Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1064 page)

without shines in at the narrow windows.

NAPOLEON is discovered dressed, but in disorder and unshaven.  He

is walking up and down the room in agitation.  There are present

CAULAINCOURT, BESSIERES, and many of the marshals of his guard,

who stand in silent perplexity.]

NAPOLEON
[sitting down on the bed]

No: I'll not go!  It is themselves who have done it.

My God, they are Scythians and barbarians still!

[Enter MORTIER [just made Governor]
.]

MORTIER

Sire, there's no means of fencing with the flames.

My creed is that these scurvy Muscovites

Knowing our men's repute for recklessness,

Have fired the town, as if 'twere we had done it,

As by our own crazed act!

[GENERAL LARIBOISIERE, and aged man, enters and approaches

NAPOLEON.]

LARIBOISIERE

     The wind swells higher!

Will you permit one so high-summed in years,

One so devoted, sire, to speak his mind?

It is that your long lingering here entails

Much risk for you, your army, and ourselves,

In the embarrassment it throws on us

While taking steps to seek security,

By hindering venturous means.

[Enter MURAT, PRINCE EUGENE, and the PRINCE OF NEUFCHATEL.]

MURAT

     There is no choice

But leaving, sire.  Enormous bulks of powder

Lie housed beneath us; and outside these panes

A park of our artillery stands unscreened.

NAPOLEON
[saturninely]

What have I won I disincline to cede!

VOICE OF A GUARD
[without]

The Kremlin is aflame!

[The look at each other.  Two officers of NAPOLEON'S guard and an

interpreter enter, with one of the Russian military police as a

prisoner.]

FIRST OFFICER

     We have caught this man

Firing the Kremlin: yea, in the very act!

It is extinguished temporarily,

We know not for how long.

NAPOLEON

     Inquire of him

What devil set him on. 
[They inquire.]

SECOND OFFICER

     The governor,

He says; the Count Rostopchin, sire.

NAPOLEON

So!  Even the ancient Kremlin is not sanct

From their infernal scheme!  Go, take him out;

Make him a quick example to the rest.

[Exeunt guard with their prisoner to the court below, whence a

musket-volley resounds in a few minutes.  Meanwhile the flames

pop and spit more loudly, and the window-panes of the room they

stand in crack and fall in fragments.]

Incendiarism afoot, and we unware

Of what foul tricks may follow, I will go.

Outwitted here, we'll march on Petersburg,

The Devil if we won't!

[The marshals murmur and shake their heads.]

BESSIERES

     Your pardon, sire,

But we are all convinced that weather, time,

Provisions, roads, equipment, mettle, mood,

Serve not for such a perilous enterprise.

[NAPOLEON remains in gloomy silence.  Enter BERTHIER.]

NAPOLEON
[apathetically]

Well, Berthier.  More misfortunes?

BERTHIER

     News is brought,

Sire, of the Russian army's whereabouts.

That fox Kutuzof, after marching east

As if he were conducting his whole force

To Vladimir, when at the Riazan Road

Down-doubled sharply south, and in a curve

Has wheeled round Moscow, making for Kalouga,

To strike into our base, and cut us off.

MURAT

Another reason against Petersburg!

Come what come may, we must defeat that army,

To keep a sure retreat through Smolensk on

To Lithuania.

NAPOLEON
[jumping up]

     I must act!  We'll leave,

Or we shall let this Moscow be our tomb.

May Heaven curse the author of this war—

Ay, him, that Russian minister, self-sold

To England, who fomented it.—'Twas he

Dragged Alexander into it, and me!

[The marshals are silent with looks of incredulity, and Caulaincourt

shrugs his shoulders.]

Now no more words; but hear.  Eugene and Ney

With their divisions fall straight back upon

The Petersburg and Zwenigarod Roads;

Those of Davout upon the Smolensk route.

I will retire meanwhile to Petrowskoi.

Come, let us go.

[NAPOLEON and the marshals move to the door.  In leaving, the

Emperor pauses and looks back.]

     I fear that this event

Marks the beginning of a train of ills....

Moscow was meant to be my rest,

My refuge, and—it vanishes away!

[Exeunt NAPOLEON, marshals, etc.  The smoke grows denser and

obscures the scene.]

SCENE IX

THE ROAD FROM SMOLENSKO INTO LITHUANIA

[The season is far advanced towards winter.  The point of observation

is high amongst the clouds, which, opening and shutting fitfully to

the wind, reveal the earth as a confused expanse merely.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Where are we?  And why are we where we are?

SHADE OF THE EARTH

Above a wild waste garden-plot of mine

Nigh bare in this late age, and now grown chill,

Lithuania called by some.  I gather not

Why we haunt here, where I can work no charm

Either upon the ground or over it.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

The wherefore will unfold.  The rolling brume

That parts, and joins, and parts again below us

In ragged restlessness, unscreens by fits

The quality of the scene.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

          I notice now

Primeval woods, pine, birch—the skinny growths

That can sustain life well where earth affords

But sustenance elsewhere yclept starvation.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

And what see you on the far land-verge there,

Labouring from eastward towards our longitude?

