better reflections. I thank you for it, and am determined to meet my future lot with patience."'

This incident seems to us to confirm the valuable adage that the devil is not so black as he is painted, especially where the pencil is a French one.

The peace of Basle afforded Blücher leisure for a second marriage, and he was united to a Maria Amelia von Colomb. He held for some time a command in Munster under the Duke of Brunswick, where he made acquaintance with many of the French emigrants, among whom the Abbé de Pradt was his favourite. The late King, Frederick William III., who ascended the throne in 1797, had found occasion, while serving in his father's armies as crown-prince, to remark the merits of Blücher, and in 1801 promoted him to the rank of lieutenantgeneral. In 1803 he was appointed governor of Munster, which by the terms of the peace had fallen to the lot of Prussia. The episcopal palace, which became his residence, now witnessed a revival of those scenes for which it has been celebrated by Sir W. Temple, in the times of the warlike and Rhenish-loving princebishop. High play was still with Blücher a passion which could only find its substitute in that still more exciting pastime, in which

'Kings hold the bottle, and Europe the stakes,' and the neighbouring baths of Pyrmont afforded dangerous summer facilities for the indulgence of this pernicious taste.

The peace was hollow. The French occupation of Hanover placed the two nations in dangerous propinquity, and a strong war-party existed in Prussia, especially in the army, of which party, as a matter of course, Blücher was a leading member.

In 1806 the drama opened at once with that great disaster of Jena, which chastised the military pride and overweening confidence of Prussia, and placed her existence as a separate state on the map of Europe at the mercy of the conqueror. The divisions and distractions of those in high command were only rendered more conspicuous by the courage which the isolated and unsupported battalions of the Prussians opposed to the admirable combinations and concentrated masses of the enemy. All the advantages of superior information and intelligence which usually accrue to those who fight on their own soil, in this strange instance were engrossed by the foreign invader, who might have been said, like Ariel,

Now in the waist, the deck, and every cabin,

To flame amazement.'

The spirit, not of the great Frederick, but of Ariosto's Agramant, reigned in the Prussian camp. Blücher was not in a situa

tion as commander of the cavalry to control the movements or repair the errors of Brunswick, Mollendorf, and Hohenlohe. All he could do was to offer to lead his brave horsemen in a desperate attempt to retrieve the fortune of the day. This offer was at first accepted by the King, but the permission was revoked, and all that remained for Blücher was to endeavour to save as large a remnant as possible of his force by a retreat into Northern Germany. The courage and perseverance with which he conducted this attempt were such as could scarcely have derived additional lustre from success. It must be admitted, on the other hand, that nothing could exceed the vigour and activity with which Buonaparte's generals, when slipped in the chase, foiled all his efforts. Like a wild beast, he found himself alike tracked on retreat, and anticipated in every desperate rush for escape, whether towards the Elbe, the Oder, or in the direction of Hanover. Driven at length through Lubeck, which to the misfortune of that neutral city he for a moment occupied, and where he narrowly escaped personal capture, he was brought to bay in its neighbourhoodand here, suffering himself from fever and exhausted of every supply for his men, he was forced to capitulate.

Blücher retired for a season to Hamburgh on his parole. His exchange was afterwards effected with General Victor. On the occasion of his release he visited the French head-quarters, and was received with marks of distinction by Napoleon.

With the powerful assistance of Russia the contest was still maintained in the northern provinces, and the offer of Swedish co-operation induced the king to organize a corps intended to act on the rear of the enemy from the northern coast. Blücher was selected for the command of this expedition, which was, however, frustrated in the first instance by the vacillation of the Swedish sovereign, and finally by the battle of Friedland and the peace of Tilsit which succeeded. After the treaty was signed, our hero retained the command of the Pomeranian army, a post of much difficulty, for the troops of the conqueror were stationed in its neighbourhood, and frequent discussions and disputes arose between the commanders. Blücher is said to have shown much subtlety and address in this position, in which his character gave weight to the concessions he was compelled as the weaker party to make. Words, according to our English satirist's theory (adopted by Talleyrand), were invented by man as a concealment to his thoughts and a disguise to his intentions, and Blücher is said to have derived much convenience from his use of the German language in negociation, for which his ignorance of any other afforded him a pretext. He stands, indeed, accused by French writers of having grossly misused this device on the retreat from Jena, in

an

an interview with the French general Klein. It is certain that he succeeded in persuading that officer that an armistice had been concluded, and that both Klein and Lasalle were thereby induced to postpone an attack and allow Blücher to get a day's start of his pursuers. It is very difficult to believe, that if he had committed himself in this instance beyond the allowed limits of military stratagem, Napoleon, however little scrupulous he is known to have been as to the conduct of his own officers, would have forborne to blast the character of a troublesome opponent by a formal verification of the charge-still more that he would have given Blücher the honourable reception of which we have spoken, at his own head-quarters. Klein and Lasalle had the Emperor's ear for their own story, and had every inducement to make the most of their own justification. We must confess at the same time that, but for this negative evidence, even the German account of the transaction would be suspicious. Another accusation of a similar nature has been preferred against Blücher. He is charged with having violated the armistice in 1813 by occupying the neutral ground before the day specified for the renewal of hostilities in Silesia:-but the Prussian accounts reply distinctly, that the original violation of this territory was the act of the French under Macdonald.

