He was born Paul Heinrich Matthias Fölsche in Moorburg, Germany on the south bank of the river Elbe near Hamburg. His mother died when he was quite young; his father, a ropemaker, married again and had another six children. At seventeen he enlisted in the Prussian cavalry which was fighting Denmark over ownership of the Schleswig-Holstein region to the north, learning the use of weapons and becoming a proficient horseman and gunsmith.