by Thomas Hardy
isn't!
[They turn their horses towards Brussels. Enter, meeting them,
MR. LEGH, a Wessex gentleman, also come out to view the battle.]
LEGH
Can you tell me, sir, how the battle is going?
RICHMOND
Badly, badly, I fear, sir. There will be a retreat soon, seemingly.
LEGH
Indeed! Yes, a crowd of fugitives are coming over the hill even now.
What will these poor women do?
RICHMOND
God knows! They will be ridden over, I suppose. Though it is
extraordinary how they do contrive to escape destruction while
hanging so close to the rear of an action! They are moving,
however. Well, we will move too.
[Exeunt DUKE OF RICHMOND, sons, and MR. LEGH. The point of view
shifts.]
SCENE VI
THE SAME. THE FRENCH POSITION
[NEY'S charge of cavalry against the opposite upland has been
three times renewed without success. He collects the scattered
squadrons to renew it a fourth time. The glittering host again
ascends the confronting slopes over the bodies of those previously
left there, and amid horses wandering about without riders, or
crying as they lie with entrails trailing or limbs broken.]
NAPOLEON [starting up]
A horrible dream has gripped me—horrible!
I saw before me Lannes—just as he looked
That day at Aspern: mutilated, bleeding!
"What—blood again?" he said to me. "Still blood?"
[He further arouses himself, takes snuff vehemently, and looks
through his glass.]
What time is it?—Ah, these assaults of Ney's!
They are a blunder; they've been enterprised
An hour too early!... There Lheritier goes
Onward with his division next Milhaud;
Now Kellermann must follow up with his.
So one mistake makes many. Yes; ay; yes!
SOULT
I fear that Ney has compromised us here
Just as at Jena; even worse!
NAPOLEON
No less
Must we support him now he is launched on it....
The miracle is that he is still alive!
[NEY and his mass of cavalry again pass the English batteries
and disappear amid the squares beyond.]
Their cannon are abandoned; and their squares
Again environed—see! I would to God
Murat could be here! Yet I disdained
His proffered service.... All my star asks now
Is to break some half-dozen of those blocks
Of English yonder. He was the man to do it.
[NEY and D'ERLON'S squadrons are seen emerging from the English
squares in a disorganized state, the attack having failed like
the previous ones. An aide-de-camp enters to NAPOLEON.]
AIDE
The Prussians have debouched on our right rear
From Paris-wood; and Losthin's infantry
Appear by Plancenoit; Hiller's to leftwards.
Two regiments of their horse protect their front,
And three light batteries.
[A haggard shade crosses NAPOLEON'S face.]
NAPOLEON
What then! That's not a startling force as yet.
A counter-stroke by Domon's cavalry
Must shatter them. Lobau must bring his foot
Up forward, heading for the Prussian front,
Unrecking losses by their cannonade.
[Exit aide. The din of battle continues. DOMON'S horse are soon
seen advancing towards and attacking the Prussian hussars in front
of the infantry; and he next attempts to silence the Prussian
batteries playing on him by leading up his troops and cutting
down the gunners. But he has to fall back upon the infantry
of LOBAU. Enter another aide-de-camp.]
AIDE
These tiding I report, your Majesty:—
Von Ryssel's and von Hacke's Prussian foot
Have lately sallied from the Wood of Paris,
Bearing on us; no vast array as yet;
But twenty thousand loom not far behind
These vanward marchers!
NAPOLEON
Ah! They swarm thus thickly?
But be they hell's own legions we'll defy them!—
Lobau's men will stand firm.
[He looks in the direction of the English lines, where NEY'S
cavalry-assaults still linger furiously on.]
But who rides hither,
Spotting the sky with clods in his high haste?
SOULT
It looks like Colonel Heymes—come from Ney.
NAPOLEON [sullenly]
And his face shows what clef his music's in!
[Enter COLONEL HEYMES, blood-stained, muddy, and breathless.]
HEYMES
The Prince of Moscow, sire, the Marshal Ney,
Bids me implore that infantry be sent
Immediately, to further his attack.
They cannot be dispensed with, save we fail!
NAPOLEON [furiously]
Infantry! Where the sacred God thinks he
I can find infantry for him! Forsooth,
Does he expect me to create them—eh?
Why sends he such a message, seeing well
How we are straitened here!
HEYMES
Such was the prayer
Of my commission, sire. And I say
That I myself have seen his strokes must waste
Without such backing.
NAPOLEON
Why?
HEYMES
Our cavalry
Lie stretched in swathes, fronting the furnace-throats
Of the English cannon as a breastwork built
Of reeking copses. Marshal Ney's third horse
Is shot. Besides the slain, Donop, Guyot,
Lheritier, Piquet, Travers, Delort, more,
Are vilely wounded. On the other hand
Wellington has sought refuge in a square,
Few of his generals are not killed or hit,
And all is tickle with him. But I see,
Likewise, that I can claim no reinforcement,
And will return and say so.
