The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill

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       MOLTKE

       ‘Organizer of victory’

      25 AND 27 APRIL 1891

      A GREAT SOLDIER HAS passed away. A foremost name has faded from contemporary history. The genius and skill of Moltke became apparent to the world only when he was 66 years old, for he was born in the first year of this century, and has thus lived on into his 91st year. His was a long, patient, and silent career of toil and of duty before suddenly his fame burst forth and the excellence of his labour was made manifest. Peace, hardly ruffled save by the campaign in the Elbe duchies, had been the fortune of Prussia for fifty years since Blücher hurled out of Belgium the columns of the first Napoleon after their repulse at Waterloo.

      The startling victory of Königgrätz in 1866 surprised the world and woke it to the fact that one of the greatest strategists known to history was chief of the Prussian General Staff. Count Moltke had counselled King William to order the dispositions which allowed the three armies of the Crown Prince, Prince Frederick Charles, and Herwarth to strike a concentrated and crushing blow against the Austrian forces on the Upper Elbe. The war had endured but a few days. It was only on the morning of the 16th of June that the first Prussian corps stepped across the Saxon frontier, and war became inevitable. On the evening of the 3d of July the shattered battalions of Austria were hurrying in disordered flight along rain-sodden tracks to seek shelter under the guns of Olmütz. This sudden victory practically concluded the war between Austria and Prussia. The prize won was the unity of North Germany; and on that day the foundation-stone was laid of the modern German Empire. The military plans which led to this rapid and brilliant success were confessedly due to the inspiration of Moltke, and when the Emperor William some years later received the Crown of all Germany, his early thought was to thank the strategist to whom so much was due.

      The war of 1866 made Count Moltke famous. This fame was won through hard work, constant perseverance, and rigid self-denial. Officers of every army can take no brighter example as their model than Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke. He was born on the 26th of October, 1800, at Parchim, in Mecklenburg. His parents were of good family, but poor, and he was their third son. His father, who had been a captain in the Prussian service, in 1801 inherited the family estate in Mecklenburg, but sold it in 1803 and retired to Lübeck. When nine years old young Helmuth was sent to school near Kiel, where he made rapid progress. He and his brother were in 1811 sent to Copenhagen, and in the following year were admitted as cadets into the Royal Military Academy there. In the beginning of 1818 young Moltke passed his examination for his commission as best of the candidates and in March, 1819, was appointed lieutenant in the Oldenburg Regiment, which was then stationed at Rendsburg.

      Promotion was slow in the Danish service. Norway had been severed from the arms of Denmark, and the Danish army had to be reduced. The Prussian army had gained renown on the Continent by its gallant action in the war of liberation and the campaign of the hundred days. Moltke determined to transfer himself to Prussia. He obtained leave from his colonel, went to Berlin, passed a brilliant examination for the rank of officer, and at the age of 22 became second lieutenant in the 5th Infantry Regiment, then quartered at Frankfort-on-Main.

      In the following year he joined the Staff College at Berlin, and after three years of study there passed an excellent examination on leaving. He returned for a short time to his regiment at Frankfort, but in the following year was detached from regimental duty to staff employment, and never did a regimental duty afterwards. It is noteworthy how little regimental duty was done by the three great strategists of this century – Napoleon, Wellington, or Moltke. Moltke was first appointed to the Topographical Department, and took part in the surveys of Silesia and Posen. About this time it would appear that he became an author, as a pamphlet appeared at Berlin, which is little known, but which bore the title ‘Holland and Belgium, by H. von Moltke.’ In 1835 he obtained longer leave, and then began the part of his life spent in the East.

      He lived in the dominions of the Sultan for more than three years. In 1839 war, broke out between the Sultan Mahmud the Second and Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, who claimed the right to name his successor. The army of the Sultan was little ready for war, but the Porte appreciated the military talent of Moltke, who was staying as a guest at Constantinople. He and his companion Mühlbach were sent as military advisers to the head-quarters of Hafiz Pasha, in the Valley of the Euphrates, near Kharput. In April, 1839, the Turkish army, 70,000 strong, commenced its advance towards Syria. It was divided into three corps, but consisted chiefly of recruits and was speedily reduced by sickness and desertion. The Egyptian army was at Aleppo under Ibrahim Pasha. In this advance Moltke commanded the Turkish artillery. In vain Moltke pointed out how unprepared for an active campaign was the Turkish army. The Mollahs insisted on offensive operations. Consequently on the 22d Moltke resigned his post as counsellor of the Commander-in-Chief. On the 24th Ibrahim Pasha attacked the Turkish position, the army fled and dispersed, although it had lost only 1,000 and Hafiz Pasha himself only escaped with difficulty. Moltke and his German comrades then returned to Constantinople. There he found the Sultan dead.

      Moltke then returned to Berlin, where he was again occupied on the General Staff, and for his services in the Egypto-Turkish campaign received the Prussian order ‘Pour le Mérite’ In the following year, 1840, he was removed from Berlin to the Staff of the 4th Corps d’Armée at Magdeburg. Here, in the following year, he published his well-known work. ‘Letters from Turkey, 1835–39.’ He also drew and issued some valuable maps, the materials for which he had collected in the East, of the Bosphorus, Constantinople, and Asia Minor. The letters from Turkey, when first written, before they were made public, had been addressed to one of his sisters, who was married to an English gentleman, named Burt, then resident in Holstein. Mrs. Burt had a step-daughter on whom this correspondence made an impression which ripened into affection when Captain Moltke, after his return was a visitor in her father’s house. They were soon engaged, and Moltke was married to his English stepniece in April, 1842, a few days after he had been made a major. The marriage proved most happy, and for a quarter of a century Moltke’s domestic life was unruffled by any trouble.

      Promoted in 1850 to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and in the following year to that of full colonel, Moltke was selected to fill the important post of first aide-de-camp to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick. In 1856 he became a Major-General. In 1856, Prince Frederick William was appointed Colonel of the Second Silesian Regiment, and when not travelling lived with his Staff chiefly at Breslau. In the following year СКАЧАТЬ