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Updated: June 2, 2025
In the Pacific the German cruisers were at first widely scattered, the Emden at Kiao-chau, the Leipzig on the west coast of Mexico, the Nürnberg at San Francisco, and the armored cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst under Admiral von Spee in the Caroline Islands.
Events were to prove that Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Blücher rivalled the best of the French Marshals; but in this war their lights were placed under bushels and only shone forth when the official covers had been shattered.
'Scharnhorst still lives! And when our poor regiments had to march to Russia as Bonaparte's auxiliaries, I said to myself: 'Scharnhorst is still there to create a new army, and God is there to give victory one day to this army, which I shall command. Oh, tell me, my friend, what are your plans? What have you been able to accomplish in regard to the reorganization of the army?
Seeing that there was no hope of bringing the Russians far to the west, Scharnhorst seems finally to have counselled a Fabian strategy for the ensuing war; and, when at Vienna, he drew up a memoir in this sense for the guidance of the Czar. Alexander was certainly much in need of sound guidance.
In distant waters Germany at the outbreak of the war had only ten cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Emden, Nürnberg, and Leipzig in the Pacific, Königsberg on the east coast of Africa, Karlsruhe and Dresden in the West Indies, and Göben and Breslau in the Mediterranean.
Patriotic conventicles and every other form of secret meeting were held. Scharnhorst went steadily on with the training and reform of the army, while Stein, with a noble devotion, and under an unsympathetic master, was working to perfect his new administrative system.
I need not go into the details of a system which made Prussia a nation of patriots as well as of soldiers, and which made Scharnhorst a great national benefactor, sharing with Stein the glory of a great deliverance.
Against ships with 12-inch guns and four times their weight of broadside the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst made a creditable record of over 20 hits. The British, however, suffered no casualties or material injury.
Her commander and crew had stood with bared heads to the last, and had gone to death, standing as though drawn up for inspection. There was a faint cheer from them as the ship disappeared beneath the waves. The sinking of the German flagship Scharnhorst had required just a few minutes less than an hour. Now the entire British fleet concentrated its fire upon the Gneisenau.
Here, again, Thiers had the ground cleared before him by a great overturn, like that which enabled Bonaparte in his day to remodel France, and the builders of Modern Prussia Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg to build up their State from its ruins.
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