ll man, GENERAL
BAGRATION, brings across a division from the Russian right and expels
them resolutely.

Semenovskoye is a commanding height opposite the right of the French,
and held by the Russians. Cannon and columns, infantry and cavalry,
assault it by tens of thousands, but cannot take it.

Aides gallop through the screeching shot and haze of smoke and dust
between NAPOLEON and his various marshals. The Emperor walks about,
looks through his glass, goes to a camp-stool, on which he sits down,
and drinks glasses of spirits and hot water to relieve his still
violent cold, as may be discovered from his red eyes, raw nose,
rheumatic manner when he moves, and thick voice in giving orders.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

So he fulfils the inhuman antickings
He thinks imposed upon him.... What says he?

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

He says it is the sun of Austerlitz!

The Russians, so far from being driven out of their redoubts,
issue from them towards the French. But they have to retreat,
BAGRATION and his Chief of Staff being wounded. NAPOLEON sips
his grog hopefully, and orders a still stronger attack on the
great redoubt in the centre.

It is carried out. The redoubt becomes the scene of a huge
massacre. In other parts of the field also the action almost
ceases to be a battle, and takes the form of wholesale butchery
by the thousand, now advantaging one side, now the other.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Thus do the mindless minions of the spell
In mechanized enchantment sway and show
A Will that wills above the will of each,
Yet but the will of all conjunctively;
A fabric of excitement, web of rage,
That permeates as one stuff the weltering whole.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

The ugly horror grossly regnant here
Wakes even the drowsed half-drunken Dictator
To all its vain uncouthness!

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

Murat cries
That on this much-anticipated day
Napoleon's genius flags inoperative.

The firing from the top of the redoubt has ceased. The French have
got inside. The Russians retreat upon their rear, and fortify
themselves on the heights there. PONIATOWSKI furiously attacks them.
But the French are worn out, and fall back to their station before
the battle. So the combat dies resultlessly away. The sun sets, and
the opposed and exhaus