In this last opinion, as he says, he follows Napoleon.[210] The latter, it is to be noted, does not criticise Wellington, as do Charras and Clausewitz, for retaining his headquarters in Brussels, but only,—in this connection, that is,—for the excessive extent of his cantonments.[211] Napoleon’s view seems to be that Brussels was the right place for the headquarters of the Anglo-Dutch army and Fleurus for those of the Prussian army; and that from the 15th of May both generals should have greatly reduced the extent of their cantonments, so that no part of their troops, except the advance-posts, should be more than twenty miles distant from the headquarters of the army. Had this course been adopted, he says the Prussians might have been assembled at Ligny at noon of the 15th,[212] ready to receive the attack of the French army. He does not, however, go on and state his view of the mode and time of the coöperation of the English army in that event. We must content ourselves with merely stating these opinions. 6. That Marshal Blücher, who had allowed his troops to remain in their widely scattered cantonments until the last moment, erred in giving Sombreffe as the point of concentration of his army, seems on principle and authority very clear. Napoleon’s remarks[213] on this are as follows:— “Marshal Blücher ought, as soon as he knew that the French were at Charleroi [that is to say, on the evening of the 15th,] to have given, as the point of assembling of his army, not Fleurus, nor where the French could not arrive until the evening of the 16th. By doing so, he would have had all the day of the 16th, and the night between the 16th and 17th, to effect the junction of his whole army.” He also for the same reasons censures Wellington[214] for establishing “Quatre Bras as the point of reunion” for his army. Sir James Shaw-Kennedy[215] says to the same effect: “The determination of Wellington and Blücher to meet Napoleon’s advance at Fleurus and Quatre Bras was totally inconsistent with the widely scattered positions in which they had placed their armies; their determination in this respect amounted in the fullest extent to that error which has so often been committed in war, by even great commanders, of endeavoring to assemble on a point which could only be reached by a portion of the troops intended to occupy it, while the enemy had the power of concentrating upon it his whole force.”