not. The plateau seems deserted!

NAPOLEON

Gone; verily!--Ah, how much will you bid,
An hour hence, for the coign abandoned now!
The battle's ours.--It was, then, their rash march
Downwards to Tilnitz and the Goldbach swamps
Before dawn, that we heard.--No hurry, Lannes!
Enjoy this sun, that rests its chubby jowl
Upon the plain, and thrusts its bristling beard
Across the lowlands' fleecy counterpane,
Peering beneath our broadest hat-brims' shade....
Soult, how long hence to win the Pratzen top?

SOULT

Some twenty minutes or less, your Majesty:
Our troops down there, still mantled by the mist,
Are half upon the way.

NAPOLEON

Good! Set forthwith
Vandamme and Saint Hilaire to mount the slopes---

[Firing begins in the marsh to the right by Tilnitz and the pools,
though the thick air yet hides the operations.]

O, there you are, blind boozy Buxhovden!
Achieve your worst. Davout will hold you firm.

[The head of and aide-de-camp rises through the fog on that
side, and he hastens up to NAPOLEON and his companions, to whom
the officer announces what has happened. DAVOUT rides off,
disappearing legs first into the white stratum that covers the
attack.]

Lannes and Murat, you have concern enough
Here on the left, with Prince Bagration
And all the Austro-Russian cavalry.
Haste off. The victory promising to-day
Will, like a thunder-clap, conclude the war!

[The Marshals with their aides gallop away towards their respective
divisions. Soon the two divisions under SOULT are seen ascending
in close column the inclines of the Pratzen height. Thereupon the
heads of the Russian centre columns disclose themselves, breaking
the sky-line of the summit from the other side, in a desperate
attempt to regain the position vacated by the Russian left. A
fierce struggle develops there between SOULT'S divisions and these,
who, despite their tardy attempt to recover the lost post of
dominance, are pressed by the French off the slopes into the
lowland.]

SEMICHORUS I OF THE PITIES [aerial music]

O Great Necessitator, heed us now!
If it indeed must be
That this day Austria smoke with slaughtery,
Quicken the issue as Thou knowest how;
And dull their lodgment in a flesh that galls!

SEMICHORUS II

If it be in the future human