A VETERAN SOLDIER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 273, 14 March 1889, Page 3

A VETERAN SOLDIER.

Berlin, March 11. Chief Marshal Count von Moltke has celebrated the seventieth anniversary of his entrance into the Prussian Army, and was on the occasion the recipient of gifts from the Emperor and Empress, and numerous other presents and addresses.

Count Von Moltke, (Hellmuth) Chief Marshal of the German Empire, Chief of the General Staff, is descended from a wellknown Mecklenburg family, and was born at —■ Parchim, Oct. 26, 1800, in the neighborhood of which place his father, a former officer of the Molendorf regiment, possessed the estate of Gnewitz. Soon after Hellmuth’s birth his parents settled down in Holstein ; and thus the boy, in his twelfth year, went to Copen hagen, in order to devote himself, in the barracks there, to the military profession. In 1822 he entered the Prussi n service, as a lieutenant in the Bth i fantry regiment, and studied in the Military Academy. The war had nearly ruined his parents, and the young officer was thrown entirely on his own resources. After having spent some time in the School of Division of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Moltke was entered into the General Staff. In 1835 he undertook a tour in Turkey, which brought him under the notice of the Sultan Mahmoud, who advised with the young Prussian officer on the reorganziation of the Turkish Army. Moltke remained several years in Turkey, and in 1839 took part in the campaign of the Turks in Syria against the Viceroy Meheme i Ali of Egypt and his adopted son Ibrahim Pasha In 1845, having returned to Prussia, and published an account of his Turkish experiences, he became adjutant to Prince Henry of Prussia, then resident in Rome, and after his death, in rf” 1847, was engaged in connection with the general command on the Rhine, becoming, in 1848 a member of the Grand General ~ Staff, and in 1849, Chief of the Staff of ths 4th Army Corps, in Magdeburg. In 1858 he was advanced to the rank of Chief Of the Grand Genera! Staff of the Prussian Army, and in 1859 became a lieutenantgensral. In the Austro ltalian war Moltke was present in the Austrian head-quarters. After the conclusion of peace, he spared no pains that he might fully develop the oapaci ies of the Prussian General Staff and the Prussian Army. When the war of 1864 against Denmark broke out, Moltke sketched the plan of the campaign, and assisted in its execution, acting similarly in the case of the war of 1866. The '-whole plan of the Bohemian campaign was due to the Lieutenant-General, who was personally present in the battle of Koniggrktz, which he fed, and in like manner arranged the bold advance of the Prussian columns against Olmfftz and Vienna, and negotiated the armistice and the preliminaries of peace. For these services he received the Order of the Black Eagle, and a national dotation. To “Father Moltke ” (Vater Moltke), as he is familiarly termed in the German army, and his brilliant strategy are ascribed the splendid victories of the German arms in the Franco-German war. He was practically the Commander-in Chief, The whole plan of the campaign was due to him. In recognition of his unrivalled services, Moltke was made the Chief Marshal of the German Empire (Sept. 1871), again received a national dotation, and was created Count 1872, The illustrious Marshal, who is generally regarded as the first strategist of the day, received from the Czar the Order of St. George, the highest military decoration of Russia, in Oct. 1870; and from his own sovereign the Grand Cross of the Order of the Iron Cross, March 22, 1871. An English translation of his “ Observations on the Influence .that Arms of Precision have on Modern Tactics,” * w»s published in London in 1871.