Without loss of time the Fifth Coalition was formed, Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia entering into a treaty on the 17th March, whereby each of them guaranteed to put 150,000 men in the field against “the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world,” Great Britain, as usual, financing the Allies, this time to the enormous extent of £5,000,000.
With commendable dispatch Napoleon formed a new ministry and began to marshal his troops, which at first numbered 200,000 and eventually 284,000, excluding a quarter of a million of men for internal defence. “It was the finest army,” writes Professor Oman, “that Napoleon had commanded since Friedland, for it was purely French, and was composed almost entirely of veterans; but it was too small for its purpose.”[83] Murat, king of Naples, precipitated matters by invading the Papal States, and failed at the hands of Austria, thereby robbing his brother-in-law of his only possible ally. But this was finished by the beginning of May, over a month before Napoleon started for the front, leaving 10,000 of his none-too-numerous troops to quell an outburst of royalist enthusiasm in La Vendée, ever the most warlike province of France and apt to flame into insurrection on the slightest provocation.
“_I go to measure myself with Wellington._”
Napoleon left Paris at dawn on the 12th June, and travelled to Laon. His troops were divided into the Army of the North, intended for the invasion of Belgium, which totalled a little over 124,000; the Army of the Rhine, commanded by Rapp, about 20,000, with a reserve of 3000 National Guards; Le Courbe’s corps of observation, watching the passes of the Jura, about 8000; the Army of the Alps, with Suchet, some 23,000; a detachment, under Brune, guarding the line of the Var, 6000; the 7th Corps, watching the line of the Pyrenees, 14,000, in two sections under Decaen and Clausel. The Army of the North was distributed at Lille, Valenciennes, Mézières, Thionville, and Soissons, under D’Erlon, Reille, Vandamme, Gérard and Lobau respectively; the Imperial Guard near Paris, and the Reserve Cavalry, under Grouchy, between the Aisne and the Sambre.[84] Soult was chief of the staff, an appointment not particularly happy.[85]