After organizing Prussia's citizen army, it was Scharnhorst's fate to be mortally wounded in the first battle; but his place, as chief of staff, was soon filled by Gneisenau, in whose nature the sternness of the warrior was happily blended with the coolness of the scientific thinker.

The accord between him and Bluecher was close and cordial; and the latter, on receiving the degree of doctor of laws from the University of Oxford, wittily acknowledged his debt to the strategist.

"Well," said he, "if I am to be a doctor, they must make Gneisenau an apothecary; for he makes up the pills and I then administer them." On these resolute chiefs and their 33,000 Prussians fell the brunt of the fighting near Luetzen.

Wittgenstein, with his 35,000 Russians, showed less energy; but if a fourth Russian corps under Miloradovitch, then on the Elster, had arrived in time, the day might have closed with victory for the allies.

Their plan was to cross a stream, called the Floss Graben, some five miles to the south of Luetzen, storm the villages of Gross Goerschen, Rahna, and Starsiedel, held by the French vanguard, and, cutting into Napoleon's line of march towards Luetzen and Leipzig, throw it into disorder and rout.