by Thomas Hardy
VOICE OF WELLINGTON
I thought they looked as they'd be scurrying soon!
VOICE OF AN AIDE
Foy bears into the wood in middling trim;
Maucune strikes out for Alba-Castle bridge.
VOICE OF WELLINGTON
Speed the pursuit, then, towards the Huerta ford;
Their only scantling of escape lies there;
The river coops them semicircle-wise,
And we shall have them like a swathe of grass
Within a sickle's curve!
VOICE OF AIDE
Too late, my lord.
They are crossing by the aforesaid bridge at Alba.
VOICE OF WELLINGTON
Impossible. The guns of Carlos rake it
Sheer from the castle walls.
VOICE OF AIDE
Tidings have sped
Just now therefrom, to this undreamed effect:
That Carlos has withdrawn the garrison:
The French command the Alba bridge themselves!
VOICE OF WELLINGTON
Blast him, he's disobeyed his orders, then!
How happened this? How long has it been known?
VOICE OF AIDE
Some ladies some few hours have rumoured it,
But unbelieved.
VOICE OF WELLINGTON
Well, what's done can't be undone....
By God, though, they've just saved themselves thereby
From capture to a man!
VOICE OF A GENERAL
We've not struck ill,
Despite this slip, my lord.... And have you heard
That Colonel Dalbiac's wife rode in the charge
Behind her spouse to-day?
VOICE OF WELLINGTON
Did she though: did she!
Why that must be Susanna, whom I know—
A Wessex woman, blithe, and somewhat fair....
Not but great irregularities
Arise from such exploits.—And was it she
I noticed wandering to and fro below here,
Just as the French retired?
VOICE OF ANOTHER OFFICER
Ah no, my lord.
That was the wife of Prescott of the Seventh,
Hoping beneath the heel of hopelessness,
As these young women will!—Just about sunset
She found him lying dead and bloody there,
And in the dusk we bore them both away.
VOICE OF WELLINGTON
Well, I'm damned sorry for her. Though I wish
The women-folk would keep them to the rear:
Much awkwardness attends their pottering round!
[The talking shapes disappear, and as the features of the field
grow undistinguishable the comparative quiet is broken by gay
notes from guitars and castanets in the direction of the city,
and other sounds of popular rejoicing at Wellington's victory.
People come dancing out from the town, and the merry-making
continues till midnight, when it ceases, and darkness and silence
prevail everywhere.]
SEMICHORUS I OF THE YEARS [aerial music]
What are Space and Time? A fancy!—
Lo, by Vision's necromancy
Muscovy will now unroll;
Where for cork and olive-tree
Starveling firs and birches be.
SEMICHORUS II
Though such features lie afar
From events Peninsular,
These, amid their dust and thunder,
Form with those, as scarce asunder,
Parts of one compacted whole.
CHORUS
Marmont's aide, then, like a swallow
Let us follow, follow, follow,
Over hill and over hollow,
Past the plains of Teute and Pole!
[There is semblance of a sound in the darkness as of a rushing
through the air.]
SCENE IV
THE FIELD OF BORODINO
[Borodino, seventy miles west of Moscow, is revealed in a bird's-
eye view from a point above the position of the French Grand Army,
advancing on the Russian capital.
We are looking east, towards Moscow and the army of Russia, which
bars the way thither. The sun of latter summer, sinking behind
our backs, floods the whole prospect, which is mostly wild,
uncultivated land with patches of birch-trees. NAPOLEON'S army
has just arrived on the scene, and is making its bivouac for the
night, some of the later regiments not having yet come up. A
dropping fire of musketry from skirmishers ahead keeps snapping
through the air. The Emperor's tent stands in a ravine in the
foreground amid the squares of the Old Guard. Aides and other
officers are chatting outside.
Enter NAPOLEON, who dismounts, speaks to some of his suite, and
disappears inside his tent. An interval follows, during which the
sun dips.
Enter COLONEL FABVRIER, aide-de-camp of MARMONT, just arrived from
Spain. An officer-in-waiting goes into NAPOLEON'S tent to announce
FABVRIER, the Colonel meanwhile talking to those outside.]
AN AIDE
Important tidings thence, I make no doubt?
FABVRIER
Marmont repulsed on Salamanca field,
And well-nigh slain, is the best tale I bring!
[A silence. A coughing heard in NAPOLEON'S tent.]
Whose rheumy throat distracts the quiet so?
AIDE
The Emperor's. He is thus the livelong day.
[COLONEL FABVRIER is shown into the tent. An interval. Then the
husky accents of NAPOLEON within, growing louder and louder.]
VOICE OF NAPOLEON
If Marmont—so I gather from these lines—
Had let the English and the Spanish be,
They would have bent from Salamanca back,
Offering no battle, to our profiting!
