DARU
I’ll bring the writing to your Majesty.
[NAPOLÉON and DARU go out severally.]
CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music]
Recording Angel, trace
This bold campaign his thought has spun apace—
One that bids fair for immortality
Among the earthlings—if immortal deeds
May be ascribed to so extemporary
And transient a race!
It will be called, in rhetoric and rhyme,
As son to sire succeeds,
A model for the tactics of all time;
“The Great Campaign of that so famed year Five,”
By millions of mankind not yet alive.
SCENE II
THE FRONTIERS OF UPPER AUSTRIA AND BAVARIA
[A view of the country from mid-air, at a point south of the
River Inn, which is seen as a silver thread, winding northward
between its junction with the Salza and the Danube, and forming
the boundaries of the two countries. The Danube shows itself as
a crinkled satin riband, stretching from left to right in the
far background of the picture, the Inn discharging its waters
into the larger river.]
DUMB SHOW
A vast Austrian army creeps dully along the mid-distance, in
the detached masses and columns of a whitish cast. The columns
insensibly draw nearer to each other, and are seen to be converging
from the east upon the banks of the Inn aforesaid.
A RECORDING ANGEL [in recitative]
This movement as of molluscs on a leaf,
Which from our vantage here we scan afar,
Is one manoeuvred by the famous Mack
To countercheck Napoléon, still believed
To be intent on England from Boulogne,
And heedless of such rallies in his rear.
Mack’s enterprise is now to cross Bavaria—
Beneath us stretched in ripening summer peace
As field unwonted for these ugly jars—
Outraged Bavaria, simmering in disquiet
At Munich down behind us, Isar-fringed,
And torn between his fair wife’s hate of France
And his own itch to gird at Austrian bluff
For riding roughshod through his territory,
Wavers from this to that. The while Time hastes
The eastward streaming of Napoléon’s host,
As soon we see.
The silent insect-creep of the Austrian columns towards the banks of
the Inn continues to be seen till the view fades to nebulousness and
dissolves.
SCENE III
BOULOGNE. THE ST. OMER ROAD
[It is morning at the end of August, and the road stretches out
of the town eastward.
The divisions of the “Army-for-England” are making preparations
to march. Some portions are in marching order. Bands strike
up, and the regiments start on their journey towards the Rhine
and Danube. Bonaparte and his officers watch the movements from
an eminence. The soldiers, as they pace along under their eagles
with beaming eyes, sing “Le Chant du Depart,” and other martial
songs, shout “Vive l’Empereur!” and babble of repeating the days
of Italy, Egypt, Marengo, and Hohenlinden.]
NAPOLÉON
Anon to England!
CHORUS OF INTELLIGENCES [aerial music]
If Time’s weird threads so weave!
[The scene as it lingers exhibits the gradual diminishing of
the troops along the roads through the undulating August
landscape, till each column is seen but as a train of dust;
and the disappearance of each marching mass over the eastern
horizon.]