battery of heavy guns, and the “Swedish”[1] and “Yellow” brigades engaged the left face of the Imperialist lozenge with success. But a gap opened between the right of the infantry and the left of the cavalry and Wallenstein’s second line squadrons pressed into it. It was this which brought Gustavus from the extreme right, and he was killed here in leading a counter charge.
On the extreme left, meanwhile, the “Green” brigade had come to close quarters with Wallenstein’s infantry and guns about Lützen, and the heavy artillery had gone forward to close range between the “Green” and the “Yellow” infantry. But the news of Gustavus’s death spread and the fire of the assault died out. Wallenstein advanced in his turn, recaptured his guns and drove the Swedes over the road.
But the fiery Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar took up the command and ordered a fresh advance. He was too good a soldier to waste his reserves and only brought up a few units of the second line to help the disordered brigades of the first. Again the Imperialists were driven in and their guns recaptured, this time all along the line. About three in the afternoon the Swedes were slowly bearing back Wallenstein’s stubborn infantry when Pappenheim appeared. The famous cavalry leader had brought on his mounted men ahead of the infantry and asking, “Where is the king of Sweden?” charged at once in the direction of the enemy’s right. Wallenstein thus gained time to re-establish his order, and once more the now exhausted brigades of the Swedish first line were driven over the road. But Pappenheim fell in the moment of victory and his death disheartened the Imperialists almost as much as the fall of Gustavus had disheartened the Swedes. For the last time Bernhard, wounded as he was, forced the Swedish army to the attack. The three infantry brigades of his second line had not been engaged,[2] and as usual the last closed reserve, resolutely handled, carried the day. Wallenstein’s army gave way at all points and the Swedes slept on the battlefield. The infantry of Pappenheim’s corps did not appear on the field until the battle was over. Of the losses on either side no accurate statement can be given, but the Swedish “Green” and “Yellow” brigades are said to have lost five-sixths of their numbers. Near the spot where Gustavus fell a granite boulder was placed in position on the day after the battle. A canopy of cast-iron was erected over this “Schwedenstein” in 1832, and close by, a chapel, built by Oskar Ekman, a citizen of Gothenburg (d. 1907), was dedicated on the 6th of November 1907.
Lützen is famous also as the scene of a victory of Napoleon over the Russians and Prussians on the 2nd of May 1813 (see Napoleonic Campaigns). This battle is often called Gross Görschen.
Bibliography.—The foregoing account of Gustavus’s last victory is founded chiefly upon Lieut.-Colonel Hon. E. Noel’s Gustaf Adolf (London, 1904) and a paper by the same officer in the Journal of the United States Institution of India (Oct. 1908), which should be consulted for further details.
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 Lützow’schen 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.
