arching against him, while his
force is only 10,000, he gives battle. Well, he won't give battle to
50,000 Austrians unless he has got something like 35,000. I should say
that after Borodino he would like to have 40,000, at least, against
50,000 Russians. No doubt the English calculate the same way, and, in
Spain, we must admit that we always found them ready to fight when, as
far as numbers went, we outmatched them. So I take it that the
difference between the fighting powers of armies is not felt so much as
you would think by each soldier, because allowance for that is made by
the generals on both sides, and the soldiers find themselves always
handicapped just in proportion to their fighting powers. So you see
there is a big element of luck in it. The question of ground comes in,
and climate, and so on. Now, taking Spain, though 10,000 against 50,000
would be fair enough odds in a fight in the open, if a hundred of us
were attacked by 500 Spaniards among the mountains, it would go very
hard with us. And, again, though 1000 Frenchmen might repulse 3000 of
those Mamelukes if they attacked us in the cool of the morning or in the
evening, yet if we were caught in the middle of the day, with the sun
blazing down, and parched with thirst, we might succumb. Then, of
course, the question of generals counts for a great deal. So you see
that even supposing both sides agree, as it were, as to the fighting
powers of their troops, the element of luck counts for a lot, and before
you begin to fight you can never feel sure that you are going to win."

"Well, but we do win almost everywhere, Brison."

"Yes, yes; because we have Napoleon and Ney and Soult and the rest of
them. We have had to fight hard many and many a time, and if the battle
had been fought between the same armies with a change of generals,
things would have gone quite differently to what they did."

"You were with Napoleon in Egypt, were you not?" Julian asked.

"Yes, I was there; and, bad as this desolate country is, I would anyhow
rather campaign here than in Egypt. The sun seems to scorch into your
very brain, and you are suffocated by dust. Drink as much as you will,
you are always tormented by thirst. It is a level plain, for the most
part treeless, and with nothing to break the view but the mud villages,
which are the same colour as the soil. Bah! we loathed them. And yet I
ought not to say anything against the villages, for, if it had not been
for one of th