[Exit HEYMES]
NAPOLEON [to Soult, sadly]
Ney does win me!
I fain would strengthen him.—Within an ace
Of breaking down the English as he is,
'Twould write upon the sunset "Victory!"—
But whom may spare we from the right here now?
So single man!
[An interval.]
Life's curse begins, I see,
With helplessness!... All I can compass is
To send Durutte to fall on Papelotte,
And yet more strongly occupy La Haye,
To cut off Bulow's right from bearing up
And checking Ney's attack. Further than this
None but the Gods can scheme!
[SOULT hastily begins writing orders to that effect. The point
of view shifts.]
SCENE VII
THE SAME. THE ENGLISH POSITION
[The din of battle continues. WELLINGTON, UXBRIDGE, HILL, DE
LANCEY, GORDON, and others discovered near the middle of the line.]
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
It is a moment when the steadiest pulse
Thuds pit-a-pat. The crisis shapes and nears
For Wellington as for his counter-chief.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
The hour is shaking him, unshakeable
As he may seem!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Know'st not at this stale time
That shaken and unshaken are alike
But demonstrations from the Ba
ck of Things?
Must I again reveal It as It hauls
The halyards of the world?
[A transparency as in earlier scenes again pervades the spectacle,
and the ubiquitous urging of the Immanent Will becomes visualized.
The web connecting all the apparently separate shapes includes
WELLINGTON in its tissue with the rest, and shows him, like them,
as acting while discovering his intention to act. By the lurid
light the faces of every row, square, group, and column of men,
French and English, wear the expression of that of people in a
dream.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES [tremulously]
Yea, sire; I see.
Disquiet me, pray, no more!
[The strange light passes, and the embattled hosts on the field
seem to move independently as usual.]
WELLINGTON [to Uxbridge]
Manoeuvring does not seem to animate
Napoleon's methods now. Forward he comes,
And pounds away on us in the ancient style,
Till he is beaten back in the ancient style;
And so the see-saw sways!
[The din increases. WELLINGTON'S aide-de-camp, Sir A. GORDON,
a little in his rear, falls mortally wounded. The DUKE turns
quickly.]
But where is Gordon?
Ah—hit is he! That's bad, that's bad, by God.
[GORDON is removed. An aide enters.]
AIDE
Your Grace, the Colonel Ompteda has fallen,
And La Haye Sainte is now a bath of blood.
Nothing more can be done there, save with help.
The Rifles suffer sharply!
[An aide is seen coming from KEMPT.]
WELLINGTON
What says he?
DE LANCEY
He says that Kempt, being riddled through and thinned,
Sends him for reinforcements.
WELLINGTON [with heat]
Reinforcements?
And where am I to get him reinforcements
In Heaven's name! I've no reinforcements here,
As he should know.
AIDE [hesitating]
What's to be done, your Grace?
WELLINGTON
Done? Those he has left him, be they many or few,
Fight till they fall, like others in the field!
[Exit aide. The Quartermaster-General DE LANCEY, riding by
WELLINGTON, is struck by a lobbing shot that hurls him over
the head of his horse. WELLINGTON and others go to him.]
DE LANCEY [faintly]
I may as well be left to die in peace!
WELLINGTON
He may recover. Take him to the rear,
And call the best attention up to him.
[DE LANCEY is carried off. The next moment a shell bursts close
to WELLINGTON.]
HILL [approaching]
I strongly feel you stand too much exposed!
WELLINGTON
I know, I know. It matters not one damn!
I may as well be shot as not perceive
What ills are raging here.
HILL
Conceding such,
And as you may be ended momently,
A truth there is no blinking, what commands
Have you to leave me, should fate shape it so?
WELLINGTON
These simply: to hold out unto the last,
As long as one man stands on one lame leg
With one ball in his pouch!—then end as I.
[He rides on slowly with the others. NEY'S charges, though
fruitless so far, are still fierce. His troops are now reduced
to one-half. Regiments of the BACHELU division, and the JAMIN
brigade, are at last moved up to his assistance. They are partly
swept down by the Allied batteries, and partly notched away by
the infantry, the smoke being now so thick that the position of
the battalions is revealed only by the flashing of the priming-
pans and muzzles, and by the furious oaths heard behind the cloud.
WELLINGTON comes back. Enter another aide-de-camp.]
AIDE
We bow to the necessity of saying
That our brigade is lessened to one-third,
Your Grace. And those who are left alive of it
Are so unmuscled by fatigue and thirst
That some relief, however temporary,
Becomes sore need.
