Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1036 page)

an evil man bent on ruining us!

SECOND CITIZEN

This country double-faced and double-tongued,

This France, or rather say, indeed, this Man—

[Peoples are honest dealers in the mass]
—

This man, to sign a stealthy scroll with Russia

That shuts us off from all indemnities,

While swearing faithful friendship with our King,

And, still professing our safe wardenry,

To fatten other kingdoms at our cost,

Insults us grossly, and makes Europe clang

With echoes of our wrongs.  The little states

Of this antique and homely German land

Are severed from their blood-allies and kin—

Hereto of one tradition, interest, hope—

In calling lord this rank adventurer,

Who'll thrust them as a sword against ourselves.—

Surely Great Frederick sweats within his tomb!

THIRD CITIZEN

Well, we awake, though we have slumbered long,

And She is sent by Heaven to kindle us.

[The QUEEN approaches to pass back again with her suite.  The

vociferous applause is repeated.  They regard her as she nears.]

To cry her Amazon, a blusterer,

A brazen comrade of the bold dragoons

Whose uniform she dons!  Her, whose each act

Shows but a mettled modest woman's zeal,

Without a hazard of her dignity

Or moment's sacrifice of seemliness,

To fend off ill from home!

FOURTH CITIZEN
[entering]

The tidings fly that Russian Alexander

Declines with emphasis to ratify

The pact of his ambassador with France,

And that the offer made the English King

To compensate the latter at our cost

Has not been taken.

THIRD CITIZEN

     And it never will be!

Thus evil does not always flourish, faith.

Throw down the gage while god is fair to us;

He may be foul anon!

[A pause.]

FIFTH CITIZEN
[entering]

Our ambassador Lucchesini is already leaving Paris.  He could stand

the Emperor no longer, so the Emperor takes his place, has decided

to order his snuff by the ounce and his candles by the pound, lest

he should not be there long enough to use more.

[The QUEEN goes by, and they gaze at here and at the escort of

soldiers.]

Haven't we soldiers?  Haven't we the Duke of Brunswick to command

'em?  Haven't we provisions, hey?  Haven't we fortresses and an

Elbe, to bar the bounce of an invader?

[The cavalcade passes out of sight and the crowd draws off.]

FIRST CITIZEN

By God, I must to beer and 'bacco, to soften my rage!

[Exeunt citizens.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

So doth the Will objectify Itself

In likeness of a sturdy people's wrath,

Which takes no count of the new trends of time,

Trusting ebbed glory in a present need.—

What if their strength should equal not their fire,

And their devotion dull their vigilance?—

Uncertainly, by fits, the Will doth work

In Brunswick's blood, their chief, as in themselves;

It ramifies in streams that intermit

And make their movement vague, old-fashioned, slow

To foil the modern methods counterposed!

[Evening descends on the city, and it grows dusk.  The soldiers

being dismissed from duty, some young officers in a frolic of

defiance halt, draw their swords and whet them on the steps of

the FRENCH AMBASSADOR'S residence as they pass.  The noise of

whetting is audible through the street.]

CHORUS OF THE PITIES
[aerial music]

     The soul of a nation distrest

          Is aflame,

     And heaving with eager unrest

          In its aim

To assert its old prowess, and stouten its chronicled fame!

SEMICHORUS I

     It boils in a boisterous thrill

          Through the mart,

     Unconscious well-nigh as the Will

          Of its part:

Would it wholly might be so, and feel not the forthcoming smart!

SEMICHORUS II

     In conclaves no voice of reflection

          Is heard,

     King, Councillors, grudge circumspection

          A word,

And victory is visioned, and seemings as facts are averred.

CHORUS

     Yea, the soul of a nation distrest

          Is aflame,

     And heaving with eager unrest

          In its aim

At supreme desperations to blazon the national name!

[Midnight strikes, lights are extinguished one by one, and the

scene disappears.]

SCENE IV

THE FIELD OF JENA

[Day has just dawned through a grey October haze.  The French,

with their backs to the nebulous light, loom out and show

themselves to be already under arms; LANNES holding the centre,

NEY the right, SOULT the extreme right, and AUGEREAU the left.

The Imperial Guard and MURAT'S cavalry are drawn up on the

Landgrafenberg, behind the centre of the French position.  In

a valley stretching along to the rear of this height flows

northward towards the Elbe the little river Saale, on which

the town of Jena stands.

On the irregular plateaux in front of the French lines, and almost

close to the latter, are the Prussians un TAUENZIEN; and away on

their right rear towards Weimar the bulk of the army under PRINCE

HOHENLOHE.  The DUKE OF BRUNSWICK [father of the Princess of

Wales]
is twelve miles off with his force at Auerstadt, in the

valley of the Ilm.

Enter NAPOLEON, and men bearing torches who escort him.  He moves

along the front of his troops, and is lost to view behind the

mist and surrounding objects.  But his voice is audible.]

NAPOLEON

Keep you good guard against their cavalry,

In past repute the formidablest known,

And such it may be now; so asks our heed.

Receive it, then, in square, unflinchingly.—

Remember, men, last year you captured Ulm,

So make no doubt that you will vanquish these!

SOLDIERS

Long live the Emperor!  Advance, advance!

DUMB SHOW

Almost immediately glimpses reveal that LANNES' corps is moving

forward, and amid an unbroken clatter of firelocks spreads out

further and wider upon the stretch of country in front of the

Landgrafenberg.  The Prussians, surprised at discerning in the

fog such masses of the enemy close at hand, recede towards the

Ilm.

