w 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 t