I must deny myself the pleasure of describing the battles and the marches of the Lutzow corps, which extended to Aachen and Oudenarde; but will mention here that Langethal rose to the rank of sergeant, and had to perform the duties of a first lieutenant; and that, towards the end of the campaign, Middendorf was sent with Lieutenant Reil to induce Blucher to receive the corps in his vanguard.  The old commander gratified their wish; they had proved their fitness for the post when they won the victory at the Gohrde, where two thousand Frenchmen were killed and as many more taken prisoners.  The sight of the battlefield had seemed unendurable to the gentle nature of Middendorf he had formed a poetical idea of the campaign as an expedition against the hereditary foe.  Now that he had confronted the bloodstained face of war with all its horrors, he fell into a state of melancholy from which he could scarcely rouse himself.

After this battle the three friends were quartered in Castle Gohrde, and there enjoyed a delightful season of rest after months of severe hardships.  Their corps had been used as the extreme vanguard against Davoust’s force, which was thrice their superior in numbers, and in consequence they were subjected to great fatigues.  They had almost forgotten how it seemed to sleep in a bed and eat at a table.  One night march had followed another.  They had often seized their food from the kettles and eaten it at the next stopping-place, but all was cheerfully done; the light-heartedness of youth did not vanish from their enthusiastic hearts.  There was even no lack of intellectual aliment, for a little field-library had been established by the exchange of books.  Langethal told us of his night’s rest in a ditch, which was to entail disastrous consequences.  Utterly exhausted, sleep overpowered him in the midst of a pouring rain, and when he awoke he discovered that he was up to his neck in water.  His damp bed—­the ditch—­had gradually filled, but the sleep was so profound that even the rising moisture had not roused him.  The very next morning he was attacked with a disease of the eyes, to which he attributed his subsequent blindness.

On the 26th of August there was a prospect of improvement in the condition of the corps.  Davoust had sent forty wagons of provisions to Hamburg, and the men were ordered to capture them.  The attack was successful, but at what a price!  Theodor Korner, the noble young poet whose songs will commemorate the deeds of the Lutzow corps so long as German men and boys sing his “Thou Sword at my Side,” or raise their voices in the refrain of the Lutzow Jagers’ song: 

“Do you ask the name of yon reckless band? 
’Tis Lutzow’s black troopers dashing swift through the land!”

Langethal first saw the body of the author of “Lyre and Sword” and “Zriny” under an oak at Wobbelin; but he was to see it once more under quite different circumstances.  He has mentioned it in his autobiography, and I have heard him describe several times his visit to the corpse of Theodor Korner.