Aggressive, excessively driven, hard-drinking and affable, Blücher displayed more the traits of an NCO than of an officer – much less a field marshal. Yet he was the right man for the job: Prussia needed an offensive-minded commander-in-chief during the years 1813–15 and Blücher deserves considerable credit for honouring his promise to assist Wellington during the Waterloo campaign. In light of the Prussians’ severe mauling at Ligny, the determination of the man becomes all the more apparent.
Blücher began his military service in the 1750s, serving in the Seven Years War (1756–63) and later in the Revolutionary Wars, mostly on the Rhine. He commanded a cavalry corps under the Duke of Brunswick during Prussia’s ill-fated campaign of 1806, in which Blücher displayed an ill-advised, impetuous keenness to attack at Auerstädt, so contributing to Count Hohenlohe’s abject defeat. Undaunted, he not only held the line to enable the bulk of the army to retreat, but managed through sheer force of character and a driving will to lead 22,000 survivors to Lübeck, on the Baltic coast, earning the eternal admiration of his countrymen in his capacity as the last Prussian field commander to capitulate to the French, for whom Blücher possessed a particular loathing – a view he openly expressed. As a consequence, during the long period of his country’s occupation – formalised by the Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807, Blücher was deliberately excluded from senior command.
When King Frederick William III joined the Sixth Coalition in early 1813, Blücher enthusiastically accepted command of Prussian forces and, despite suffering initial defeats at Lützen and Bautzen, pressed on remorselessly to participate in the colossal struggle at Leipzig. He played an instrumental role in numerous engagements during the campaign in France which followed, confirming throughout these years his reputation as an inspirational leader.
Gregory Fremont-Barnes holds a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford and serves as a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. A prolific author, his books on this period include Waterloo 1815, The French Revolutionary Wars, The Peninsular War, 1807–14, The Fall of the French Empire, 1813–15, Nile 1798 and Trafalgar 1805. He also edited Armies of the Napoleonic Wars and the three-volume Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As an academic advisor, Dr Fremont-Barnes has accompanied several groups of British Army officers and senior NCOs in their visits to the battlefields of the Peninsula and to Waterloo.