August Neidhardt Von Gneisenau - Later Life

Later Life

In 1816 Gneisenau was appointed to command the VIII Prussian Corps, but soon retired from the service, both because of ill health and for political reasons.

For two years Gneisenau lived in retirement at his estate, Erdmannsdorf in Silesia, but in 1818 he became governor of Berlin, as successor to Kalckreuth, and member of the Staatsrath (Council of State). In 1825 he was promoted to General Field Marshal. In 1831, soon after the outbreak of the Polish insurrection of 1830, he was appointed to the command of the Army of Observation on the Polish frontier, with Clausewitz as his chief-of-staff. At Posen he was struck down by cholera and died on 24 August 1831, soon followed by his chief-of-staff, who fell a victim to the same disease in November.

Read more about this topic:  August Neidhardt Von Gneisenau

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and money, warp them.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns,
    Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
    Life overflows without ambitious pains;
    And rains down life until the basin spills,
    And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
    As though to choose whatever shape it wills....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)