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‘Organizer of victory’

25 AND 27 APRIL 1891

A GREAT SOLDIER HAS passed away. A foremost name has faded from contemporary history. The genius and skill of Moltke became apparent to the world only when he was 66 years old, for he was born in the first year of this century, and has thus lived on into his 91st year. His was a long, patient, and silent career of toil and of duty before suddenly his fame burst forth and the excellence of his labour was made manifest. Peace, hardly ruffled save by the campaign in the Elbe duchies, had been the fortune of Prussia for fifty years since Blücher hurled out of Belgium the columns of the first Napoleon after their repulse at Waterloo.

The startling victory of Königgrätz in 1866 surprised the world and woke it to the fact that one of the greatest strategists known to history was chief of the Prussian General Staff. Count Moltke had counselled King William to order the dispositions which allowed the three armies of the Crown Prince, Prince Frederick Charles, and Herwarth to strike a concentrated and crushing blow against the Austrian forces on the Upper Elbe. The war had endured but a few days. It was only on the morning of the 16th of June that the first Prussian corps stepped across the Saxon frontier, and war became inevitable. On the evening of the 3d of July the shattered battalions of Austria were hurrying in disordered flight along rain-sodden tracks to seek shelter under the guns of Olmütz. This sudden victory practically concluded the war between Austria and Prussia. The prize won was the unity of North Germany; and on that day the foundation-stone was laid of the modern German Empire. The military plans which led to this rapid and brilliant success were confessedly due to the inspiration of Moltke, and when the Emperor William some years later received the Crown of all Germany, his early thought was to thank the strategist to whom so much was due.

The war of 1866 made Count Moltke famous. This fame was won through hard work, constant perseverance, and rigid self-denial. Officers of every army can take no brighter example as their model than Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke. He was born on the 26th of October, 1800, at Parchim, in Mecklenburg. His parents were of good family, but poor, and he was their third son. His father, who had been a captain in the Prussian service, in 1801 inherited the family estate in Mecklenburg, but sold it in 1803 and retired to Lübeck. When nine years old young Helmuth was sent to school near Kiel, where he made rapid progress. He and his brother were in 1811 sent to Copenhagen, and in the following year were admitted as cadets into the Royal Military Academy there. In the beginning of 1818 young Moltke passed his examination for his commission as best of the candidates and in March, 1819, was appointed lieutenant in the Oldenburg Regiment, which was then stationed at Rendsburg.

Promotion was slow in the Danish service. Norway had been severed from the arms of Denmark, and the Danish army had to be reduced. The Prussian army had gained renown on the Continent by its gallant action in the war of liberation and the campaign of the hundred days. Moltke determined to transfer himself to Prussia. He obtained leave from his colonel, went to Berlin, passed a brilliant examination for the rank of officer, and at the age of 22 became second lieutenant in the 5th Infantry Regiment, then quartered at Frankfort-on-Main.

In the following year he joined the Staff College at Berlin, and after three years of study there passed an excellent examination on leaving. He returned for a short time to his regiment at Frankfort, but in the following year was detached from regimental duty to staff employment, and never did a regimental duty afterwards. It is noteworthy how little regimental duty was done by the three great strategists of this century – Napoleon, Wellington, or Moltke. Moltke was first appointed to the Topographical Department, and took part in the surveys of Silesia and Posen. About this time it would appear that he became an author, as a pamphlet appeared at Berlin, which is little known, but which bore the title ‘Holland and Belgium, by H. von Moltke.’ In 1835 he obtained longer leave, and then began the part of his life spent in the East.

He lived in the dominions of the Sultan for more than three years. In 1839 war, broke out between the Sultan Mahmud the Second and Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, who claimed the right to name his successor. The army of the Sultan was little ready for war, but the Porte appreciated the military talent of Moltke, who was staying as a guest at Constantinople. He and his companion Mühlbach were sent as military advisers to the head-quarters of Hafiz Pasha, in the Valley of the Euphrates, near Kharput. In April, 1839, the Turkish army, 70,000 strong, commenced its advance towards Syria. It was divided into three corps, but consisted chiefly of recruits and was speedily reduced by sickness and desertion. The Egyptian army was at Aleppo under Ibrahim Pasha. In this advance Moltke commanded the Turkish artillery. In vain Moltke pointed out how unprepared for an active campaign was the Turkish army. The Mollahs insisted on offensive operations. Consequently on the 22d Moltke resigned his post as counsellor of the Commander-in-Chief. On the 24th Ibrahim Pasha attacked the Turkish position, the army fled and dispersed, although it had lost only 1,000 and Hafiz Pasha himself only escaped with difficulty. Moltke and his German comrades then returned to Constantinople. There he found the Sultan dead.

