By the evening of the 11th of August, the wedding had already begun to feel strangely distant.
Moltke had returned to the Hotel Staar while the last celebrations still continued elsewhere in Luxembourg City, bringing with him more wine than good sense and the familiar weight of the maps waiting upstairs. His uniform had lost some of its morning precision, his collar sat slightly loose, and an open bottle stood beside the latest dispatches as he worked his way through reports from the western armies.
He had not been alone for long when the door opened without warning and Kaiser Wilhelm II strode inside as though entering the private room of an old friend rather than the headquarters of the German Army. The Kaiser was in considerably better spirits. A half-empty bottle hung from one hand, a cigarette burned between the fingers of the other, and the warmth of the day's celebrations remained plainly upon his face.
For a while the two men simply drank together.
There was, after all, plenty to celebrate. Paris had been bombed that afternoon, German armies continued pressing through Belgium and northern France, and Entente forces everywhere were yielding ground beneath losses few governments had imagined suffering within the opening weeks of war. German aircraft dominated the western skies so completely that French and British machines now appeared mostly in scattered reconnaissance attempts, slipping across the front wherever they could before German fighters found them. Some escaped. Many did not.
Wilhelm raised his glass toward the maps with obvious satisfaction.
"To victory."
Moltke touched his own glass against it.
"To Germany."
For a little while even Moltke allowed himself to believe in the picture before them. Paris had felt German bombs. Brussels was theirs. The armies were advancing, and somewhere beyond the lines French and British commanders were already being forced to rethink everything they had believed about modern warfare.
Yet the farther Moltke's eyes travelled across the map, the more difficult optimism became.
Every kilometre gained carried the armies farther from the railheads and depots that sustained them. New supply hubs had to be established almost as quickly as the front moved, roads repaired, bridges secured and ammunition pushed forward in quantities that seemed to grow more absurd with every battle. Behind the armies, Belgian resistance remained troublesome enough to make every railway, road and warehouse another thing requiring guards. Telegraph wires were cut. Supply columns were harassed. Bridges that should have remained behind the front sometimes needed defending as though the battle had never truly passed them.
The advance was outrunning the machinery that fed it.
And Moltke knew, with increasing bitterness, that part of the fault was his own.
Before the war he had resisted Oskar's demands for far greater investment in trucks, tractors and mechanised transport. Horses were proven, railways dependable, and Oskar's appetite for engines had seemed excessive even by the standards of the new Germany. Now Moltke watched ammunition crawl forward behind armies capable of moving faster than their supplies and found himself wondering how many pauses might have been avoided had he simply listened.
The thought came too late to be useful.
There was no correcting the pre-war argument now. The machines Germany possessed would have to suffice, and whatever shortcomings remained would be overcome by organisation, improvisation and sheer determination.
Paris lay ahead. That was what mattered.
Wilhelm seemed to sense little of the unease beneath his friend's silence. To him the map still looked magnificent, and perhaps after enough wine Moltke could almost see it that way as well. The two talked of France, of the battered Royal Navy, of German aircraft ruling skies that only weeks earlier had belonged to nobody, and of what Europe might look like when the fighting finally ended.
Another glass was poured. Then another. By the time Wilhelm lifted his bottle again, both men were comfortably drunk and speaking less like Kaiser and Chief of the General Staff than two ageing friends who had somehow lived long enough to watch the Germany of their youth become the greatest military power on the Continent.
Wilhelm grinned and raised the bottle.
"For God and Fatherland."
Moltke managed a tired smile and lifted his glass.
"Until death."
Then the door opened, and a staff officer stepped quickly into the room with a telegram held in one hand. Whatever warmth the wine had put into Moltke's thoughts receded slightly at the sight of him.
"Your Majesty. Generaloberst. Urgent news from the Eastern Front."
Wilhelm turned in his chair, cigarette still between his fingers and the remains of a smile upon his face.
"Oh? Has my son won us something else?"
The officer hesitated only long enough to glance at the telegram. "It would appear so, Your Majesty. General Rennenkampf has abandoned the Russian First Army and passed into German hands with members of his family and staff. First Army is presently without effective leadership and falling back in considerable disorder. The Black Legion has begun pressing farther north toward Riga."
Wilhelm's smile widened.
The officer continued. German naval forces had landed at Ventspils, placing troops upon the Baltic coast behind the retreating Russian position and threatening communications farther north. Meanwhile Oskar had begun consolidating the territories already taken. German police formations financed and equipped through his own organisations were moving into occupied towns behind the army, including specialist security detachments intended to restore administration, suppress disorder and free the Black Legion from having to police every village it passed.
The advance, according to the telegram, was proceeding steadily.
Wilhelm gave a delighted laugh and slapped one hand against the arm of his chair. "Of course it is. The boy seems determined to collect the Baltic before Helmuth here gives me Paris."
Moltke produced the smile expected of him.
"An impressive development, Your Majesty."
Impressive was certainly one word for it.
The bombing of Paris had seemed rather grand that afternoon. Germany had reached the French capital through the air, and tomorrow newspapers would undoubtedly proclaim the achievement across the Empire. Yet compared with what continued arriving from the east, even that suddenly seemed strangely modest. Oskar had destroyed one Russian army, broken another, taken Warsaw, advanced into the Baltic provinces, brought a Russian army commander over to Germany and now added a naval landing while police and administrators followed behind him almost as quickly as his soldiers advanced.
There was always something more.
Wilhelm raised his bottle toward the officer. "Send my congratulations to His Highness. Tell him his father is very pleased."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
The officer saluted and withdrew, leaving the two men alone again.
