The Emperor, who set out on the 12th at three in the morning, had gone over the fortifications of Soissons and Laon in his way, and arrived at Avesnes on the 13th. His anxious thoughts were incessantly turned toward Paris. Placed as it were between two fires, he seemed less to dread the enemies he had before him, than those he left behind.
On the 14th of June the whole of his forces amounted to three hundred thousand men; of which only a hundred and fifty thousand infantry, and thirty-five thousand cavalry, were in a state to take the field.
These hundred and eighty-five thousand men he had formed into four armies, and four corps of observation.
The first, under the name of the grand army, was intended to act immediately under his own orders. This was subdivided into five principal corps, commanded
The 1st by Count d'Erlon;
The 3d by Count Vandamme;
The 4th by Count Gérard;
The 5th (called the 6th) by Count de Lobau[38]:
And into a corps of cavalry commanded by Marshal Grouchy.