SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
This is her prescient pang of widowhood.
Ere Salamanca clang to-morrow’s close
She’ll find her consort stiff among the slain!
[The infantry regiments now reach the ford. The storm increases
in strength, the stream flows more furiously; yet the columns of
foot enter it and begin crossing. The lightning is continuous;
the faint lantern in the ford-house is paled by the sheets of
fire without, which flap round the bayonets of the crossing men
and reflect upon the foaming torrent.]
CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]
The skies fling flame on this ancient land!
And drenched and drowned is the burnt blown sand
That spreads its mantle of yellow-grey
Round old Salmantica to-day;
While marching men come, band on band,
Who read not as a reprimand
To mortal moils that, as ’twere planned
In mockery of their mimic fray,
The skies fling flame.
Since sad Coruna’s desperate stand
Horrors unsummed, with heavy hand,
Have smitten such as these! But they
Still headily pursue their way,
Though flood and foe confront them, and
The skies fling flame.
[The whole of the English division gets across by degrees, and
their invisible tramp is heard ascending the opposite heights as
the lightnings dwindle and the spectacle disappears.]
SCENE III
THE FIELD OF SALAMANCA
[The battlefield—an undulating and sandy expanse—is lying
under the sultry sun of a July afternoon. In the immediate
left foreground rises boldly a detached dome-like hill known
as the Lesser Arapeile, now held by English troops. Further
back, and more to the right, rises another and larger hill of
the kind—the Greater Arapeile; this is crowned with French
artillery in loud action, and the French marshal, MARMONT, Duke
of RAGUSA, stands there. Further to the right, in the same
plane, stretch the divisions of the French army. Still further
to the right, in the distance, on the Ciudad Rodrigo highway, a
cloud of dust denotes the English baggage-train seeking security
in that direction. The city of Salamanca itself, and the river
Tormes on which it stands, are behind the back of the spectator.
On the summit of the lesser hill, close at hand, WELLINGTON, glass
at eye, watches the French division under THOMIERE, which has become
separated from the centre of the French army. Round and near him
are aides and other officers, in animated conjecture on MARMONT’S
intent, which appears to be a move on the Ciudad Rodrigo road
aforesaid, under the impression that the English are about to
retreat that way.
The English commander descends from where he was standing to a nook
under a wall, where a meal is roughly laid out. Some of his staff
are already eating there. WELLINGTON takes a few mouthfuls without
sitting down, walks back again, and looks through his glass at the
battle as before. Balls from the French artillery fall around.
Enter his aide-de-camp, FITZROY SOMERSET.]
FITZROY SOMERSET [hurriedly]
The French make movements of grave consequence—
Extending to the left in mass, my lord.
WELLINGTON
I have just perceived as much; but not the cause.
[He regards longer.]
Marmont’s good genius is deserting him!
[Shutting up his glass with a snap, WELLINGTON calls several aides
and despatches them down the hill. He goes back behind the wall
and takes some more mouthfuls.]
By God, Fitzroy, if we shan’t do it now!
[to SOMERSET].
Mon cher Alava, Marmont est perdu!
[to his SPANISH ATTACHE].
FITZROY SOMERSET
Thinking we mean to attack on him,
He schemes to swoop on our retreating-line.
WELLINGTON
Ay; and to cloak it by this cannonade.
With that in eye he has bundled leftwardly
Thomiere’s division; mindless that thereby
His wing and centre’s mutual maintenance
Has gone, and left a yawning vacancy.
So be it. Good. His laxness is our luck!
[As a result of the orders sent off by the aides, several British
divisions advance across the French front on the Greater Arapeile
and elsewhere. The French shower bullets into them; but an English
brigade under PACK assails the nearer French on the Arapeile, now
beginning to cannonade the English in the hollows beneath.
Light breezes blow toward the French, and they get in their faces
the dust-clouds and smoke from the masses of English in motion, and
a powerful sun in their eyes.
MARMONT and his staff are sitting on the top of the Greater Arapeile
only half a cannon-shot from WELLINGTON on the Lesser; and, like
WELLINGTON, he is gazing through his glass.
SPIRIT OF RUMOUR
Appearing to behold the full-mapped mind
Of his opponent, Marmont arrows forth
Aide after aide towards the forest’s rim,
To spirit on his troops emerging thence,
And prop the lone division Thomiere,
For whose recall his voice has rung in vain.
Wellington mounts and seeks out Pakenham,
Who pushes to the arena from the right,
And, spurting to the left of Marmont’s line,
Shakes Thomiere with lunges leonine.
When the manoeuvre’s meaning hits his sense,
Marmont hies hotly to the imperilled place,
Where see him fall, sore smitten.—Bonnet rides
And dons the burden of the chief command,
Marking dismayed the Thomiere column there
Shut up by Pakenham like bellows-folds
Against the English Fourth and Fifth hard by;
And while thus crushed, Dragoon-Guards and Dragoons,
Under Le Marchant’s hands [of Guernsey he],
Are launched upon them by Sir Stapleton,
And their scathed files are double-scathed anon.
Cotton falls wounded. Pakenham’s bayoneteers
Shape for the charge from column into rank;
And Thomiere finds death thereat point-blank!
SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES [aerial music]
In fogs of dust the cavalries hoof the ground;
Their prancing squadrons shake the hills around:
Le Marchant’s heavies bear with ominous bound
Against their opposites!
SEMICHORUS II
A bullet crying along the cloven air
Gouges Le Marchant’s groin and rankles there;
In Death’s white sleep he soon joins Thomiere,
And all he has fought for, quits!
[In the meantime the battle has become concentrated in the middle
hollow, and WELLINGTON descends thither from the English Arapeile.
The fight grows fiercer. COLE and LEITH now fall wounded; then
BERESFORD, who directs the Portuguese, is struck down and borne
away. On the French side fall BONNET who succeeded MARMONT in
command, MANNE, CLAUSEL, and FEREY, the last hit mortally.
Their disordered main body retreats into the forest and disappears;
and just as darkness sets in, the English stand alone on the crest,
the distant plain being lighted only by musket-flashes from the
vanquishing enemy. In the close foreground vague figures on
horseback are audible in the gloom.