Now, patient reader, at last we turn our full attention to the career of Maurice.

It is said that Maurice expressed resolve to be a soldier when he was five years old. This is not surprising, given his family background on both sides, but the desire was probably much enhanced by the surroundings and circumstances of his boyhood. From an early age Maurice was steeped in the tradition and glories of the Saxon military experience. The scions of the House of Wettin were warriors to a man, and the Augustenburg Palace where he grew-up was bulging with the artifacts and paraphernalia of centuries of warfare. He could hold in his hand the marshals batons of Tilly and Pappenheim, and gaze upon the armor of Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, not to mention flags, drums and other trophies taken from enemies during the glory days of Saxon arms.

Moreover, throughout most of Maurice's boyhood Saxony was engaged against the Swedes in the furious Great Northern War (1700-21). Consequently, the boy's natural ardor for warfare was further inflamed by the excitement of incessant talk of battles and sieges, ambuscades and stratagems, victories and defeats (well, defeats anyway). Maurice was clearly taken with all this excitement, and fascinated by the marshal pageantry so prevalent in wartime Dresden. It is reported that after watching a particularly exciting military parade he would request:

" . . . children of his own age brought to him with whom he imitated in miniature what he had seen executed at full length. He had always in his hand a stick, a pistol or a sword. He had such an extraordinary liking for horses that the moment he could walk, he went among them; and this familiarity grew upon him so much that to the day of his death he was passionately fond of them."

Though the son of a king, Maurice grew up with feelings of insecurity, and perhaps in relative poverty, though we should not feel too sorry for him, because he was still a high-born nobleman with plenty of servants, a grand place to live, and plenty to eat. Maurice was deprived of his mother's company during most of his boyhood. Marie Aurora had been banished from the Saxon court before Maurice was born, and though she made an occasional reappearance there, Augustus controlled the boy's upbringing and was determined she would have as little influence as possible on the boy's development.

Maurice was born in Goslar, Germany, while his mother was making her way back to Stade after she was ejected from the Augustan court, either because she had been unfaithful to Augustus, or because of her sharp tongue. Perhaps it was a combination. However, from the following documented exchange between the couple, we can draw our own conclusions. When Augustus returned from campaigning against the Turks, he heard rumors that Marie Aurora had been unfaithful to him. She denied it, but Augustus assumed that regardless of the truth, "Caesar's wife must be beyond reproach." In response, the witty mistress was reported to have quipped, "Well my dear, you are not Caesar, and I am not your wife."

Nevertheless, Augustus himself paid scant attention to the lad, despite Maurice's strong resemblance to the father both in physical appearance, strength, and personality. He was obviously talented as well, if extraordinarily willful and precocious. Still, Augustus did not award Maurice a stipend on which to live until he was seven. Before that he had to rely on modest gleanings from the much-reduced Königsmarck estates. Augustus would not formally acknowledge Maurice as his son until he was a teenager and had already acquitted himself with honor on many a battlefield of the Spanish Succession and Great Northern wars. By that time Saxon military glory had faded badly, and Augustus began to cling to the accomplishments of his son as a means to revive Saxon military glory, at least in his own mind.

Maurice was not a scholar. He applied himself assiduously only to those subjects that would be of value to the military man, such as mathematics, drawing, and engineering, and we get a sense that at least as a youngster he preferred physical activity to the intellectual. He had no interest in learning language or philosophy. His favorite tutor was a Frenchman known as Captain d'Alencon, who taught him to ride and fence.

In 1705, as Saxon fortunes in the war achieved nadir, and Charles XII and his stern battalions advanced through Poland defeating Saxon armies as they went, Marie Aurora convinced a no-doubt preoccupied Augustus to send Maurice out of harm's way. Thus in 1705 he was shipped off to the Hague, ostensibly to advance his learning. Captain d'Alencon accompanied him.

Redeployment to the Netherlands placed Maurice close to the major theater of operations of the War of the Spanish Succession, and he soon developed a keen interest in that war. Marlborough and Eugene became his heroes, even as he agonized about the fate of his father, who in 1706 was compelled to sign the humiliating treaty of Altranstadt, which mandated he abdicate the crown of Poland, a title he had gained in 1697, primarily through political intrigue. The ignominious treatment afforded Augustus in this matter outraged Maurice, who seems to have loved his father dearly and probably felt worse about the old lecher's debasement than Augustus did himself. Maurice's first reaction was to become the intractable foe of all Swedes (except his mother I suppose). While at the Hague he could not suffer to be in the same room with one of them without drawing his sword in anger. What seems astonishing to me is that at age ten Maurice wore a sword and apparently knew how to use it.

