He was one of the leaders of the war party in Prussia in 1805-1806, and served as a cavalry general in the disastrous campaign of the latter year. At Auerstädt Blücher repeatedly charged at the head of the Prussian cavalry, but without success. In the retreat of the broken armies he commanded the rearguard of Prince Hohenlohe’s corps, and upon the capitulation of the main body of Prenzlau he carried off a remnant of the Prussian army to the northward, and in the neighbourhood of Lübeck he fought a series of combats, which, however, ended in his being forced to surrender at Ratkau (November 7, 1806). His adversaries testified in his capitulation that it was caused by “want of provisions and ammunition.” He was soon exchanged for General Victor, 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. 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.
When at last the Napoleonic domination was ended by the outbreak of the War of Liberation in 1813, Blücher of course was at once placed in high command, and he was present at Lützen and Bautzen. During the armistice he worked at the organization of the Prussian forces, and when the war was resumed Blücher became commander-in-chief of the Army of Silesia, with Gneisenau and Müffling as his principal staff officers, and 40,000 Prussians and 50,000 Russians under his control. The autumn campaign of 1813 will be found described in the article [Napoleonic Campaigns], and it will here be sufficient to say that the most conspicuous military quality displayed by Blücher was his unrelenting energy. The irresolution and divergence of interests usual in allied armies found in him a restless opponent, and the knowledge that if he could not induce others to co-operate he was prepared to attempt the task in hand by himself often caused other generals to follow his lead. He defeated Marshal Macdonald at the Katzbach, and by his victory over Marmont at Möckern led the way to the decisive overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig, which place was stormed by Blücher’s own army on the evening of the last day of the battle. On the day of Mockern (October 16, 1813) Blücher was made a general field marshal, and after the victory he pursued the routed French with his accustomed energy. In the winter of 1813-1814 Blücher, with his chief staff officers, was mainly instrumental in inducing the allied sovereigns to carry the war into France itself. The combat of Brienne and the battle of La Rothière were the chief incidents of the first stage of the celebrated campaign of 1814, and they were quickly followed by the victories of Napoleon over Blücher at Champaubert, Vauxchamps and Montmirail. But the courage of the Prussian leader was undiminished, and his great victory of Laon (March 9 to 10) practically decided the fate of the campaign. After this Blücher infused some of his own energy into the operations of Prince Schwarzenberg’s Army of Bohemia, and at last this army and the Army of Silesia marched in one body direct upon 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 disposed to make a severe retaliation upon Paris for the calamities that Prussia had suffered from the armies of France had not the allied commanders intervened to prevent it. Blowing up the bridge of Jena was said to be one of his contemplated acts. On the 3rd of June 1814 he was made prince of Wahlstadt (in Silesia on the Katzbach battlefield), and soon afterwards he paid a visit to England, being received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm.
After the peace he retired to Silesia, but the return of Napoleon soon called him to further service. He was put in command of the Army of the Lower Rhine with General Gneisenau as his chief of staff (see [Waterloo Campaign]). In the campaign of 1815 the Prussians sustained a very severe defeat at the outset at Ligny (June 16), in the course of which the old field marshal was ridden over by cavalry charges, his life being saved only by the devotion of his aide-de-camp, Count Nostitz. He was unable to resume command for some hours, and Gneisenau drew off the defeated army. The relations of the Prussian and the English headquarters were at this time very complicated, and it is uncertain whether Blücher himself was responsible for the daring resolution to march to Wellington’s assistance. This was in fact done, and after an incredibly severe march Blücher’s army intervened with decisive and crushing effect in the battle of Waterloo. The great victory was converted into a success absolutely decisive of the war by the relentless pursuit of the Prussians, and the allies re-entered Paris on the 7th of July. Prince Blücher remained in the French capital for some months, but his age and infirmities compelled him to retire to his Silesian residence at Krieblowitz, where he died on the 12th of September 1819, aged seventy-seven. He retained to the end of his life that wildness of character and proneness to excesses which had caused his dismissal from the army in his youth, but however they may be regarded, these faults sprang always from the ardent and vivid temperament which made Blücher a dashing leader of horse. The qualities which made him a great general were his patriotism and the hatred of French domination which inspired every success of the War of Liberation. He was twice married, and had, by his first marriage, two sons and a daughter. Statues were erected to his memory at Berlin, Breslau and Rostock.
