Prince Blucher arrived at Liege, with the Prussian army, which was concentrated on the Sambre and Meuse rivers, occupying Charleroi, Namur, Givet, and Liege. The Duke of Wellington covered Brussels, where he had fixed his headquarters, communicating by his left with the right of the Prussians. There was a general idea that Napoleon's threatened advance would take place on Namur, as he was likely to find least opposition at that dismantled city.
The Duke of Wellington's first corps, under the Prince of Orange, with two divisions of British, two of Hanoverians, and two of Belgians, occupied Enghien, Brain le Comte, and Nivelles, and served as a reserve to the Prussian division under Ziethen, which was at Charleroi. The second division, commanded by Lord Hill, included two British, two Hanoverian, and one Belgian divisions. It was cantoned at Halle, Oudenarde, and Grammont. The reserve, under Picton, who, at Lord Wellington's special request, had accepted of the situation of second in command, consisted of the remaining two British divisions, with three of the Hanoverians, and was stationed at Brussels and Ghent. The cavalry occupied Grammont and Nieve.
The Anglo-Belgic army was so disposed, therefore, as might enable the divisions to combine with each other, and with the Prussians, upon the earliest authentic intelligence of the enemy's being put in motion. At the same time, the various corps were necessarily, to a certain degree, detached, both for the purpose of being more easily maintained (especially the cavalry,) and also because, from the impossibility of foreseeing in what direction the French Emperor might make his attack, it was necessary to maintain such an extensive line of defence as to be prepared for his arrival upon any given point. This is the necessary inconvenience attached to a defensive position, where, if the resisting general should concentrate his whole forces upon any one point of the line to be defended, the enemy would, of course, choose to make their assault on some of the other points, which such concentration must necessarily leave comparatively open.
In the meantime, Napoleon in person advanced to Vervins on 12th June, with his Guard, who had marched from Paris. The other divisions of his selected grand army had been assembled on the frontier, and the whole, consisting of five divisions of infantry, and four of cavalry, were combined at Beaumont on the 14th of the same month, with a degree of secrecy and expedition which showed the usual genius of their commander. Napoleon reviewed the troops in person, reminded them that the day was the anniversary of the great victories of Marengo and Friedland, and called on them to remember that the enemies whom they had then defeated, were the same which were now arrayed against them. "Are they and we," he asked, "no longer the same men?"[134] The address produced the strongest effect on the minds of the French soldiery, always sensitively alive to military and national glory.