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 396 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS a few of his strongest men, he kept them at bay until all his troops had passed into the fortress, he himself being the last to enter. Then the drawbridge was raised and the victory won. The island, preserved by the good pastor, long since gone to his rest, still exists, and is pointed out with great pride by the villagers to curious visitors as the scene of one of the early exploits of Germany's greatest strategist. His experiences at the Royal Academy at Copenhagen, to which he was sent at the age of twelve, were not of the happiest. Relating his reminiscences of that period, in reply to the question. " Do you retain pleasant recollections of cadet life?" he remarked, "I have little reason to do so. Without relations or acquaintances in a strange city, we spent a joyless youth. The discipline was strict, even hard, and now, when my judgment of it is unprejudiced, I must say that it was too strict, too hard. The only benefit we received from this treatment was that we became accustomed to deprivations." Passing over the period of his service in the Danish army, and his entrance into that of Prussia, we find him, after making heroic efforts on his scanty pay to acquire foreign languages, in which he attained in after-life so remarkable a pro- ficiency, attached to a commission for topographical surveys in Silesia and the Grand Duchy of Posen. " Consolidating and extending his knowledge of military science and of foreign peoples, as in the case of his visits to the East, Russia, Rome, and elsewhere, Moltke rose steadily in his profession. In 1845, he became aide-de-camp to the invalid Prince Henry of Prussia, uncle of the king ; and subsequently, after holding commands of increasing importance, he was made first aide-de-camp to the Crown Prince Frederick. Ultimately, in 1859, he was appointed permanent chief of the staff. His later military career, and brilliant successes against the Danes, Austrians, and the French, and the various honors accorded him, are so well known and have been so often and so recently narrated, that any further reference to them in this present sketch is unnecessary, the purpose of our notice being to briefly indicate some of the leading points of the great field-marshal's character. One fact is memorable, that he had passed the age when men fre- quently retire from the public service before the time of his greater achievements His splendid career began to the eye of the world at sixty-five. The guiding principle of his life is well illustrated by the ancient motto of his family, Caute et candide (warily and gently), and by his own favorite maxim, Erst wdgen, dann wagen (first weigh, then venture). He w^as slow, cautious, and Careful in laying his plans, but having formed his design, he was bold, daring even to the verge of apparent recklessness in its execution. The same calm, im- movable spirit characterized him even in moments when most ordinary mortals he was a man sui generis might, with some show of reason, be perturbed or excited. Even in the most critical period of the Franco-German war his unruf- fled quietness remained the same, sterner perhaps in look, more silent than ever. Though the warrior king, amidst the carnage of the battle-field might feel de- pressed ; though Bismarck, man of " iron and blood," might be anxious at the