the color guard was killed, and the rest of the unit was driven away in flight before it could retake it's flag.

[alhoon]

So to surmise:
Flag = communication so you know the order when people shoot muskets next to you and cannons fire near you.
Flag = Blessed by the King and Church, actually the 2 things you were fighting for before Nationalism took over so you also fought for country.
Flag = Heavily protected for above reasons so, loosing it = "oops, we lost our best warriors + anyone actually interested to fight, so we're actually defeated"

Am I correct?

If so, why didn't everyone shot at the color guard and the flag bearer?

Why the articles mention "the battalion lost a flag and the the flag"? Did they have more than one?

[Yoda Twin]

So to surmise:
Flag = communication so you know the order when people shoot muskets next to you and cannons fire near you.
Flag = Blessed by the King and Church, actually the 2 things you were fighting for before Nationalism took over so you also fought for country.
Flag = Heavily protected for above reasons so, loosing it = "oops, we lost our best warriors + anyone actually interested to fight, so we're actually defeated"

Am I correct?

If so, why didn't everyone shot at the color guard and the flag bearer?

Why the articles mention "the battalion lost a flag and the the flag"? Did they have more than one?

Battalion's carried the King's colours and the regimental colours to the field if I'm not mistaken

[Nik]

It's not that it would have simply sufficed to shoot down the guy carrying the flag and the guys protecting it. If the unit did not have enemy contact, someone else would have simply picked up the flag (either voluntarily or ordered to do so), and the advance would have continued. But in a pinch, when the moral of the unit was already sorely tested, after suffering withering fire, or being subject to and attack from cavalry or by the bayonet, or even in the crucial moment of an attack, the loss of the flag could tip the scales in that moment. Simply killing the color guard did not suffice.
So in short: Flag going down does not equals losing the flag.
Losing the Flag is a sign of a unit being routed, but not the cause of the unit being routed.

[43rdFoot]

As has been said, the colors were the distinguishing feature of the unit. How many of them is dependant on the regiment itself. American units tended to carry one until the Civil War. British units carried two (the King's color and the Regimental color). I am unsure about how many other nations carried. They were unique to that unit, and were especially venerated. The colors were what you looked to, and they represented best the spirit of the regiment. To lose the colors was an incredibly shameful event.

For example, the 1st battalion of the 71st Regiment of Foot lost the regiment's colors at Cowpens in 1781. The 2nd battalion (which was with Cornwallis chasing Nathaniel Greene), and what remained of the 1st battalion removed the facings (the colors that served to identify the unit on the men's coats) from their coats in shame. If you are aware of the image of the drummed out soldier having his buttons and insignia ripped off his uniform, this was basically the same thing, only the regiment did it to itself.

This is from a larger sermon made at a consecration of the colors of Maclean's Corps of Emigrants in 1777:

"The colours, in short, represent every thing that is dear to the soldier; at the sight of them all the powers of his soul are to rouse, they are a post to which he must defend while life remains; to this he is bound, besides every other consideration, by the acceptance of a most solemn oath: to desert them is the blackest perjury and eternal infamy: to lose them by such an accident, even as one might otherwise judge unavoidable, is not to be excused, because to lose them, no matter how, is to lose every thing; and when they are in danger, or lost, officers and soldiers have nothing for it but to recover them or die."



In short: you don't lose them, unless you are a coward. Cowardice, as you may know, is not a trait becoming of a soldier.