The Emperor did not tell everything to Josephine; he said nothing about the terrible vicissitudes of the battle, a victory scarcely to be distinguished from a defeat; he kept silence about the cruel sufferings of his army which, without having eaten, had fought amid blinding snow beneath a leaden sky; he said no word about the regiments destroyed, one in particular, from colonel to drummers, all killed or wounded; he did not mention his own danger in the cemetery on the hill, where he had stood surrounded by his Guard, his last resource, anxiously watching the fight from its beginning, slashing the snow with his whip, and exclaiming at the approach of the Russian Grenadiers as they advanced towards him, "What audacity!" He did not say that after the terrible and fruitless bloodshed, which both armies claimed as a victory, he had been obliged to withdraw, and that Bennigsen had taken possession of the hotly disputed battle- field. He did not say what he was about to say in his bulletins: "Imagine, on a space a league square, nine or ten thousand corpses; four or five thousand dead horses; lines of Russian knapsacks; fragments of guns and sabres: the earth covered with bullets, shells, supplies; twenty-four cannon, surrounded by their artillery-men, slain just as they were trying to take their guns away; and all that in plainest relief on the stretch of snow." He did not quote the words he uttered in the biting frost, in face of thousands of dead and dying, when the gloomy day was sinking into a night of anguish: "This sight is one to fill rulers with a love of peace and a horror of war." No; the Emperor did not tell her everything. In another letter, dated Eylau, February 11, 8 A.M., the Emperor tried to reassure the Empress: "I send you a line: you must have been very anxious, I fought the enemy on a memorable day which cost me many brave men. The bad weather drove me into winter quarters. Do not distress yourself, I beg of you; it will all be over soon, and my delight at seeing you once more will soon make me forget my fatigue. Besides, I have never been better. Little Tascher, of the fourth of the line, did well; and he had a hard experience. I have given him a place near me, in the artillery; so his troubles are over. The young man interests me. Good by, my dear; a thousand kisses."