Early life Blücher was born on 16 December 1742 in
Rostock, a Baltic port in
northern Germany, then in the
Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. His father, Christian Friedrich von Blücher, was a retired army captain, and his family belonged to the nobility and had been landowners in northern Germany since at least the 13th century. His mother was Dorothea Maria von Zülow, who also belonged to an old noble family from
Mecklenburg. Gebhard began his military career at the age of 16, when he joined the
Swedish Army as a
hussar. At the time,
Sweden was at war with
Prussia in the
Seven Years' War. Blücher took part in the
Pomeranian campaign of 1760, where Prussian hussars captured him in a skirmish. The colonel of the Prussian regiment,
Wilhelm Sebastian von Belling (a distant relative), was impressed with the young hussar and had him join his own regiment. Blücher took part in the later battles of the Seven Years' War, and as a hussar officer, gained much experience in light cavalry work. In peace, however, his ardent spirit led him into excesses of all kinds, such as the
mock execution of a priest suspected of supporting
Polish uprisings in 1772. As a result, he was passed over for promotion to
major. Blücher submitted a rude letter of resignation in 1773, which
Frederick the Great replied to with "Captain Blücher can take himself to the devil" (1773). Blücher settled down to farming. Within 15 years, he had acquired financial independence and had become a
Freemason. During Frederick the Great's lifetime, Blücher could not return to the army. However, the monarch died in 1786, and the following year, Blücher was reinstated as a major in his old regiment, the Red Hussars. He took part in the expedition to the
Netherlands in 1787, and the next year was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1789, he received Prussia's highest
military order, the
Pour le Mérite, and in 1794, he became colonel of the Red Hussars. In 1793 and 1794, Blücher distinguished himself in cavalry actions against the French, and for his victory at
Kirrweiler on 28 May 1794, he was promoted to major general. In 1801, he was made a lieutenant general.
Napoleonic Wars (1863) Blücher was one of the leaders of the war party in Prussia in 1805, and he served as a cavalry general in the disastrous campaign of 1806. At the double
Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Blücher fought at
Auerstedt, repeatedly leading the charges of the Prussian cavalry, but without success. During the retreat of the broken armies, he commanded the rearguard composed of
Frederick Louis, Prince of Hohenlohe's corps. With the
capitulation of the main body after the
Battle of Prenzlau on 28 October, he found his march toward the north-east blocked. He led the remnant of his corps away to the north-west. Reinforcing his numbers with a division previously commanded by
Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Blücher and his new
chief of staff,
Gerhard von Scharnhorst, reorganised his forces into two small corps totaling 21,000 men and 44 cannons. Nevertheless, he was defeated by two French corps at the
Battle of Lübeck on 6 November. The next day, trapped against the
Danish frontier by 40,000 French troops, he was compelled to surrender with less than 10,000 soldiers at
Ratekau. Blücher insisted that clauses be written in the capitulation document that he had had to surrender due to lack of provisions and ammunition, and that his soldiers should be honoured by a French formation along the street. He was allowed to keep his sabre and to move freely, bound only by his
word of honour. He was soon exchanged for future Marshal
Claude Victor-Perrin, Duc de Belluno, and was actively employed in Pomerania, at
Berlin, and at
Königsberg until the conclusion of the war. After the war, Blücher was looked upon as the natural leader of the Patriot Party, with which he was in close touch during the period of Napoleonic domination, but his hopes of an alliance with
Austria in the war of 1809 were disappointed. In this year, he was made general of cavalry. In 1812, he expressed himself so openly on the alliance of Russia with France that he was recalled from his military governorship of Pomerania and virtually banished from the court. (1885) Following the start of the
War of Liberation in the spring of 1813, Blücher was again placed in high command, and he was present at
Lützen and
Bautzen. During the
summer truce, he worked on the organisation of the Prussian forces; when the war was resumed, he became commander-in-chief of the Army of Silesia, with
August von Gneisenau and
Karl von Müffling as his principal staff officers and 40,000 Prussians and 50,000 Russians under his command during the
autumn campaign. The most conspicuous military quality displayed by Blücher was his unrelenting energy. The irresolution and divergence of interests usual in
Sixth Coalition armies found in him a restless opponent. Knowing that if he could not induce others to co-operate, he was prepared to attempt the task at hand by himself, which often caused other generals to follow his lead. He defeated
Marshal MacDonald at the
Katzbach, and by his victory over
Marshal Marmont at
Möckern led the way to the decisive defeat of
Napoleon at
the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig. Blücher's own army stormed Leipzig on the evening of the last day of the battle. This was the fourth battle between Napoleon and Blücher, and the first that Blücher had won. On the day of Möckern (16 October 1813), Blücher was made a field marshal. He later earned the nickname "Marshal Forwards" due to his tireless energy. And after the victory, he pursued the French with his accustomed energy. In the winter of 1813–1814, Blücher, with his chief staff officers, was mainly instrumental in inducing the Coalition sovereigns to carry the war into France itself. , onto the French territory; 1 January 1814. By
Wilhelm Camphausen (1859). , 8 April 1814 The
Battle of Brienne and the
Battle of La Rothière were the chief incidents of the first stage of the celebrated
1814 campaign in north-east France, and they were quickly followed by victories of Napoleon over Blücher at
Champaubert,
Vauchamps, and
Montmirail. The courage of the Prussian leader was undiminished, though, and his victory against the vastly outnumbered French, at
Laon (9 and 10 March) practically decided the fate of the campaign. However, his health had been severely affected by the strains of the previous two months, and he now suffered a breakdown, during which he lost his sight and suffered a delusion that a Frenchman had impregnated him with an elephant. Dominic Lieven wrote that the breakdown, "revealed the fragility of the coalition armies' command structure and just how much the Army of Silesia had depended on Blücher's drive, courage, and charisma.... The result was that for more than a week after the battle of Laon, the Army of Silesia... played no useful role in the war". After this, Blücher infused some of his energy into the operations of the
Prince Schwarzenberg's
Army of Bohemia, and at last this army and the Army of Silesia marched in one body directly towards Paris. The
victory of Montmartre, the entry of the allies into the French capital, and the overthrow of the
First Empire were the direct consequences. Blücher was in favour of punishing the city of Paris severely for the sufferings of Prussia at the hands of the French armies, but the allied commanders intervened. According to the
Duke of Wellington, one of Blücher's plans involved blowing up the
Jena Bridge near the
Champ de Mars: In gratitude for his victories in 1814, King
Frederick William III of Prussia created Blücher
Prince (Fürst) of Wahlstatt (in Silesia on the Katzbach battlefield). The king also awarded him estates near Krieblowitz (now
Krobielowice, Poland) in Lower Silesia and a grand mansion at 2,
Pariser Platz in Berlin (which in 1930 became the
Embassy of the United States, Berlin). Soon afterward, Blücher
paid a visit to England, where he was received with royal honours and cheered enthusiastically everywhere he went. When
Oxford University granted him an honorary doctorate (doctor of laws), he is supposed to have joked that if he was made a doctor, they should at least make Gneisenau an
apothecary; "...for if I wrote the prescription, he made the pills."
