The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 141

SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS [aerial music]

This is the combat of Napoleon's hope, But not of his a.s.surance! Shrunk in power He broods beneath October's clammy cope, While hemming hordes wax denser every hour.

SEMICHORUS II

He knows, he knows that though in equal fight He stand s heretofore the matched of none, A feeble skill is propped by numbers' might, And now three hosts close round to crush out one!

DUMB SHOW

The Leipzig clocks imperturbably strike nine, and the battle which is to decide the fate of Europe, and perhaps the world, begins with three booms from the line of the allies. They are the signal for a general cannonade of devastating intensity.

So ma.s.sive is the contest that we soon fail to individualize the combatants as beings, and can only observe them as amorphous drifts, clouds, and waves of conscious atoms, surging and rolling together; can only particularize them by race, tribe, and language.

Nationalities from the uttermost parts of Asia here meet those from the Atlantic edge of Europe for the first and last time. By noon the sound becomes a loud droning, uninterrupted and breve-like, as from the pedal of an organ kept continuously down.

CHORUS OF RUMOURS

Now triple battle beats about the town, And now contracts the huge elastic ring Of fighting flesh, as those within go down, Or spreads, as those without show faltering!

It becomes apparent that the French have a particular intention, the Allies only a general one. That of the French is to break through the enemy's centre and surround his right. To this end NAPOLEON launches fresh columns, and simultaneously OUDINOT supports VICTOR against EUGENE OF WURTEMBERG'S right, while on the other side of him the cavalry of MILHAUD and KELLERMAN prepares to charge.

NAPOLEON'S combination is successful, and drives back EUGENE.

Meanwhile SCHWARZENBERG is stuck fast, useless in the marshes between the Pleisse and the Elster.

By three o'clock the Allied centre, which has held out against the a.s.saults of the French right and left, is broken through by cavalry under MURAT, LATOUR-MAUBOURG, and KELLERMANN.

The bells of Leipzig ring.

CHORUS OF THE PITIES

Those chimings, ill-advised and premature!

Who knows if such vast valour will endure?

The Austro-Russians are withdrawn from the marshes by SCHWARZENBERG.

But the French cavalry also get entangled in the swamps, and simultaneously MARMONT is beaten at Mockern.

Meanwhile NEY, to the north of Leipzig, having heard the battle raging southward, leaves his position to a.s.sist it. He has nearly arrived when he hears BLUCHER attacking at the point he came from, and sends back some of his divisions.

BERTRAND has kept open the west road to Lindenau and the Rhine, the only French line of retreat.

Evening finds the battle a drawn one. With the nightfall three blank shots reverberate hollowly.

SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS

They sound to say that, for this moaning night, As Nature sleeps, so too shall sleep the fight; Neither the victor.

SEMICHORUS II

But, for France and him, Half-won is losing!

CHORUS

Yea, his hopes drop dim, Since nothing less than victory to-day Had saved a cause whose ruin is delay!

The night gets thicker and no more is seen.

SCENE III

THE SAME, FROM THE TOWER OF THE PLEISSENBURG

[The tower commands a view of a great part of the battlefield.

Day has just dawned, and citizens, saucer-eyed from anxiety and sleeplessness, are discover watching.]

FIRST CITIZEN

The wind increased at midnight while I watched, With flapping showers, and clouds that combed the moon, Till dawn began outheaving this huge day, Pallidly--as if scared by its own issue; This day that the Allies with bonded might Have vowed to deal their felling finite blow.

SECOND CITIZEN

So must it be! They have welded close the coop Wherein our luckless Frenchmen are enjailed With such compression that their front has shrunk From five miles' farness to but half as far.-- Men say Napoleon made resolve last night To marshal a retreat. If so, his way Is by the Bridge of Lindenau.

[They look across in the cold east light at the long straight causeway from the Ranstadt Gate at the north-west corner of the town, and the Lindenau bridge over the Elster beyond.]

FIRST CITIZEN

Last night I saw, like wolf-packs, hosts appear Upon the Dresden road; and then, anon, The already stout arrays of Schwarzenberg Grew stoutened more. I witnessed clearly, too, Just before dark, the bands of Bernadotte Come, hemming in the north more thoroughly.

The horizon glowered with a thousand fires As the unyielding circle shut around.

[As it grows light they scan and define the armies.]

THIRD CITIZEN

Those lying there, 'twixt Connewitz and Dolitz, Are the right wing of horse Murat commands.