Moltke then returned to Berlin, where he was again occupied on the General Staff, and for his services in the Egypto-Turkish campaign received the Prussian order ‘Pour le Mérite’ In the following year, 1840, he was removed from Berlin to the Staff of the 4th Corps d’Armée at Magdeburg. Here, in the following year, he published his well-known work. ‘Letters from Turkey, 1835–39.’ He also drew and issued some valuable maps, the materials for which he had collected in the East, of the Bosphorus, Constantinople, and Asia Minor. The letters from Turkey, when first written, before they were made public, had been addressed to one of his sisters, who was married to an English gentleman, named Burt, then resident in Holstein. Mrs. Burt had a step-daughter on whom this correspondence made an impression which ripened into affection when Captain Moltke, after his return was a visitor in her father’s house. They were soon engaged, and Moltke was married to his English stepniece in April, 1842, a few days after he had been made a major. The marriage proved most happy, and for a quarter of a century Moltke’s domestic life was unruffled by any trouble.

Promoted in 1850 to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and in the following year to that of full colonel, Moltke was selected to fill the important post of first aide-de-camp to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick. In 1856 he became a Major-General. In 1856, Prince Frederick William was appointed Colonel of the Second Silesian Regiment, and when not travelling lived with his Staff chiefly at Breslau. In the following year the Prince was made Commander of the First Brigade of Guards. A few days later Generial Reyher, the chief of the Staff of the Army, died, and shortly afterwards Moltke, one of the youngest general officers in the service, was temporarily intrusted with the duties, and in May, 1859, was made permanent Chief of the Staff, with the rank of Lieutenant-General. Moltke thus rose to the post in the Prussian Army which under the great Frederick had been held by Schmettau and Levin; after Jena, by Scharnhorst; and in the war of liberation by Gneisenau, and on his death by Müffling. Great were these names, but Germany regards now Moltke as greatest of them all.

The duty of the Chief of a Staff is, above all things, to prepare in peace for war. He must consider and regulate the measures for the mobilization of the army down to the most minute detail, the plan of operations, and the means of concentration. He must have a thorough knowledge of his own and of foreign armies, and be intimately acquainted with railways, roads, and bridges. Under the administration of Moltke the Prussian Army became rapidly more ready for war in every particular. Its mobilization, which on his accession to office was calculated to require 21 days, can now be effected in ten days.

Moltke had not long to wait before his services were called into active play. On account of the advance of the French Army through Lombardy in 1859 towards German soil the Prussian Army was mobilized, and he drew up the regulations for the advance of the Prussian Army and its railway transport to the Rhine. The manner in which he accomplished this then original task showed the Government and the Army that a wise step had been taken in placing him in the most responsible military position in the country.

Almost at the same time as Moltke took up the duties of Chief of the Staff of the Army, great political changes occurred in Prussia. In 1857 in consequence of the severe illness of King Frederic William IV, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor William I. was entrusted with the Regency of the kingdom. In 1861 the King died and William succeeded to the Throne. He determined to gain for Prussia a leading position among European Powers. The first step necessary to carry out this great project was the reorganization of the army. The King was determined that the land forces should be put in thorough working order. By 1863 the reorganization was complete. Events soon came to show how necessary the work was and how well it had been done. In 1863 the Prussian Staff was active, for the turmoils in Russian Poland made it doubtful whether Prussian troops might not be required to take the field.

In the following year the war with Denmark on account of the Elbe Duchies broke out. In it Prussia on account of her geographical position took the leading part, and it fell to Moltke to draw out the plan of operations for the combined Prussian and Austrian armies. Thus his first active service was against the same army in which he had borne a commission as a youth. He directed the advance of the armies which under Field-Marshal von Wrangel invaded the duchies, and after the storming of Düppal in 1864 accompanied the King to the theatre of war and as Chief of the Staff directed the further operations. For a moment England thought of saving Denmark single-handed from Prussia, but most fortunately wiser counsels prevailed, and British troops were not sent to prove the terrible efficacy of the Prussian needle gun. A conference was, indeed, held to consider the matter at London; but it separated without result. England folded her hands and allowed the war to proceed. Prince Frederick Charles, with Moltke as his Chief of the Staff, took the command of the allied forces. On the 30th of October peace was signed, and Holstein, Lauenburg and Schleswig were annexed to Germany. To these results the talents of Moltke largely contributed. They were much aided by the breech-loading rifle of the Prussian infantry and by a portion of the artillery also consisting of breech-loading guns. But in Europe at large little attention was paid to these mechanical improvements, and even in Germany they were not thoroughly appreciated.

