Meanwhile Coburg, still awaiting his orders, made no attempt to overwhelm any one of the scattered French divisions. ◆April 2.◆ At last on the 2nd of April the Emperor quitted Vienna, reached Brussels in company with his brothers, the Archdukes Charles and Joseph on the 9th, and on the 14th joined Coburg at Valenciennes. ◆April 14.◆ The Prince then laid before him the danger of the Allied position, with both wings too weak to take the offensive against an enemy which was reported to be three hundred thousand strong; and followed this up by recommending the advance of the centre to the siege of Landrecies, for which Mack had prepared one of his usual elaborate schemes. Thus the Austrians reverted once more to a war of petty sieges, which could produce no decisive result. Indeed the only thing to be said for operations in the selected quarter was that the country was open and well suited to cavalry, in which arm the Allies were far superior both in quantity and quality to the French. The Emperor approved the plan; and the troops were set in motion forthwith, nominally for a great review to be held in the Emperor’s honour near Le Cateau. Thus, despite all Carnot’s efforts to take the initiative, it fell to the Allies to open the new campaign. VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER X ◆1794.◆ ◆April 16.◆ On the 16th of April, as had been arranged, the whole of the main army was inspected by the Emperor on the heights of Cateau. The British infantry was represented, as in the last campaign, by three battalions of Guards, with a fourth battalion formed out of their flank-companies, and by Abercromby’s brigade of the Fourteenth, Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-third. These last had at length received their first instalment of recruits to make good their losses during 1793, in the shape of a draft which was described as “much resembling Falstaff’s men, and as lightly clad as any Carmagnole battalion”[218] of the French Army. The cavalry numbered twenty-eight squadrons, drawn from fourteen regiments[219] and organised into four brigades, three of heavy and one of light dragoons, the last being supplemented by a picked squadron of the Carbineers under the command of Captain Stapleton Cotton, a lad of twenty, who in later years was to earn the title of Viscount Combermere. The review over, the Emperor took up his quarters in Le Cateau, whither the commanders forthwith repaired to him for orders. ◆April 17.◆