“They [the allied commanders] determined to continue in the cantonments which they occupied until they knew positively the line of attack. Now it may safely be predicted that this determination will be considered by future and dispassionate historians as a great mistake; for, in place of waiting to see where the blow actually fell, the armies should have been instantly put in motion to assemble. Nor was this the only error: the line of cantonments occupied by the Anglo-Allied and Prussian armies was greatly too extended. * * * From the time, therefore, that it became known that Napoleon’s army was organized and formed into corps ready to take the field, the armies of Wellington and Blücher should have been so placed in cantonments as to be prepared to meet any of the cases supposed,”—_i.e._, an advance of the French by any one of the great Flanders roads,— * * * “and from the moment that it was known that the French army was at all in movement, the allied armies should have been withdrawn from their cantonments and placed very near to each other.” Wellington and Blücher, it will be remembered, had known for several days that Napoleon was massing his forces, and yet they put off till the last moment even the assembling their corps and divisions in their respective places of _rendezvous_. Sir James Shaw-Kennedy then proceeds to discuss the proper “line of cantonments” of the allied armies from the time when “it was known that Napoleon had a large organized army ready to take the field,”[206] and he gives it as his opinion that Blücher should have “made Genappe his headquarters, cantoning his army between Louvain and Gosselies, occupying the line of the Sambre from Namur to the frontier by strong bodies of cavalry, &c.,” and that Wellington, having his headquarters at Brussels, should have cantoned his army between Brussels and Soignies, with cavalry outposts. Charras[207] expresses the same opinion as to the line of cantonments of Wellington’s army, but he holds that by the end of May the Duke should have carried his headquarters six or eight leagues [15 or 20 miles] in advance of Brussels:[208] while Blücher ought at the same time to have removed his headquarters to Fleurus,[209] and to have concentrated his forces within a radius of six or eight leagues (fifteen or twenty miles); having outposts on the Sambre and Meuse.