The French were not his only accusers. During his tenure of command in Pomerania he found occasion to defend himself against certain anonymous attacks which issued from the Leipzic press upon his military conduct in his recent arduous retreat. Blücher demanded an investigation before a court of inquiry which had been appointed to sit at Konigsberg for the consideration of cases of a far more serious complexion. The evidence of that distinguished officer Scharnhorst, who had shared the toils and dangers of his retreat, was conclusive in his favour, and the result was more than his justification.

A dark period now ensued to Blücher's adopted country-four years of humiliation, of sullen submission to almost every possible variety of outrage and exaction. France should in policy either have pursued her conquest to the utter dismemberment of Prussia, or have spared her dignity. The death of the loved and lovely Queen, who was considered as the victim of Napoleon's unmanly insults, added to the general indignation. In despite of French vigilance, and of the terms of the peace which limited the numbers of the standing army, means were found silently to accumulate both soldiers and material for a future campaign. The Baron de Stein set on foot the famous tugendbund, and Blücher, in despite of his now advanced age, was looked up to as the future vindicator of his country's wrongs. An

illness

illness which afflicted him through the greater part of the year 1808, and at times affected his reason, seems but to have added a morbid fire to his enthusiasm. He is said in moments of delirium to have attained to something like prophetic strain,' and to have predicted with confidence the speedy liberation of his country and the downfall of its oppressor. This must happen,' he said, and I must assist at it, and I will not die till it shall have come to pass.'

Blücher's education had been that of a soldier. He knew no language but his own, but he was fond of writing, and took a pleasure in dictating his despatches and proclamations. We have seen letters addressed by him to the King at this period, upon the subject of that future movement to which he looked forward with such unabated confidence, containing passages of an eloquence worthy of his theme. His hopes were revived from time to time by the Austrian war and Schill's chivalrous enterprise; but the prospect was soon clouded, and, till the two colossal powers, Russia and France, once more arrayed themselves against each other, the distant successes of England in the Peninsula could alone afford him a gleam of consolation.

Among the concessions which Napoleon extorted from his doubtful ally previous to his Russian expedition was the removal of Blücher from his Pomeranian command, a measure for which the old soldier's reckless language and deportment afforded a full justification. It was gilded on the part of the sovereign by a handsome territorial donation in Silesia, to the capital of which province Blücher, after a short residence at Berlin, retired.

It was to Breslau also that the King betook himself on the occasion of that famous defection of D'York from the French, which fired at once from one end of Prussia to the other the insurrectionary materials long and secretly stored up for such a contingency. The nature of Blücher's feelings and advice at this juncture might easily be anticipated. He was loud in favour of an immediate forward movement, louder in his scorn of more timid and dilatory proposals. The King hesitated in bestowing upon him the command which the popular voice and the general feeling of the soldiery would have at once decreed to him. There were among the court advisers not a few who looked upon Blücher as a mere fiery hussar, who would compromise by rashness and want of science the hopes of the present crisis, and by such the pretensions of Tauenzien were advocated. The opinion and advice of the deeply-skilled Scharnhorst, however, prevailed, and on the 15th of March, 1813, Blücher's long dream was realized by finding himself at the head of the Silesian army.

We have dwelt, perhaps at some length, on the earlier portion

of

of Blücher's career-as affording illustrations of his character from that part of his biography with which general readers are probably the least familiar. The subsequent incidents of his military life are so well known as to make summary revision superfluous. It is impossible, however, for any one, scientific or otherwise, to review the great struggle of 1813 and '14 without admit. ting that if to the Emperor Alexander belonged the political influence, and to Schwarzenberg the address, which mainly kept together the discordant elements of the coalition, Blücher was the fighting element which inspired the mass with a spirit of enterprise in action and endurance under defeat of which few coalitions have presented an example. In ordinary times, or with ordinary objects, Blücher's character and disposition would have ill fitted him for acting with the subtle and jealous Russian, or the lukewarm Swede, to whom the Germans applied the wellknown line from Schiller's Song of the Bell,

Ach! ihm fehlt kein theures haupt.'

Neither the amiability of Schwarzenberg, nor the patient tact of Wellington, which neither Portuguese nor Spanish could exhaust, were natural to Blücher; but for his two great purposes, the liberation of his country and the humiliation of France, he could assume both. Defeat indeed he suffered often :-to compare him with that great captain from whom throughout his campaigns in India and Europe no enemy ever carried off a gun and kept it, would be preposterous. Few victories, however, have been more fairly won, to say nothing of their consequences, than the great battle of the Katzbach. No mere hussar inspired his troops with that sterling enthusiasm which could enable them to pursue every advantage and rally after every failure, which could retrieve Montmirail on the heights of Montmartre, and keep steadily to a programme of combined movement after Ligny. Blücher must have possessed real and high skill as a tactician, though probably not as a strategist, to which, indeed, he does not seem ever to have pretended. At the same time his supreme contempt of danger and constant recklessness of personal exposure had doubtless very much to do with his success. He possessed with Marmion and Napoleon the art

To win the hardy soldier's heart,

Who loves a captain to obey,

Boisterous as March, yet fresh as May.'

His jests, frequently of a description ill calculated for chaste ears, extorted grim smiles from lips black with the cartridge, and sent laughter through the column while grapeshot was tearing its ranks. When he checked his horse in the hottest cannonade to light his pipe at the linstock of the gunner, the piece was pro

bably