Thread by @Roelkonijn

I study early scholars of Greek warfare.

Most of them are obscure teachers and professors.

Only one is found in the letters of Mazzini, Bismarck, Garibaldi, Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln.

That's right, Twitter. It's time to talk about Wilhelm Rüstow, born #OTD in 1821.

Rüstow was one of the most famous military writers of the 19th century. But his life was lived in exile and ended with his suicide. No one remembers his name.

How did this happen?

It is a tale of kings and sugar mamas, of prison break and cross-dressing and obsession. 2/

The Rüstows are a Prussian family of officers. Young Wilhelm joins the army at 17. By all counts, he's clever but proud, vain, stubborn, a proponent of authoritarian democracy with an incredible talent for pissing people off.

3/

He starts churning out books on war at 22. When he's 27 and a mere lieutenant in the engineers, he publishes "The War of the Future" - a revolutionary leftist militarist screed. Many eyebrows are raised. Including the hefty eyebrow of King Frederick William IV of Prussia. 4/

The army shunts him to a backwater garrison. Rüstow responds by changing in no way whatsoever. In the summer of 1848 - revolution times - he speaks to a Democratic Club and criticises a royal order to the army. ALERT. DANGER, WILL RÜSTOW.

5/

He is taken to an honour court, but acquitted. So the King of Prussia PERSONALLY issues an EXECUTIVE ORDER to courtmartial him. He's acquitted again - so the King orders ANOTHER RETRIAL. The case is thrown out of court. King Status: Very Pissed Off. 6/

Does Rüstow learn his lesson and lay low? OF COURSE NOT. He writes a pro-revolutionary review of Prussia during the 1848 revolutions. It is published in 1850 and immediately confiscated. Rüstow is arrested. King Status: FUCKING FURIOUS.

7/

On 7 March 1850, Rüstow is convicted of offending the crown & inciting unrest. Sentenced to 1.5 years in prison. What does the King say to that? YOU GUESSED IT, IT'S EXECUTIVE-ORDER-TO-RETRIAL TIME.

8/

Rüstow decides not to sit this one out. He escapes from prison - sawing through the bars with a hidden file, tying sheets together, the whole cartoon deal. He puts on a dress, gets in a carriage, and rides it to neutral Switzerland. His sentence: 31.5 years for high treason. 9/

He is left with nothing. He settles in Zürich and does what he knows best: write. Like an overcaffeinated centipede. For the remaining years of his life, he churns out about 2 full-length books a year. I'm not counting articles and letters. 10/

The reason he matters to me: he wrote 2 books on Greek warfare together with philologist and fellow exile Hermann Köchly. He'd never written on Greek warfare before. He published his handbook - THE STANDARD WORK OF THE FIELD FOR 80 YEARS - less than 2 years into his exile. 11/

He makes it his business to write the history of wars as they happen. People are reading these books all over Europe. Rüstow gets translated into Russian and Hungarian. He has an in with the French Minister of War. Prussia kinda starts to want him back. 12/

There's a whole exchange of letters in which Bismarck himself explains the way Rüstow might return. Rüstow is a natural diplomat like an elephant is a natural brain surgeon. He rejects anything short of a full pardon. Bismarck is like... u wot m8

It never happens.

13/

Meanwhile there are revolutionary movements badly in need of military expertise. Rüstow doesn't see much in it until his lifelong pen pal Emma Herwegh urges him to go do some good. 14/

In 1860 he travels south to join Mazzini. He trains a regiment that is attached to Garibaldi. Rüstow - an armchair general until now - gets to lead a division in the march on Naples and Capua. He fucking loves it. Garibaldi fucking loves it. War is great! [citation needed] 15/

Now, Garibaldi is an international hero at this point. When the American Civil War breaks out there's a big campaign to get him to fight for the Union. He doesn't - but he writes Lincoln to offer the services of his chief of staff. You're right. It's Wilhelm fucking Rüstow. 16/

Lincoln may actually have heard of Rüstow. As I said, he's a huge name in military theory. But it's also possible that he was like, hey. I asked for Guiseppe Garibaldi. Who the fuck is this guy? 17/

So it's back to the grindstone for Rüstow. Writing and writing. Uncertain about his station; unable to count on even his most powerful friends. He is desperate for a cause, for something to make his name.

18/

He has some good times. He hangs out a lot with the revolutionary Ferdinand Lassalle. He falls in love with Lassalle's patron Sophie von Hatzfeld, leftist agitator and financier, 16 years his senior. He's married, but he craves the good life. 19/

But the story gets darker. Rüstow's projects come to nothing. He's involved in a scheme to build a people's army out of German sports clubs - a plan Karl Marx himself calls, actual quote, "bloody stupid." (Marx would later read Rüstow's book on Greek warfare.) 20/

His close ones start dying. In 1864, Rüstow is Lassalle's second in the duel where Lassalle is shot dead. In 1866, his brothers Cäsar and Alexander - Prussian officers like him - are killed in the Austro-Prussian War. 21/

He can't get work. All he can do is keep churning out books to feed his wife and daughters. When the Franco-Prussian War breaks out, he finally offers to fight for Prussia - but they turn him down. For all his fame, no one is willing to give him a job. He's too toxic. 22/

A glimmer of hope! In 1877 the Zürich Polytechnic creates a chair in Military Science. Everyone agrees Rüstow should fill it. He teaches for 1 semester.

In that semester he pisses off so many people that they sack him and offer the job to Emil Rothpletz. 23/

There is nothing left now for Rüstow. He's out of money and hope. He descends into despair and takes his own life, aged 57, on 14 August 1878.

His final letter to his daughters is a rambling screed against all who have wronged him. 24/

But it sums up the great injustice of his life - the frustration of being always outside the circles where authority and stability are taken for granted:

"So you see, my sweet Hanneli, not all those who look for work will find it."

/fin