Couple of Questions regarding Death Eaters and the Dark Mark

[eireschilde at btinternet.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 29275

Hi all :waves: 


I'm Eire, I'm 24 and hail from Glasgow Scotland.  I'm quite new to 
the list so I am unsure if these topics have been discussed before, 
if so I apologise, but this was just some thing's that occurred to me 
at the end of Book 4.

At the graveyard scene Voldermort calls his deatheaters to his side 
by using the dark mark, the first thing that struck me here was how 
few of them there were.

You had  the usual suspects, Crabbe, Goyle, Malfoy, McNair and he 
also mentioned some in Azkaban, some dead and the 3 missing, Crouch, 
Snape and Karakoff.  All in all this doesn't amount to a very large 
bunch maybe around 20? People, but from Sirius' description of the 
last reign of the Dark Lord, I was assuming that he had many 
followers, at least 50 or more, in order for him to wreak the havoc 
that he did.  

One conclusion I reached, is maybe a large mass of them were people 
under the imperious curse? Which lead me to another point that 
confused me if ALL of LV's supporters were branded with the Dark Mark 
(and this was then used to locate and call them), would this have 
included those under the imperious curse? And if so why were they not 
called the night of the graveyard? If only those who willingly joined 
the Death Eaters were branded with the mark, then why was this not 
used to identify, those who worked for him under their own free will 
and those who joined him willingly, after his disappearance.

As I said, I'm unsure if this topic has already been done to death as 
I have not yet braved your archives, but it was just a couple of 
niggly thoughts I had