Wellington visited Paris and Madrid, and then returned to London. Five years earlier he had left England as Sir Arthur Wellesley; he came back Duke of Wellington. His own remark upon his campaigns contrasts strangely with the spirit of the Frenchman, whose best generals he had out-manoeuvered and overwhelmed. He was "a conqueror without ambition," he said. "All the world knew that I desired nothing but to beat the French out of Spain and then go home to my own country, leaving the Spaniards to manage theirs as they pleased." England lavished honors upon the hero of the Peninsular War. Parliament thanked him, granted him four hundred thousand pounds. He carried the sword of state on the occasion of the peace celebration in St. Paul's Cathedral. London banqueted him in Guildhall. For a summer and a winter the Duke represented England at Paris and Vienna where the states of Europe were wrangling over the restoration of the continent to its antebellum condition. When Napoleon escaped from Elba and was welcomed to Paris by his former marshals, Europe turned to Wellington to deliver her from the new peril. On the 25th of March, 1815, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain formed the Quadruple Alliance, binding themselves to maintain the treaty recently signed at Paris, and not to lay down arms until "Buonaparte should be placed absolutely beyond possibility of exciting disturbance and renewing his attempts to possess himself of the supreme power in France." The Duke arrived at Brussels on the 4th of April to take command of the allied army. Instead of the grand armies of the Quadruple Alliance he found a composite force of some twenty-five thousand English, Dutch, Belgians, Brunswickers, and Hanoverians. The Prussians had thirty thousand men within co-operating distance. In comparison with the thoroughly disciplined army which he had developed and wielded so skilfully in the peninsula this force cut a sorry figure. The field-marshal's bitterest complaint was that his government had not even provided him with the admirable staff which five years of service had made so familiar with his methods and desires. On the very verge of the campaign he wrote, "I have an infamous army, very weak and ill equipped, and a very inexperienced staff." While the armies of Austria and Russia were advancing upon France the Emperor was setting an enormous force in the field. It was his purpose to fall upon the army on the Belgian frontier before the other allies could enter France. For the invasion of Belgium he selected one hundred and twenty-five thousand men. Prince Blucher, commanding the Prussians, now had as many men, while Wellington, his ally, commanded some ninety- three thousand, of whom barely one-third were British. Five- sixths of the British infantry had never been under fire.