Hence the importance of narrowly watching the Belgian frontier, and of making due preparations for meeting any attack in that quarter, was too obvious not to form a principal feature in the general plan of the Allies. Its defence was assigned to an Army under the Duke of Wellington, comprising contingent forces from Great Britain, from Hanover, the Netherlands, Brunswick, and Nassau; and to a Prussian Army, under Field Marshal Prince Blücher von Wahlstadt.
At the moment of the landing of Napoleon on the French shore, the only force in the Netherlands consisted, in addition to the native troops, of a weak Anglo-Hanoverian Corps, under the command of His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange; but the zeal, energy, and activity displayed by the Government of Great Britain, in engrafting upon this nucleus a powerful Army, amounting at the commencement of hostilities, to about 100,000 combatants, notwithstanding the impediments and delays occasioned by the absence of a considerable portion of its troops in America, were truly surprising. At the same time, the extraordinary supply of subsidies furnished by the British Parliament, without which not one of the Armies of the Allied Sovereigns could have commenced operations, and by means of which England thus become the great lever whereby the whole of Europe was set in motion towards the attainment of the one common object, was admirably illustrative of the bold, decided, and straightforward policy of the most determined, the most indefatigable, and the most consistent, enemy of Napoleon.
Within the same period, the Prussian forces, originally limited to a corps of 30,000 men, under General Count Kleist von Nollendorf, occupying the Prussian territories bounded by the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Moselle, were augmented to an effective Army of 116,000 combatants, with all the rapidity and energy which a keen sense of the wrongs and miseries their country had endured under the ruthless sway of their inveterate foe, and a salutary dread of a repetition of such infliction, could not fail to inspire.
Great Britain and Prussia thus occupied the post of honour, and formed the vanguard of the mighty masses which Europe was pouring forth to seal the doom of the Napoleon dynasty.
A Russian Army, under Field Marshal Count Barclay de Tolly, amounting to 167,000 men, was rapidly traversing the whole of Germany, in three main Columns: of which the Right, commanded by General Dochterow, advanced by Kalisch, Torgau, Leipzig, Erfurt, Hanau, Frankfort, and Hochheim, towards Mayence; the Centre, commanded by General Baron Sacken, advanced by Breslau, Dresden, Zwickau, Baireuth, Nuremberg, Aschaffenburg, Dieburg, and Gross Gerau, towards Oppenheim; while the Left Column, commanded by General Count Langeron, took its direction along the line of Prague, Aube, Adelsheim, Neckar, and Heidelberg, towards Mannheim. The heads of the Columns reached the Middle Rhine, when hostilities were on the point of breaking out upon the Belgian frontier. The intimation to these troops of another Campaign in France, and of a probable reoccupation of Paris, had imparted new life and vigour to the spirit of inveterate hatred and insatiable revenge which they had so thoroughly imbibed against the French; and which had so invariably marked their career since the memorable burning of MOSCOW.
An Austrian army of about 50,000 men, commanded by Field Marshal Prince Schwartzenburg, and the Army of Reserve under the Archduke Ferdinand, amounting to 40,000 men, were gradually occupying the most important points along the right bank of the Rhine, between Basle and Mannheim. In addition to this force, about 120,000 men were then assembling on the plains of Lombardy, upon the termination of the decisive Campaign against Murat; which secured the deposition of the latter, and the restoration of King Ferdinand to the throne of Naples. Vigorous and energetic measures such as these on the part of Austria, clearly indicated that her Government, discarding alike the circumstance of a family alliance with Napoleon, and the views which had once induced it to enter into a league with him and with the Southern German States, as a security against its formidable northern neighbours, still adhered with inflexible resolution to its subsequently adopted policy of entering into, and fostering, a general European compact, having for its object the complete annihilation of the despotic sway of the ambitious Soldier Sovereign of the French.
The assembling also, on the Upper Rhine, of a Bavarian Army, commanded by Prince Wrède, of the Contingents of Baden and Würtemberg, under the hereditary Prince of Würtemberg, and of the troops of Hesse, amounting altogether to about 80,000 men, offered a sufficient guarantee for the line of policy espoused by the Confederated States of the Rhine.
Formidable as was the attitude assumed by the Allies towards France, and imposing as was their array of Armies assembling upon her frontier; they nevertheless found their great antagonist prepared, on learning that they had determined on an irrevocable appeal to the sword, to throw away the scabbard. He assumed a bold and resolute posture of defence—armed at all points, and prepared at all hazards, either to ward off the blows of his adversaries, or to become himself the assailant. The indefatigable exertions of Napoleon in restoring the Empire to its former strength and grandeur were really astonishing; and never, perhaps, in the whole course of the extraordinary career of that extraordinary man, did the powerful energies of his comprehensive mind shine forth with greater brilliancy and effect, than in his truly wonderful and incredibly rapid development of the national resources of France on this momentous occasion.