NAPOLÉON
Ah, so? My friend Augustus, is he near?
I will be prompt to meet him when he comes,
And safely quarter him. [He returns to the map.]
[An interval. The clock strikes midnight. The EMPEROR rises
abruptly, sighs, and comes forward.]
I now retire,
Comrades. Good-night, good-night. Remember well
All must prepare to grip with gory death
In the now voidless battle. It will be
A great one and a critical; one, in brief,
That will seal France’s fate, and yours, and mine!
ALL [fervidly]
We’ll do our utmost, by the Holy Heaven!
NAPOLÉON
Ah—what was that? [He pulls back the window-curtain.]
SEVERAL
It is our enemies,
Whose southern hosts are signalling to their north.
[A white rocket is beheld high in the air. It is followed by a
second, and a third. There is a pause, during which NAPOLÉON and
the rest wait motionless. In a minute or two, from the opposite
side of the city, three coloured rockets are sent up, in evident
answer to the three white ones. NAPOLÉON muses, and lets the
curtain drop.]
NAPOLÉON
Yes, Schwarzenberg to Blücher.... It must be
To show that they are ready. So are we!
[He goes out without saying more. The marshals and other officers
withdraw. The room darkens and ends the scene.]
SCENE II
THE SAME. THE CITY AND THE BATTLEFIELD
[Leipzig is viewed in aerial perspective from a position above the
south suburbs, and reveals itself as standing in a plain, with
rivers and marshes on the west, north, and south of it, and higher
ground to the east and south-east.
At this date it is somewhat in she shape of the letter D, the
straight part of which is the river Pleisse. Except as to this
side it is surrounded by armies—the inner horseshoe of them
being the French defending the city; the outer horseshoe being
the Allies about to attack it.
Far over the city—as it were at the top of the D—at Lindenthal,
we see MARMONT stationed to meet BLÜCHER when he arrives on that
side. To the right of him is NEY, and further off to the right,
on heights eastward, MACDONALD. Then round the curve towards the
south in order, AUGEREAU, LAURISTON [behind whom is NAPOLÉON
himself and the reserve of Guards], VICTOR [at Wachau], and
PONIATOWSKI, near the Pleisse River at the bottom of the D. Near
him are the cavalry of KELLERMANN and MILHAUD, and in the same
direction MURAT with his, covering the great avenues of approach
on the south.
Outside all these stands SCHWARZENBERG’S army, of which, opposed
to MACDONALD and LAURISTON, are KLEINAU’S Austrians and ZIETEN’S
Prussians, covered on the flank by Cossacks under PLATOFF.
Opposed to VICTOR and PONIATOWSKI are MEERFELDT and Hesse-Homburg’s
Austrians, WITTGENSTEIN’S Russians, KLEIST’S Prussians, GUILAY’S
Austrians, with LICHTENSTEIN’S and THIELMANN’S light troops: thus
reaching round across the Elster into the morass on our near left—
the lower point of the D.]
SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS [aerial music]
This is the combat of Napoléon’s hope,
But not of his assurance! 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 massive 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.