This was the final plan of the Allies; but long before the date fixed for the first moves, Napoleon was fully acquainted with their designs. Newspaper reports and secret letters had kept him informed throughout the preparations. He tells us that he worked out two alternative plans of campaign. His first idea was to concentrate a force of 200,000 men outside Paris, and await the approach of the Allied armies. He proposed to gather the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Corps, the Imperial Guard, and Grouchy’s Cavalry Reserve, round the Capital, which would be garrisoned by 80,000 regular troops, mobilised guards and sharpshooters, strongly entrenched and governed by Davoût: and to concentrate round Lyons Suchet’s army of the Alps, 23,000 men, and Lecourbe’s Corps of the Jura, 8,000 men. All the great fortresses were strongly garrisoned; and Napoleon intended to let the Allies advance until they were surrounded with these powerful garrisons and faced by himself with 200,000 men. The date fixed by the Allies for the crossing of the frontier was 1st July. It would take them three weeks to draw near Paris. By that time the entrenchments round the Capital would be completed. But the Allies, operating on six different lines, would be obliged to detach large forces to watch Suchet and Lecourbe, and to mask the great strongholds in their way. When they had approached Paris, their great armies would have been thus reduced to 400,000 men, far from their bases, and faced by the greatest soldier of modern time. The campaign of 1814 would be repeated, but Napoleon would have 200,000 men at his back, and a powerful entrenched camp at Paris. Thus the Allies would in all probability be crushed in detail; whether they would recover and overwhelm Napoleon by sheer weight of numbers seemed doubtful. But to allow France to be over-run in the meantime by the invaders would enrage the Parisians; and Parisians had always to be reckoned in any plan of Napoleon’s. A more splendid scheme soon presented itself to him. He had a great idea of the importance of winning Brussels: and defensive warfare was unworthy of his genius. He resolved to attack before the Allies should be concentrated. By the middle of June his available forces on the Northern frontier would amount to 125,000 men. “He would enter Belgium: he would beat in turn, or separately, the English and the Prussians; then, as soon as new reinforcements had arrived from the depôts, he would effect a junction with the 23,000 men under Rapp, and would bear down upon the Austro-Russians.”[1]