We should have been delivered this disaster,
Whose bruit will harm us more than aught besides
That has befallen in Spain!
VOICE OF FABVRIER
I fear so, sire.
VOICE OF NAPOLEON
He forced a conflict, to cull laurel crowns
Before King Joseph should arrive to share them!
VOICE OF FABVRIER
The army's ardour for your Majesty,
Its courage, its devotion to your cause,
Cover a myriad of the Marshal's sins.
VOICE OF NAPOLEON
Why gave he battle without biddance, pray,
From the supreme commander? Here's the crime
Of insubordination, root of woes!...
The time well chosen, and the battle won,
The English succours there had sidled off,
And their annoy in the Peninsula
Embarrassed us no more. Behoves it me,
Some day, to face this Wellington myself!
Marmont too plainly is no match for him....
Thus he goes on: "To have preserved command
I would with joy have changed this early wound
For foulest mortal stroke at fall of day.
One baleful moment damnified the fruit
Of six weeks' wise strategics, whose result
Had loomed so certain!"—[Satirically] Well, we've but his word
As to their wisdom! To define them thus
Would not have struck me but for his good prompting!...
No matter: On Moskowa's banks to-morrow
I'll mend his faults upon the Arapeile.
I'll see how I can treat this Russian horde
Which English gold has brought together here
From the four corners of the universe....
Adieu. You'd best go now and take some rest.
[FABVRIER reappears from
the tent and goes. Enter DE BAUSSET.]
DE BAUSSET
The box that came—has it been taken in?
AN OFFICER
Yes, General 'Tis laid behind a screen
In the outer tent. As yet his Majesty
Has not been told of it.
[DE BAUSSET goes into the tent. After an interval of murmured
talk an exclamation bursts from the EMPEROR. In a few minutes he
appears at the tent door, a valet following him bearing a picture.
The EMPEROR'S face shows traces of emotion.]
NAPOLEON
Bring out a chair for me to poise it on.
[Re-enter DE BAUSSET from the tent with a chair.]
They all shall see it. Yes, my soldier-sons
Must gaze upon this son of mine own house
In art's presentment! It will cheer their hearts.
That's a good light—just so.
[He is assisted by DE BAUSSET to set up the picture in the chair.
It is a portrait of the young King of Rome playing at cup-and-ball
being represented as the globe. The officers standing near are
attracted round, and then the officers and soldiers further back
begin running up, till there is a great crowd.]
Let them walk past,
So that they see him all. The Old Guard first.
[The Old Guard is summoned, and marches past surveying the picture;
then other regiments.]
SOLDIERS
The Emperor and the King of Rome for ever!
[When they have marched past and withdrawn, and DE BAUSSET has
taken away the picture, NAPOLEON prepares to re-enter his tent.
But his attention is attracted to the Russians. He regards them
through his glass. Enter BESSIERES and RAPP.]
NAPOLEON
What slow, weird ambulation do I mark,
Rippling the Russian host?
BESSIERES
A progress, sire,
Of all their clergy, vestmented, who bear
An image, said to work strange miracles.
[NAPOLEON watches. The Russian ecclesiastics pass through the
regiments, which are under arms, bearing the icon and other
religious insignia. The Russian soldiers kneel before it.]
NAPOLEON
Ay! Not content to stand on their own strength,
They try to hire the enginry of Heaven.
I am no theologian, but I laugh
That men can be so grossly logicless,
When war, defensive or aggressive either,
Is in its essence pagan, and opposed
To the whole gist of Christianity!
BESSIERES
'Tis to fanaticize their courage, sire.
NAPOLEON
Better they'd wake up old Kutuzof.—Rapp,
What think you of to-morrow?
RAPP
Victory;
But, sire, a bloody one!
NAPOLEON
So I foresee.
[The scene darkens, and the fires of the bivouacs shine up ruddily,
those of the French near at hand, those of the Russians in a long
line across the mid-distance, and throwing a flapping glare into
the heavens. As the night grows stiller the ballad-singing and
laughter from the French mixes with a slow singing of psalms from
their adversaries.
The two multitudes lie down to sleep, and all is quiet but for
the sputtering of the green wood fires, which, now that the human
tongues are still, seem to hold a conversation of their own.]
SCENE V
THE SAME
[The prospect lightens with dawn, and the sun rises red. The
spacious field of battle is now distinct, its ruggedness being
bisected by the great road from Smolensk to Moscow, which runs
centrally from beneath the spectator to the furthest horizon.
The field is also crossed by the stream Kalotcha, flowing from
the right-centre foreground to the left-centre background, thus
forming an "X" with the road aforesaid, intersecting it in mid-
distance at the village of Borodino.
