Von der Tann entered the military under the
artillery branch in 1833, and was after some years placed on the general staff. He attended the manoeuvres of the Austrian army in Italy under
Field Marshal Radetzky and, in a spirit of adventure, joined a French military expedition operating in
Algiers against the
Tunisian frontier.
First Schleswig War On his return he became a close personal friend of the Bavarian Crown Prince
Maximilian (afterwards King Maximilian II). In 1848 he was promoted to major, and in that year he distinguished himself greatly as the leader of a
Schleswig-Holstein light corps in the
First Schleswig War between Denmark and a coalition of German states. At the close of the first campaign he was awarded the
Order of the Red Eagle by the king of
Prussia, and his own sovereign awarded him the
Military Order of Max Joseph and promoted him to lieutenant-colonel. In 1849 he served as chief of staff to the
Bavarian contingent at the front and distinguished himself at the lines of
Dybbøl. He then visited
Haynau's headquarters in the
Hungarian War before returning to Schleswig-Holstein to serve as
von Willisen's chief of staff in the Idstedt campaign.
Austro-Prussian War Then came the threat of war between Prussia and Austria, and von der Tann was recalled to Bavaria. The crisis ended with the
surrender of Olmütz (November 1850), and he saw no further active service until 1866, rising in the usual way of promotion to colonel (1851), major-general (1855), and lieutenant-general (1861). In the earlier years of this period he was the
aide-de-camp and constant companion of King
Maximilian. In the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866 he served as chief of staff to
Prince Karl Theodor of Bavaria, who commanded the South German contingents. The almost entirely unfavorable outcome of the military operations led to vehement attacks on him in the press, but the unreadiness and ineffectiveness of the troops and the general lack of interest in the war on the part of the soldiers had foredoomed the South Germans to failure in any case.
Franco-Prussian War He continued to enjoy the favour of the king and was promoted to the rank of general of the infantry (1869), but the bitterness of his disappointment of 1866 never left him. He was grey-haired at forty-two, and his health was impaired. In 1869 von der Tann-Rathsamhausen, as he was now called, was appointed commander of the
I. Bavarian Corps. This corps he commanded during the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, and it was in this war that he secured his reputation as one of the foremost of German soldiers. His gallantry was conspicuous at the battles of
Wörth and
Sedan. Transferred in the autumn to an independent command on the
Loire, he conducted the operations against
d'Aurelle de Paladines, at first with marked success, and forced the surrender of
Orléans. He had, however, at
Coulmiers to give way before a numerically larger French force; but reinforced, he fought several successful engagements under the
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin near Orléans. After the end of the war he was reappointed commander-in-chief of the
I. Bavarian Corps, a post which he held until his death in 1881 at
Meran. He received the Grand Cross of the Bavarian Military Order, and from the King of Prussia the first class of the
Iron Cross and the
Pour le Mérite. In 1878 the German emperor named von der Tann honorary colonel of a Prussian infantry regiment, gave him a life pension, and named one of the new
Strassburg forts after him. ==Honours and awards==