him,
Moltke--means to give an account of that memorable phase of modern
history, perhaps, so far as Europe is concerned, the most important of
the nineteenth century. This was the ascendency of Prussia, of her
king and of her people, culminating in the unification and the
consolidation of most of the German states into one great empire, with
all its realization of military and political power, of social,
economic, and, in a wide sense, of cultural eminence and efficiency.
The barest outlines, however, must suffice for the present purpose.

Moltke was born at the threshold of the century the history of which
he so prominently helped to shape, on October 26, 1800, at Parchim in
the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. On his father's side he descended
from a family of the North German gentry which had come to various
degrees of prominence in some German as well as Scandinavian states.
No doubt he inherited the military instinct from this race of
warriors, statesmen, and landholders; a race the characteristic traits
of which indicated the line along which he was bound to develop, the
field in which he was to manifest his greatest achievements. But there
is just as little doubt that all the elements of character which
exalted his military gifts and instincts into an almost antique
nobility, simplicity, and grandeur--his dignity, purity, dutifulness,
his profound religious devotion, and sense of humor--came to him from
his mother, who was descended from an ancient patrician family of the
little republican commonwealth, the once famous Hansatown of
Luebeck. How far the Huguenot strain may have influenced him, through
his paternal grandmother, is hard to tell, since we know but little of
Charlotte d'Olivet.

After the family had moved to Holstein, where his father failed to
make a success of an agricultural undertaking for which he seems to
have lacked fitness, young Moltke entered the Royal Danish Military
Academy as a cadet, and there passed his lieutenant's examination with
distinction; but he sought and found a commission under the Prussian
eagle. He entered the eighth grenadiers at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. A
year later, in 1823, he was sent to what is now called the War Academy
in Berlin. Only by the closest economy and by some outside work,
partly literary, as we shall see, he managed to get along with his
exceedingly small officer's pay. He distinguished himself however so
much that he became, successively, a teacher at the D