Robert Browning

Camp (French)

i.

Ratisbon = Regensburg

Battle of Ratisbon, April 23, 1809—Napoleon defeated the Austrians. Browning uses the French name; the city is now Regensburg, Germany.

You know we French stormed Ratisbon:
⁠A mile or so away
On a little mound, Napoléon
⁠Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
⁠Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
⁠Oppressive with its mind.
ii.
Just as perhaps he mused "My plans
⁠"That soar, to earth may fall
"Let once my army-leader Lannes

Marshal Lannes

Jean Lannes, one of Napoleon's most trusted marshals. He was actually wounded at this battle and died eight days later—the historical irony Browning's playing with.

"Waver at yonder wall."
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew
⁠A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
⁠Until he reached the mound.
iii.
Then off there flung in smiling joy,
⁠And held himself erect
By just his horse's mane, a boy:
⁠You hardly could suspect—
(So tight he kept his lips compressed
⁠Scarce any blood came thro')
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
⁠Was all but shot in two.
iv.
"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace
⁠We've got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal's in the market-place,
⁠And you'll be there anon

flag-bird

The French eagle standard. Napoleon replaced royal flags with eagles modeled on Roman legions—the boy is saying he planted it in the town square.

To see your flag-bird flap his vans
⁠Where I, to heart's desire,
Perched him!" The Chief's eye flashed; his plans
⁠Soared up again like fire.
v.
The Chief's eye flashed; but presently
⁠Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye
⁠When her bruised eaglet breathes:
"You're wounded!" "Nay," his soldier's pride
⁠Touched to the quick, he said:
"I'm killed, Sire!" And, his Chief beside,

"I'm killed, Sire!"

The grammatical precision matters: not "I'm dying" (future) or "I'm wounded" (survivable), but "I'm killed" (already done). He corrects Napoleon's euphemism with military accuracy.

⁠Smiling the boy fell dead.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Dramatic Monologue Trick

The poem pretends to be told by a French soldier—"You know we French stormed Ratisbon"—but Browning was English, writing in 1842, decades after Waterloo. This ventriloquism lets him admire Napoleon's magnetism without endorsing it. The speaker is caught up in imperial glory; the reader sees the cost.

Watch how Browning builds the reveal. Stanza III delays the wound for four lines: the boy dismounts "in smiling joy," holds himself upright, keeps his lips compressed. Only then—"You looked twice ere you saw his breast / Was all but shot in two." The casual "You hardly could suspect" makes the reader complicit in not noticing. We're as dazzled by the performance as Napoleon is.

The title "Camp (French)" signals this is one perspective on war. Browning wrote companion pieces from other viewpoints—this is deliberately partial, the view from inside the cult of personality.

Eagle Imagery and Imperial Myth

Napoleon rebuilt French identity around Roman symbols—the eagle standards, the imperial purple, the idea of citizen-soldiers dying for glory. The boy's speech is soaked in this mythology: "your flag-bird flap his vans" (vans = wings), "Where I, to heart's desire, / Perched him!" He's internalized the propaganda so completely he describes his own death as wish-fulfillment.

Browning then flips the eagle image: "as sheathes / A film the mother-eagle's eye / When her bruised eaglet breathes." Napoleon becomes the maternal eagle, the boy a "bruised eaglet." But this tenderness is structural to the system—the empire needs boys willing to die smiling. The "film" that sheathes the eye suggests both protection and a veil, something that obscures clear sight.

The final line—"Smiling the boy fell dead"—refuses commentary. No moral, no outrage, just the event. Browning trusts you to feel the horror underneath the heroic surface. The French speaker can't see it; the English reader in 1842 is meant to.