ACT FIRST
SCENE I
THE BANKS OF THE NIEMEN, NEAR KOWNO
[The foreground is a hillock on a broken upland, seen in evening
twilight. On the left, further back, are the dusky forests of
Wilkowsky; on the right is the vague shine of a large river.
Emerging from the wood below the eminence appears a shadowy
amorphous thing in motion, the central or Imperial column of
NAPOLÉON’S Grand Army for the invasion of Russia, comprising
the corps of OUDINOT, NEY, and DAVOUT, with the Imperial Guard.
This, with the right and left columns, makes up the host of
nearly half a million, all starting on their march to Moscow.
While the rearmost regiments are arriving, NAPOLÉON rides ahead
with GENERAL HAXEL and one or two others to reconnoitre the river.
NAPOLÉON’S horse stumbles and throws him. He picks himself up
before he can be helped.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS [to Napoléon]
The portent is an ill one, Emperor;
An ancient Roman would retire thereat!
NAPOLÉON
Whose voice was that, jarring upon my thought
So insolently?
HAXEL AND OTHERS
Sire, we spoke no word.
NAPOLÉON
Then, whoso spake, such portents I defy!
[He remounts. When the reconnoitrers again came back to the
foreground of the scene the huge array of columns is standing
quite still, in circles of companies, the captain of each in
the middle with a paper in his hand. He reads from it a
proclamation. They quiver emotionally, like leaves stirred by
the wind. NAPOLÉON and his staff reascend the hillock, and his
own words as repeated to the ranks reach his ears, while he
himself delivers the same address to those about him.
NAPOLÉON
Soldiers, wild war is on the board again;
The lifetime-long alliance Russia swore
At Tilsit, for the English realm’s undoing,
Is violate beyond refurbishment,
And she intractable and unashamed.
Russia is forced on by fatality:
She cries her destiny must be outwrought,
Meaning at our expense. Does she then dream
We are no more the men of Austerlitz,
With nothing left of our old featfulness?
She offers us the choice of sword or shame;
We have made that choice unhesitatingly!
Then let us forthwith stride the Niemen flood,
Let us bear war into her great gaunt land,
And spread our glory there as otherwhere,
So that a stable peace shall stultify
The evil seed-bearing that Russian wiles
Have nourished upon Europe’s choked affairs
These fifty years!
[The midsummer night darkens. They all make their bivouacs
and sleep.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Something is tongued afar.
DISTANT VOICE IN THE WIND
The hostile hatchings of Napoléon’s brain
Against our Empire, long have harassed us,
And mangled all our mild amenities.
So, since the hunger for embranglement
That gnaws this man, has left us optionless,
And haled us recklessly to horrid war,
We have promptly mustered our well-hardened hosts,
And, counting on our call to the most High,
Have forthwith set our puissance face to face
Against Napoléon’s.—Ranksmen! officers!
You fend your lives, your land, your liberty.
I am with you. Heaven frowns on the aggressor.