[3] Born into a military family, Steuben was exposed to war from an early age; at 14 years old, he observed his father directing Prussian engineers in the 1744 siege of Prague.

[6] Steuben's career culminated in his attendance of Frederick's elite school for young military officers, after which he was abruptly discharged from the army in 1763, allegedly by the machinations of a rival.

[8] In 1775, as the American Revolution had begun, Steuben saw a reduction in his salary and sought some form of military work; unable to find employment in peacetime Europe, he joined the U.S. war effort through mutual French contacts with U.S. diplomats, most notably ambassadors to France Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin.

Appalled by the state of U.S. forces, Steuben took the lead in teaching soldiers the essentials of military drills, tactics, and discipline based on Prussian techniques.

[12] Baron von Steuben was born in the fortress town of Magdeburg in Prussia (now in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany), on September 17, 1730, the son of Royal Prussian Engineer Capt.

[13] When his father entered the service of Empress Anna of Russia, young Friedrich went with him to Crimea and then to Kronstadt, staying until the Russian war against the Turks under General Burkhard Christoph von Münnich.

[14]: 63  Originally, von Steuben's family were Protestants in the Kingdom of Prussia, and after his emigration to America he became a member of the Reformed German Church, a congregation in New York.

[17] He subsequently attained the rank of captain and served as aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great; in 1762 he was one of 13 young officers chosen to participate in a special course of instruction delivered by the king himself.

[18] Towards the end of his life, Steuben indicated in a letter that "an inconsiderate step and an implacable personal enemy" led to his leaving the Prussian army.

[18] In 1763, Steuben had been formally introduced to the future French Minister of War, Claude Louis, Comte de Saint-Germain, in Hamburg.

The Count, fully realizing the potential of an officer with Prussian general staff training, introduced him to Americans Silas Dean and Benjamin Franklin.

[19] Steuben, his Italian Greyhound Azor (which he took with him everywhere), his young aide-de-camp Louis de Pontière, his military secretary Pierre-Étienne du Ponceau, and two other companions reached Portsmouth, New Hampshire on December 1, 1777.

On February 5, 1778, Steuben and his party arrived in York, Pennsylvania, where the Continental Congress had relocated after being ousted from Philadelphia by the British advance.

[24] As he could only speak and write a small amount of English, Steuben originally wrote the drills in French, the military language of Europe at the time.

His secretary, Du Ponceau, then translated the drills from French into English, with the help of John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton, two of Washington's aides-de-camp.

Colonel Alexander Hamilton and General Nathanael Greene were of great help in assisting Steuben in drafting a training program for the Army.

Led by General William Smallwood, four battalions performed precise military formations to demonstrate their mastery of Steuben's training.

[31] After the review, about sixty generals and colonels attended a dinner hosted by Steuben in a large tent near his headquarters at the Abraham Staats House.

[32] In 1780, Steuben sat on the court-martial of British Major John André, captured and charged with espionage in conjunction with the defection of General Benedict Arnold.

[33] He was forced to take sick leave, rejoining the army for the final campaign at Yorktown, where his role was as commander of one of the three divisions of Washington's troops.

With the war over, Steuben resigned from service and first settled with his longtime companion, William North, for whom he created a special room at his retreat he called the Louvre[36] on Manhattan Island, where he became a prominent figure and elder in the German Reformed Church.

[38] On December 23, 1783, the state of New Jersey presented him with the use of an estate in Bergen County now known as Steuben House,[39] which had been confiscated from Loyalist Jan Zabriskie in 1781.

"[40] Von Steuben spent considerable sums to repair wartime damages to the house and restore its commercial operations under Walker.

[42] Von Steuben moved upstate and settled in Oneida County on a small estate in the vicinity of Rome, New York, on land granted to him for his military service and where he had spent summers.

[14] Thus, he left his estate to his companions and aides-de-camp, Walker and North, with whom he had had an "extraordinarily intense emotional relationship ... treating them as surrogate sons.

"[51] A third young man, John W. Mulligan (1774–1862), who also considered himself one of von Steuben's "sons", inherited his vast library, collection of maps and $2,500 in cash.

[64] Von Steuben was one of four European military leaders who assisted the U.S. cause during the Revolution and was honored with a statue in Lafayette Square, just north of the White House, in Washington, D.C.

[73] The various depictions of Steuben in popular U.S. media include portrayals by Nehemiah Persoff in the 1979 U.S. TV miniseries The Rebels,[74] Kurt Knudson in the 1984 TV miniseries George Washington,[75] being voiced by Austrian-American Arnold Schwarzenegger in the animated series Liberty's Kids,[76] and by David Cross on the "Philadelphia" episode of Drunk History.

[77] In 2007, a popular documentary DVD was released by LionHeart FilmWorks and director Kevin Hershberger titled Von Steuben's Continentals: The First American Army.

The 60-minute, live-action documentary details the uniforms, camp life, food, weapons, equipment, and drill of the Continental soldier from 1775 to 1781, as taught and developed by Baron von Steuben.