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

An object like a dun-piled caterpillar,

Shuffling its length in painful heaves along,

Hitherward.... Yea, what is this Thing we see

Which, moving as a single monster might,

Is yet not one but many?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

          Even the Army

Which once was called the Grand; now in retreat

From Moscow's muteness, urged by That within it;

Together with its train of followers—

Men, matrons, babes, in brabbling multitudes.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

     And why such flight?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

     Recording Angels, say.

RECORDING ANGEL I
[in minor plain-song]

The host has turned from Moscow where it lay,

And Israel-like, moved by some master-sway,

Is made to wander on and waste away!

ANGEL II

By track of Tarutino first it flits;

Thence swerving, strikes at old Jaroslawitz;

The which, accurst by slaughtering swords, it quits.

ANGEL I

Harassed, it treads the trail by which it came,

To Borodino, field of bloodshot fame,

Whence stare unburied horrors beyond name!

ANGEL II

And so and thus it nears Smolensko's walls,

And, stayed its hunger, starts anew its crawls,

Till floats down one white morsel, which appals.

[What has floated down from the sky upon the Army is a flake of

snow.  Then come another and another, till natural features,

hitherto varied with the tints of autumn, are confounded, and all

is phantasmal grey and white.

The caterpillar shape still creeps laboriously nearer, but instead,

increasing in size by the rules of perspective, it gets more

attenuated, and there are left upon the ground behind it minute

parts of itself, which are speedily flaked over, and remain as

white pimples by the wayside.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

These atoms that drop off are snuffed-out souls

Who are enghosted by the caressing snow.

[Pines rise mournfully on each side of the nearing object; ravens

in flocks advance with it overhead, waiting to pick out the eyes

of strays who fall.  The snowstorm increases, descending in tufts

which can hardly be shaken off.  The sky seems to join itself to

the land.  The marching figures drop rapidly, and almost immediately

become white grave-mounds.

Endowed with enlarged powers of audition as of vision, we are struck

by the mournful taciturnity that prevails.  Nature is mute.  Save

for the incessant flogging of the wind-broken and lacerated horses

there are no sounds.

With growing nearness more is revealed.  In the glades of the forest,

parallel to the French columns, columns of Russians are seen to be

moving.  And when the French presently reach Krasnoye they are

surrounded by packs of cloaked Cossacks, bearing lances like huge

needles a dozen feet long.  The fore-part of the French army gets

through the town; the rear is assaulted by infantry and artillery.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

The strange, one-eyed, white-shakoed, scarred old man,

Ruthlessly heading every onset made,

I seem to recognize.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

          Kutuzof he:

The ceaselessly-attacked one, Michael Ney;

A pair as stout as thou, Earth, ever hast twinned!

Kutuzof, ten years younger, would extirp

The invaders, and our drama finish here,

With Bonaparte a captive or a corpse.

But he is old; death even has beckoned him;

And thus the so near-seeming happens not.

[NAPOLEON himself can be discerned amid the rest, marching on foot

through the snowflakes, in a fur coat and with a stout staff in his

hand.  Further back NEY is visible with the remains of the rear.

There is something behind the regular columns like an articulated

tail, and as they draw on, it shows itself to be a disorderly rabble

of followers of both sexes.  So the whole miscellany arrives at the

foreground, where it is checked by a large river across the track.

The soldiers themselves, like the rabble, are in motley raiment,

some wearing rugs for warmth, some quilts and curtains, some even

petticoats and other women's clothing.  Many are delirious from

hunger and cold.

But they set about doing what is a necessity for the least hope of

salvation, and throw a bridge across the stream.

The point of vision descends to earth, close to the scene of action.]

SCENE X

THE BRIDGE OF THE BERESINA

[The bridge is over the Beresina at Studzianka.  On each side of

the river are swampy meadows, now hard with frost, while further

back are dense forests.  Ice floats down the deep black stream in

large cakes.]

DUMB SHOW

The French sappers are working up to their shoulders in the water at

the building of the bridge.  Those so immersed work till, stiffened

with ice to immobility, they die from the chill, when others succeed

them.

Cavalry meanwhile attempt to swim their horses across, and some

infantry try to wade through the stream.

Another bridge is begun hard by, the construction of which advances

with greater speed; and it becomes fit for the passage of carriages

and artillery.

NAPOLEON is seen to come across to the homeward bank, which is the

foreground of the scene.  A good portion of the army also, under

DAVOUT, NEY, and OUDINOT, lands by degrees on this side.  But

VICTOR'S corps is yet on the left or Moscow side of the stream,

moving toward the bridge, and PARTONNEAUX with the rear-guard, who

has not yet crossed, is at Borissow, some way below, where there is

an old permanent bridge partly broken.

Enter with speed from the distance the Russians under TCHAPLITZ.

More under TCHICHAGOFF enter the scene down the river on the left

or further bank, and cross by the old bridge of Borissow.  But they

are too far from the new crossing to intercept the French as yet.

PLATOFF with his Cossacks next appears on the stage which is to be

such a tragic one.  He comes from the forest and approaches the left

bank likewise.  So also does WITTGENSTEIN, who strikes in between

the uncrossed VICTOR and PARTONNEAUX.  PLATOFF thereupon descends

on the latter, who surrenders with the rear-guard; and thus seven

thousand more are cut off from the already emaciated Grand Army.

TCHAPLITZ, of TCHICHAGOFF'S division, has meanwhile got round by the

old bridge at Borissow to the French side of the new one, and attacks