Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/214

198 and while he was on horseback, he would go back to the chasseurs and himself count the regiment. When nightfall came Marbot approached the Imperial head-quarters:

"I was taken in, and found him lying at full length on an immense map spread on the floor. As soon as he saw me he called out, 'Well, Marbot, how many mounted chasseurs are there present in my guard? Are there twelve hundred of them, as Morland declares?' 'No, sir, I only counted eleven hundred and twenty, that is to say, eighty short.' 'I was quite sure that there were a great many missing.' The tone in which the Emperor pronounced these last words proved that he expected a much larger deficit; and, indeed, if there had been only eighty men missing in a regiment of twelve hundred which has just marched five hundred leagues in winter, sleeping almost every night in the open air, it would have been very little. So when the Emperor, on his way to dinner, crossed the room where the commanders of the guard were assembled, he merely said to Morland, 'You see now you've got eighty chasseurs missing; it is nearly a squadron. With eighty of these fellows one might stop a Russian regiment. You must keep a tight hand to stop the men from falling out.' Then passing on to the commander of the foot grenadiers, whose effective strength had also been much weakened, Napoleon reprimanded him severely. Morland,