mainly Decorated and Perpendicular, wherein are preserved relics of John Wycliffe, who was rector here from 1374 until his death in 1384. The exhumation and burning of his body in 1428, when the ashes were cast into the Swift, gave rise to the saying that their distribution by the river to the ocean resembled that of Wycliffe’s doctrines over the world. Wycliffe is further commemorated by a modern obelisk in the town. Trade is principally agricultural.
LUTTRELL, HENRY (c. 1765–1851), English wit and writer of society verse, was the illegitimate son of Henry Lawes Luttrell,
2nd earl of Carhampton (1743–1821), a grandson of Colonel
Henry Luttrell (c. 1655–1717), who served James II. in Ireland
in 1689 and 1690, and afterwards deserted him, being murdered
in Dublin in November 1717. Colonel Luttrell’s son Simon
(1713–1787) was created earl of Carhampton in 1785, and the
latter’s son was Henry Lawes Luttrell. Before succeeding to the
peerage, the 2nd earl, then Colonel Luttrell, had won notoriety
by opposing John Wilkes at the Middlesex election of 1769.
He was beaten at the poll, but the House of Commons declared
that he and not Wilkes had been elected. In 1796 he was made
commander of the forces in Ireland and in 1798 he became a
general. Being an Irish peer, Carhampton was able to sit in
the English parliament until his death in April 1821. The earldom
became extinct on the death of his brother John, the 3rd
earl, in 1829.
Henry Luttrell secured a seat in the Irish parliament in 1798 and a post in the Irish government, which he commuted for a pension. Introduced into London society by the duchess of Devonshire, his wit made him popular. Soon he began to write verse, in which the foibles of fashionable people were outlined. In 1820 he published his Advice to Julia, of which a second edition, altered and amplified, appeared in 1823 as Letters to Julia in Rhyme. This poem, suggested by the ode to Lydia in the first book of Horace’s Odes, was his most important work. His more serious literary contemporaries nicknamed it “Letters of a Dandy to a Dolly.” In 1827 in Crockford House he wrote a satire on the high play then in vogue. Byron characterized him as “the best sayer of good things, and the most epigrammatic conversationist I ever met”; Sir Walter Scott wrote of him as “the great London wit,” and Lady Blessington described him as the one talker “who always makes me think.” Luttrell died in London on the 19th of December 1851.
LÜTTRINGHAUSEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian
Rhine province, 6 m. S.E. of Elberfeld by rail. Pop. (1905)
11,829. It is the seat of various iron and other metal industries,
and has cloth and calico mills.
LÜTZEN, a town in Prussian Saxony, in the circle of Merseburg
(pop. in 1905, 3981), chiefly famous as the scene of a great battle
fought on the 6/16th of November 1632 between the Swedes,
under King Gustavus Adolphus, and the Imperialists, under
Wallenstein. On the 5/15th November, Gustavus, with some
20,000 men, advanced from Naumburg on the Saale to meet a
contingent of his German allies at Grimma, S.E. of Leipzig, but
becoming aware of the presence of Wallenstein’s army near
Lützen, and that it had been weakened by a large detachment
sent away under Pappenheim towards Halle, he turned towards
Lützen. Wallenstein’s posts at Weissenfels and Rippach prevented
him from fighting his main battle the same evening, and
the Swedes went into camp near Rippach, a little more than an
hour’s march from Lützen.
Wallenstein made ready to give battle on the following day and recalled Pappenheim. The latter had taken a small castle, the reduction of which was one of the objects of his expedition, but his men had dispersed to plunder and could not be rallied before the following morning. Gustavus had now to choose between proceeding to Grimma and fighting Wallenstein on the chance that Pappenheim had not rejoined. He chose the latter. In the mist of the early morning Wallenstein’s army was formed in line of battle along the Leipzig road with its right on Lützen. Its left was not carried out as far as the Flossgraben in order to leave room on that flank for Pappenheim. His infantry was arranged in five huge oblongs, four of which (in lozenge formation) formed the centre and one the right wing at Lützen. These “battalias” had their angles strengthened in the old-fashioned way that had prevailed since Marignan, with small outstanding bodies of musketeers, so that they resembled rectangular forts with bastions. On either side of this centre was the cavalry in two long lines, while in front of the centre and close to the right at Lützen were the two batteries of heavy artillery. Lützen was set on fire as a precaution. Skirmishers lined the bank and the ditch of the Leipzig road. The total strength of the Imperial army was about 12,000 foot and 8000 horse.
Gustavus’s hopes of an early decision were frustrated by the fog, which delayed the approach and deployment of the Swedes. It was 8 a.m. before all was ready. The royal army was in two lines. The infantry in the centre was arrayed in the small and handy battalions then peculiar to Gustavus’s army, the horse on either wing extended from opposite Lützen to some distance beyond Wallenstein’s left, which Pappenheim was to extend on his arrival. By the accident of the terrain, or perhaps, following the experience of Breitenfeld (q.v.), by design, the right of the Swedes was somewhat nearer to the enemy than the left. In front, near the centre, were the heavy guns and each infantry battalion had its own light artillery. The force of infantry and cavalry on either side was about equal, the Swedes had perhaps rather less cavalry and rather more infantry, but their artillery was superior to Wallenstein’s. Not until 11 was it possible to open fire, for want of a visible target, but about noon, after a preliminary cannonade, Gustavus gave the word to advance.
The king himself commanded the right wing, which had to wait until small bodies of infantry detached for the purpose had driven in the Imperialist skirmish line, and had then to cross a ditch leading the horses. They were not charged by the Imperialists at this moment, for Pappenheim had not yet arrived, and the usual cavalry tactics of the day were founded on the pistol and not on the sword and the charging horse. Gaining at last room to form, the Swedes charged and routed the first line of the Imperial cavalry but were stopped by the heavy squadrons of cuirassiers in second line, and at that moment Gustavus galloped away to the centre where events had taken a serious turn. The Swedish centre (infantry) had forced their way across the Leipzig road and engaged Wallenstein’s living forts at close quarters. The “Blue” brigade—Gustavus’s infantry wore distinctive colours—overran the
