The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill
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 the Prince was made Commander of the First Brigade of Guards. A few days later Generial Reyher, the chief of the Staff of the Army, died, and shortly afterwards Moltke, one of the youngest general officers in the service, was temporarily intrusted with the duties, and in May, 1859, was made permanent Chief of the Staff, with the rank of Lieutenant-General. Moltke thus rose to the post in the Prussian Army which under the great Frederick had been held by Schmettau and Levin; after Jena, by Scharnhorst; and in the war of liberation by Gneisenau, and on his death by Müffling. Great were these names, but Germany regards now Moltke as greatest of them all.
The duty of the Chief of a Staff is, above all things, to prepare in peace for war. He must consider and regulate the measures for the mobilization of the army down to the most minute detail, the plan of operations, and the means of concentration. He must have a thorough knowledge of his own and of foreign armies, and be intimately acquainted with railways, roads, and bridges. Under the administration of Moltke the Prussian Army became rapidly more ready for war in every particular. Its mobilization, which on his accession to office was calculated to require 21 days, can now be effected in ten days.
Moltke had not long to wait before his services were called into active play. On account of the advance of the French Army through Lombardy in 1859 towards German soil the Prussian Army was mobilized, and he drew up the regulations for the advance of the Prussian Army and its railway transport to the Rhine. The manner in which he accomplished this then original task showed the Government and the Army that a wise step had been taken in placing him in the most responsible military position in the country.
Almost at the same time as Moltke took up the duties of Chief of the Staff of the Army, great political changes occurred in Prussia. In 1857 in consequence of the severe illness of King Frederic William IV, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor William I. was entrusted with the Regency of the kingdom. In 1861 the King died and William succeeded to the Throne. He determined to gain for Prussia a leading position among European Powers. The first step necessary to carry out this great project was the reorganization of the army. The King was determined that the land forces should be put in thorough working order. By 1863 the reorganization was complete. Events soon came to show how necessary the work was and how well it had been done. In 1863 the Prussian Staff was active, for the turmoils in Russian Poland made it doubtful whether Prussian troops might not be required to take the field.
In the following year the war with Denmark on account of the Elbe Duchies broke out. In it Prussia on account of her geographical position took the leading part, and it fell to Moltke to draw out the plan of operations for the combined Prussian and Austrian armies. Thus his first active service was against the same army in which he had borne a commission as a youth. He directed the advance of the armies which under Field-Marshal von Wrangel invaded the duchies, and after the storming of Düppal in 1864 accompanied the King to the theatre of war and as Chief of the Staff directed the further operations. For a moment England thought of saving Denmark single-handed from Prussia, but most fortunately wiser counsels prevailed, and British troops were not sent to prove the terrible efficacy of the Prussian needle gun. A conference was, indeed, held to consider the matter at London; but it separated without result. England folded her hands and allowed the war to proceed. Prince Frederick Charles, with Moltke as his Chief of the Staff, took the command of the allied forces. On the 30th of October peace was signed, and Holstein, Lauenburg and Schleswig were annexed to Germany. To these results the talents of Moltke largely contributed. They were much aided by the breech-loading rifle of the Prussian infantry and by a portion of the artillery also consisting of breech-loading guns. But in Europe at large little attention was paid to these mechanical improvements, and even in Germany they were not thoroughly appreciated.
A larger field in which to prove his strategical genius was opened to Moltke in the war of 1866. Austria and Prussia found cause of quarrel in the newly acquired Elbe Duchies. By the middle of June, 1866, the armies on both sides were concentrating on the common frontier. The Prussian forces consisted of three armies, which by Moltke’s combination advanced concentrically into Bohemia, and by carefully calculated marches and skilful manoeuvres exposed the Austrian forces to a simultaneous attack in front and rear. It had hitherto been considered exceedingly hazardous to advance into an enemy’s country in different independent columns, especially through mountain passes, as two columns might be checked by small forces, while an overwhelming weight was thrown on the third, and then the columns might be destroyed in detail. But this danger Moltke perceived would be averted if each column