Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Man of Destiny
    The Man of Destiny
    The Man of Destiny
    Ebook59 pages1 hour

    The Man of Destiny

    By George Bernard Shaw

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    "The Man of Destiny" is one of Shaw's shorter works, just a one act play, in which we see the mastery of character development that is so common to the playwright's works. The play is an investigation of a young twenty-seven year old general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte who has yet to achieve the accomplishments for which make him such an important figure in world history. In the play we find him waiting impatiently at an inn on the road between Lodi and Milan for a packet of dispatches to arrive, in which he will discover the truth of a personal betrayal. With rich dialogue and dramatic style Shaw delivers within this short little work a satisfying character study and a portrait of the everyday life of a great man prior to his greatness.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781596749580
    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.

    Read more from George Bernard Shaw

    Related to The Man of Destiny

    Related ebooks

    Performing Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      From Ballroom To Battlefield

      Feb 20, 2020

      From Ballroom To Battlefield
      5 min read

    • Article

      Witness To The White War

      Jan 4, 2022

      Witness To The White War
      23 min read

    • Article

      Georges Clemenceau

      Aug 2, 2023

      Georges Clemenceau
      7 min read

    • Article

      All At Sea

      Jun 10, 2021

      Your novel is set in early 19th-century Britain – what was the atmosphere then? Britain went to war with France after years of anxiety about the revolution: would revolution happen here? The government was repressive; there were masses of spies. Then

      1 min read

    • Article

      Redefining Bonaparte

      Mar 21, 2019

      Redefining Bonaparte
      9 min read

    • Article

      Last Portion Of Chips

      Sep 21, 2022

      Last Portion Of Chips
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Two Argonnes

      Feb 23, 2018

      The Two Argonnes
      24 min read

    • Article

      The Rise Of Napoleon

      Nov 2, 2023

      The Rise Of Napoleon
      10 min read

    • Article

      Boney’s PR man

      Feb 23, 2023

      ANTOINE-JEAN GROS WAS BORN in 1771 and would go on to become one of the most significant artists of the Napoleonic era. It was Gros above all others who captured Le petit caporal both as he climbed to power and in his pomp. After Napoleon’s final def

      3 min read

    • Article

      Boney’s PR man

      Feb 23, 2023

      ANTOINE-JEAN GROS WAS BORN in 1771 and would go on to become one of the most significant artists of the Napoleonic era. It was Gros above all others who captured Le petit caporal both as he climbed to power and in his pomp. After Napoleon’s final def

      3 min read

    • Article

      Napoleon A Life In Objects

      Apr 15, 2021

      Napoleon’s school compass (below) is a reminder of the rudimentary beginnings of his career. Made from wood, copper and leather, it was his introduction to strategy, used in map drawing and fortification classes. Napoleon, who was born on 15 August 1

      8 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Sep 2, 2021

      Anniversaries
      4 min read

    • Article

      Queen Elizabeth I

      Aug 2, 2023

      Queen Elizabeth I
      6 min read

    • Article

      Battle Of Paris

      Dec 28, 2023

      Battle Of Paris
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Roots Of German Militarism

      Sep 29, 2022

      The Roots Of German Militarism
      5 min read

    • Article

      Louts

      Sep 1, 2019

      Louts
      5 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Jul 8, 2021

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      When In Rome!

      Nov 17, 2022

      When In Rome!
      7 min read

    • Article

      Napoleon's Biggest Battles

      May 11, 2023

      AUGUST– DECEMBER 1793 An audacious raid that announced Napoleon Bonaparte to the world It may not be as celebrated as the likes of Austerlitz or Friedland (see page 37). Yet when it comes to evaluating Napoleon's greatest victories, the Siege of Toul

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Man of Destiny

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Man of Destiny - George Bernard Shaw

      THE MAN OF DESTINY

      BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-3291-1

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59674-958-0

      This edition copyright © 2011

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      THE MAN OF DESTINY

      BY BERNARD SHAW

      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 the Prussian type. Napoleon has therefore approached the Alps in command of men without money, in rags, and consequently indisposed to stand

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1