fter two and a half
months of effort, to consider his ready force as less than 300,000, indeed
only just over 290,000.

There was behind this, it is true, a reserve of irregulars such as I have
described, but the spirit furnishing those irregulars was uncertain, and
the yield of them patchy and heterogeneous. Perhaps a quarter of the
country responded readily to the appeal which was to call up a national
militia. But even upon the eve of the Waterloo campaign there were
departments, such as the Orne, which had not compelled five per cent. of
those called to join the colours, such as the Pas de Calais and the Gers,
which had not furnished eight per cent., and at the very last moment, of
every twenty-five men called, not fifteen had come.

Add to this that Napoleon must strike at once or not at all, and it will
readily be seen how desperate his situation was. His great chiefs of the
higher command were not united in his service, the issue was doubtful, and
to join Napoleon was to be a rebel should he fail,--was to be a rebel,
that is, in case of a very probable event. The marvel is that so many of
the leading men who had anything to lose undertook the chances at all.
Finally, even of the total force available to him at that early moment
when he was compelled to strike, Napoleon could strike with but a
fraction. Less than half of the men available could he gather to deliver
this decisive blow; and that blow, be it remembered, he could deliver at
but one of the various hosts which were preparing to advance against him.

He was thus handicapped by two things: first, the necessity under which he
believed himself to be of leaving considerable numbers to watch the
frontiers. Secondly, and most important, the limitations imposed upon him
by his lack of provision. With every effort, he could not fully arm and
equip and munition a larger force than that which he gathered in early
June for his last desperate throw; and the body upon the immediate and
decisive success of which everything depended numbered but 124,000 men.

With this force Napoleon proceeded to attack the Allies in the
Netherlands. _There_ was a belt of French-speaking population. _There_ was
that body of the Allies which lay nearest to his hand, and over which, if
he were but victorious, his victory would have its fullest effect. _There_
were the troops under Wellington, a defeat of which would mean the cutting
off of England, the financier of the Allies, from the