Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1025 page)

terraces of espaliered vines.  Between these and the river stands

the city, crowded with old gabled houses and surrounded by walls,

bastions, and a ditch, all the edifices being dominated by the

nave and tower of the huge Gothic Munster.

On the most prominent of the heights at the back—the Michaelsberg

—to the upper-right of the view, is encamped the mass of the

Austrian army, amid half-finished entrenchments.  Advanced posts

of the same are seen south-east of the city, not far from the

advanced corps of the French Grand-Army under SOULT, MARMONT,

LANNES, NEY, and DUPONT, which occupy in a semicircle the whole

breadth of the flat landscape in front, and extend across the

river to higher ground on the right hand of the panorama.

Heavy mixed drifts of rain and snow are descending impartially

on the French and on the Austrians, the downfall nearly blotting

out the latter on the hills.  A chill October wind wails across

the country, and the poplars yield slantingly to the gusts.]

DUMB SHOW

Drenched peasants are busily at work, fortifying the heights of

the Austrian position in the face of the enemy.  Vague companies

of Austrians above, and of the French below, hazy and indistinct

in the thick atmosphere, come and go without apparent purpose

near their respective lines.

Closer at hand NAPOLEON, in his familiar blue-grey overcoat, rides

hither and thither with his marshals, haranguing familiarly the

bodies of soldiery as he passes them, and observing and pointing

out the disposition of the Austrians to his companions.

Thicker sheets of rain fly across as the murk of evening increases,

which at length entirely obscures the prospect, and cloaks its

bleared lights and fires.

SCENE III

ULM.  WITHIN THE CITY

[The interior of the Austrian headquarters on the following

morning.  A tempest raging without.

GENERAL MACK, haggard and anxious, the ARCHDUKE FERDINAND, PRINCE

SCHWARZENBERG, GENERAL JELLACHICH, GENERALS RIESC, BIBERBACH, and

other field officers discovered, seated at a table with a map

spread out before them.  A wood fire blazes between tall andirons

in a yawning fireplace.  At every more than usually boisterous

gust of wind the smoke flaps into the room.]

MACK

The accursed cunning of our adversary

Confounds all codes of honourable war,

Which ever have held as granted that the track

Of armies bearing hither from the Rhine—

Whether in peace or strenuous invasion—

Should pierce the Schwarzwald, and through Memmingen,

And meet us in our front.  But he must wind

And corkscrew meanly round, where foot of man

Can scarce find pathway, stealing up to us

Thiefwise, by out back door!  Nevertheless,

If English war-fleets be abreast Boulogne,

As these deserters tell, and ripe to land there,

It destines Bonaparte to pack him back

Across the Rhine again.  We've but to wait,

And see him go.

ARCHDUKE

But who shall say if these bright tales be true?

MACK

Even then, small matter, your Imperial Highness;

The Russians near us daily, and must soon—

Ay, far within the eight days I have named—

Be operating to untie this knot,

If we hold on.

ARCHDUKE

     Conjectures these—no more;

I stomach not such waiting.  Neither hope

Has kernel in it.  I and my cavalry

With caution, when the shadow fall to-night,

Can bore some hole in this engirdlement;

Outpass the gate north-east; join General Werneck,

And somehow cut our way Bohemia-wards:

Well worth the hazard, in our straitened case!

MACK
[firmly]

The body of our force stays here with me.

And I am much surprised, your Highness, much,

You mark not how destructive 'tis to part!

If we wait on, for certain we should wait

In our full strength, compacted, undispersed

By such partition as your Highness plans.

SCHWARZENBERG

There's truth in urging we should not divide,

But weld more closely.—Yet why stay at all?

Methinks there's but one sure salvation left,

To wit, that we conjunctly march herefrom,

And with much circumspection, towards the Tyrol.

The subtle often rack their wits in vain—

Assay whole magazines of strategy—

To shun ill loomings deemed insuperable,

When simple souls by stumbling up to them

Find the grim shapes but air.  But let use grant

That the investing French so ring us in

As to leave not a span for such exploit;

Then go we—throw ourselves upon their steel,

And batter through, or die!—

What say you, Generals?  Speak your minds, I pray.

JELLACHICH

I favour marching out—the Tyrol way.

RIESC

Bohemia best!  The route thereto is open.

ARCHDUKE

My course is chosen.  O this black campaign,

Which Pitt's alarmed dispatches pricked us to,

All unforseeing!  Any risk for me

Rather than court humiliation here!

[MACK has risen during the latter remarks, walked to the

window, and looked out at the rain.  He returns with an air

of embarrassment.]

MACK
[to Archduke]

It is my privilege firmly to submit

That your Imperial Highness undertake

No venturous vaulting into risks unknown.—

Assume that you, Sire, as you have proposed,

With your light regiments and the cavalry,

Detach yourself from us, to scoop a way

By circuits northwards through the Rauhe Alps

And Herdenheim, into Bohemia:

Reports all point that you will be attacked,

Enveloped, borne on to capitulate.

What worse can happen here?—

Remember, Sire, the Emperor deputes me,

Should such a clash arise as has arisen,

To exercise supreme authority.

The honour of our arms, our race, demands

That none of your Imperial Highness' line

Be pounded prisoner by this vulgar foe,

Who is not France, but an adventurer,

Imposing on that country for his gain.

