Your Majesty, I now have to suggest, Pursuant to conclusions reached this morn, That since the front and flower of all our force Is seen receding to the Bisamberg, These walls no longer yield safe shade for you, Or facile outlook. Scouts returning say Either Davout, or Bonaparte himself, With the mid-columns of his forward corps, Will bear up hitherward in fierce pursuit, And may intrude beneath this very roof. Not yet, I think; it may not be to-night; But we should stand prepared. FRANCIS If we must go We'll go with a good grace, unfeignedly! Who knows to-morrow may not see regained What we have lost to-day? [Re-enter fourth aide-de-camp.] FOURTH AIDE [breathlessly] The Archduke John, Discerning our main musters in retreat, Abandons an advance that throws on him The enemy's whole brunt if he bear on. FRANCIS Alas for his devotion! Let us go. Such weight of sadness 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]