1868, before his proudest triumph. Various commands led him to Italy, Spain, England, and Russia as adjutant of Prussian princes. In 1858 he was appointed chief of the General Staff of the Prussian Army—the institution which he shaped into that great strategical instrument through which were made possible, from a military point of view, the glorious successes of the three wars—1864, 1866, 1870–71—and which has become the model of all similar organizations the world over.
Side by side with the overtowering political achievement of Bismarck and the more congenial life work of Roon, the minister of war, Moltke's service to his country and his king stands unchallenged in historical significance. He has indelibly inscribed his name on the tablets of history as one of the world's greatest strategists. But he did not lay down his work until extreme old age; in 1888, as he so simply put it in his request for relief from duty, he resigned his office, because he "could no more mount a horse." He, however, still remained president of the Commission of National Defense and his last speech in the German Reichstag, of which he had been a continuous member since its establishment, he delivered on May 14, 1890. He died on April 24, 1891. The nation felt that one of its great heroes had passed away.
In two congratulatory documents on the occasion of Moltke's ninetieth birthday, Theodor Mommsen, the historian, has summed up the results of the great soldier's life-work—in the address presented by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and in the honorary tablet of the German cities. These inscriptions may be found in Mommsen's Reden and Aufsaetze. Shortly after Moltke's death, in a commemorative address at the same Academy, the historian and Hellenist Ernst Curtius reviewed Moltke's relations to historical science and his achievements in military science and in history. The Academy had appointed the Fieldmarshal an honorary member in 1860 for his great achievements in the military, geographical, and historical
