Early Life and Napoleonic Wars
He was educated at the cadet school of Stolp in Pomerania from 1807 to 1811, in the midst of the misery and poverty caused by the French occupation. At the outbreak of the War of Liberation he and his elder brother made their way through the French positions to Breslau, where they were at once appointed to the army, the elder as ensign on probation, the younger to the substantive rank of second lieutenant. After a vain attempt to transfer to the Blücher Hussars, a regiment he had an intense boyish admiration for when it was quartered at Stolp, he was ordered to report to General Yorck, who treated him and the other officers from Breslau with coldness, until Steinmetz asked about returning to the king who had sent him.
The brothers were in the hardest fighting of the campaign of 1813, the elder being killed at the battle of Leipzig and the younger being wounded more than once. During the short halt on the Rhine he improved his military and general education. In the battles in France, he won the Iron Cross, Second Class. After the peace, he entered Paris only once, fearing to spend the ten ducats that sent monthly to his mother. For the same reason, he did not take part in the pleasures of his better off comrades.
Read more about this topic: Karl Friedrich Von Steinmetz
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or wars:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“That doctrine [of peace at any price] has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)