Maurice longed to take the field to avenge his father's debasement and to restore the honor of Saxony. Maurice was a proud and vain young fellow. He found the stain on Saxon honor occasioned by its poor showing in the Great Northern War insufferable, and swore by his own actions to blot it out. Thus he applied himself with uncharacteristic vigor to his the studies of those disciplines needed to be successful in the profession of arms. It is not surprising he seems also to have suffered from depression as well as anger over the diminishment of Saxon reputation. Neither was this mood alleviated by the occasional ridicule to which he was subjected. For example, At some point during his "winter of his discontent" Maurice attempted a social call on the Prussian King, Frederick the Great's father, but that mean old fellow refused to receive him. Later, the Prussian monarch turned his back on Maurice in public, an insult that cut the boy deeply, further fueling his thirst for vengeance.

Finally, in late 1708, after several years spent stewing in the Netherlands, Maurice's opportunity came. In this year the Holy Roman Emperor requested that Saxony send a contingent of troops to reinforce Eugene's army in Flanders. After much correspondence to his parents badgering them to allow him to accompany the expedition, they reluctantly acquiesced. In January of 1709 he was recalled to Dresden and became part of the 4500 man force being organized by Field Marshal Johann M. von Schulenburg. Schulenburg met him when he got to Dresden, and Maurice describes what then took place.

Things were going badly for Charles XII in the seemingly interminable Great Northern War, and Augustus had crept furtively back onto the Polish Throne.

"He told me in the King's name that His Majesty wished to make me a soldier, that I was greatly indebted to him and that we would leave the next morning. I was to take with me only one of my servants, my valet. I was drunk with joy, above all because I thought I was finished with my tutors. Schulenburg had brought me a uniform that I put on. A big belt with a huge sword was buckled round my waist and my outfit was completed by an enormous pair of Saxon boots. I was then led before the King to kiss his hand and found myself dining at his own table, where all present cheerfully drank my health. The conversation next turned to my studies, and I was questioned about my knowledge of geometry, my facility at drawing and my ability to make plans.

The King said to Schulenburg, 'I want every plan that you send me drawn by his own hand.' He went on, 'Keep him on his toes and don't coddle him. Toughen him up. I want you to make him march on foot to Flanders.' This last notion did not please me. Footslogging did not appeal to me because I wanted to be a cavalryman; and I was summoning up my courage to broach the matter when I was pulled up short. "I don't want anyone else to carry his weapons on the march', said the King. 'His shoulders are broad enough for him to carry them himself. And don't let him pay other soldiers to do his guard duty for him, unless he is seriously ill.' This made me prick up my ears, for the King, who usually treated me with geniality was now talking like a real Turk. But I comforted myself with the thought that I was free forever from tutors and considered myself the happiest mortal alive. After saying my farewells, next day I left Dresden."

After drilling for a week at Lützen, the contingent ceremoniously prepared to march for Flanders by holding a final review on the battlefield where Gustavus Adolphus had been killed. Shulenburg brought Maurice before the assembled troops, kissed him on both cheeks, and made him take a soldierly oath while the thirteen-year old boy's hand rested on the stone monument commemorating the death of the great Swede. Maurice was now an ensign in the Regiment von Pruess. He dutifully took his place in the battalion column and thus began his long march into the pages of military history.

To be continued

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Browning, Reed. The War of the Austrian Succession. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993
D'Auvergne, Edmund V. The Prodigious Marshal, New York: Dodd Mead & Company, 1931
Dupuy, R. Ernest and Trevor N. The Encyclopedia of Military History. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1970
Nosworthy, Brent. The Anatomy of Victory, Battle Tactics 1689-1763. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990
Saxe, Maurice. Mes Ręveries. In The Roots of Strategy, Edited by Brig. General T.R. Phillips. Harrisburg: Stackpole Books,1985
Trowbridge, W.R.H.. A Beau Sabreur, Maurice de Saxe, Marshal of France. New York: Brentano's, 1910
White, Jon Manchip. Marshal of France, The Life and Times of Maurice, Comte de Saxe. Gateshead on Tyne: Northhumberland Press Limited, 1962

More Marshal Saxe

Introduction
Genes: Parents and Family
Early Days
War and Debt
Lessons Learned in Flanders
In Action Against the Swedes

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