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    The Man of Destiny
    The Man of Destiny
    The Man of Destiny
    Ebook61 pages

    The Man of Destiny

    By George Bernard Shaw

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    About this ebook

    "The Man of Destiny" by George Bernard Shaw is a captivating one-act play that weaves together history, romance, and wit. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the play follows the encounter between a young and ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte and a mysterious woman, known only as the lady. The story begins in a remote inn in Italy, where Napoleon is waiting for a message from his superiors. The lady arrives unexpectedly and engages Napoleon in a battle of wits and intellect. As the two engage in a series of clever and humorous exchanges, it becomes apparent that the lady is not what she seems.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInteractive Media
    Release dateAug 17, 2018
    ISBN9781787247840
    The Man of Destiny
    Author

    George Bernard Shaw

    George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and moved to London in 1876. He initially wrote novels then went on to achieve fame through his career as a journalist, critic and public speaker. A committed and active socialist, he was one of the leaders of the Fabian Society. He was a prolific and much lauded playwright and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in 1950.

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      Book preview

      The Man of Destiny - George Bernard Shaw

      cover.jpg

      George Bernard Shaw

      The Man of Destiny

      Published by Sovereign

      This edition first published in 2018

      Copyright © 2018 Sovereign

      All Rights Reserve

      ISBN: 9781787247840

      Contents

      THE MAN OF DESTINY

      THE MAN OF DESTINY

      The twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavazzano, on the road from Lodi to Milan. The afternoon sun is blazing serenely over the plains of Lombardy, treating the Alps with respect and the anthills with indulgence, not incommoded by the basking of the swine and oxen in the villages nor hurt by its cool reception in the churches, but fiercely disdainful of two hordes of mischievous insects which are the French and Austrian armies. Two days before, at Lodi, the Austrians tried to prevent the French from crossing the river by the narrow bridge there; but the French, commanded by a general aged 27, Napoleon Bonaparte, who does not understand the art of war, rushed the fireswept bridge, supported by a tremendous cannonade in which the young general assisted with his own hands. Cannonading is his technical specialty; he has been trained in the artillery under the old regime, and made perfect in the military arts of shirking his duties, swindling the paymaster over travelling expenses, and dignifying war with the noise and smoke of cannon, as depicted in all military portraits. He is, however, an original observer, and has perceived, for the first time since the invention of gunpowder, that a cannon ball, if it strikes a man, will kill him. To a thorough grasp of this remarkable discovery, he adds a highly evolved faculty for physical geography and for the calculation of times and distances. He has prodigious powers of work, and a clear, realistic knowledge of human nature in public affairs, having seen it exhaustively tested in that department during the French Revolution. He is imaginative without illusions, and creative without religion, loyalty, patriotism or any of the common ideals. Not that he is incapable of these ideals: on the contrary, he has swallowed them all in his boyhood, and now, having a keen dramatic faculty, is extremely clever at playing upon them by the arts of the actor and stage manager. Withal, he is no spoiled child. Poverty, ill-luck, the shifts of impecunious shabby-gentility, repeated failure as a would-be author, humiliation as a rebuffed time server, reproof and punishment as an incompetent and dishonest officer, an escape from dismissal from the service so narrow that if the emigration of the nobles had not raised the value of even the most rascally lieutenant to the famine price of a general he would have been swept contemptuously from the army: these trials have ground the conceit out of him, and forced him to be self-sufficient and to understand that to such men as he is the world will give nothing that he cannot take from it by force. In this the world is not free from cowardice and folly; for Napoleon, as a merciless cannonader of political rubbish, is making himself useful. indeed, it is even now impossible to live in England without sometimes feeling how much that country lost in not being conquered by him as well as by Julius Caesar.

      However, on this May afternoon in 1796, it is early days with him. He is only 26, and has but recently become a general, partly by using his wife to seduce the Directory (then governing France) partly by the scarcity of officers caused by the emigration as aforesaid; partly by his faculty of knowing a country, with all its roads, rivers, hills and valleys, as he knows the palm of his hand; and largely by that new faith of his in the efficacy of firing cannons at people. His army is, as to discipline, in a state which has so greatly shocked some modern writers before whom the following story has been enacted, that they, impressed with the later glory of L’Empereur, have altogether refused to credit it. But Napoleon is not L’Empereur yet: he has only just been dubbed Le Petit Caporal, and is in the stage of gaining influence over his men by displays of pluck. He is not in a position to force his will on them, in orthodox military fashion, by the cat o’ nine tails. The French Revolution, which has escaped suppression solely through the monarchy’s habit of being at least four years in arrear with its soldiers in the matter of pay, has substituted for that habit, as far as possible, the habit of not paying at all, except in promises and patriotic flatteries which are not compatible with martial law of

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