A larger field in which to prove his strategical genius was opened to Moltke in the war of 1866. Austria and Prussia found cause of quarrel in the newly acquired Elbe Duchies. By the middle of June, 1866, the armies on both sides were concentrating on the common frontier. The Prussian forces consisted of three armies, which by Moltke’s combination advanced concentrically into Bohemia, and by carefully calculated marches and skilful manoeuvres exposed the Austrian forces to a simultaneous attack in front and rear. It had hitherto been considered exceedingly hazardous to advance into an enemy’s country in different independent columns, especially through mountain passes, as two columns might be checked by small forces, while an overwhelming weight was thrown on the third, and then the columns might be destroyed in detail. But this danger Moltke perceived would be averted if each column could communicate almost instantly with the others. He called science to his aid. The military field telegraph was instituted and each column could communicate in a few seconds with the others, though a hundred miles distant, and tell exactly the hostile forces in its front.

Aided thus, Moltke perfected plans by which the army of Prince Frederick Charles, joined with that of Herwarth, burst into Bohemia through Saxony, swept away the detachments left to bar their progress, and threatened the flank and rear of the main force with which Benedek hoped to check the Crown Prince. The latter, fighting hard, pushed his way through the Silesian hills. His breech-loaders swept away the badly-armed Austrian columns opposed to him, and Benedek, thus assailed and threatened, fell back perforce to a rearward position on the Bistritz. Once through the mountains, the junction of the Crown Prince with Prince Frederick Charles was assured, and on the night of the 1st of July their horsemen communicated with each other near Gitschin. The next day the King, with Moltke, arrived at Gitschin. Prince Frederick Charles felt the Austrian army on the Bistritz, and, fearing that it might retreat beyond the Elbe, determined to attack and hold it fast till the Crown Prince could come up within striking distance and smite it heavily in flank and rear. The consent of the King, by Moltke’s advice, was given to this bold but wise view of Prince Frederick Charles. The battle of Königgrätz was the result, where the Austrian army was so utterly defeated that Benedek telegraphed immediately to his Sovereign, ‘Sire, you must make peace.’

An armistice was then agreed upon, and the Peace of Prague definitely concluded on the 23d of August. At the close of the war Moltke wrote, ‘It is beautiful when God gives to man such a result to his life as He has vouchsafed to the King and many of his Generals. I am now 66 years old and for my work I received much reward. We have made a campaign which for Prussia, for Germany, and the world is of inestimable importance.’ But there was a great sorrow in store for the General. In December, 1866, Madame von Moltke fell ill, and Christmas Eve, which brings gladness to so many hearts, was sad to Moltke. Before the dawn of Christmas Day his wife lay dead. They had had no children, and his life would have been very lonely had not the kindly King appointed his nephew, Lieutenant von Burt, to be his permanent aide-de-camp; his only surviving sister, Madame von Burt, took charge of his house, and thus he was not left quite alone. But he ever cherished a most lasting and tender affection for his wife. She was buried on his property in Silesia, and whenever the General went home from Berlin his first action was to visit her grave.

But there was hard work to distract his mind from private sorrow. The main results of the war of 1866 were the formation of the new North German Confederation, under the Sovereign of Prussia, and the disappearance of Austria as a Germanic Power. The Treaty of Prague was, however, but the stepping-stone, not the keystone, of German unity. North Germany was, indeed, linked with Prussia, which now held the command of the German forces and the power of peace and war north of the Main. The treaties with Baden and Wurtemberg were of the same tenor. On account of the representations of the Emperor of the French, Saxony was not so completely absorbed into the union. The Saxon King retained the power of nominating his civil and military officers, and the Saxon army was not merged in that of the Confederation. France, by an attitude of desire to interfere in the internal arrangements of Germany, facilitated the conclusion of those treaties; and the fact that on the 6th of August, 1866, she demanded the fortress of Mainz from Prussia under threat of war, though known to but few, had doubtless an important effect.

