page_title: Waterloo campaign
section_title: Prelude
hierarchical_section_title: Waterloo campaign / Prelude
caption_attribution_description: descriptive numbers: 1. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (UK) 2. Joaquim Lobo da Silveira (Portugal) 3. António de Saldanha da Gama (Portugal) 4. Count Carl Löwenhielm (Sweden) 5. Jean-Louis-Paul-François, 5th Duke of Noailles (France) 6. Prince Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich (Austria) 7. Frédéric-Séraphin de La Tour du Pin Gouvernet (France) 8. Count Karl Robert Nesselrode (Russia) 9. Pedro de Sousa Holstein, 1st Count, 1st Marquess and 1st Duke de Palmela (Portugal) 10. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (UK) 11. Emmerich Joseph de Dalberg (France) 12. Baron Johann von Wessenberg-Ampringen (Austria) 13. Prince Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky (Russia) 14. Charles Stewart, 1st Baron Stewart (UK) 15. Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador (Spain) 16. Richard Le Poer Trench, 2nd Earl of Clancarty (UK) 17. Nikolaus von Wacken (Recorder) (Österreichischer Staatskanzleirat, Freiherr 1823) 18. Friedrich von Gentz (Congress Secretary) 19. Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (Prussia) 20. William Schaw Cathcart, 1st Earl Cathcart (UK) 21. Prince Karl August von Hardenberg (Prussia) 22. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Sovereign Prince de Bénévent (France) 23. Count Gustav Ernst von Stackelberg (Russia)
context_page_description: The Waterloo Campaign was fought between the French Army of the North and two Seventh Coalition armies, an Anglo-allied army and a Prussian army. Initially the French army was commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte, but he left for Paris after the French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Command then rested on Marshals Soult and Grouchy, who were in turn replaced by Marshal Davout, who took command at the request of the French Provisional Government. The Anglo-allied army was commanded by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army by Prince Blücher.
  The war between France and the Seventh Coalition came when the other European Great Powers refused to recognise Napoleon as Emperor of the French upon his return from exile on the island of Elba, and declared war on him, rather than France, as they still recognised Louis XVIII as the king of France and considered Napoleon a usurper. Rather than wait for the Coalition to invade France, Napoleon decided to attack his enemies and hope to defeat them in detail before they could launch their combined and coordinated invasion.
context_section_description: Napoleon returned from his exile on the island of Elba on 1 March 1815, King Louis XVIII fled Paris on 19 March, and Napoleon entered Paris the next day. Meanwhile, far from recognising him as Emperor of the French, the Great Powers of Europe (Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia) and their allies, who were assembled at the Congress of Vienna, declared Napoleon an outlaw, and with the signing of this declaration on 13 March 1815, so began the War of the Seventh Coalition. The hopes of peace that Napoleon had entertained were gone – war was now inevitable.
  A further treaty (the Treaty of Alliance against Napoleon) was ratified on 25 March in which each of the Great European Powers agreed to pledge 150,000 men for the coming conflict. Such a number was not possible for Great Britain, as her standing army was smaller than the three of her peers. Besides, her forces were scattered around the globe, with many units still in Canada, where the War of 1812 had recently ceased. With this in mind she made up her numerical deficiencies by paying subsidies to the other Powers and to the other states of Europe that would contribute contingents.
  Some time after the allies began mobilising, it was agreed that the planned invasion of France was to commence on 1 July 1815, much later than both Blücher and Wellington would have liked as both their armies were ready in June, ahead of the Austrians and Russians; the latter were still some distance away. The advantage of this later invasion date was that it allowed all the invading Coalition armies a chance to be ready at the same time. Thus they could deploy their combined numerically superior forces against Napoleon's smaller, thinly spread forces, thus ensuring his defeat and avoiding a possible defeat within the borders of France. Yet this postponed invasion date allowed Napoleon more time to strengthen his forces and defences, which would make defeating him harder and more costly in lives, time and money.
  Napoleon now had to decide whether to fight a defensive or offensive campaign. Defence would entail repeating the 1814 campaign in France but with much larger numbers of troops at his disposal. France's chief cities, Paris and Lyon, would be fortified and two great French armies, the larger before Paris and the smaller before Lyon, would protect them; francs-tireurs would be encouraged, giving the Coalition armies their own taste of guerrilla warfare.
  Napoleon chose to attack, which entailed a pre-emptive strike at his enemies before they were all fully assembled and able to co-operate. By destroying some of the major Coalition armies, Napoleon believed he would then be able to bring the governments of the Seventh Coalition to the peace table to discuss results favourable to himself, namely peace for France with himself remaining in power as its head. If peace were rejected by the allies despite any pre-emptive military success he might have achieved using the offensive military option available to him, then the war would continue and he could turn his attention to defeating the rest of the Coalition armies.
  Napoleon's decision to attack in Belgium was supported by several considerations. First, he had learned that the British and Prussian armies were widely dispersed and might be defeated in detail. The other major coalition armies of Russia and Austria would not be able to reinforce the Prussians and British. This was because the Russian army was still moving across Europe and the Austrian army was still mobilising.  Also, the British troops in Belgium were largely second-line troops; most of the veterans of the Peninsular War had been sent to America to fight the War of 1812. In addition, the army of the United Netherlands was reinforcing the British. These Dutch troops were ill-equipped and inexperienced. And, politically, a French victory might trigger a pro-French revolution in French-speaking Belgium.
caption: Plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Vienna
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