Early Life
Moltke was born in Parchim, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, son of the Danish Generalleutnant Friedrich Philipp Victor von Moltke (1768–1845). In 1805, his father settled in Holstein, but about the same time was left impoverished when the French burned his country house and plundered his town house in Lübeck, where his wife and children were during the Fourth Coalition. Young Moltke therefore grew up under difficult circumstances. At nine he was sent as a boarder to Hohenfelde in Holstein, and at age eleven went to the cadet school at Copenhagen, being destined for the Danish army and court. In 1818 he became a page to the king of Denmark and a second lieutenant in a Danish infantry regiment.
At twenty-one Moltke resolved to enter the Prussian service, in spite of the loss of seniority. In 1822 he became a second lieutenant in the 8th Infantry Regiment stationed at Frankfurt (Oder). At twenty-three, he was allowed to enter the general war school (later called the Prussian Military Academy), where he studied the full three years and passed in 1826.
Read more about this topic: Helmuth Von Moltke The Elder
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)