Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1088 page)

assault.  Its columns have borne upon HALKETT'S right.  HALKETT,

desperate to keep his wavering men firm, himself seizes and

waves the flag of the Thirty-third, in which act he falls wounded.

But the men rally.  Meanwhile the Fifty-second, covered by the

Seventy-first, has advanced across the front, and charges the

Imperial Guard on the flank.

The third echelon next arrives at the English lines and squares;

rushes through the very focus of their fire, and seeing nothing

more in front, raises a shout.

IMPERIAL GUARD

The Emperor!  It's victory!

WELLINGTON

     Stand up, Guards!

Form line upon the front face of the square!

[Two thousand of MAITLAND'S Guards, hidden in the hollow roadway,

thereupon spring up, form as ordered, and reveal themselves as a

fence of leveled firelocks four deep.  The flints click in a

multitude, the pans flash, and volley after volley is poured into

the bear-skinned figures of the massed French, who kill COLONEL

D'OYLEY in returning fire.]

WELLINGTON

Now drive the fellows in!  Go on; go on!

You'll do it now!

[COLBORNE converges on the French guard with the Fifty-second, and

The former splits into two as the climax comes.  ADAM, MAITLAND,

and COLBORNE pursue their advantage.  The Imperial columns are

broken, and their confusion is increased by grape-shot from

BOLTON'S battery.]

     Campbell, this order next:

Vivian's hussars are to support, and bear

Against the cavalry towards Belle Alliance.

Go—let him know.

[Sir C. CAMPBELL departs with the order.  Soon VIVIAN'S and

VANDELEUR'S light horse are seen advancing, and in due time the

French cavalry are rolled back.

WELLINGTON goes in the direction of the hussars with UXBRIDGE.  A

cannon-shot hisses past.]

UXBRIDGE
[starting]

I have lost my leg, by God!

WELLINGTON

By God, and have you!  Ay—the wind o' the shot

Blew past the withers of my Copenhagen

Like the foul sweeping of a witch's broom.—

Aha—they are giving way!

[While UXBRIDGE is being helped to the rear, WELLINGTON makes a

sign to SALTOUN, Colonel of the First Footguards.]

SALTOUN
[shouting]

     Boys, now's your time;

Forward and win!

FRENCH VOICES

The Guard gives way—we are beaten!

[They recede down the hill, carrying confusion into NAPOLEON'S

centre just as the Prussians press forward at a right angle from

the other side of the field.  NAPOLEON is seen standing in the

hollow beyond La Haye Sainte, alone, except for the presence of

COUNT FLAHAULT, his aide-de-camp.  His lips move with sudden

exclamation.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

He says "Now all is lost!  The clocks of the world

Strike my last empery-hour."

[Towards La Haye Sainte the French of DONZELOT and ALLIX, who

are fighting KEMPT, PACK, KRUSE, and LAMBERT, seeing what has

happened to the Old and Middle Guard, lose heart and recede

likewise; so that the whole French line rolls back like a tide.

Simultaneously the Prussians are pressing forward at Papelotte

and La Haye.  The retreat of the French grows into a panic.]

FRENCH VOICES
[despairingly]

We are betrayed!

[WELLINGTON rides at a gallop to the most salient point of the

English position, halts, and waves his hat as a signal to all

the army.  The sign is answered by a cheer along the length of

the line.]

WELLINGTON

No cheering yet, my lads; but bear ahead,

Before the inflamed face of the west out there

Dons blackness.  So you'll round your victory!

[The few aides that are left unhurt dart hither and thither with

this message, and the whole English host and it allies advance

in an ordered mass down the hill except some of the artillery,

who cannot get their wheels over the bank of corpses in front.

Trumpets, drums, and bugles resound with the advance.

The streams of French fugitives as they run are cut down and shot

by their pursuers, whose clothes and contracted features are

blackened by smoke and cartridge-biting, and soiled with loam

and blood.  Some French blow out their own brains as they fly.

The sun drops below the horizon while the slaughter goes on.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Is this the last Esdraelon of a moil

For mortal man's effacement?

SPIRIT IRONIC

          Warfare, mere,

Plied by the Managed for the Managers;

To wit: by frenzied folks who profit nought

For those who profit all!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

          Between the jars

Of these who live, I hear uplift and move

The bones of those who placidly have lain

Within the sacred garths of yon grey fanes—

Nivelles, and Plancenoit, and Braine l'Alleud—

Beneath the unmemoried mounds through deedless years

Their dry jaws quake: "What Sabaoath is this,

That shakes us in our unobtrusive shrouds,

As though our tissues did not yet abhor

The fevered feats of life?"

SPIRIT IRONIC

          Mere fancy's feints!

How know the coffined what comes after them,

Even though it whirl them to the Pleiades?—

Turn to the real.

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

          That hatless, smoke-smirched shape

There in the vale, is still the living Ney,

His sabre broken in his hand, his clothes

Slitten with ploughing ball and bayonet,

One epaulette shorn away.  He calls out "Follow!"

And a devoted handful follow him

Once more into the carnage.  Hear his voice.

NEY
[calling afar]

My friends, see how a Marshal of France can die!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Alas, not here in battle, something hints,

But elsewhere!... Who's the sworded brother-chief

Swept past him in the tumult?

