eat drama to be played, young
Marteau has been necessarily somewhat lost sight of. He was very much
in evidence during that hundred days of feverish and frantic activity.
Napoleon had distinguished him highly. He had given him the rank of a
Colonel of the Guard, but he had still retained him on his staff. Good
and experienced staff-officers were rare, and the Emperor needed all he
could get; he could have used many more than were available. And as
Marteau was one of those who were attached to the Emperor by the double
motive of love of the man and love of his country, believing as he did
that the destiny of the two could not be dissevered, he had served the
Emperor most efficiently, with that blind, passionate devotion to duty
by which men give to a cause the best that is in them and which
sometimes leads them to almost inconceivable heights of achievements.

Suffice it to say that the great strategic conception of Napoleon was
carried out with rather striking success in the first three days of the
campaign. The Emperor, crossing the Sambre, interposed himself between
Wellington and Bluecher, completely deceived the Englishman, who thought
his extreme right was threatened, detached Ney to seize the village of
Quatre Bras, where Wellington had at last decided to concentrate, and
with eighty thousand men fell on the Prussians at Ligny.

Ney did not seize Quatre Bras; Wellington got there ahead of him and
stubbornly held the position. Although Ney had twice the number of
troops at the beginning of the battle that the English Field-Marshal
could muster, they were not well handled and no adequate use was made
of the French preponderance. Napoleon, on the far right of Ney, at
Ligny, on the contrary, fought the Prussians with his old-time skill
and brilliance. The contending forces there were about equal, the
Prussians having the advantage in numbers, but victory finally declared
for the Emperor. It was the last victory, not the least brilliant and
not the least desperately fought of his long career. The importance
and quality of the battle has been lost sight of in the greater
struggle of Waterloo, which took place two days after, but it was a
great battle, nevertheless. One of the crude ways in which to estimate
a battle is by what is called the "butcher's bill" and eighteen
thousand dead and wounded Prussians and twelve thousand Frenchmen tells
its tale. But it was not the decisive battle that Napoleon had plann