536 



MOLTKE, HELMUT!! KARL BERNHARD. 



service, was killed in Russia at the passage of the 

 Beresina in 1812. In 1818 young Helmuth passed 

 his examination as candidate for a degree at the 

 head of his class. He served for a year as a page 

 at court, as the rules of the Danish service re- 

 quired, and in March, 1819, was appointed a 

 lieutenant in the Oldenburg regiment. He won 

 the good-will of his superiors by his attention to 

 duty and zeal for knowledge. Desiring to serve 

 for a time under the Prussian flag in order to 

 complete his training, he asked the King for an 

 advance of pay, as he was very poor. His colo- 

 nel, the Duke of Holstein, afterward King of 

 Denmark, gave him leave of absence and good 

 recommendations; but the King, whom he 

 promised to repay by acquiring such knowledge 

 and capacity in the Prussian service as wouid 

 enable him to serve Denmark more efficiently, 

 refused to pay the expenses of any Danish officer 

 seeking service abroad, and owing to this refusal 

 the future strategist of the Schleswig-Holstein 

 campaign remained in the Prussian service, 

 which he entered in 1822. He became a second 

 lieutenant in the infantry regiment stationed at 

 Frankfort-on-the-Main, and did regimental duty 

 for a short time, after which he studied in the 

 military academy at Berlin and in the school at 

 Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and applied himself so 

 assiduously to the practice and theory of the 

 military art that in 1832 he was assigned to duty 

 on the general staff. He took part in the topo- 

 graphical survey of Silesia and Posen. About 

 this time he published a pamphlet entitled 

 'Holland and Belgium," discussing the politico- 

 military aspects of the secession of Belgium from 

 the Netherlands. In 1835 he obtained leave of 

 absence to visit the East, and was presented to 

 the Sultan Mahmoud, who asked him to remain 

 in order to assist Chosref Pasha in reorganizing 

 the Turkish army on the Prussian system. Will- 

 ing to oblige the Sultan, the King of Prussia 

 gave his permission. When Mehemet Ali, 

 Viceroy of Egypt, invaded Syria, Moltke and 

 another officer named Miihlbach went to the 

 headquarters of Hafiz Pasha in the valley of the 

 Euphrates to act as military advisers. In the 

 advance of the Turkish army, 70,000 strong, on 

 Aleppo Moltke commanded the artillery. He 

 advised the commander-in-chief to remain on the 

 defensive until the raw troops could be trained 

 into some degree of efficiency, and when Hafiz 

 Pasha, relying on the enthusiasm roused by the 

 mollahs, insisted on making the disastrous attack 

 on Ibrahim Pasha's position, Moltke predicted 

 that on the morrow he would be a general with- 

 out troops. Returning to Berlin in August, 

 1839, Moltke was placed again on the general 

 staff, and for his services in the Syrian campaign 

 he received the order Pour le Merite. A year 

 later he was assigned to the staff of the Fourth 

 Army Corps, stationed at Magdeburg. Descrip- 

 tions of his experiences and observations in 

 Turkey contained in his correspondence with his 

 sister, Frau Burt, wife of an Englishman living 

 in Holstein, were published under the title of 

 " Letters from Turkey, 1835-'39." These letters, 

 which gave him a high literary reputation, had 

 already won the admiration of Mr. Burt's attract- 

 ive daughter, and this impression ripened into 

 love when they met in her father's house. They 

 were soon engaged, and in April, 1842, a few days 



after he had been made a major, they were mar- 

 ried. He was much his wife's senior, yet their 

 union, until it was broken by her death in 1868, 

 was remarkably harmonious and affectionate, 

 though they had no children. In 1845 he pub- 

 lished a critical work on " The Russo-Turkish 

 Campaign of 1828-'29 in European Turkey," 

 that made a great impression on army circles in 

 Germany and still stands high among the classics 

 of military criticism. In the same year he was 

 appointed aide-de-camp to Prince Heinrich of 

 Prussia, who was living in Rome, where he died 

 in the following year. After his return from the 

 East Moltke had published maps of the Bospo- 

 rus and Constantinople and had drawn the map 

 of Asia Minor published in Kiepert's " Atlas," 

 and while in Rome he made a map of the city 

 and its environs. While the prince's corpse was 

 borne on board a man-of-war to Germany, Moltke 

 traveled through Spain and France, lea'ving the 

 ship at Gibraltar. For the next two years he 

 served on the staff of the Eighth Army Corps, 

 stationed at Coblentz, and then was given charge 

 of a department of the general staff at Berlin, 

 from which he was transferred before long 

 to the post of chief of staff of the Magdeburg 

 corps, being promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1850 

 and colonel in 1851. In 1855 he was called from 

 this post to become aide-de-camp to Prince Fried- 

 rich Wilhelm, the future Kaiser Friedrich. He 

 accompanied this Prince to St. Petersburg and 

 Moscow in 1856, on the occasion of the Czar's 

 coronation. Graphic and unrestrained pictures 

 of court life and observations on the country, 

 the people, and the army, contained in letters to 

 his wife, were printed without leave long after- 

 ward in a Danish newspaper, and later in an 

 authorized version in the " Rundschau" and in 

 the form of a pamphlet. He was made a major- 

 general in 1856, and after the trip to Russia he 

 went with the prince to England, and remained 

 with him when he took command of a regiment 

 at Breslau and in 1857 of the First Brigade of 

 the Guards. 



When Gen. Reyher died, in 1857, Moltke, one 

 of the youngest general officers in the service, 

 was intrusted with the duties of chief of the 

 general staff, though only provisionally till May, 

 1859, when he was permanently appointed chief 

 of staff with the rank of lieutenant-general. 

 His preparations for mobilization when the 

 French army advanced through Lombardy con- 

 vinced the Prussian military authorities that he 

 would uphold and improve the standards set by 

 Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Muffling, and Reyher, 

 and impelled the French Emperor speedily to 

 conclude the peace of Villafranca. A critical 

 history of the Italian campaign prepared under 

 his direction was the first of a series of valuable 

 military works issued by the Prussian staff. The 

 prospect of a war with a maritime power caused 

 the Prussian Government to commission Moltke 

 to prepare, at the shortest notice, a general 

 scheme of naval defense, which was worked out 

 with the assistance of the best fnaval and engi- 

 neer officers. The plans, which involved the 

 creation of a common navy under Prussian di- 

 rection, were submitted to the Diet at Frankfort, 

 -but, the war cloud having passed over, they were 

 not examined for three years, at the end of which 

 a federal commission condemned all the Prus- 



