[2] They had, however, found detachments to reinforce the first line.
LÜTZOW, ADOLF, Freiherr von (1782-1834), Prussian lieutenant-general, entered the army in 1795, and eleven years later as a lieutenant took part in the disastrous battle of Auerstädt. He achieved distinction in the siege of Colberg, as the leader of a squadron of Schill’s volunteers. In 1808, as a major, he retired from the Prussian army, indignant at the humiliating treaty of Tilsit. He took part in the heroic venture of his old chief Schill in 1809; wounded at Dodendorf and left behind, he thereby escaped the fate of his comrades. In 1811 he was restored to the Prussian army as major, and at the outbreak of the “war of liberation” received permission from Scharnhorst to organize a “free corps” consisting of infantry, cavalry and Tirolese marksmen, for operating in the French rear and rallying the smaller governments into the ranks of the allies. This corps played a marked part in the campaign of 1813. But Lützow was unable to coerce the minor states, and the wanderings of the corps had little military influence. At Kitzen (near Leipzig) the whole corps, warned too late of the armistice of Poischwitz, was caught on the French side of the line of demarcation and, as a fighting force, annihilated. Lützow himself, wounded, cut his way out with the survivors, and immediately began reorganizing and recruiting. In the second part of the campaign the corps served in more regular warfare under Wallmoden. Lützow and his men distinguished themselves at Gadebusch (where Körner fell) and Göhrde (where Lützow himself, for the second time, received a severe wound at the head of the cavalry). Sent next against Denmark, and later employed at the siege of Jülich, Lützow in 1814 fell into the hands of the French. After the peace of 1814 the corps was dissolved, the infantry becoming the 25th Regiment, the cavalry the 6th Ulans. At Ligny he led the 6th Ulans to the charge, but they were broken by the French cavalry, and he finally remained in the hands of the enemy, escaping, however, on the day of Waterloo. Made colonel in this year, his subsequent promotions were: major-general 1822, and lieutenant-general (on retirement) 1830. He died in 1834. One of the last acts of his life for which Lützow is remembered is his challenge (which was ignored) to Blücher, who had been ridden down in the rout of the 6th Ulans at Ligny, and had made, in his official report, comments thereon, which their colonel considered disparaging.
See Koberstein in Preussisches Jahrbuch, vol. xxiii (Berlin, 1868), and Preussisches Bilderbuch (Leipzig, 1889); K. von Lützow, Adolf Lützows Freikorps (Berlin, 1884); Fr. von Jagwitz, Geschichte des Lützowschen Freikorps (Berlin, 1892); and the histories of the campaigns of 1813 and 1815.
LUXEMBURG, FRANÇOIS HENRI DE MONTMORENCY-BOUTEVILLE, Duke of (1628-1695), marshal of France, the comrade and successor of the great Condé, was born at Paris on the 8th of January 1628. His father, the comte de Montmorency-Bouteville, had been executed six months before his birth for killing the marquis de Beuvron in a duel, but his aunt, Charlotte de Montmorency, princess of Condé, took charge of him and educated him with her son, the duc d’Enghien. The young Montmorency (or Bouteville as he was then called) attached himself to his cousin, and shared his successes and reverses throughout the troubles of the Fronde. He returned to France in 1659 and was pardoned, and Condé, then much attached to the duchesse de Châtillon, Montmorency’s sister, contrived the marriage of his adherent and cousin to the greatest heiress in France, Madeleine de Luxemburg-Piney, princesse de Tingry and heiress of the Luxemburg dukedom (1661), after which he was created duc de Luxembourg and peer of France. At the opening of the War of Devolution (1667-68), Condé, and consequently Luxemburg, had no command, but during the second campaign he served as Condé’s lieutenant-general in the conquest of Franche Comté. During the four years of peace which followed Luxemburg cultivated the favour of Louvois, and in 1672 held a high command against the Dutch. He defeated the prince of Orange at Woerden and ravaged Holland, and in 1673 made his famous retreat from Utrecht to Maestricht with only 20,000 men in face of 70,000, an exploit which placed him in the first rank of generals. In 1674 he was made captain of the gardes du corps, and in 1675 marshal of France. In 1676 he was placed at the head of the army of the Rhine, but failed to keep the duke of Lorraine out of Philipsburg; in 1677 he stormed Valenciennes; and in 1678 he defeated the prince of Orange, who attacked him at St Denis after the signature of the peace of Nijmwegen. His reputation was now high, and it is reputed that he quarrelled with Louvois, who managed to involve him in the “affair of the poisons” (see [La Voisin, Catherine]) and get him sent to the Bastille. Rousset in his Histoire de Louvois has shown that this quarrel is probably apocryphal. There is no doubt that Luxemburg spent some months of 1680 in the Bastille, but on his release took up his post at court as capitaine des gardes. When the war of 1690 broke out, the king and Louvois recognized that Luxemburg was the only general fit to cope with the prince of Orange, and