Napoleon's generals--Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were in proximity to the zone of fire and even occasionally rode into it--several ties led huge and orderly masses of troops into the zone of fire. But contrary to what had invariably happened in all previous battles, instead of the expected news of the enemy's flight, the orderly masses of troops came back from there as disorderly, frightened crowds. They restored them to order, but the men were becoming fewer. Halfway through the day, Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon to ask for reinforcements.
Napoleon was sitting at the foot of the barrow and drinking punch when Murat's adjutant galloped up to him with assurances that the Russians would be crushed if his majesty gave them one more division.
Reinforcements?" said Napoleon, with stern astonishment, as if failing to understand his words and gazing at the handsome boy-adjutant with his long, curled black hair (the same way Murat did his hair), "Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon. "What sort of reinforcements can they ask for, when they've got half an army in their hands direcfted against a weak, unfortified Russian wing!
"Dites au roi de Naples," Napoleon said sternly, "qu'il n'est pas midi et que je ne vois pas encore clair sur mon échiquier. Allez ..."
--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 753 (Pevear and Volokhonsky trans. 2008)
[i.e., "Tell the king of Naples that it's not yet midday, and that I still don't see my chessboard clearly. Go ..." Tolstoy published a good deal of the dialogue of this Russian novel in French. Pevear and Volokhonsky leave it in French.
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