[Illustration: Chief of the Staff General von Moltke (nephew of the great General who trained the Prussian Army for the wars against Denmark, Austria, and France). He is here seen with the Kaiser Wilhelm watching the manoeuvres of German troops. (_Photo, Oscar Tellgmann._)] In the year 1806 a Prussian boy, named John Nicholas Dreyse, finished his apprenticeship as a locksmith. The battle of Jena[75] had just been fought, and Dreyse wandered on to the battlefield, where the Prussians lay thick on the ground, with their muskets beside them. He picked up one of these guns and examined it carefully. He was a clever and inventive lad, and he soon saw that the musket was a poor weapon, and that his countrymen had been beaten because Napoleon's army had a much better gun. Thereupon he began to dream of inventing a gun for his country that should be the best in the world. He found his way to Paris, and obtained employment in the workshop of a Swiss gunmaker who was trusted by the Emperor Napoleon. The clever, hard-working Prussian boy soon gained the confidence of his master, who one day told him that he was going to make for the Emperor a gun that would be loaded at the breech. Dreyse had never thought of this before. All the guns that he had ever seen were muzzle-loaders--that is, they were loaded by pouring powder into the barrel and ramming home a bullet. The new idea filled his mind, and night and day he thought of ways in which such a quick-loading gun might be made. When Napoleon heard how he was occupied, he encouraged him to further effort by promising him a gift of money and the Cross of the Legion of Honour.[76] Before, however, the gun was made, Napoleon was sleeping his last sleep under the willow-tree on the island of St. Helena. [Illustration: Cross of the Legion of Honour.] At length, in 1835, after thirty years of thought and trial and disappointment, Dreyse made a breech-loading gun which was fired by the prick of a needle. At once he offered his gun to the Government of his own country. It was tried against the Danes, and proved so successful that the Prussian Government set up a large factory in which to manufacture it. By the month of June 1866, many of the Prussian soldiers were armed with this needle-gun, and had learned how to use it. Then when all was ready war began.