Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1044 page)

tone]
:—

     "O I thought it had been day,

     And I stole from here away;

     But it proved to be the light o' the moon!"

[Retreat continues, with infantry in good order.  Hearing the

singing, one of the officers looks around, and detaching a patrol

enters the ruined house with the file of men, the body of soldiers

marching on.  The inmates of the cellar bury themselves in the

straw.  The officer peers about, and seeing no one prods the straw

with his sword.

VOICES [under the straw]

Oh! Hell!  Stop it!  We'll come out!  Mercy!  Quarter!

[The lurkers are uncovered.]

OFFICER

If you are well enough to sing bawdy songs, you are well enough to

march.  So out of it—or you'll be shot, here and now!

SEVERAL

You may shoot us, captain, or the French may shoot us, or the devil

may take us; we don't care which!  Only we can't stir.  Pity the

women, captain, but do what you will with us!

[The searchers pass over the wounded, and stir out those capable

of marching, both men and women, so far as they discover them.

They are pricked on by the patrol.  Exeunt patrol and deserters

in its charge.

Those who remain look stolidly at the highway.  The English Rear-

guard of cavalry crosses the scene and passes out.  An interval.

It grows dusk.]

SPIRIT IRONIC

Quaint poesy, and real romance of war!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Mock on, Shade, if thou wilt!  But others find

Poesy ever lurk where pit-pats poor mankind!

[The scene is cloaked in darkness.]

SCENE II

THE SAME

[It is nearly midnight.  The fugitives who remain in the cellar

having slept off the effects of the wine, are awakened by a new

tramping of cavalry, which becomes more and more persistent.  It

is the French, who now fill the road.  The advance-guard having

passed by, DELABORDE'S division, LORGE'S division, MERLE'S

division, and others, successively cross the gloom.

Presently come the outlines of the Imperial Guard, and then, with

a start, those in hiding realize their situation, and are wide

awake.  NAPOLEON enters with his staff.  He has just been overtaken

by a courier, and orders those round him to halt.]

NAPOLEON

Let there a fire be lit: Ay, here and now.

The lines within these letters brook no pause

In mastering their purport.

[Some of the French approach the ruined house and, appropriating

what wood is still left there, heap it by the roadside and set it

alight.  A mixed rain and snow falls, and the sputtering flames

throw a glare all round.]

SECOND DESERTER
[under his voice]

We be shot corpses!  Ay, faith, we be!  Why didn't I stick to

England, and true doxology, and leave foreign doxies and their

wine alone!... Mate, can ye squeeze another shardful from the

cask there, for I feel my time is come!... O that I had but the

barrel of that firelock I throwed away, and that wasted powder to

prime and load!  This bullet I chaw to squench my hunger would do

the rest!... Yes, I could pick him off now!

FIRST DESERTER

You lie low with your picking off, or he may pick off you!  Thank

God the babies are gone.  Maybe we shan't be noticed, if we've but

the courage to do nothing, and keep hid.

[NAPOLEON dismounts, approaches the fire, and looks around.]

NAPOLEON

Another of their dead horses here, I see.

OFFICER

Yes, sire.  We have counted eighteen hundred odd

From Benavente hither, pistoled thus.

Some we'd to finish for them: headlong haste

Spared them no time for mercy to their brutes.

One-half their cavalry now tramps afoot.

NAPOLEON

And what's the tale of waggons we've picked up?

OFFICER

Spanish and all abandoned, some four hundred;

Of magazines and firelocks, full ten load;

And stragglers and their girls a numerous crew.

NAPOLEON

Ay, devil—plenty those!  Licentious ones

These English, as all canting peoples are.—

And prisoners?

OFFICER

     Seven hundred English, sire;

Spaniards five thousand more.

NAPOLEON

     'Tis not amiss.

To keep the new year up they run away!

[He soliloquizes as he begins tearing open the dispatches.]

Nor Pitt nor Fox displayed such blundering

As glares in this campaign!  It is, indeed,

Enlarging Folly to Foolhardiness

To combat France by land!  But how expect

Aught that can claim the name of government

From Canning, Castlereagh, and Perceval,

Caballers all—poor sorry politicians—

To whom has fallen the luck of reaping in

The harvestings of Pitt's bold husbandry.

[He unfolds a dispatch, and looks for something to sit on.  A cloak

is thrown over a log, and he settles to reading by the firelight.

The others stand round.  The light, crossed by the snow-flakes,

flickers on his unhealthy face and stoutening figure.  He sinks

into the rigidity of profound thought, till his features lour.]

So this is their reply!  They have done with me!

Britain declines negotiating further—

Flouts France and Russia indiscriminately.

"Since one dethrones and keeps as prisoners

The most legitimate kings"—that means myself—

"The other suffers their unworthy treatment

For sordid interests"—that's for Alexander!...

And what is Georgy made to say besides?—

"Pacific overtures to us are wiles

Woven to unnerve the generous nations round

Lately escaped the galling yoke of France,

Or waiting so to do.  Such, then, being seen,

These tentatives must be regarded now

As finally forgone; and crimson war

Be faced to its fell worst, unflinchingly."

—The devil take their lecture!  What am I,

That England should return such insolence?

[He jumps up, furious, and walks to and fro beside the fire.

