by Thomas Hardy
Rostopchin he,
The city governor, whose name will ring
Far down the forward years uncannily!
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
His arts are strange, and strangely do they move him:—
To store the stews with stuffs inflammable,
To bid that pumps be wrecked, captives enlarged
And primed with brands for burning, are the intents
His warnings to the citizens outshade!
When the bulk of the populace has passed out eastwardly the Russian
army retreating from Borodino also passes through the city into the
country beyond without a halt. They mostly move in solemn silence,
though many soldiers rush from their ranks and load themselves with
spoil.
When they are got together again and have marched out, there goes by
on his horse a strange scarred old man with a foxy look, a swollen
neck and head and a hunched figure. He is KUTUZOF, surrounded by
his lieutenants. Away in the distance by other streets and bridges
with other divisions pass in like manner GENERALS BENNIGSEN, BARCLAY
DE TOLLY, DOKHTOROF, the mortally wounded BAGRATION in a carriage, and
other generals, all in melancholy procession one way, like autumnal
birds of passage. Then the rear-guard passes under MILORADOVITCH.
Next comes a procession of another kind.
A long string of carts with wounded men is seen, which trails out of
the city behind the army. Their clothing is soiled with dried blood,
and the bandages that enwrap them are caked with it.
The greater part of this migrant multitude takes the high road to
Vladimir.
SCENE VII
THE SAME. OUTSIDE THE CITY
[A hill forms the foreground, called the Hill of Salutation, near
the Smolensk road.
Herefrom the city appears as a splendid panorama, with its river,
its gardens, and its curiously grotesque architecture of domes and
spires. It is the peacock of cities to Western eyes, its roofs
twinkling in the rays of the September sun, amid which the ancient
citadel of the Tsars—the Kremlin—forms a centre-piece.
There enter on the hill at a gallop NAPOLEON, MURAT, EUGENE, NEY,
DARU, and the rest of the Imperial staff. The French advance-
guard is drawn up in order of battle at the foot of the hill, and
the long columns of the Grand Army stretch far in the rear. The
Emperor and his marshals halt, and gaze at Moscow.]
NAPOLEON
Ha! There she is at last. And it was time.
[He looks round upon his army, its numbers attenuated to one-fourth
of those who crossed the Niemen so joyfully.]
Yes: it was time.... NOW what says Alexander!
DARU
This is a foil to Salamanca, sire!
DAVOUT
What scores of bulbous church-tops gild the sky!
Souls must be rotten in this region, sire,
To need so much repairing!
NAPOLEON
Ay—no doubt....
Prithee march briskly on, to check disorder,
[to Murat].
Hold word with the authorities forthwith,
[to Durasnel].
Tell them that they may swiftly swage their fears,
Safe in the mercy I by rule extend
To vanquished ones. I wait the city keys,
And will receive the Governor's submission
With courtesy due. Eugene will guard the gate
To Petersburg there leftward. You, Davout,
The gate to Smolensk in the centre here
Which we shall enter by.
VOICES OF ADVANCE-GUARD
Moscow! Moscow!
This, this is Moscow city. Rest at last!
[The words are caught up in the rear by veterans who have entered
every capital in Europe except London, and are echoed from rank to
rank. There is a far-extended clapping of hands, like the babble
of waves, and companies of foot run in disorder towards high ground
to behold the spectacle, waving their shakos on their bayonets.
The army now marches on, and NAPOLEON and his suite disappear
citywards from the Hill of Salutation.
The day wanes ere the host has passed and dusk begins to prevail,
when tidings reach the rear-guard that cause dismay. They have
been sent back lip by lip from the front.]
SPIRIT IRONIC
An anticlimax to Napoleon's dream!
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
They say no governor attends with keys
To offer his submission gracefully.
The streets are solitudes, the houses sealed,
And stagnant silence reigns, save where intrudes
The rumbling of their own artillery wheels,
And their own soldiers' measured tramp along.
"Moscow deserted? What a monstrous thing!"—
He shrugs his shoulders soon, contemptuously;
"This, then is how Muscovy fights!" cries he.
Meanwhile Murat has reached the Kremlin gates,
And finds them closed against him. Battered these,
The fort reverberates vacant as the streets
But for some grinning wretches gaoled there.
Enchantment seems to sway from quay to keep,
And lock commotion in a century's sleep.
[NAPOLEON, reappearing in front of the city, follows MURAT, and is
again lost to view. He has entered the Kremlin. An interval.
Something becomes visible on the summit of the Ivan Tower.]
CHORUS OF RUMOURS [aerial music]
Mark you thereon a small lone figure gazing
Upon his hard-gained goal? It is He!
The startled crows, their broad black pinions raising,
Forsake their haunts, and wheel disquietedly.