Behind this village the Russians have taken their stand in close
masses. So stand also the French, who have in their centre the
Shevardino redoubt beyond the Kalotcha. Here NAPOLEON, in his
usual glue-grey uniform, white waistcoat, and white leather
breeches, chooses his position with BERTHIER and other officers
of his suite.]
DUMB SHOW
It is six o'clock, and the firing of a single cannon on the French
side proclaims that the battle is beginning. There is a roll of
drums, and the right-centre masses, glittering in the level shine,
advance under NEY and DAVOUT and throw themselves on the Russians,
here defended by redoubts.
The French enter the redoubts, whereupon a slim, small man, GENERAL
BAGRATION, brings across a division from the Russian right and expels
them resolutely.
Semenovskoye is a commanding height opposite the right of the French,
and held by the Russians. Cannon and columns, infantry and cavalry,
assault it by tens of thousands, but cannot take it.
Aides gallop through the screeching shot and haze of smoke and dust
between NAPOLEON and his various marshals. The Emperor walks about,
looks through his glass, goes to a camp-stool, on which he sits down,
and drinks glasses of spirits and hot water to relieve his still
violent cold, as may be discovered from his red eyes, raw nose,
rheumatic manner when he moves, and thick voice in giving orders.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
So he fulfils the inhuman antickings
He thinks imposed upon him.... What says he?
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
He says it is the sun of Austerlitz!
The Russians, so far from being driven out of their redoubts,
issue from them towards the French. But they have to retreat,
BAGRATION and his Chief of Staff being wounded. NAPOLEON sips
his grog hopefully, and orders a still stronger attack on the
great redoubt in the centre.
It is carried out. The redoubt becomes the scene of a huge
massacre. In other parts of the field also the action almost
ceases to be a battle, and takes the form of wholesale butchery
by the thousand, now advantaging one side, now the other.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Thus do the mindless minions of the spell
In mechanized enchantment sway and show
A Will that wills above the will of each,
Yet but the will of all conjunctively;
A fabric of excitement, web of rage,
That permeates as one stuff the weltering whole.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
The ugly horror grossly regnant here
Wakes even the drowsed half-drunken Dictator
To all its vain uncouthness!
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
Murat cries
That on this much-anticipated day
Napoleon's genius flags inoperative.
The firing from the top of the redoubt has ceased. The French have
got inside. The Russians retreat upon their rear, and fortify
themselves on the heights there. PONIATOWSKI furiously attacks them.
But the French are worn out, and fall back to their station before
the battle. So the combat dies resultlessly away. The sun sets, and
the opposed and exhausted hosts sink to lethargic repose. NAPOLEON
enters his tent in the midst of his lieutenants, and night desce
nds.
SHADE OF THE EARTH
The fumes of nitre and the reek of gore
Make my airs foul and fulsome unto me!
SPIRIT IRONIC
The natural nausea of a nurse, dear Dame.
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
Strange: even within that tent no notes of joy
Throb as at Austerlitz! [signifying Napoleon's tent].
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
But mark that roar—
A mash of men's crazed cries entreating mates
To run them through and end their agony;
Boys calling on their mothers, veterans
Blaspheming God and man. Those shady shapes
Are horses, maimed in myriads, tearing round
In maddening pangs, the harnessings they wear
Clanking discordant jingles as they tear!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
It is enough. Let now the scene be closed.
The night thickens.
SCENE VI
MOSCOW
[The foreground is an open place amid the ancient irregular streets
of the city, which disclose a jumble of architectural styles, the
Asiatic prevailing over the European. A huge triangular white-
walled fortress rises above the churches and coloured domes on a
hill in the background, the central feature of which is a lofty
tower with a gilded cupola, the Ivan Tower. Beneath the battlements
of this fortress the Moskva River flows.
An unwonted rumbling of wheels proceeds from the cobble-stoned
streets, accompanied by an incessant cracking of whips.]
DUMB SHOW
Travelling carriages, teams, and waggons, laden with pictures,
carpets, glass, silver, china, and fashionable attire, are rolling
out of the city, followed by foot-passengers in streams, who carry
their most precious possessions on their shoulders. Others bear
their sick relatives, caring nothing for their goods, and mothers
go laden with their infants. Others drive their cows, sheep, and
goats, causing much obstruction. Some of the populace, however,
appear apathetic and bewildered, and stand in groups asking questions.
A thin man with piercing eyes gallops about and gives stern orders.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Whose is the form seen ramping restlessly,
Geared as a general, keen-eyed as a kite,
Mid this mad current of close-filed confusion;
High-ordering, smartening progress in the slow,
And goading those by their own thoughts o'er-goaded;
Whose emissaries knock at every door
In rhythmal rote, and groan the great events
The hour is pregnant with?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