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

          D'Erlon he.

Ney cries to him:

NEY

     Be sure of this, my friend,

If we don't perish here at English hands,

Nothing is left us but the halter-noose

The Bourbons will provide!

SPIRIT IRONIC

          A caustic wit,

And apt, to those who deal in adumbrations!

[The brave remnant of the Imperial Guard repulses for a time the

English cavalry under Vivian, in which MAJOR HOWARD and LIEUTENANT

GUNNING of the Tenth Hussars are shot.  But the war-weary French

cannot cope with the pursuing infantry, helped by grape-shot from

the batteries.

NAPOLEON endeavours to rally them.  It is his last effort as a

warrior; and the rally ends feebly.]

NAPOLEON

They are crushed!  So it has ever been since Crecy!

[He is thrown violently off his horse, and bids his page bring

another, which he mounts, and is lost to sight.]

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

He loses his last chance of dying well!

[The three or four heroic battalions of the Old and Middle Guard

fall back step by step, halting to reform in square when they

get badly broken and shrunk.  At last they are surrounded by the

English Guards and other foot, who keep firing on them and smiting

them to smaller and smaller numbers.  GENERAL CAMBRONNE is inside

the square.]

COLONEL HUGH HALKETT
[shouting]

Surrender!  And preserve those heroes' lives!

CAMBRONNE
[with exasperation]

Mer-r-rde!... You've to deal with desperates, man, today:

Life is a byword here!

[Hollow laughter, as from people in hell, comes approvingly from

the remains of the Old Guard.  The English proceed with their

massacre, the devoted band thins and thins, and a ball strikes

CAMBRONNE, who falls, and is trampled over.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Observe that all wide sight and self-command

Desert these throngs now driven to demonry

By the Immanent Unrecking.  Nought remains

But vindictiveness here amid the strong,

And there amid the weak an impotent rage.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Why prompts the Will so senseless-shaped a doing?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

I have told thee that It works unwittingly,

As one possessed, not judging.

SEMICHORUS I OF IRONIC SPIRITS
[aerial music]

Of Its doings if It knew,

What It does It would not do!

SEMICHORUS II

Since It knows not, what far sense

Speeds Its spinnings in the Immense?

SEMICHORUS I

None; a fixed foresightless dream

Is Its whole philosopheme.

SEMICHORUS II

Just so; an unconscious planning,

Like a potter raptly panning!

CHORUS

Are then, Love and Light Its aim—

Good Its glory, Bad Its blame?

Nay; to alter evermore

Things from what they were before.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Your knowings of the Unknowable declared,

Let the last pictures of the play be bared.

[Enter, fighting, more English and Prussians against the French.

NEY is caught by the throng and borne ahead.  RULLIERE hides an

eagle beneath his coat and follows Ney.  NAPOLEON is involved

none knows where in the crowd of fugitives.

WELLINGTON and BLUCHER come severally to the view.  They meet in

the dusk and salute warmly.  The Prussian bands strike up "God save

the King" as the two shake hands.  From his gestures of assent it

can be seen that WELLINGTON accepts BLUCHER'S offer to pursue.

The reds disappear from the sky, and the dusk grows deeper.  The

action of the battle degenerates to a hunt, and recedes further

and further into the distance southward.  When the tramplings

and shouts of the combatants have dwindled, the lower sounds are

noticeable that come from the wounded: hopeless appeals, cries

for water, elaborate blasphemies, and impotent execrations of

Heaven and hell.  In the vast and dusky shambles black slouching

shapes begin to move, the plunderers of the dead and dying.

The night grows clear and beautiful, and the moon shines musingly

down.  But instead of the sweet smell of green herbs and dewy rye

as at her last beaming upon these fields, there is now the stench

of gunpowder and a muddy stew of crushed crops and gore.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

So hath the Urging Immanence used to-day

Its inadvertent might to field this fray:

And Europe's wormy dynasties rerobe

Themselves in their old gilt, to dazzle anew the globe!

[The scene us curtained by a night-mist.[25]
]

SCENE IX

THE WOOD OF BOSSU

[It is midnight.  NAPOLEON enters a glade of the wood, a solitary

figure on a faded horse.  The shadows of the boughs travel over

his listless form as he moves along.  The horse chooses its own

path, comes to a standstill, and feeds.  The tramp of BERTRAND,

SOULT, DROUOT, and LOBAU'S horses, gone forward in hope to find

a way of retreat, is heard receding over the hill.]

NAPOLEON
[to himself, languidly]

Here should have been some troops of Gerard's corps,

Left to protect the passage of the convoys,

Yet they, too, fail.... I have nothing more to lose,

But life!

[Flocks of fugitive soldiers pass along the adjoining road without

seeing him.  NAPOLEON'S head droops lower and lower as he sits

listless in the saddle, and he falls into a fitful sleep.  The

moon shines upon his face, which is drawn and waxen.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

"Sic diis immortalibus placet,"—

"Thus is it pleasing to the immortal gods,"

As earthlings used to say.  Thus, to this last,

The Will in thee has moved thee, Bonaparte,

As we say now.

NAPOLEON
[starting]

     Whose frigid tones are those,

Breaking upon my lurid loneliness

So brusquely?... Yet, 'tis true, I have ever know