ARCHDUKE

But it seems clear to me that loitering here

Is full as like to compass our surrender

As moving hence.  And ill it therefore suits

The mood of one of my high temperature

To pause inactive while await me means

Of desperate cure for these so desperate ills!

[The ARCHDUKE FERDINAND goes out.   A troubled, silence follows,

during which the gusts call into the chimney, and raindrops spit

on the fire.]

SCHWARZENBERG

The Archduke bears him shrewdly in this course.

We may as well look matters in the face,

And that we are cooped and cornered is most clear;

Clear it is, too, that but a miracle

Can work to loose us!  I have stoutly held

That this man's three years' ostentatious scheme

To fling his army on the tempting shores

Of our Allies the English was a—well—

Scarce other than a trick of thimble-rig

To still us into false security.

JELLACHICH

Well, I know nothing.  None needs list to me,

But, on the whole, to southward seems the course

For lunging, all in force, immediately.

[Another pause.]

SPIRIT SINISTER

The Will throws Mack again into agitation:

Ho-ho—what he'll do now!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

          Nay, hard one, nay;

The clouds weep for him!

SPIRIT SINISTER

          If he must;

And it's good antic at a vacant time!

[MACK goes restlessly to the door, and is heard pacing about

the vestibule, and questioning the aides and other officers

gathered there.]

A GENERAL

He wavers like this smoke-wreath that inclines

Or north, or south, as the storm-currents rule!

MACK
[returning]

Bring that deserter hither once again.

[A French soldier is brought in, blindfolded and guarded.  The

bandage is removed.]

Well, tell us what he says.

AN OFFICER
[after speaking to the prisoner in French]

     He still repeats

That the whole body of the British strength

Is even now descending on Boulogne,

And that self-preservation must, if need,

Clear us from Bonaparte ere many days,

Who momently is moving.

MACK

Still retain him.

[He walks to the fire, and stands looking into it.  The soldier

is taken out.]

JELLACHICH
[bending over the map in argument with RIESC]

I much prefer our self-won information;

And if we have Marshal Soult at Landsberg here,

[Which seems to be truth, despite this man,]

And Dupont hard upon us at Albeck,

With Ney not far from Gunzburg; somewhere here,

Or further down the river, lurking Lannes,

Our game's to draw off southward—if we can!

MACK
[turning]

I have it.  This we'll do.  You Jellachich,

Unite with Spangen's troops at Memmingen,

To fend off mischief there.  And you, Riesc,

Will make your utmost haste to occupy

The bridge and upper ground at Elchingen,

And all along the left bank of the stream,

Till you observe whereon to concentrate

And sever their connections.  I couch here,

And hold the city till the Russians come.

A GENERAL
[in a low voice]

Disjunction seems of all expedients worst:

If any stay, then stay should every man,

Gather, inlace, and close up hip to hip,

And perk and bristle hedgehog-like with spines!

MACK

The conference is ended, friends, I say,

And orders will be issued here forthwith.

[Guns heard.]

AN OFFICER

Surely that's from the Michaelsberg above us?

MACK

Never care.  Here we stay.  In five more days

The Russians hail, and we regain our bays.

[Exeunt severally.]

SCENE IV

BEFORE ULM.  THE SAME DAY

[A high wind prevails, and rain falls in torrents.  An elevated

terrace near Elchingen forms the foreground.]

DUMB SHOW

From the terrace BONAPARTE surveys and dictates operations against

the entrenched heights of the Michaelsberg that rise in the middle

distance on the right above the city.  Through the gauze of

descending waters the French soldiery can be discerned climbing

to the attack under NEY.

They slowly advance, recede, re-advance, halt.  A time of suspense

follows.  Then they are seen in a state of irregular movement, even

confusion; but in the end they carry the heights with the bayonet.

Below the spot whereon NAPOLEON and his staff are gathered,

glistening wet and plastered with mud, obtrudes on the left the

village of Elchingen, now in the hands of the French.  Its white-

walled monastery, its bridge over the Danube, recently broken by

the irresistible NEY, wear a desolated look, and the stream, which

is swollen by the rainfall and rasped by the storm, seems wanly to

sympathize.

Anon shells are dropped by the French from the summits they have

gained into the city below.  A bomb from an Austrian battery falls

near NAPOLEON, and in bursting raises a fountain of mud.  The

Emperor retreats with his officers to a less conspicuous station.

Meanwhile LANNES advances from a position near NAPOLEON till his

columns reach the top of the Frauenberg hard by.  The united corps

of LANNES and NEY descend on the inner slope of the heights towards

the city walls, in the rear of the retreating Austrians.  One

of the French columns scales a bastion, but NAPOLEON orders the

assault to be discontinued, and with the wane of day the spectacle

disappears.

SCENE V

THE SAME.  THE MICHAELSBERG

[A chilly but rainless noon three days later.  At the back of the

scene, northward, rise the Michaelsberg heights; below stretches

the panorama of the city and the Danube.  On a secondary eminence

forming a spur of the upper hill, a fire of logs is burning, the

foremost group beside it being NAPOLEON and his staff, the former

in his shabby greatcoat and plain turned-up hat, walking to and

fro with his hands behind him, and occasionally stopping to warm

himself.  The French infantry are drawn up in a dense array at

the back of these.

The whole Austrian garrison of Ulm marches out of the city gate