________________________________________________
_ PART FIRST. ACT FOURTH. SCENE IV.
[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 top of the Frauenberg hard by. The united corps
of LANNES and NEY descend on the inner slope of the heights towards
the city walls, in the rear of the retreating Austrians. One
of the French columns scales a bastion, but NAPOLEON orders the
assault to be discontinued, and with the wane of day the spectacle
disappears. _
Read next: Part 1: Act 4: Scene 5. The Same. The Michaelsberg
Read previous: Part 1: Act 4: Scene 3. Ulm. Within The City
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