olumns, with no
barrier to check him until he neared the environs of Paris. Once more
the Prussian and Russian officers looked on the war as over, and
invited one another to dinner at the Palais-Royal in a week's
time.[403]

But it was on this confidence of the old hussar-general that Napoleon
counted. He knew his proneness to daring movements, and the strong
bias of Schwarzenberg towards delay: he also divined that they would
now separate their forces, Bluecher making straight for Paris, while
other columns would threaten the capital by way of Troyes and Sens.
That was why he fell back on Troyes, so as directly to oppose the
latter movement, "or so as to return and manoeuvre against Bluecher and
stay his march."[404] Another motive was his expectation of finding at
Nogent the 15,000 veterans whom he had ordered Soult to send
northwards. And doubtless the final reason was his determination to
use the sheltering curve of the Seine, which between Troyes and Nogent
flows within twenty miles of the high-road that Bluecher must use if he
struck at Paris. At many a crisis Napoleon had proved the efficacy of
a great river line. From Rivoli to Friedland his career abounds in
examples of riverine tactics. The war of 1813 was one prolonged
struggle for the line of the Elbe. He still continued the war because
he could not yet bring himself to sign away the Rhenish fortresses:
and he now hoped to regain that "natural boundary" by blows showered
on divided enemies from behind the arc of the Seine.

With wonderful prescience he had guessed at the general plan of the
allies. But he could scarcely have dared to hope that on that very day
(February 2nd) they were holding a council of war at Brienne, and
formally resolved that Bluecher should march north-west on Paris with
about 50,000 men, while the allied Grand

Army of nearly three times those numbers was to diverge south-west
towards Bar-sur-Seine and Sens. So unequal a partition of forces
seemed to court disaster. It is true that the allies had no magazines
of supplies: they could not march in an undivided host through a
hostile land where the scanty defenders themselves were nearly
starving. If, however, they decided to move at all, it was needful to
allot the more dangerous task to a powerful force. Above all, it was
necessary to keep their main armies well in touch with one another and
with the foe. Yet these obvious precautions were not taken. In truth,
the separation of the