Early Life
Seydlitz was born in Kalkar in the Duchy of Cleves, where his father Daniel Florian von Seydlitz, a major of Prussian cavalry, was stationed. After his father's death in 1728 his mother brought him up in straitened circumstances, but at the age of fourteen he went as a page to the court of the Margrave Frederick William of Brandenburg-Schwedt, who had been his father's colonel. During this time under the "Mad" Margrave, Seydlitz conceived his passion for tobacco, women, and feats of daredevil horsemanship. He acquired a superb mastery of horsemanship, and many stories tell of his feats, the best known of which involved riding between the sails of a windmill in full swing.
Read more about this topic: Friedrich Wilhelm Von Seydlitz
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)