adness as we shoulder now
Will wring us down to sleep in stall or stye,
If even that be found!... Think! Bonaparte,
By reckless riskings of his life and limb,
Has turned the steelyard of our strength to-day
Whilst I have idled here!... May brighter times
Attend the cause of Europe far in Spain,
And British blood flow not, as ours, in vain!

[Exeunt the EMPEROR FRANCIS, minister, officers, and attendants.
The night comes, and the scene is obscured.]

SCENE IV

THE FIELD OF TALAVERA

[It is the same month and weather as in the preceding scene.

Talavera town, on the river Tagus, is at the extreme right of the
foreground; a mountain range on the extreme left.

The allied army under SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY stretches between--the
English on the left, the Spanish on the right--part holding a hill
to the left-centre of the scene, divided from the mountains by a
valley, and part holding a redoubt to the right-centre. This army
of more than fifty thousand all told, of which twenty-two thousand
only are English, has its back to the spectator.

Beyond, in a wood of olive, oak, and cork, are the fifty to sixty
thousand French, facing the spectator and the allies. Their right
includes a strong battery upon a hill which fronts the one on the
English left.

Behind all, the heights of Salinas close the prospect, the small
river Alberche flowing at their foot from left to right into the
Tagus, which advances in foreshortened perspective to the town at
the right front corner of the scene as aforesaid.]

DUMB SHOW

The hot and dusty July afternoon having turned to twilight, shady
masses of men start into motion from the French position, come towards
the foreground, silently ascend the hill on the left of the English,
and assail the latter in a violent outburst of fire and lead. They
nearly gain possession of the hill ascended.

CHORUS OF RUMOURS [aerial music]

Talavera tongues it as ten o' the night-time:
Now come Ruffin's slaughterers surging upward,
Backed by bold Vilatte's! From the vale Lapisse, too,
Darkly outswells there!

Down the vague veiled incline the English fling them,
Bended bayonets prodding opponents backward:
So the first fierce charge of the ardent Frenchmen
England repels there!

Having fallen back into the darknes