Moltke’s answer to the demand was the rapid march of 60,000 men to the Rhine; and when it was seen that Prussia was resolute, the threat was not carried out, but an excuse made that the demand was wrung from the Emperor while suffering from severe illness. But those who looked below the surface saw that France was brooding, and pushing forward armaments and military organization. Moltke well knew this. His system of intelligence from France was excellent; every change in armament and every movement of battalions was known to him. The war which he had long foreseen broke out, indeed, suddenly, but found him prepared. In England it caused great surprise, although in the spring of 1870 French agents were abroad in all our southern counties buying corn and forage. The excuses for enormous purchases of this description were that the season had been so dry that no harvest was expected in France. But these excuses were transparent, for had forage been so very scarce in France French dealers would not have cared, simultaneously with an enormous rise in the price of forage, to largely export horses to France.

At the same time, a flotilla was secretly collected in the northern French ports, capable of transporting 40,000 men and 12,000 horses. These things were carefully noted by Moltke’s agents, but the British Government, against which the arrangements might have been equally directed, remained in happy ignorance of any danger of war, and within a few hours of the outbreak of hostilities our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as he himself stated in Parliament, ‘believed that there was not a cloud on the political horizon of Europe.’

Careful precautions were taken on the Prussian side, and already in December, 1867, Moltke worked out and laid before the King a plan for the railway transport of the armies of Germany to the Rhine and a plan of campaign against France. So carefully were the details of the transport arranged that when war broke out more than two years afterwards they had hardly to be altered. The key of Moltke’s plan of campaign as exposed in his history of this war which was published from the office of the German staff in 1874, was ‘to find the main body of the enemy and to attack it wherever found.’ The mobilization of the army was prepared in every detail, and Moltke, with a keen but bold strategy, fixed the point of concentration in the Bavarian palatinate, between the Rhine and the Moselle. The assembly of the whole German force here protected the upper as well as the lower Rhine, and allowed for an offensive movement into France which would probably prevent any invasion of German territory.

It might appear hazardous to concentrate the armies on the French side of the Rhine, where they might be attacked before they were united, but his calculations were so perfect and his arrangements so complete, that under his magician’s hand this danger disappeared. For every detachment, the day and hour of its departure from its garrison and arrival near the frontier was laid down. On the 10th day after mobilization was ordered, the first troops would descend from their railway carriages close by the French frontier, and on the 13th day 60,000 combatants would be there in position and on the 18th day this force would be swelled to 300,000 men. He calculated that only on the eighth day, in most favourable circumstances, could the French cross the frontier with 150,000 men, when there was time for the Prussian staff to stop their railway transport at the Rhine and there disembark their forces. To move from the frontier at Saarlouis to the Rhine the French would require at least six marches, and could only reach the river on the 14th day to find the passages occupied by overwhelming German forces. For on the German side there were ready to take the field, as soon as their rapid mobilization was complete, the 12 corps of the North German Confederation, mustering at least 360,000 men; and the armies of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Darmstadt, Saxony and Baden, which were under the supreme command of the King of Prussia in virtue of the treaties concluded after the campaign of 1866, raised the field forces of that Sovereign to over 500,000 combatants.

The German soldier was more suitably equipped for European war than the French. Discarding the cumbrous equipage necessary for the formation of camps or the refinements of cooking, the German troops were prepared during a campaign to trust to the shelter which villages nearly always afford in Western Europe, or, in case of necessity, to bivouac in the open air, while a small mess-tin carried by each soldier sufficed for his culinary wants. The French soldier, on the contrary, was weighed down with tentes d’abri, heavy cooking apparatus, and an enormous kit. These were generally useless, frequently lost, always incumbrances; but an army accustomed to African or Asiatic war clings pertinaciously to the idea of canvas covering, fails to realize the different conditions under which campaigns must be conducted in Europe, and shudders at the idea of an exposure in war to which every true sportsman will willingly consent for pleasure.