From PRINCE HOHENLOHE, who is with the body of the Prussians on

the Weimar road to the south, comes perspiring the bulk of the

infantry to rally the retreating regiments of TAUENZIEN, and he

hastens up himself with the cavalry and artillery.  The action

is renewed between him and NEY as the clocks of Jena strike ten.

But AUGEREAU is seen coming to Ney's assistance on one flank of

the Prussians, SOULT bearing down on the other, while NAPOLEON

on the Landgrafenberg orders the Imperial Guard to advance.  The

doomed Prussians are driven back, this time more decisively,

falling in great numbers and losing many as prisoners as they

reel down the sloping land towards the banks of the Ilm behind

them.  GENERAL RUCHEL, in a last despairing effort to rally,

faces the French onset in person and alone.  He receives a bullet

through the chest and falls dead.

The crisis of the struggle is reached, though the battle is not

over.  NAPOLEON, discerning from the Landgrafenberg that the

decisive moment has come, directs MURAT to sweep forward with all

his cavalry.  It engages the shattered Prussians, surrounds them,

and cuts them down by thousands.

From behind the horizon, a dozen miles off, between the din of guns

in the visible battle, there can be heard an ominous roar, as of a

second invisible battle in progress there.  Generals and other

officers look at each other and hazard conjectures between whiles,

the French with exultation, the Prussians gloomily.

HOHENLOHE

That means the Duke of Brunswick, I conceive,

Impacting on the enemy's further force

Led by, they say, Davout and Bernadotte.

God grant his star less lurid rays then ours,

Or this too pregnant, hoarsely-groaning day

Shall, ere its loud delivery be done,

Have twinned disasters to the fatherland

That fifty years will fail to sepulchre!

Enter a straggler on horseback.

STRAGGLER

Prince, I have circuited by Auerstadt,

And bring ye dazzling tidings of the fight,

Which, if report by those who saw't be true,

Has raged thereat from clammy day-dawn on,

And left us victors!

HOHENLOHE

     Thitherward go I,

And patch the mischief wrought upon us here!

Enter a second and then a third straggler.

Well, wet-faced men, whence come ye?  What d'ye bring?

STRAGGLER II

Your Highness, I rode straight from Hassenhausen,

Across the stream of battle as it boiled

Betwixt that village and the banks of Saale,

And such the turmoil that no man could speak

On what the issue was!

HOHENLOHE
[To Straggler III]

Can you add aught?

STRAGGLER III

Nothing that's clear, your Highness.

HOHENLOHE

     Man, your mien

Is that of one who knows, but will not say.

Detain him here.

STRAGGLER III

     The blackness of my news,

Your Highness, darks my sense!... I saw this much:

His charging grenadiers, received in the face

A grape-shot stroke that gouged out half of it,

Proclaiming then and there his life fordone.

HOHENLOHE

Fallen?  Brunswick!  Reed in council, rock in fire...

Ah, this he looked for.  Many a time of late

Has he, by some strange gift of foreknowing,

Declared his fate was hovering in such wise!

STRAGGLER III

His aged form being borne beyond the strife,

The gallant Moellendorf, in flushed despair,

Swore he would not survive; and, pressing on,

He, too, was slaughtered.  Patriotic rage

Brimmed marshals' breasts and men's.  The King himself

Fought like the commonest.  But nothing served.

His horse is slain; his own doom yet unknown.

Prince William, too, is wounded.  Brave Schmettau

Is broke; himself disabled.  All give way,

And regiments crash like trees at felling-time!

HOHENLOHE

No more.  We match it here.  The yielding lines

Still sweep us backward.  Backward we must go!

[Exeunt HOHENLOHE, Staff, stragglers, etc.]

The Prussian retreat from Jena quickens to a rout, many thousands

taken prisoners by MURAT, who pursues them to Weimar, where the

inhabitants fly shrieking through the streets.

The October day closes in to evening.  By this time the troops

retiring with the King of Prussia from the second battlefield

of Auerstadt have intersected RUCHEL'S and HOHENLOHE'S flying

battalions from Jena.  The crossing streams of fugitives strike

panic into each other, and the tumult increases with the

thickening darkness till night renders the scene invisible,

and nothing remains but a confused diminishing noise, and fitful

lights here and there.

SCENE V

BERLIN.  A ROOM OVERLOOKING A PUBLIC PLACE

[A fluttering group of ladies is gathered at the window, gazing

out and conversing anxiously.  The time draws towards noon, when

the clatter of a galloping horse's hoofs is heard echoing up the

long Potsdamer-Strasse, and presently turning into the Leipziger-

Strasse reaches the open space commanded by the ladies' outlook.

It ceases before a Government building opposite them, and the

rider disappears into the courtyard.]

FIRST LADY

Yes: surely he is a courier from the field!

SECOND LADY

Shall we not hasten down, and take from him

The doom his tongue may deal us?

THIRD LADY

     We shall catch

As soon by watching here as hastening hence

The tenour of his new. 
[They wait.]
  Ah, yes: see—see

The bulletin is straightway to be nailed!

He was, then, from the field....

[They wait on while the bulletin is affixed.]

SECOND LADY

I cannot scan the words the scroll proclaims;

Peer as I will, these too quick-thronging dreads

Bring water to the eyes.  Grant us, good Heaven,

That victory be where she is needed most

To prove Thy goodness!... What do you make of it?

THIRD LADY
[reading, through a glass]

"The battle strains us sorely; but resolve

May save us even now.  Our last attack

Has failed, with fearful loss.  Once more we strive."

[A long silence in the room.  Another rider is heard approaching,