[The scene slowly darkens. Midnight hangs over the city. In
blackness to the north of where the Kremlin stands appears what at
first seems a lurid, malignant star. It waxes larger. Almost
simultaneously a north-east wind rises, and the light glows and
sinks with the gusts, proclaiming a fire, which soon grows large
enough to irradiate the fronts of adjacent buildings, and to show
that it is creeping on towards the Kremlin itself, the walls of
that fortress which face the flames emerging from their previous
shade.
The fire can be seen breaking out also in numerous other quarters.
All the conflagrations increase, and become, as those at first
detached group themselves together, one huge furnace, whence
streamers of flame reach up to the sky, brighten the landscape
far around, and show the houses as if it were day. The blaze
gains the Kremlin, and licks its walls, but does not kindle it.
Explosions and hissings are constantly audible, amid which can be
fancied cries and yells of people caught in the combustion. Large
pieces of canvas aflare sail away on the gale like balloons.
Cocks crow, thinking it sunrise, ere they are burnt to death.]
SCENE VIII
THE SAME. THE INTERIOR OF THE KREMLIN
[A chamber containing a bed on which NAPOLEON has been lying. It
is not yet daybreak, and the flapping light of the conflagration
without shines in at the narrow windows.
NAPOLEON is discovered dressed, but in disorder and unshaven. He
is walking up and down the room in agitation. There are present
CAULAINCOURT, BESSIERES, and many of the marshals of his guard,
who stand in silent perplexity.]
NAPOLEON [sitting down on the bed]
No: I'll not go! It is themselves who have done it.
My God, they are Scythians and barbarians still!
[Enter MORTIER [just made Governor].]
MORTIER
Sire, there's no means of fencing with the flames.
My creed is that these scurvy Muscovites
Knowing our men's repute for recklessness,
Have fired the town, as if 'twere we had done it,
As by our own crazed act!
[GENERAL LARIBOISIERE, and aged man, enters and approaches
NAPOLEON.]
LARIBOISIERE
The wind swells higher!
Will you permit one so high-summed in years,
One so devoted, sire, to speak his mind?
It is that your long lingering here entails
Much risk for you, your army, and ourselves,
In the embarrassment it throws on us
While taking steps to seek security,
By hindering venturous means.
[Enter MURAT, PRINCE EUGENE, and the PRINCE OF NEUFCHATEL.]
MURAT
There is no choice
But leaving, sire. Enormous bulks of powder
Lie housed beneath us; and outside these panes
A park of our artillery stands unscreened.
NAPOLEON [saturninely]
What have I won I disincline to cede!
VOICE OF A GUARD [without]
The Kremlin is aflame!
[The look at each other. Two officers of NAPOLEON'S guard and an
interpreter enter, with one of the Russian military police as a
prisoner.]
FIRST OFFICER
We have caught this man
Firing the Kremlin: yea, in the very act!
It is extinguished temporarily,
We know not for how long.
NAPOLEON
Inquire of him
What devil set him on. [They inquire.]
SECOND OFFICER
The governor,
He says; the Count Rostopchin, sire.
NAPOLEON
So! Even the ancient Kremlin is not sanct
From their infernal scheme! Go, take him out;
Make him a quick example to the rest.
[Exeunt guard with their prisoner to the court below, whence a
musket-volley resounds in a few minutes. Meanwhile the flames
pop and spit more loudly, and the window-panes of the room they
stand in crack and fall in fragments.]
Incendiarism afoot, and we unware
Of what foul tricks may follow, I will go.
Outwitted here, we'll march on Petersburg,
The Devil if we won't!
[The marshals murmur and shake their heads.]
BESSIERES
Your pardon, sire,
But we are all convinced that weather, time,
Provisions, roads, equipment, mettle, mood,
Serve not for such a perilous enterprise.
[NAPOLEON remains in gloomy silence. Enter BERTHIER.]
NAPOLEON [apathetically]
Well, Berthier. More misfortunes?
BERTHIER
News is brought,
Sire, of the Russian army's whereabouts.
That fox Kutuzof, after marching east
As if he were conducting his whole force
To Vladimir, when at the Riazan Road
Down-doubled sharply south, and in a curve
Has wheeled round Moscow, making for Kalouga,
To strike into our base, and cut us off.
MURAT
Another reason against Petersburg!
Come what come may, we must defeat that army,
To keep a sure retreat through Smolensk on
To Lithuania.
NAPOLEON [jumping up]
I must act! We'll leave,
Or we shall let this Moscow be our tomb.
May Heaven curse the author of this war—
Ay, him, that Russian minister, self-sold
To England, who fomented it.—'Twas he
Dragged Alexander into it, and me!