For a while neither spoke. Wilhelm poured more drink with the comfortable satisfaction of a man receiving confirmation that the world continued arranging itself in Germany's favour, while Moltke stared across the maps beneath the warm electric light.
"To Oskar," Wilhelm said at last, raising his glass.
Moltke touched his own against it.
"To the Crown Prince."
Wilhelm drank deeply and settled back, thoroughly content.
Moltke drank as well. The alcohol helped, though not enough. What disturbed him was no longer merely Oskar's military success. The boy was not racing blindly across Russia as Wilhelm liked to joke. Police followed his soldiers. Administrators followed the police. Railways, property, law and settlement followed behind them all. Whatever plan existed in Oskar's head, conquest appeared to be only its beginning. That was what frightened Moltke.
He wished, increasingly, that Oskar were not Crown Prince. The thought had once seemed almost absurd. Now it came to him with uncomfortable frequency.
Wilhelm gave his son extraordinary freedom because he loved him, because Oskar's industries had enriched Germany and because nearly every impossible undertaking entrusted to him somehow succeeded. Yet each success created something else around the young prince: another institution loyal to him, another company financed through his wealth, another military formation that revered him, another territory being reorganised according to his ideas.
Even the Church troubled Moltke.
The Church of the New Dawn had begun as another one of Oskar's peculiarities. Now its priests stood beside Catholic clergy at royal weddings, its crosses hung from the necks of soldiers across Europe, and even Rome seemed uncertain how firmly it dared condemn it. Moltke had heard enough whispers to know the dilemma facing Catholic authorities. Was Oskar a dangerous heretic building a religion around himself, or something far more unsettling—a man upon whom God's favour genuinely seemed to rest?
Some called him the Iron Prince. Others spoke of him as though he were chosen. A few had gone considerably further. The more victories Oskar accumulated, the harder such beliefs became to dismiss with laughter.
Moltke looked across the table at Wilhelm. The Kaiser was smoking contentedly now, half drunk and quietly imagining victories still to come, apparently unaware that his friend's thoughts had travelled somewhere considerably darker.
Perhaps Crown Prince Wilhelm would recover.
The former heir had disappeared so thoroughly into illness and instability that the Empire had gradually learned to function without him, leaving Oskar to occupy the space beside the throne. Moltke had once regarded that merely as unfortunate family tragedy. Increasingly he wondered whether Wilhelm's recovery might be necessary for Germany itself.
Not because the former Crown Prince was especially brilliant.
Perhaps precisely because he was not.
A restored Wilhelm would create balance. Another centre of dynastic legitimacy. Another man around whom those uneasy with Oskar might gather. Something capable of preventing the entire Empire from gradually bending toward a single extraordinary figure and the strange new Germany forming around him.
Moltke swallowed another mouthful.
He did not yet know what he would do.
He did know, however, that he had begun thinking thoughts which, spoken aloud, could easily be called treason.
If Kaiser Wilhelm continued giving Oskar everything he wanted, and if the old Crown Prince never returned, then eventually preserving the monarchy might require saving it from the man presently sitting at its head.
The thought should have horrified him.
Instead, tonight, it merely sat there.
Wilhelm looked across the table and smiled at his old friend.
"To victory, Helmuth."
Moltke raised his glass.
"To victory, Your Majesty."
The Kaiser never noticed that his smile did not quite reach his eyes.
Outside, Luxembourg continued celebrating beneath flags and summer lights, while somewhere far to the east another portion of the Russian Empire was being pulled into Oskar's expanding grasp.
And as the two old men drank into the night, only one of them still believed the greatest danger to Germany waited beyond its borders.
Days later, on the 15th of August, the news Moltke had been waiting for finally arrived.
Namur had fallen.
The last stubborn elements of the fortress system had been broken beneath German siege artillery and assault troops, its surviving defenders killed, captured or driven away. The roads and railways around the city were finally secure enough to carry the full weight of the German advance, releasing men, guns and transport that had been tied down behind the front.
For Moltke, the fall of Namur provided the opportunity he needed.
For several days he had been refining the next phase of the western campaign, adjusting his plans as the armies pushed deeper into France and the Anglo-French forces withdrew before them. Now he carried the completed proposal to Kaiser Wilhelm II, still residing in Luxembourg City, and spread the maps and written orders before him inside the Hotel Staar.
The plan centred upon the Marne.
There the German armies would press the retreating Entente forces hard enough to force the decisive battle Moltke wanted, break their remaining cohesion and continue the advance toward Paris before the French could recover. Beyond that lay the possibility of encircling the capital, destroying the armies defending it and bringing the western campaign to its conclusion.
Wilhelm studied the plans with obvious interest while Moltke explained the essentials. He asked several questions, returned once more to the map, and then looked toward his old friend with a satisfied smile.
"You believe this will give us Paris?"
"I believe it gives us our best opportunity, Your Majesty."
That was enough.
Wilhelm took the pen, signed the operational order and pushed the document back across the table. Moltke added his own signature beneath it before the two men rose and shook hands.
Only one concern remained beneath Moltke's confidence.
Supply.
Every kilometre gained carried the armies farther from the depots and railheads feeding them. The farther they advanced, the more difficult it became to keep artillery supplied with shells, vehicles with fuel and men with everything required to continue fighting. Moltke knew the strain was growing.
But time mattered even more.
Every day surrendered to caution gave France another day to recover.
So there would be no pause.
On the 15th of August 1914, with Namur finally fallen and the road west opened before them, Kaiser and Generaloberst agreed upon the next great movement of the German armies.
The campaign of the Marne was about to begin.