Of the various lives of Prince Blücher, that by Varnhagen von Ense (1827) is the most important. His war diaries of 1793-1794, together with a memoir (written in 1805) on the subject of a national army, were edited by Golz and Ribbentrop (Campagne Journal 1793-4 von Gl. Lt. v. Blücher).
BLUE (common in different forms to most European languages), the name of a colour, used in many colloquial phrases. From the fact of various parties, political and other, having adopted the colour blue as their badge, various classes of people have come to be known as “blue” or “blues”; thus “true blue” meant originally a staunch Presbyterian, the Covenanters having adopted blue as their colour as opposed to red, the royal colour; similarly, in the navy, there was in the 18th century a “Blue Squadron,” Nelson being at one time “Rear-Admiral of the Blue”; again, in 1690, the Royal Horse Guards were called the “Blues” from their blue uniforms, or, from their leader, the earl of Oxford, the “Oxford Blues”; also, from the blue ribbon worn by the knights of the Garter comes the use of the phrase as the highest mark of distinction that can be worn, especially applied on the turf to the winning of the Derby. The “blue Peter” is a rectangular blue flag, with a white square in the centre, hoisted at the top of the foremast as a signal that a vessel is about to leave port. At Oxford and Cambridge a man who represents his university in certain athletic sports is called a “blue” from the “colours” he is then entitled to wear, dark blue for Oxford and light blue for Cambridge.
BLUEBEARD, the monster of Charles Perrault’s tale of Barbe Bleue, who murdered his wives and hid their bodies in a locked room. Perrault’s tale was first printed in his Histoires et contes du temps passé (1697). The essentials of the story—Bluebeard’s prohibition to his wife to open a certain door during his absence, her disobedience, her discovery of a gruesome secret, and her timely rescue from death—are to be found in other folklore stories, none of which, however, has attained the fame of Bluebeard. A close parallel exists in an Esthonian legend of a husband who had already killed eleven wives, and was prevented from killing the twelfth, who had opened a secret room, by a gooseherd, the friend of her childhood. In “The Feather Bird” of Grimm’s Hausmärchen, three sisters are the victims, the third being rescued by her brothers. Bluebeard, though Perrault does not state the number of his crimes, is generally credited with the murder of seven wives. His history belongs to the common stock of folklore, and has even been ingeniously fitted with a mythical interpretation. In France the Bluebeard legend has its local habitation in Brittany, but whether the existing traditions connecting him with Gilles de Rais (q.v.) or Comorre the Cursed, a Breton chief of the 6th century, were anterior to Perrault’s time, we have no means of determining. The identification of Bluebeard with Gilles de Rais, the bête d’extermination of Michelet’s forcible language, persists locally in the neighbourhood of the various castles of the baron, especially at Machecoul and Tiffauges, the chief scenes of his infamous crimes. Gilles de Rais, however, had only one wife, who survived him, and his victims were in the majority of cases young boys. The traditional connexion may arise simply from the not improbable association of two monstrous tales. The less widespread identification of Bluebeard with Comorre is supported by a series of frescoes dating only a few years later than the publication of Perrault’s story, in a chapel at St Nicolas de Bieuzy dedicated to St Tryphine, in which the tale of Bluebeard is depicted as the story of the saint, who in history was the wife of Comorre. Comorre or Conomor had his original headquarters at Carhaix, in Finistère. He extended his authority by marriage with the widow of Iona, chief of Domnonia, and attempted the life of his stepson Judwal, who fled to the Frankish court. About 547 or 548 he obtained in marriage, through the intercession of St Gildas, Tryphine, daughter of Weroc, count of Vannes. The pair lived in peace at Castel Finans for some time, but Comorre, disappointed in his ambitions in the Vannetais, presently threatened Tryphine. She took flight, but her husband found her hiding in a wood, when he gave her a wound on the skull and left her for dead. She was tended and restored to health by St Gildas, and after the birth of her son retired to a convent of her own foundation. Eventually Comorre was defeated and slain by Judwal. In legend St Tryphine was decapitated and miraculously restored to life by Gildas. Alain Bouchard (Grandes croniques, Nantes, 1531) asserts that Comorre had already put several wives to death before he married Tryphine. In the Légendes bretonnes of the count d’Amezeuil the church legend becomes a charming fairy tale.
See also E.A. Vizetclly, Bluebeard (1902); E. Sidney Hartland, “The Forbidden Chamber,” in Folklore, vol. iii. (1885); and the editions of the Contes of Charles Perrault (q.v.). Cf. A. France, Les Sept Femmes de Barbe Bleue (1909).