Hundred Days and later life during the
Battle of Waterloo, painted by
Adolph Northen After the war,
Frederick William III gave Blücher properties in the area of Neustadt (now
Prudnik). In November of the same year, Blücher leased
Kunzendorf,
Mühlsdorf,
Wackenau and
Achthuben to a local farmer, Hübner, in exchange for 2,000
thalers, rolls of linen cloth and yarn. His wife also moved to Kunzendorf. While living in the area of Neustadt, he financed the families of the fallen soldiers, gave a few liters of beer to the local parish priest every day, and paid a doctor from Neustadt to treat the poor. Thanks to his efforts, a health resort called "Blücher's Spring" was established in Kunzendorf (it was destroyed together with the castle as a result of the battles of the Neustadt in 1945). After the war, Blücher retired to Silesia. However, the return of Napoleon from
Elba and his entry into Paris at the start of the
Hundred Days, called him back to service. He was put in command of the
Army of the Lower Rhine, with Gneisenau serving again as his chief of staff. At the outset of the
Waterloo Campaign of 1815, the Prussians sustained a serious defeat at
Ligny (16 June), in the course of which the old field marshal lay trapped under his dead horse for several hours and was repeatedly ridden over by cavalry, his life saved only by the devotion of his
aide-de-camp Count
Nostitz, who threw a greatcoat over his commander to obscure Blücher's rank and identity from the passing French. As Blücher was unable to resume command for some hours, Gneisenau took command, drew off the defeated army, and rallied it. In spite of Gneisenau's distrust of Wellington, he obeyed Blücher's last orders to direct the army's retreat towards
Wavre, rather than
Liège, to keep alive the possibility of joining the Prussian and Wellington's Anglo-allied armies together. After bathing his wounds in a liniment of
rhubarb and
garlic, and fortified by a liberal internal dose of
schnapps, Blücher rejoined his army. Gneisenau feared that the British had reneged on their earlier agreements and favoured a withdrawal, but Blücher convinced him to send two corps to join Wellington at
Waterloo. He then led his army on a tortuous march along muddy paths, arriving on the field of Waterloo in the late afternoon. In spite of his age, the pain of his wounds, and the effort it must have taken for him to remain on horseback,
Bernard Cornwell states that several soldiers attested to Blücher's high spirits and his determination to defeat Napoleon: With the battle hanging in the balance, Blücher's army intervened with decisive and crushing effect, his vanguard drawing off Napoleon's badly needed reserves, and his main body being instrumental in crushing French resistance. Wellington's army was able to overcome the
Middle Guard, while Blücher's troops, in their final assault on Plancenoit, managed to push the
Old Guard back, which retreated in good order unlike the rest of the fleeing French army. This victory led the way to a decisive victory through the
relentless pursuit of the French by the Prussians. The two Coalition armies
entered Paris on 7 July. Krieblowitz (now
Krobielowice, Poland). Blücher remained in the French capital for a few months, but his age and infirmities compelled him to retire to his Silesian residence at Krieblowitz. At the invitation of the British government, he made another state visit to England, to be formally thanked for his army and his role in the Waterloo Campaign. When his carriage stopped on
Blackheath Hill, overlooking London, he is said to have exclaimed, "What a city to sack!" However, this may have been a case of a foreign word being a homonym of an English word. According to J.H. Morgan, on seeing London he actually said "Was für Plunder!" which translates as "What a load of rubbish." Blücher died at Krieblowitz on 12 September 1819, aged 76. After his death, an imposing mausoleum was built for his remains. When Krieblowitz was conquered by the Red Army in 1945, Soviet soldiers broke into the Blücher mausoleum and scattered the remains. Soviet troops reportedly used his skull as a football. After 1989, some of his remains were taken by a Polish priest and interred in the catacomb of the church in
Sośnica (German: Schosnitz), three km from the now Polish Krobielowice. ==Assessment==