The plans matured in peace by Moltke were now to be tested. They were not found wanting. Late at night, on the 15th of July, the King of Prussia ordered the mobilization of the whole German army. The 16th was the first day of mobilization; on the 26th the mobilization was complete; and on the 3d of August three army corps stood formed in order of battle south of the Moselle, between the Saar and the Rhine, and ready to advance into France. While the German army was being mobilized the French lost all advantage which their hasty declaration of war should have given. Their army, instead of having been ready before the declaration of war, was unprepared to advance, and instead of dashing boldly into Germany lay inactive on the frontier. Thus the German army was able unhindered to assume the offensive with superior numbers.

Moltle’s plan of the campaign was that the army of the Crown Prince should advance on the east of the Vosges Mountains, on the German left, that of Prince Frederick Charles in the centre, and that of Steinmetz on the right, to the west of the Vosges. Moltke expected to find the united French army on the Moselle between Nancy and Metz, but his cavalry soon informed him that they were not even concentrated, but in scattered corps. On the 4th of August the French corps which occupied St. Avold, a small town on the road from Metz to the frontier line of the Saar at Saarbruck, made a movement towards the latter place. The Emperor and Prince Imperial were present, and the French soldiery thought that the advance had at last really begun, and that they were upon the high road to Berlin. The movement was not, however, pushed; the French did not even cross the frontier in force, but occupied the strong heights of Spicheren.

Meanwhile the German troops had drawn swiftly and silently down to the frontier. In the early morning of the 6th of August, the Crown Prince had massed his forces behind the dark woods which lie north of Weissemburg. Thence, soon after day-break, he sprang upon the unsuspecting advanced guard of the corps of Marshal MacMahon, and drove them back with great loss on Wörth. The same day Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz stormed the heights of Spicheren and drove the French occupants of that position in full retreat towards Metz. On the 8th the Crown Prince came upon Marshal MacMahon at Wörth, and after a severe battle, in which the French leader showed much tactical resource, overthrew him completely, and the Marshal retreated in great confusion on Nancy. The future Emperor Frederick, at Wörth, tore from the brows of tho French army the laurels which a too credulous world had uncritically accorded to it, and proved that the army of France, however much animated by enthusiasm and gallantry, was unable to withstand the stern onset of the German soldiery directed with judgment and conducted with skill.

Reports soon came in which showed that the whole French army contemplated a retreat from the line of the Moselle towards Châlons. Then Moltke conceived the daring plan of throwing the German force between Bazaine and Châlons and cutting off the French retreat. Prince Frederick Charles crossed the Moselle and engaged Bazaine’s retreating columns in the bloody battle of Mars-la-Tour. Here he held the French General, who had 180,000 men, with his 90,000, and although he lost heavily he gripped him tight and prevented his further retreat. Other German corps hurried up in support; and on the 18th the main German army, with its rear to Paris, engaged Bazaine at Gravelotte and, after a severe fight, drove him back into Metz, where his force was quickly surrounded by Prince Frederick Charles was shut up from all further participation in the war, and was finally compelled to capitulate in the latter part of October.

While the German cavalry hurried forward in front of the armies of the two Crown Princes to gather news of the French movements, the Chief of the Staff joined the head-quarters of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the 24th of August at Ligny. A council of war was held. It was known that the French army was near Rheims, and rumours gathered by the cavalry from the country people told that MacMahon contemplated a march to Metz. It was then determined to continue the march towards Châlons. On his arrival at Bar-le-Duc General Moltke went to walk on the ancient walls of that once fortified town. He meditated on the state of the campaign, and then for the first time the thought struck him of what MacMahon really was doing, and he saw that it was possible that the French leader might endeavour to throw himself into Metz behind the advancing German armies and at the same time threaten their lines of communication. He went to his quarters and there studied the possibility of such a movement and the measures to be taken to counteract it. He found that the proposed French march could be carried out, and that to defeat it the enemy’s columns must at the latest be stopped on the right bank of the Meuse and attacked, and that the position of the German armies allowed them to be attacked there by the fourth army in front and the third army on their right flank with overwhelming force. In the course of the evening, reports from the advanced cavalry showed that the enemy was moving from Rheims in an easterly direction towards Metz. Moltke studied the reports by aid of his maps, in which each detachment of troops was marked with a pin, and soon concluded that there could be no doubt that the French General was marching on Metz. He at once laid his views before the King, and obtained his permission that the march on Paris should be given up, and that the third and fourth armies, wheeled to the right, should march towards the north.

