ital for some months, but his age and
infirmities compelled him to retire to his Silesian residence at
Krieblowitz, where he died on the 12th of September 1819, aged
seventy-seven. He retained to the end of his life that wildness of
character and proneness to excesses which had caused his dismissal from
the army in his youth, but however they may be regarded, these faults
sprang always from the ardent and vivid temperament which made Blucher a
dashing leader of horse. The qualities which made him a great general
were his patriotism and the hatred of French domination which inspired
every success of the War of Liberation. He was twice married, and had,
by his first marriage, two sons and a daughter. Statues were erected to
his memory at Berlin, Breslau and Rostock.

Of the various lives of Prince Blucher, that by Varnhagen von Ense
(1827) is the most important. His war diaries of 1793-1794, together
with a memoir (written in 1805) on the subject of a national army,
were edited by Golz and Ribbentrop (Campagne Journal 1793-4 von _Gl.
Lt. v. Blucher_).

BLUE (common in different forms to most European languages), the name of
a colour, used in many colloquial phrases. From the fact of various
parties, political and other, having adopted the colour blue as their
badge, various classes of people have come to be known as "blue" or
"blues"; thus "true blue" meant originally a staunch Presbyterian, the
Covenanters having adopted blue as their colour as opposed to red, the
royal colour; similarly, in the navy, there was in the 18th century a
"Blue Squadron," Nelson being at one time "Rear-Admiral of the Blue";
again, in 1690, the Royal Horse Guards were called the "Blues" from
their blue uniforms, or, from their leader, the earl of Oxford, the
"Oxford Blues"; also, from the blue ribbon worn by the knights of the
Garter comes the use of the phrase as the highest mark of distinction
that can be worn, especially applied on the turf to the winning of the
Derby. The "blue Peter" is a rectangular blue flag, with a white square
in the centre, hoisted at the top of the foremast as a signal that a
vessel is about to leave port. At Oxford and Cambridge a man who
represents his university in certain athletic sports is called a "blue"
from the "colours" he is then entitled to wear, dark blue for Oxford and
light blue for Cambridge.

BLUEBEARD, the monster of Charles Perrault's tale of _Barbe Bleue_, who
murdered his