Karl Friedrich Von Steinmetz - Early Life and Napoleonic Wars

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.