Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/344

 commonwealth, the once famous Hansatown of Lübeck. 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 Division 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. His wife, by whom he had no issue, lived to see the beginning of his great achievements and fame, but died in