 Leboeuf responded that the French soldiers had a rifle superior to the Prussian rifle, that the French artillery was commanded by an elite corps of officers, and that the army "would not lack a button on its puttees".He assured the Emperor that the French army could have four hundred thousand men on the Rhine in less than fifteen days.King Wilhelm I did not want to be seen as the instigator of the war; he had received messages urging restraint from Emperor Alexander II, Queen Victoria, and the King of the Belgians.