Blücher was much the most homely of the three commanders who converged on Waterloo that day

From Waterloo A Near Run Thing by David Howarth. Page 98.

Blücher’s forthright promise and Gneisenau’s suspicion had been typical of the marshal and his chief of staff. Blücher was much the most homely of the three commanders who converged on Waterloo that day. Napoleon maintained his dignity behind a screen of pomp: Wellington guarded himself by detachment and inaccessibility. But Blücher was bluff and jolly, and could even, unlike the others, enjoy a joke against himself. As a young officer, he had been so wild and gay that he had been passed over for promotion and had offered his resignation: ‘Capt. Blücher can take himself to the devil,’ his Emperor had written on it, and from the age of thirty to the age of forty-five he had become a farmer. At seventy-two, he was still as wild and gay as his age allowed him to be. It endeared him to his troops. He had an engaging habit of calling them ‘My children’, and they responded by calling him Father Blücher. ‘Brave comrades in arms,’ he shouted to a Russian contingent after one of his victories, ‘I shall thank your Emperor for giving me the honour of commanding such excellent men.’ This friendliness towards the common soldiers was an eccentricity that only a commander old in years could have allowed himself, but it was extremely successful: the Prussians had a human affection for their commander-in-chief that neither the British nor the French enjoyed. And since Blücher had also unbounded energy and courage and a very shrewd sense of strategy and tactics, his armies had always been powerful.