The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 146

My lord, there are no headquarters.

WELLINGTON

No headquarters?

COMMANDANT

There are no French headquarters now, my lord, For there is no French army! France's fame Is fouled. And how, then, could we fight to-day With our hearts in our shoes!

WELLINGTON

Why, that bears out What I but lately said; it was not like The brave men who have faced and foiled me here So many a long year past, to give away A stubborn station quite so readily.

BERESFORD

And what, messieurs, ensued at Leipzig then?

SEVERAL FRENCH OFFICERS

Why, sirs, should we conceal it? Thereupon Part of our army took the Lutzen road; Behind a blown-up bridge. Those in advance Arrived at Lutzen with the Emperor-- The scene of our once famous victory!

In such sad sort retreat was hurried on, Erfurt was gained with Blucher hot at heel.

To cross the Rhine seemed then our only hope; Alas, the Austrians and the Bavarians Faced us in Hanau Forest, led by Wrede, And dead-blocked our escape.

WELLINGTON

Ha. Did they though?

SECOND FRENCH OFFICER

But if brave hearts were ever desperate, Sir, we were desperate then! We pierced them through, Our loss unrecking. So by Frankfurt's walls We fared to Mainz, and there recrossed the Rhine.

A funeral procession, so we seemed, Upon the long bridge that had rung so oft To our victorious feet!... What since has coursed We know not, gentlemen. But this we know, That Germany echoes no French footfall!

AN ENGLISH OFFICER

One sees not why it should.

SECOND FRENCH OFFICER

We'll leave it so.

[Conversation on the Leipzig disaster continues till the dinner ends The French prisoners courteously take their leave and go out.]

WELLINGTON

Very good set of fellows. I could wish They all were mine!...Well, well; there was no crime In trying to ascertain these fat events: They would have sounded soon from other tongues.

HILL

It looks like the first scene of act the last For our and all men's foe!

WELLINGTON

I count to meet The Allies upon the cobble-stones of Paris Before another half-year's suns have shone.

--But there's some work for us to do here yet: The dawn must find us fording the Nivelle!

[Exeunt WELLINGTON and officers. The room darkens.]

ACT FOURTH

SCENE I

THE UPPER RHINE

[The view is from a vague alt.i.tude over the beautiful country traversed by the Upper Rhine, which stretches through it in birds-eye perspective. At this date in Europe's history the stream forms the frontier between France and Germany.

It is the morning of New Year's Day, and the shine of the tardy sun reaches the fronts of the beetling castles, but scarcely descends far enough to touch the wavelets of the river winding leftwards across the many-leagued picture from Schaffhausen to Coblenz.]

DUMB SHOW

At first nothing--not even the river itself--seems to move in the panorama. But anon certain strange dark patches in the landscape, flexuous and riband-shaped, are discerned to be moving slowly.

Only one movable object on earth is large enough to be conspicuous herefrom, and that is an army. The moving shapes are armies.

The nearest, almost beneath us, is defiling across the river by a bridge of boats, near the junction of the Rhine and the Neckar, where the oval town of Mannheim, standing in the fork between the two rivers, has from here the look of a human head in a cleft stick. Martial music from many bands strikes up as the crossing is effected, and the undulating columns twinkle as if they were scaly serpents.

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

It is the Russian host, invading France!

Many miles to the left, down-stream, near the little town of Caube, another army is seen to be simultaneously crossing the pale current, its arms and accoutrements twinkling in like manner.