Bluecher, who completed the work which Kutusoff began, and in a manner which the Russian would hardly have approved, was an older man than the hero of Borodino. When called to the command of the Prussian army, in March, 1813, he was in his seventy-first year; and he was in his seventy-third year when his energy enabled him, in the face of difficulties that no other commander could have overcome, to bring up more than fifty thousand men to the assistance of Wellington at Waterloo, losing more than an eighth of their number. He had no military talent, as the term is generally used. He could not tell whether a plan was good or bad. He could not understand the maps. He was not a disciplinarian, and he was ignorant of all the details of preparing an army, of clothing and feeding and arming it. In all those things which it is supposed a commander should know, and which such commanders as Napoleon and Wellington did know well, he was so entirely ignorant, that he might have been raised to the head of an army of United States Volunteers amid universal applause. He was vicious to an extent that surprised even the fastest men of that vicious time,--a gambler, a drunkard, and a loose liver every way, indulging in vices that are held by mild moralists to be excusable in youth who are employed in sowing wild oats, but which are universally admitted to be disgusting in those upon whom age has laid its withering hand. Yet this vicious and ignorant old man had more to do with bringing about the fall of Napoleon than all the generals and statesmen of the Allies combined. He had energy, which is the most valuable of all qualities in a military leader; and he hated Napoleon as heartily as he hated Satan, and a great deal more heartily than he hated sin. Mr. Dickens tells us that the vigorous tenacity of love is always much stronger than hate, and perhaps he is right, so far as concerns private life; but in public life hate is by far the stronger passion. But for Bluecher's hatred of Napoleon the campaign of 1813 would have terminated in favor of the Emperor, that of 1814 never would have been undertaken, and that of 1815, if ever attempted, would have had a far different issue. The old German disregarded all orders and suggestions, and set all military and political principles at defiance, in his ardor to accomplish the one purpose which he had in view; and as that purpose was accomplished, he has taken his place in history as one of the greatest of soldiers. Napoleon himself is not more secure of immortality. He was greatly favored by circumstances, but he is a wise man who knows how to profit from circumstances. Take Bluecher out of the wars of 1813-15, and there is little left in them on the side of the Allies that is calculated to command admiration. Next to Bluecher stands his celebrated chief of the staff, General Count Gneisenau, who was the brains of the Army of Silesia, Bluecher being its head. When Bluecher was made an LL.D. at