By and by cooling he sits down again.]

Now as to hostile signs in Austria....

[He breaks another seal and reads.]

Ah,—swords to cross with her some day in spring!

Thinking me cornered over here in Spain

She speaks without disguise, the covert pact

'Twixt her and England owning now quite frankly,

Careless how works its knowledge upon me.

She, England, Germany: well—I can front them!

That there is no sufficient force of French

Between the Elbe and Rhine to prostrate her,

Let new and terrible experience

Soon disillude her of!  Yea; she may arm:

The opportunity she late let slip

Will not subserve her now!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Has he no heart-hints that this Austrian court,

Whereon his mood takes mould so masterful,

Is rearing naively in its nursery-room

A future wife for him?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

     Thou dost but guess it,

And how should his heart know?

NAPOLEON
[opening and reading another dispatch]

     Now eastward.  Ohe!—

The Orient likewise looms full somberly....

The Turk declines pacifically to yield

What I have promised Alexander.  Ah!...

As for Constantinople being his prize

I'll see him frozen first.  His flight's too high!

And showing that I think so makes him cool. 
[Rises.]

Is Soult the Duke Dalmatia yet at hand?

OFFICER

He has arrived along the Leon road

Just now, your Majesty; and only waits

The close of your perusals.

[Enter SOULT, who is greeted by NAPOLEON.]

FIRST DESERTER

Good Lord deliver us from all great men, and take me back again to

humble life!  That's Marshal Soult the Duke of Dalmatia!

SECOND DESERTER

The Duke of Damnation for our poor rear, by the look on't!

FIRST DESERTER

Yes—he'll make 'em rub their poor rears before he has done with

'em!  But we must overtake 'em to-morrow by a cross-cut, please God!

NAPOLEON
[pointing to the dispatches]

Here's matter enough for me, Duke, and to spare.

The ominous contents are like the threats

The ancient prophets dealt rebellious Judah!

Austria we soon shall have upon our hands,

And England still is fierce for fighting on,—

Strange humour in a concord-loving land!

So now I must to Paris straight away—

At least, to Valladolid; so as to stand

More apt for couriers than I do out here

In this far western corner, and to mark

The veerings of these new developments,

And blow a counter-breeze....

Then, too, there's Lannes, still sweating at the siege

Of sullen Zaragoza as 'twere hell.

Him I must further counsel how to close

His twice too tedious battery.—You, then, Soult—

Ney is not yet, I gather, quite come up?

SOULT

He's near, sire, on the Benavente road;

But some hours to the rear I reckon, still.

NAPOLEON
[pointing to the dispatches]

Him I'll direct to come to your support

In this pursuit and harassment of Moore

Wherein you take my place.  You'll follow up

And chase the flying English to the sea.

Bear hard on them, the bayonet at their loins.

With Merle's and Mermet's corps just gone ahead,

And Delaborde's, and Heudelet's here at hand.

While Lorge's and Lahoussaye's picked dragoons

Will follow, and Franceschi's cavalry.

To Ney I am writing, in case of need,

He will support with Marchand and Mathieu.—

Your total thus of seventy thousand odd,

Ten thousand horse, and cannon to five score,

Should near annihilate this British force,

And carve a triumph large in history.

[He bends over the fire and makes some notes rapidly.]

I move into Astorga; then turn back,

[Though only in my person do I turn]

And leave to you the destinies of Spain.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

More turning may be here than he design.

In this small, sudden, swift turn backward, he

Suggests one turning from his apogee!

[The characters disperse, the fire sinks, and snowflakes and

darkness blot out all.]

SCENE III

BEFORE CORUNA

[The town, harbour, and hills at the back are viewed from an

aerial point to the north, over the lighthouse known as the

Tower of Hercules, rising at the extremity of the tongue of

land on which La Coruna stands, the open ocean being in the

spectator's rear.

In the foreground the most prominent feature is the walled old

town, with its white towers and houses, shaping itself aloft

over the harbour.  The new town, and its painted fronts, show

bright below, even on this cloudy winter afternoon.  Further

off, behind the harbour—now crowded with British transports

of all sizes—is a series of low broken hills, intersected by

hedges and stone walls.

A mile behind these low inner hills is beheld a rocky chain of

outer and loftier heights that completely command the former.

Nothing behind them is seen but grey sky.

DUMB SHOW

On the inner hills aforesaid the little English army—a pathetic

fourteen thousand of foot only—is just deploying into line: HOPE'S

division is on the left, BAIRD'S to the right.  PAGET with the

reserve is in the hollow to the left behind them; and FRASER'S

division still further back shapes out on a slight rise to the right.

This harassed force now appears as if composed of quite other than

the men observed in the Retreat insubordinately straggling along

like vagabonds.  Yet they are the same men, suddenly stiffened and

grown amenable to discipline by the satisfaction of standing to the

enemy at last.  They resemble a double palisade of red stakes, the

only gaps being those that the melancholy necessity of scant numbers

entails here and there.

Over the heads of these red men is beheld on the outer hills the

twenty thousand French that have been pushed along the road at the

heels of the English by SOULT.  They have an ominous superiority,

both in position and in their abundance of cavalry and artillery,

over the slender lines of English foot.  The left of this background,