both in interest and in feelings."[1] His own army was under his own sole command. It was composed exclusively of French soldiers, mostly of veterans, well acquainted with their officers and with each other, and full of enthusiastic confidence in their commander. If he could separate the Prussians from the British, so as to attack each in detail, he felt sanguine of success, not only against these, the most resolute of his many adversaries, but also against the other masses that were slowly laboring up against his southeastern frontiers.
The triple chain of strong fortresses which the French possessed on the Belgian frontier formed a curtain, behind which Napoleon was able to concentrate his army, and to conceal till the very last moment the precise line of attack which he intended to take. On the other hand, Blucher and Wellington were obliged to canton their troops along a line of open country of considerable length, so as to watch for the outbreak-of Napoleon from whichever point of his chain of strongholds he should please to make it. Blucher, with his army, occupied the banks of the Sambre and the Meuse, from Liege on his left, to Charleroi on his right; and the Duke of Wellington covered Brussels, his cantonments being partly in front of that city, and between it and the French frontier, and partly on its west; their extreme right being at Courtray and Tournay, while their left approached Charleroi and communicated with the Prussian right. It was upon Charleroi that Napoleon resolved to level his attack, in hopes of severing the two allied armies from each other, and then pursuing his favorite tactic of assailing each separately with a superior force on the battle-field, though the aggregate of their numbers considerably exceeded his own.
On the 15th of June the French army was suddenly in motion, and crossed the frontier in three columns, which were pointed upon Charleroi and its vicinity. The French line of advance upon Brussels, which city Napoleon resolved to occupy, thus lay right through the centre of the line of the cantonments of the allies. The Prussian general rapidly concentrated his forces, calling them in from the left, and the English general concentrated his, calling them in from the right toward the menaced centre of the combined position. On the morning of the 16th, Blucher was in position at Ligny, to the northeast of Charleroi,
- ↑ See Montholon’s "Memoirs," p. 45.