he was put in command of the army of Flanders. On the 1st of July 1690 he won a great victory over the prince of Waldeck at Fleurus. In the following year he commanded the army which covered the king’s siege of Mons and defeated William III. of England at Leuze on September 18, 1691. Again in the next campaign he covered the king’s siege of Namur, and defeated William at Steenkirk (q.v.) on June 5, 1692; and on July 29, 1693, he won his greatest victory over his old adversary at Neerwinden, after which he was called le tapissier de Nôtre Dame from the number of captured colours that he sent to the cathedral. He was received with enthusiasm at Paris by all but the king, who looked coldly on a relative and adherent of the Condés. St Simon describes in the first volume of his Memoirs how, instead of ranking as eighteenth peer of France according to his patent of 1661, he claimed through his wife to be duc de Piney of an old creation of 1571, which would place him second on the roll. The affair is described with St Simon’s usual interest in the peerage, and was chiefly checked through his assiduity. In the campaign of 1694, Luxemburg did little in Flanders, except that he conducted a famous march from Vignamont to Tournay in face of the enemy. On his return to Versailles for the winter he fell ill, and died on January 4, 1695. In his last moments he was attended by the famous Jesuit priest Bourdaloue, who said on his death, “I have not lived his life, but I would wish to die his death.” Luxemburg’s morals were bad even in those times, and he had shown little sign of religious conviction. But as a general he was Condé’s grandest pupil. Though slothful like Condé in the management of a campaign, at the moment of battle he seemed seized with happy inspirations, against which no ardour of William’s and no steadiness of Dutch or English soldiers could stand. His death and Catinat’s disgrace close the second period of the military history of the reign of Louis XIV., and Catinat and Luxemburg, though inferior to Condé and Turenne, were far superior to Tallard and Villeroi. He was distinguished for a pungent wit. One of his retorts referred to his deformity. “I never can beat that cursed humpback,” William was reputed to have said of him. “How does he know I have a hump?” retorted Luxemburg, “he has never seen my back.” He left four sons, the youngest of whom was a marshal of France as Maréchal de Montmorency.
See, besides the various memoirs and histories of the time, Beaurain’s Histoire militaire du duc de Luxembourg (Hague and Paris, 1756); Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire du maréchal duc de Luxembourg (Hague and Paris, 1758); Courcelles, Dictionnaire des généraux français (Paris, 1823), vol. viii. There are some interesting facts in Desormeaux’s Histoire de la maison de Montmorency (1764), vols. iv. and v. Camille Rousset’s Louvois and the recent biography of Luxemburg by Count de Ségur (1907) should also be studied.
LUXEMBURG, a district in the European low countries, of which the eastern part forms the grand-duchy of Luxemburg, and the western is the Belgian province of that name (for map, see [Belgium]). The name is derived from the chief town.
Under the Romans the district was included in the province of Belgica prima, afterwards forming part of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia and of the empire of Charlemagne. About 1060 it came under the rule of Conrad (d. 1086), who took the title of count of Luxemburg. His descendants ruled the county, first in the male and then in the female line, until the death of the emperor Sigismund in 1437. Through the marriage of Sigismund’s daughter, Elizabeth, with the German king, Albert II., Luxemburg, which had been made a duchy in 1354, passed to the house of Habsburg, but was seized in 1443 by Philip III. the Good, duke of Burgundy, who based his claim upon a bargain concluded with Sigismund’s niece Elizabeth (d. 1451). Regained by the Habsburgs in 1477 when Mary, daughter and heiress of duke Charles the Bold, married the German king Maximilian I., the duchy passed to Philip II. of Spain in 1555, though subject to the laws of the empire, of which it still formed part. After a section had been ceded to France in 1659, the remainder was given to the emperor Charles VI. by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It was conquered by France in 1795, and retained by that power until the end of the Napoleonic wars. The congress of Vienna (1814-1815) erected Luxemburg into a grand-duchy, added part of the duchy of Bouillon to it, and assigned it to William I., king of the Netherlands, in return for the German territories of the house of Orange-Nassau, which Napoleon had confiscated in 1806, and which were given by the congress to the king of Prussia. In 1830 when the Belgian provinces separated from Holland, an effort was made to include Luxemburg in the new kingdom of the Belgians; but in November 1831 the powers decided that part of the grand-duchy should be retained by the king of Holland, who refused to accept this arrangement. Consequently the whole of Luxemburg remained in the possession of the Belgians until 1838, when the treaty of the 19th of April, concluded at the conference of London, enforced the partition of 1831.