joined the fray against the Great Frede- | placed by an officer of different habits and rick, and, in an hour evil for the paternal manners, with whom also, however, Blūprecautions, a regiment of Swedish hussars cher soon contrived to quarrel. The Poles set foot on the island. In spite of all at this time, like the Spaniards in ours, attempts at remonstrance or prevention, revenged by frequent assassinations their young Blücher, now in his fifteenth year. subjection to the invader. A priest, whom joined the ranks, and soon found himself Captain Blücher suspected as the instion the mainland opposed to the Prussian gator of two of these enormities. was sumforces in a contest in which little either of marily condemned by him to military exeardour or skill was evinced by his com- cution. The grave was dug with the usual rades. In 1758 he was taken prisoner in formalities, the culprit blinded, and the a cavalry-skirmish with the regiment of muskets discharged-though with blank. Colonel Belling, who, soon perceiving cartridges The priest survived his fright some promising indications in the stripling, but this daring violation not only of justtreated him with kindness, and negotiated for him an exchange with a prisoner, who, being by birth a Prussian, had forfeited his life to military law. This transaction enabled Blücner, without impeachment of his honour, to take service in the regiment of his captor. Till it was effected, he had tenaciously resisted the offer of a subaltern's commission in the then most brilliant of contineutal services.

Under Belling he served through the latter part of the Seven Years' War, assisted at the murderous battle of Cunersdo ff, which first brought the formidable qualities of the Russian infantry under the notice of civilized Europe, and was wounded at Freyberg On the re-establishment of peace he was found a turbulent subject for garrison duty, the inherent monotony of which was not relieved to him by the resources of education. His leisure was diversified, as usual in such cases, by as much sporting, drinking, gaming, and flirtation as his pay could afford, as also by frequent duelling, of which no serious result is recorded One instance of the latter propensity, for which hot blood and the manners of his age and vocation may plead excuse, was certainly little to his credit; for he ended by calling out his patron and commander, Belling, who had now attained the rank of general. That he was not shot, or at the least cashiered, for so gross a violation of military law, must be ascribed to the generosity of that veteran, who contented himself with transferring this turbulent and ungrateful subject to a lieutenancy under a Major Podscharli, an officer to whose military tuition Blücher's biographer ascribes the happiest results.

In 1770 Poland was invaded by the troops of Frederick, and Blücher found himself again commanded by Belling, who never ceased to befriend him. Belling was an able and trusted soldier, but his situation in Poland was one which required political talent and pliancy, and he was re

ice, but of Frederick's conciliatory policy, was punished, mildly enough, by the degradation of the offender from the highest to the lowest on the list of captains in his regiment. This being followed by the promotion of an officer from another regiment to the next vacancy, the cup of Blúcher's indignation boiled over, and he demanded his retirement from the service. Frederick replied by placing him in arrest, with a view to give him time for consideration. The gentleman however, insisted, and his repeated applications at length extorted the following answer: Captain von Blücher is released from his service, and may go to the d-. January, 1773.'

This interruption of Blücher's military career continued for this teen years. We have heard that a chancery-lawyer who for any reason abandons his practice for the thirteenth portion of that period, seldom recovers it. Assuredly. few soldiers of fortune, after quitting a regular service for a dozen of the best years of their life have died field marshals. Perhaps Blücher was somewhat reconciled to an event which seemed so likely to blast his prospects, by the circumstance that it found him seriously in love and half engaged with the daughter of a Saxon Colonel Melling, then settled in Poland. The lady was seventeen years his junior, Polish in her language, her beauty, and her attractions, which is saying everything for the latter. They married, and settled on a farm of the father-in-law. Blücher appears to have abandoned the excesses of his youth in his new vocation, and to have prosecuted it with ability and success. After a few years he found himself in condition to purchase a tolerable estate near Stargard in Pomerania, whither he migrated from Poland. As a resident proprietor, he continued his attention to rural affairs, and became a man of conse quence among his neighbours. He was elected to the local magistracy, and consulted by the provincial authorities. This

was not all. It is evident that there was | Revolution opened a career for such spirits something about the man which in the esti- as Blücher. The commencement of hosmation of his superiors had uniformly outweighed the objectionable features of his wild, uneducated and untameable disposition. Frederick the Second was not a man to overlook the freaks of an ordinary swaggerer, yet we find that at this period he corresponded with Blücher, and assisted him with money for the improvement of his estate, first in the shape of loan without interest, and then of donation. This liberality on the part of a sovereign so careful of his dollars was the more remarkable, as it by no means took the shape of a retain ing fee for future military devotion. Blucher's restless spirit pined for restoration to the service, but on this subject Frederick was inexorable. In 1778 there was a prospect of hostilities in Bavaria, and Blucher became urgent for permission to re-enter the army. His first attempt was defeated by his wife, a second by the stern refusal of Frederick. He was obliged to remain an agriculturist, his farm prospered, and his hearth was surrounded by six promising sons and a daughter.

