Gerhard Johann David Scharnhorst was a child of the Lower Saxon people, born into a family of honorable farmers, the son of a Hanoverian soldier who was born in 1723 and participated in the War of the Austrian Succession in a dragoon regiment. Scharnhorst's paternal grandfather was a small farmer in Bordenau, in the Calenberg district, located near the Bückeburg border and the Steinhuder Meer. Scharnhorst's father rose to the rank of sergeant in the regiment and then returned to his native village. The handsome warrior found marital and later material happiness through his marriage to the daughter of the wealthiest landowner in the village, named Johann David Tegtmeyer. The officer Viktor von Lignitz presents in this volume the life and work of the great Prussian general Gerhard von Scharnhorst, who lived from 1755 to 1813.