United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Moltke so far relinquished his passive equanimity that, glancing up joyously towards the ceiling and abandoning his usual punctiliousness of speech, he smote his hand upon his breast and said: "If I may but live to lead our armies in such a war, then the devil may come directly afterwards and fetch away the 'old carcass." He was less robust at that time than afterwards, and doubted whether he would survive the hardships of the campaign.

The cannon of Königgratz proved more convincing than Liberal arguments; and the methods of blood and iron, by which Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon conquered Denmark, Austria, and France and annexed to Prussia the greater part of German soil, impressed upon Germany a constitution in which the rule of the sword was merely concealed behind a skilfully emasculated parliamentary system.

The reading finished, the King returned to his former post, and after a conference with Bismarck, Von Moltke, and Von Roon, dictated an answer accepting Napoleon's surrender, and requesting him to designate an officer with power to treat for the capitulation of the army, himself naming Von Moltke to represent the Germans. The King then started for Vendresse, to pass the night.

It is therefore not surprising that von Moltke, on seeing the French forces concentrating in this hollow, remarked to von Blumenthal, Chief of the Staff: "Now we have them in a trap; to-morrow we must cross over the Meuse early in the morning."

Whether this was really so or not, I shall always believe it true, for his kind words and sincere manner could leave no other conclusion. General von Moltke was, as usual, quiet and reserved, betraying not the slightest consciousness of his great ability, nor the least indication of pride on account of his mighty work.

It was after midnight when the steam launches carried us across the bay from Algeciras to our steamship. The reception given us at the Moltke, after our two days' absence, made us feel that we had indeed arrived home.

'After the last words of Von Moltke, he continues, 'De Wimpffen exclaimed, "We shall renew the battle." "The truce," retorted the German general, "expires to-morrow morning at four o'clock. At four, precisely, I shall open fire." We were all standing. After Von Moltke's words no one spoke a syllable.

Von Moltke knew it when, at the capitulation of Paris, he was asked to whom the credit of the victory was due, and he replied, in the frank simplicity of the true soldier and the true hero, "The schoolmaster did it."

Simply thus: The Saxon was a Saxon, the Bavarian was a Bavarian; each suddenly found himself a German and part of a world-power. Bismarck and Von Moltke had a policy for the Hohenzollerns; it was a united Germany, and they left it a defensive Germany.

He might have chosen Moltke as the best type of this sort of warrior. But there was much more than this scientific and dutiful soldier; there was at bottom of Moltke's nature a fine sense of proportion, an artistic vein, and, not the least element, a Christian philosophy of life just as far removed from mere perfunctory indifferentism as from cocksure dogmatic bigotry and self-sufficiency.