ivision School
and an active military geological surveyor, and finally was taken into
the General Staff of the Army. Becoming a first lieutenant in 1832, a
captain in 1835, ahead of many of his comrades, he served exclusively
in strategical positions. During the four years, 1835-39, he, with
some comrades, was in the Turkish dominions for the purpose of
organizing and drilling the Turkish Army. He witnessed, as an active
participant, the Turkish defeat by the insurgent Egyptians at Nisib on
the Euphrates, which was brought about by the indolent obstinacy of
the Turkish commander-in-chief. Like Xenophon, Moltke retreated toward
and reached the Black Sea. At Constantinople he obtained honorable
dismissal from the Sultan. After his return to Prussia he became chief
of the General Staff of the Fourth Army Corps. In 1841 he married Mary
Burt, a young relative who was partly of English extraction. The union
developed into an unusually happy married life, in spite of, or partly
because of, their great difference in age.

[Illustration: MOLTKE ANTON VON WERNER]

His wife, by whom he had no issue, lived to see the beginning of his
great achievements and fame, but died in 1868, before his proudest
triumph. Various commands led him to Italy, Spain, England, and Russia
as adjutant of Prussian princes. In 1858 he was appointed chief of the
General Staff of the Prussian Army--the institution which he shaped
into that great strategical instrument through which were made
possible, from a military point of view, the glorious successes of the
three wars--1864, 1866, 1870-71--and which has become the model of all
similar organizations the world over.

Side by side with the overtowering political achievement of Bismarck
and the more congenial life work of Roon, the minister of war,
Moltke's service to his country and his king stands unchallenged in
historical significance. He has indelibly inscribed his name on the
tablets of history as one of the world's greatest strategists. But he
did not lay down his work until extreme old age; in 1888, as he so
simply put it in his request for relief from duty, he resigned his
office, because he "could no more mount a horse." He, however, still
remained president of the Commission of National Defense and his last
speech in the German Reichstag, of which he had been a continuous
member since its establishment, he delivered on May 14, 1890. He died
on April 24, 1891. The nation felt that one of its g