Coming now to the _personnel_ of the army: Napoleon’s old chief-of-staff, Berthier, who had served him in this capacity for twenty years, who had grown accustomed to his ways, and was able by reason of his long experience to supplement his defects, had retired into Belgium with the King. To supply his place the Emperor selected Marshal Soult, certainly a very singular choice.[24] Soult was a man of Napoleon’s own age,—he had for several years commanded an army in Spain, and had had, of course, a chief-of-staff of his own. To place such a man at such a time of his life on staff duty when he should be commanding troops, must strike any one as strange. Such an officer is not fitted by his experience in an independent command for the duties of a chief-of-staff. Those duties he has been for years accustomed to turn over to a subordinate. The personal attention which they need he has for years expected to be given by a junior officer. It is out of the question that he can, all at once, assume the extremely laborious duties which belong to the chief-of-staff. We shall, before we get through, have more than one opportunity to see how Soult performed his new tasks. It is safe to say that there was many a younger officer in the French army who would have served with much more efficiency in this all-important place, for which the utmost vigor and alertness of mind and body are wellnigh indispensable. For the invasion of Belgium, Napoleon destined the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, and 6th Corps, and the Imperial Guard, besides a large force of cavalry. The five corps-commanders, d’Erlon, Reille, Vandamme, Gérard and the Comte de Lobau were all men of experience and admitted capacity. Vandamme was known specially as a hard fighter. Gérard was a comparatively young officer of great promise. The Comte de Lobau, under his original name of Mouton, had distinguished himself in the Austrian campaign of 1809. But no one of them equalled in military talent the leading generals in the Italian or Austerlitz campaigns,—Masséna, Lannes, Davout, Desaix, and their fellows. The commander of the cavalry, Grouchy, was a veteran of twenty years’ hard fighting, but was not credited with possessing any great capacity. The fact is that Napoleon himself could not do for his own army what the turmoil and chaos of the Revolution had done for the army of the republic, and that was to override seniority and all ordinary claims to promotion, and to open the door wide to youthful vigor and ambition. It was to the confusion created by the Revolution that the formidable list of warriors who served France so brilliantly for twenty years owed in great measure their rapid advancement. Napoleon himself constitutes no exception to this remark. Napoleon[25] says of his officers at this period:—