[The marshals are silent with looks of incredulity, and Caulaincourt
shrugs his shoulders.]
Now no more words; but hear. Eugene and Ney
With their divisions fall straight back upon
The Petersburg and Zwenigarod Roads;
Those of Davout upon the Smolensk route.
I will retire meanwhile to Petrowskoi.
Come, let us go.
[NAPOLEON and the marshals move to the door. In leaving, the
Emperor pauses and looks back.]
I fear that this event
Marks the beginning of a train of ills....
Moscow was meant to be my rest,
My refuge, and—it vanishes away!
[Exeunt NAPOLEON, marshals, etc. The smoke grows denser and
obscures the scene.]
SCENE IX
THE ROAD FROM SMOLENSKO INTO LITHUANIA
[The season is far advanced towards winter. The point of observation
is high amongst the clouds, which, opening and shutting fitfully to
the wind, reveal the earth as a confused expanse merely.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Where are we? And why are we where we are?
SHADE OF THE EARTH
Above a wild waste garden-plot of mine
Nigh bare in this late age, and now grown chill,
Lithuania called by some. I gather not
Why we haunt here, where I can work no charm
Either upon the ground or over it.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
The wherefore will unfold. The rolling brume
That parts, and joins, and parts again below us
In ragged restlessness, unscreens by fits
The quality of the scene.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
I notice now
Primeval woods, pine, birch—the skinny growths
That can sustain life well where earth affords
But sustenance elsewhere yclept starvation.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
And what see you on the far land-verge there,
Labouring from eastward towards our longitude?
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
An object like a dun-piled caterpillar,
Shuffling its length in painful heaves along,
Hitherward.... Yea, what is this Thing we see
Which, moving as a single monster might,
Is yet not one but many?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Even the Army
Which once was called the Grand; now in retreat
From Moscow's muteness, urged by That within it;
Together with its train of followers—
Men, matrons, babes, in brabbling multitudes.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
And why such flight?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Recording Angels, say.
RECORDING ANGEL I [in minor plain-song]
The host has turned from Moscow where it lay,
And Israel-like, moved by some master-sway,
Is made to wander on and waste away!
ANGEL II
By track of Tarutino first it flits;
Thence swerving, strikes at old Jaroslawitz;
The which, accurst by slaughtering swords, it quits.
ANGEL I
Harassed, it treads the trail by which it came,
To Borodino, field of bloodshot fame,
Whence stare unburied horrors beyond name!
ANGEL II
And so and thus it nears Smolensko's walls,
And, stayed its hunger, starts anew its crawls,
Till floats down one white morsel, which appals.
[What has floated down from the sky upon the Army is a flake of
snow.
Then come another and another, till natural features,
hitherto varied with the tints of autumn, are confounded, and all
is phantasmal grey and white.
The caterpillar shape still creeps laboriously nearer, but instead,
increasing in size by the rules of perspective, it gets more
attenuated, and there are left upon the ground behind it minute
parts of itself, which are speedily flaked over, and remain as
white pimples by the wayside.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
These atoms that drop off are snuffed-out souls
Who are enghosted by the caressing snow.
[Pines rise mournfully on each side of the nearing object; ravens
in flocks advance with it overhead, waiting to pick out the eyes
of strays who fall. The snowstorm increases, descending in tufts
which can hardly be shaken off. The sky seems to join itself to
the land. The marching figures drop rapidly, and almost immediately
become white grave-mounds.
Endowed with enlarged powers of audition as of vision, we are struck
by the mournful taciturnity that prevails. Nature is mute. Save
for the incessant flogging of the wind-broken and lacerated horses
there are no sounds.
With growing nearness more is revealed. In the glades of the forest,
parallel to the French columns, columns of Russians are seen to be
moving. And when the French presently reach Krasnoye they are
surrounded by packs of cloaked Cossacks, bearing lances like huge
needles a dozen feet long. The fore-part of the French army gets
through the town; the rear is assaulted by infantry and artillery.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
The strange, one-eyed, white-shakoed, scarred old man,
Ruthlessly heading every onset made,
I seem to recognize.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Kutuzof he:
The ceaselessly-attacked one, Michael Ney;
A pair as stout as thou, Earth, ever hast twinned!
Kutuzof, ten years younger, would extirp
The invaders, and our drama finish here,
With Bonaparte a captive or a corpse.
But he is old; death even has beckoned him;
And thus the so near-seeming happens not.
[NAPOLEON himself can be discerned amid the rest, marching on foot
through the snowflakes, in a fur coat and with a stout staff in his
hand. Further back NEY is visible with the remains of the rear.
There is something behind the regular columns like an articulated
tail, and as they draw on, it shows itself to be a disorderly rabble
of followers of both sexes. So the whole miscellany arrives at the