tilities between Prussia and France found him a colonel, and thus his exercise of command dates its commencement from the fifty first year of his age, a time of life at which many officers look to a wellearned retirement. From the period of the Duke of Brunswick's famous and fatal incursion to the peace of Basle, he was in almost constant employment. On the death of General Goltz, he succeeded to the command of the left wing of the Prussian army; and without doubt the confidence of his soldiers and the general success which attended his operations, particularly with his favourite arm, the cavalry, fully justified this promotion. The corps of hussars under his immediate command, including his old regiment, is said to have lost but six men by surprise during the outpost duty of the campaigns of 1793 and '94, in which Prussian accounts boast that they captured 4000 men, 1500 horses, and 11 guns from the enemy, and he retired from the contest with the reputation of a

There are one or two anecdotes of this period which may, perhaps, tend to rescue his character from the imputation of unmitigated barbarism cast upon it by the French. While commanding within their frontier, he caused a captured officer who had died of his wounds to be buried with all military honours-an attention to the fallen so unusual as to excite the greatest astonishment among the French inhabitants, who were further edified when ho administered with his own hand an exemplary threshing to the village carpenter who had given short measure and bad workmanship to the coffin. Another incident is recorded in his journal, and we give it in his own words. It occurred near Kaiserslautern in 1799:

second Ziethen. The curious in the details Frederick died in 1786. Blucher now of such warfare may learn them from a set aside all connubial remonstrances, rush-journal which he kept and published.. ed to Berlin, made interest with some of his former commanders, and returned to Pomerania without positive success, but with assurances of support in due season. On the next military inspection he attracted by his riding the attention of the new king, presented his request in person, and found himself in his former regiment of Black Hussars, with the rank which he would have occupied had he continued without interruption in the service, It was soon apparent that his military ardour, which perhaps might have cooled away in the barracks, had only been nursed and kept vigorous by the long interval of domestic repose. His other old propensities were, we fear, resumed with his uniform, and his wife perhaps only consulted her own convenience and comfort by dying about this period. Except that she was beautiful, attractive, and fond enough of her husband to wish to detain him at home, we hear little of her. Blücher returned to the camp as though the interval had been a dream, and its adventures as imaginary as those of the sultan of the Arabian tale, who dipped his head into a tub of water for an instant, which by the delusion of magic was converted into years of deposition and servitude.

Some years of garrison duty were still to elapse before the great event of the French

Among the prisoners was one whose thighbone had been shattered. They had laid him near the fire, and offered him bread and brandy, as to the others. He not only rejected this, but refused to be bandaged, and repeatedly begged the bystanders to shoot him. The latter said to one another, "This is an obstinate, sulky Frenchman." Muffling and myself were within hearing, and approached the group. The wounded man lay still, drawn into himself, and saw nothing of what was passing. As he seemed to shiver, I caused cloaks to be heaped upon him. He looked up at me upon this, and again cast down his eyes. Not being master of the French language myself, I made my adjutant tell him that he ought to let himself be ban

With the powerful assistance of Russia day specified for the renewal of hostilities. the contest was still maintained in the in Silesia :-but the Prussian accounts northern provinces, and the offer of Swedish reply distinctly, that the original violation. co-operation induced the king to organize of this territory was the act of the French a corps intended to act on the rear of the under Macdonald. enemy from the northern coast. Blücher The French are not his only accusers. was selected for the command of this ex-During his tenure of command in Pomepedition, which was, however, frustrated rania he found occasion to defend himself in the first instance by the vacillation of against certain anonymous attacks which the Swedish sovereign, and finally by the issued from the Leipzic press upon his battle of Friedland and the peace of Tilsit military conduct in his recent arduous rewhich succeeded. After the treaty was treat. Blücher demanded an investigation signed, our hero retained the command of before a court of inquiry which had been the Pomeranian army, a post of much diffi-appointed to sit at Konigsberg for the conculty, for the troops of the conqueror were sideration of cases of a far more serious stationed in its neighbourhood, and frequent complexion. The evidence of that distindiscussions and disputes arose between the guished officer Scharnhorst, who had sharcommanders. Blücher is said to have showned the toils and dangers of his retreat, was much subtlety and address in this position, conclusive in his favour, and the result was in which his character gave weight to the more than his justification. 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 negotiation, 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 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 induce- Blücher's education had been that of a ment to make the most of their own justifi- soldier. He knew no language but his cation. We must confess at the same time own, but he was fond of writing, and took that, but for this negative evidence, even a pleasure in dictating his despatches and the German account of the transaction proclamations. We have seen letters adwould 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

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 which afflicted him through the greater part of the year 1808, and at times affected his reason, seems 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.'

dressed by him to the King at this period, upon the subject of that future moment to which he look forward with such unabated confidence, containing passages of an eloquence worthy of his theme. His hopes