These movements brought on the battle of Sedan. On the 30th of August, the Crown Prince of Saxony, moving down the right bank of the Meuse, surprised the French advance at Mouzon; for the French army, instead of making forced marches of about 20 miles a day, on account of want of discipline among the new levies and the failure of transport arrangements, was only able to make about six. On the same day the Crown Prince of Prussia also engaged the heads of Marshal MacMahon’s columns at Beaumont and Donchery and drove them in. On the 1st of September the two armies, under the eyes of the King of Prussia, attacked the position which the French had taken up at Sedan. The Crown Prince threw his left completely round the French army. All day the battle raged. The French fought gallantly, even desperately, but, pressed upon by the better disciplined legions of Germany, they were pushed closer and closer to the ramparts of the fortress, while their adversaries gained a firm footing on all the heights which command and overlook the basin in which Sedan is situate. At last, hemmed in, surrounded, and exposed to the commanding fire of a numerous and superior artillery, no resource was left to the French army but capitulation.

After the halt of a few days necessary for the completion of arrangements at Sedan, the armies of the Crown Princes marched direct for Paris, where alone the war could be ended. There was no French army worthy of mention now in the field. Bazaine, with the Army of the Rhine, was invested in Metz, the Emperor and MacMahon were prisoners on the road to Germany. The few troops that escaped from the general catastrophe at Sedan, or had been on the way to reinforce Marshal MacMahon, were hurried back to Paris to man the defences of the capital. The German movements were, in Moltke’s fashion, at once rapid and deliberate. On the 19th of September the investment of Paris was, in a sense, completed, though much had to be done to fix the grasp securely on the doomed victim.

Here opened a second stage of the war, which for several months was directed from Moltke’s quarters at Versailles. There can be little question that, in the first instance, the Germans were led away by a miscalculation, and for a time, undoubtedly, Moltke’s schemes had to embrace, not only offensive operations against the enemy, but a safe retreat in case of disaster. The resources of Paris, the strength of the fortifications, and the spirit of the people had been underrated. If the Germans had not reckoned on the immediate surrender of the city, as in 1814 and 1815, they would hardly have risked an advance while Bazaine’s army was still safe in Metz and while the fortresses of Alsace and Lorraine threatened their main lines of communication. When Moltke saw that Paris was not to be captured by a coup de main, but that it must be regularly invested, he must have passed some uneasy days and nights until Toul and Strasburg fell; nor could his anxieties have been greatly relieved before Metz capitulated on the 28th of October. Then the problem became a comparatively simple one, for even if the German armies had been compelled to raise the siege they could have retired in perfect order and kept their hold upon the occupied departments. But, at the very outset, Moltke stood firm, and, even while the security of his communications was doubtful, a vast double line of intrenchments, thrown up by the spade, hemmed in the Parisians.

Thenceforward the issue of the siege was only a matter of time. Paris fell by the pressure of hunger. Even Moltke had not truly estimated the strength of the fortifications, which remained unbroken when the gates were opened to the investing armies; and the struggle might have been prolonged for months if there had been any means of getting supplies of food. Perhaps no part of Moltke’s work was more remarkable than the complete success with which he solved a problem only one degree less difficult than that of victualling Paris – the provision of supplies during the winter for the investing armies, in a country to a great extent stripped of its resources and where a prolonged siege had not been contemplated. It is curious that those who planned the fortifications had calculated that no investing army could subsist outside the walls for more than two months, whereas the German investment lasted for five months. Versailles became thus the scene of the most important part of Moltke’s life work.

This extract from the extensive obituary of Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke published in The Times on 25th and 27th April 1891 deals with the key points of his career, in particular those during the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars.

Moltke was a general who fought the next war with his every breath. Recognising that the railways could cut the time for national mobilization to provide a decisive strategic advantage over France, he studied the system in immense detail. His mobilization plan worked perfectly in 1870 but when his nephew, Moltke the Younger, as Chief of Staff in 1914, was asked by Kaiser Wilhelm II whether the plan could be changed to deliver the bulk of the German Army to face Russia in the east, rather than to face France in the west, Moltke said the complexity of the railway schedules made it impossible. In fact, it could have been done, as was later conceded, as an alternative plan for that contingency had been prepared in 1913.

Moltke’s grasp of the importance of co-ordination and communication, using the telegraph, gave his armies another decisive advantage once they reached the battlefield and, like Napoleon, he instinctively anticipated his enemy’s intentions and interpreted his movements.