"Nearly eight thousand?" Napoleon frowned and said to the staff officer, "First, let those whose families have no adult males under forty-five return home.
"Have the rest run eight laps around the training ground. Anyone who cannot understand the commands or runs about everywhere is to be dismissed.
"Keep only the first four thousand to finish."
Over the past few days, he had visited the various tribes and learned that frequent famines had left many natives in very poor physical condition. Those people had to be screened out.
Of course, the most important reason for limiting the army's size was the number of officers.
The French and people from Spain in the Colony combined had only twenty-two mid-ranking officers or above, and fewer than one hundred ninety noncommissioned officers.
These officers could manage at most three thousand men. Even after promoting some through training, the total number of soldiers should not exceed five thousand.
As for the Indians, who had never encountered modern methods of warfare, they were fundamentally unfit to serve as officers.
Three days later, the selection was complete. Four thousand young Indians eagerly joined the "Holy Knight Order"—a name Father Vigne had chosen to heighten the ritual atmosphere of crusading against heretics.
Early the next morning, these indigenous warriors began their first joint drill with the Colony's white soldiers.
Then Napoleon, the commander most skilled at using recruits, nearly collapsed.
At least half of them had put on their Military Uniforms wrong—some wore them back to front, while even more had buttoned them incorrectly.
By noon, the several thousand men still had not even managed to form up.
More precisely, they had not yet understood what "forming ranks" meant.
A few days later, Napoleon simply threw the training to his deputy, Major Brasseur, and went to stare