It was in this state of public feeling that intelligence was received in March, 1815, of the reappearance in France of the emperor Napoleon.  At the head of three hundred men he had taken the resolution, without parallel even among the grandest of his own powerful conceptions, of invading a country containing thirty millions of people, girded by the protecting armies of coalesced Europe, and imbued, beyond all doubt, with an almost general objection to the former despot who now put his foot on its shores, with imperial pretensions only founded on the memory of his bygone glory.  His march to Paris was a miracle; and the vigor of his subsequent measures redeems the ambitious imbecility with which he had hurried on the catastrophe of his previous fall.

The flight of Louis XVIII. from Paris was the sure signal to the kingdom of the Netherlands, in which he took refuge, that it was about to become the scene of another contest for the life or death of despotism.  Had the invasion of Belgium, which now took place, been led on by one of the Bourbon family, it is probable that the priesthood, the people, and even the nobility, would have given it not merely a negative support.  But the name of Napoleon was a bugbear for every class; and the efforts of the King and government, which met with most enthusiastic support in the northern provinces, were seconded with zeal and courage by the rest of the kingdom.

The national force was soon in the field, under the command of the Prince of Orange, the king’s eldest son, and heir-apparent to the throne for which he now prepared to fight.  His brother, Prince Frederick, commanded a division under him.  The English army, under the duke of Wellington, occupied Brussels and the various cantonments in its neighborhood; and the Prussians, commanded by Prince Blucher, were in readiness to co-operate with their allies on the first movement of the invaders.

Napoleon, hurrying from Paris to strike some rapid and decisive blow, passed the Sambre on the 15th of June, at the head of the French army, one hundred and fifty thousand strong, driving the Prussians before him beyond Charleroi and back on the plain of Fleurus with some loss.  On the 16th was fought the bloody battle of Ligny, in which the Prussians sustained a decided defeat; but they retreated in good order on the little river Lys, followed by Marshal Grouchy with thirty thousand men detached by Napoleon in their pursuit.  On the same day the British advanced position at Quatre Bras, and the corpsd’armee_ commanded by the Prince of Orange, were fiercely attacked by Marshal Ney; a battalion of Belgian infantry and a brigade of horse artillery having been engaged in a skirmish the preceding evening at Frasnes with the French advanced troops.