Hundred Days - Military Mobilisation

Military Mobilisation

During the Hundred Days both the Coalition nations and Napoleon I mobilised for war. Upon reassumption of the throne, Napoleon found that he was left with little by Louis XVIII. There were 56,000 soldiers of which 46,000 were ready to campaign. By the end of May the total armed forces available to Napoleon had reached 198,000 with 66,000 more in depots training up but not yet ready for deployment.

By the end of May Napoleon I had formed L'Armée du Nord (the "Army of the North") which, led by Napoleon, would participate in the Waterloo Campaign.

For the defence of France, Napoleon deployed his remaining forces within France with the intention of delaying his foreign enemies while he suppressed his domestic ones. By June the forces were organised thus:

• V Corps, – L'Armée du Rhin – commanded by Rapp, cantoned near Strassburg;
• VII Corps – L'Armée des Alpes – commanded by Suchet, cantoned at Lyon;
• I Corps of Observation – L'Armée du Jura – commanded by Lecourbe, cantoned at Belfort;
• II Corps of Observation – L'Armée du Var – commanded by Brune, based at Toulon;
• III Corps of Observation – Army of the Pyrenees orientales – commanded by Decaen, based at Toulouse;
• IV Corps of Observation – Army of the Pyrenees occidentales – commanded by Clauzel, based at Bordeaux;
• Army of the West, – Armée de l'Ouest (also known as the Army of the Vendee and the Army of the Loire) – commanded by Lamarque, was formed to suppress the Royalist insurrection in the Vendée region of France which remained loyal to King Louis XVIII during the Hundred Days.

Opposing Coalition forces:

Archduke Charles gathered Austrian and allied German states, while the Prince of Schwarzenberg formed another Austrian army. King Ferdinand VII of Spain summoned British officers to lead his troops against France. Tsar Alexander I of Russia mustered an army of 250,000 troops and sent these rolling toward the Rhine. Prussia mustered two armies. One under Blücher took post alongside Wellington’s British army and its allies. The other was the North German Corps under General Kleist.

• Assessed as an immediate threat by Napoleon I:
  • Anglo-Allied, commanded by Wellington, cantoned south west Brussels, headquartered at Brussels.
  • Prussian Army commanded by Blücher, cantoned south east of Brussels, headquartered at Namur.
• Close to the borders of France but assessed to be less of a threat by Napoleon I:
  • The German Corps (North German Federal Army) which was part of Blücher's army, but was acting independently south of the main Prussian army. Blücher summoned it to join the main army once Napoleon's intentions became known.
  • The Austrian Army of the Upper Rhine, commanded by Field Marshal Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg.
  • The Swiss Army, commanded by Niklaus Franz von Bachmann.
  • The Austrian Army of Upper Italy – Austro-Sardinian Army – commanded by Johann Maria Philipp Frimont.
  • The Austrian Army of Naples, commanded by Frederick Bianchi, Duke of Casalanza.
• Other coalition forces which were either converging on France, mobilised to defend the homelands, or in the process of mobilisation included:
  • A Russian Army, commanded by Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, and marching towards France
  • A Reserve Russian Army to support de Tolly if required.
  • A Reserve Prussian Army stationed at home in order to defend its borders.
  • An Anglo-Sicilian Army under General Sir Hudson Lowe, which was to be landed by the Royal Navy on the southern French coast.
  • Two Spanish Armies were assembling and planning to invade over the Pyrenees.
  • A Netherlands Corps, under Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, was not present at Waterloo but as a corps in Wellington's army it did take part in minor military actions during the Coalition's invasion of France.
  • A Danish contingent known as the Royal Danish Auxiliary Corps commanded by General Prince Frederik of Hesse and a Hanseatic contingent (from the free cities of Bremen, Lubeck and Hamburg) commanded by the British Colonel Sir Neil Campbell, were on their way to join Wellington; both however, joined the army in July having missed the conflict.
  • A Portuguese contingent, which due to the speed of events never assembled.