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CHAPTER XXXIII GERMAN DISASTER TF on the night of June i8, 1815, Napoleon, hav- -*■ ing put the Old Guard in and failed, had been able to extricate his army, take it back on the Sambre, call in Grouchy's force from Wavre and stand near the French frontier, the whole world, in the second week of September, 19 14, would have discovered the remarkable parallel between the conditions of 19 14 and 1815. For the more one examines the campaign from the Sambre to the Marne, the more completely the Waterloo struggle comes to mind. To begin with, the problem of Napoleon in June, 18 15, was pre- cisely the problem of the Kaiser in August, 19 14. In his immediate path in Belgium one considerable army, Belgian, Prussian, Dutch and English, was on foot, ready for battle. Far off in the East, Austrian, Russian, Swedish armies were gathering. In June he could hurl against the Allied army in Belgium a force almost equal in numbers, and superior in all that goes to make up a successful army. But in July or August, when the Russian and Austrian armies came up, he would be outnumbered, forced back upon France to fight one more such defensive 182

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