The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dynasts, by Thomas Hardy

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Title: The Dynasts
An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts,
Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release Date: May, 2003 [Etext #4043]
Posting Date: December 10, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DYNASTS ***

Produced by Douglas Levy

THE DYNASTS

By Thomas Hardy

AN EPIC-DRAMA OF THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON,

IN THREE PARTS, NINETEEN ACTS, AND

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SCENES

The Time covered by the Action being about ten Years

"And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,
And trumpets blown for wars."

PREFACE

The Spectacle here presented in the likeness of a Drama is concerned
with the Great Historical Calamity, or Clash of Peoples, artificially
brought about some hundred years ago.

The choice of such a subject was mainly due to three accidents of
locality. It chanced that the writer was familiar with a part of
England that lay within hail of the watering-place in which King
George the Third had his favourite summer residence during the war
with the first Napoleon, and where he was visited by ministers and
others who bore the weight of English affairs on their more or less
competent shoulders at that stressful time. Secondly, this district,
being also near the coast which had echoed with rumours of invasion
in their intensest form while the descent threatened, was formerly
animated by memories and traditions of the desperate military
preparations for that contingency. Thirdly, the same countryside
happened to include the village which was the birthplace of Nelson's
flag-captain at Trafalgar.

When, as the first published result of these accidents, _The Trumpet
Major_ was printed, more than twenty years ago, I found myself in
the tantalizing position of having touched the fringe of a vast
international tragedy without being able, through limits of plan,
knowledge, and opportunity, to enter further into its events; a
restriction that prevailed for many years. But the slight regard
paid to English influe