I can positively assert no Council of War was ever held either in 1866 or 1870—71.
Excepting on the march and on days of battle, an audience was regularly held by his Majesty at ten o'clock, at which I, accompanied by the Quartermaster-General, laid the latest reports and information before him, and made our suggestions on that basis. The Chief of the Military Cabinet and the Minister of War were also present, and while the head-quarters of the IIIrd Army were at Versailles, the Crown Prince also; but all merely as listeners. The King occasionally required them to give him information on one point or another; but I do not remember that he ever asked for advice concerning the operations in the field or the suggestions I made.
These, which I always discussed beforehand with my staff officers, were, on the contrary, generally maturely weighed by his Majesty himself. He always pointed out with a military eye and an invariably correct estimate of the situation, all the objections that might be raised to their execution; but as in war every step is beset with danger, the plans laid before him were invariably adopted.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] viz. The IInd Army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia, which was to strike the Austrian right flank and right rear; and the Army of the Elbe, commanded by General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, which was to strike the Austrian left flank.
[85] I have a history of the war, published at Tokio, in the Japanese language, with very original illustrations. One of these has for its title, "The King scolding the Army." [Moltke.]
[86] During a long peace the sphere of action of the War Minister's department and the General Staff were not distinctly defined. The providing for the troops in peace was the function of the former, and in war time a number of official duties which could be superintended by the central authorities at home. Thus the place of the Minister of War was not at head-quarters, but at Berlin. The Chief of the General Staff, on the other hand, from the moment when the mobilization is ordered, assumes the whole responsibility for the marching and transport already prepared for during peace, both for the first assembling of the forces, and for their subsequent employment, for which he has only to ask the consent of the Commander-in-Chief—always, with us, the King.
How necessary this disjunction of the two authorities is, I had to experience in June, 1866. Without my knowledge the order had been given for the VIIth Corps to remain on the Rhine. It was only by my representations that the 16th Division was moved up into Bohemia, and our numerical superiority thus brought up to a decisive strength. [Moltke.]
[87] Frederick the Great.
[88] Wilhelm was not the grandson, but the great-grand-nephew of Frederick the Great. The term is very rarely used in the wider sense of "descendant;" but Frederick was childless.