WELLINGTON
Inform your general
That his proposal asks the impossible!
That he, I, every Englishman afield,
Must fall upon the spot we occupy,
Our wounds in front.
AIDE
It is enough, your Grace.
I answer for't that he, those under him,
And I withal, will bear us as you say.
[Exit aide. The din of battle goes on. WELLINGTON is grave but
calm. Like those around him, he is splashed to the top of his hat
with partly dried mire, mingled with red spots; his face is grimed
in the same way, little courses showing themselves where the sweat
has trickled down from his brow and temples.]
CLINTON [to Hill]
A rest would do our chieftain no less good,
In faith, than that unfortunate brigade!
He is tried damnably; and much more strained
Than I have ever seen him.
HILL
Endless risks
He's running likewise. What the hell would happen
If he were shot, is more than I can say!
WELLINGTON [calling to some near]
At Talavera, Salamanca, boys,
And at Vitoria, we saw smoke together;
And though the day seems wearing doubtfully,
Beaten we must not be! What would they say
Of us at home, if so?
A CRY [from the French]
Their centre breaks!
Vive l'Empereur!
[It comes from the FOY and BACHELU divisions, which are rushing
forward. HALKETT'S and DUPLAT'S brigades intercept. DUPLAT
falls, shot dead; but the venturesome French regiments, pierced
with converging fires, and cleft with shells, have to retreat.]
HILL [joining Wellington]
The French artillery-fire
To the right still renders regiments restive there
That have to stand. The long exposure galls them.
WELLINGTON
They must be stayed as our poor means afford.
I have to bend attention steadfastly
Upon the centre here. The game just now
Goes all against us; and if staunchness fail
But for one moment with these thinning foot,
Defeat succeeds!
[The battle continues to sway hither and thither with concussions,
wounds, smoke, the fumes of gunpowder, and the steam from the hot
viscera of grape-torn horses and men. One side of a Hanoverian
square is blown away; the three remaining sides form themselves
into a triangle. So many of his aides are cut down that it is
difficult for WELLINGTON to get reports of what is happening
afar. It begins to be discovered at the front that a regiment of
hussars, and others without ammunition, have deserted, and that
some officers in the rear, honestly concluding the battle to be
lost, are riding quietly off to Brussels. Those who are left
unwounded of WELLINGTON'S staff show gloomy misgivings at such
signs, despite their own firmness.]
SPIRIT SINISTER
One needs must be a ghost
To move here in the midst 'twixt host and host!
Their balls scream bri
sk and breezy tunes through me
As I were an organ-stop. It's merry so;
What damage mortal flesh must undergo!
[A Prussian officer enters to MUFFLING, who has again rejoined
the DUKE'S suite. MUFFLING hastens forward to WELLINGTON.]
MUFFLING
Blucher has just begun to operate;
But owing to Gneisenau's stolid stagnancy
The body of our army looms not yet!
As Zieten's corps still plod behind Smohain
Their coming must be late. Blucher's attack
Strikes the remote right rear of the enemy,
Somewhere by Plancenoit.
WELLINGTON
A timely blow;
But would that Zieten sped! Well, better late
Than never. We'll still stand.
[The point of observation shifts.]
SCENE VIII
THE SAME. LATER
[NEY'S long attacks on the centre with cavalry having failed,
those left of the squadrons and their infantry-supports fall
back pell-mell in broken groups across the depression between
the armies.
Meanwhile BULOW, having engaged LOBAU'S Sixth Corps, carries
Plancenoit.
The artillery-fire between the French and the English continues.
An officer of the Third Foot-guards comes up to WELLINGTON and
those of his suite that survive.]
OFFICER
Our Colonel Canning—coming I know not whence—
WELLINGTON
I lately sent him with important words
To the remoter lines.
OFFICER
As he returned
A grape-shot struck him in the breast; he fell,
At once a dead man. General Halkett, too,
Has had his cheek shot through, but still keeps going.
WELLINGTON
And how proceeds De Lancey?
OFFICER
I am told
That he forbids the surgeons waste their time
On him, who well can wait till worse are eased.
WELLINGTON
A noble fellow.
[NAPOLEON can now be seen, across the valley, pushing forward a
new scheme of some sort, urged to it obviously by the visible
nearing of further Prussian corps. The EMPEROR is as critically
situated as WELLINGTON, and his army is now formed in a right
angle ["en potence"], the main front to the English, the lesser
to as many of the Prussians as have yet arrived. His gestures
show him to be giving instructions of desperate import to a
general whom he has called up.]
SPIRIT IRONIC
He bids La Bedoyere to speed away
Along the whole sweep of the surging line,
And there announce to the breath-shotten bands
Who toil for a chimaera trustfully,