His favorite motto was, '_Help yourself and others will help you_.' Hundreds of his age in the Prussian army were of nobler birth, thousands of greater fortune, but he made himself superior to them all by extraordinary fidelity and diligence.
"The greatest master of strategy the world has ever seen was sixty-six years at school to himself before he was ready for his task.

Though born with the century, and an army officer at nineteen, he was an old man when, in 1866, as Prussian chief of staff, he crushed Austria at Sadowa and drove her out of Germany.

Four years later the silent, modest soldier of seventy, ready for the still greater opportunity, smote France, and changed the map of Europe.

Glory and the field-marshal's baton, after fifty-one years of hard work! No wonder Louis Napoleon was beaten by such men as he.

All Louis Napoleons have been, and always will be.