A CRUISING VISIT TO SOME GERMAN BATTLE-FIELDS, 451 
people ; wMcli would imply that in those days they had more need of 
the people and so they put the people first. 
Here below Dresden is a little place called Torgau, which is now 
mostly known on account of the “ Torgauer March/ 1 but near there 
was born Gneisenau at a little village called Schildau. It is eight or 
nine miles from the railway and, I think, as many from the river. I 
drove over there with the man that carried the post and he was a very 
communicative man. So I asked him about Gneisenau, but he had 
never heard of him,, and this was in the intelligent country of Saxony. 
I was a little discouraged by this because I had hoped to learn from 
him the house where Gneisenau was born. I knew that it was at an 
old inn called the “ Gold Mug/ 5 or something of that kind; and 
Gneisenau was born under very romantic circumstances. 
It was in the year 1759,, I think, when Frederick the Great’s army 
was driving back the Austrians from Torgau. Gneisenau 5 s father was 
an artillery lieutenant in the Austrian army and he had run away with 
the young lady who afterwards became Gneisenau’s mother. During 
the hurly-burly of that winter’s campaign, little Gneisenau was born in 
this old inn of Schildau. On the ground floor the walls are at least 
four feet thick. The house is no longer an inn, but the home of a 
miller, who has nothing but a cheap lithograph to indicate the interest 
that attaches to the place. There is not the slightest outside indication 
that anyone takes an interest in the house, or that anybody makes 
patriotic pilgrimages to that village of Schildau. One would suppose 
that the house would be purchased by the nation or, at least, that a 
plate on the wall would call attention to the great man who here first 
saw the light. 
That night I went to visit the parson of the place and as he had 
been newly appointed he was exceedingly energetic and interested. 
He had never heard about Gneisenau having been born there, but he 
produced his church books and looked it up ; and then allowed me to 
take a photograph of the entry in that book according to the christening. 
This photograph I have here, and I should like to add this to your other 
historic treasures (applause). I feel as though I was purchasing your 
applause (laughter). But the historic interest of this is that it gives 
the complete and obvious reason why Gneisenau’s mother does not ap¬ 
pear on the register of her son’s baptism. There was, as you will see by 
this, no officer of importance present at the ceremony. It was evidently 
a painful ordeal. She hurried off with her all too heavy, if not un¬ 
hallowed burden and the child fell from her arms at night (whether 
intentionally or by accident we shall never know) and would have 
been run over by the next artillery wagon if some kindly soldier had 
not picked it up and brought it to the mother again. Whether it was 
a welcome return I do not know either. Little Gneisenau’s mother 
soon died of shame, neglect and suffering, and he was farmed out to 
some peasants in the neighbourhood. But the father, whose name was 
Neidhart, soon forgot to make payments and the little boy was set to 
attending geese in order to earn his bread. 
One day a pedlar or a tramp came by there begging and the little 
boy had nothing to give him. But he said he had at home a hymn 
