BTW, I seem to recall Katte also had some family connections in Britain?
That may well be the case, but I don't remember coming across this; I remember that he visited London when he did the Grand Tour, but that's all. I'll keep an eye out for it.
Though it is interesting to contemplate what would have happened to European history if, say, Friedrich Wilhelm after a successful escape from Fritz & Katte would have disinherited his oldest son in favour of one of the younger ones.
Yeah, there are so many ways a successful escape attempt could have gone down. Fritz *said* he was always planning on coming back as soon as FW agreed to treat him better. I think that's quite likely; the real question in my mind is whether FW would have backed down in the face of foreign opposition and succession problems, or whether the prospect of losing face would have pushed him into "I never did anything wrong, how sharper than a serpent's tooth, etc." mode.
The problem with disinheriting your oldest son is that you then end up with a Jacobite situation. Just because he's disinherited doesn't mean he doesn't come back with a foreign army; and then if you think there are strong sympathies for him in your own country, you might back down for these reasons alone. But then the ability of FW and Fritz to go toe-to-toe and stare each other in the face and never back down (especially with the power differential mitigated) should not be underestimated. That would have been one interesting game of chicken. "In short, I think there are on this earth no two men quite like them, father and son." (Grumbkow to Seckendorff)
I'm sure the British family would not have been thrilled to have him show up, but, if he's not a permanent penniless exile, he becomes a potential game piece in getting concessions from Prussia. (Question: didn't Versailles agree to offer him asylum?) Like, if he refuses to accept his disinheritance, and there are local sympathies in Prussia, not to mention the Queen's party, you don't even necessarily have to provide your exile with an army. You just spend a lot of time half-bluffing that if he shows up after FW is dead, he's got a plausible claim to the throne and military backing, game over. Then maybe FW backs down, and there's a tearful public reconciliation and a lot of private back-stabbing.
Or maybe Fritz ends up stranded like the Stuarts in Rome, who knows. (With a stronger personality, I still think that's an interesting situation.)
Would Augustus Wilhelm, under his father's tutelage and with Heinrich's services as general, have invaded and held Silesia? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If so, would the brothers then have gotten Prussia politically maneuvered into the Seven Years' War in the first place? (Again, the politics of the Diplomatic Revolution are more complex than I have mastered, but I seem to recall Fritz blithely making enemies left, right, and center and then going, "I am innocent of this war.") *cough*
If Friedrich is forced to accept his disinheritance, maybe decides living on a country estate and writing poetry is not the worst life ever, then my familiarity with later history is not strong enough for me to speculate intelligently on the AUs (my "period" of European history kind of stops after Napoleon).
Would it have been "enough" for Prussia's future momentum to hold Lower Silesia and concede Upper Silesia? (A plausible outcome of a Fritz-less Prussia, imo.) Would the First Partition of Poland have come along anyway, and might Prussia have benefited from it? Or was the mystique from winning the Seven Years' War against all comers necessary to Prussia's later development through Bismarck into Nazi Germany?
Definitely if Friedrich's personal contributions to the alphaness of Prussia were necessary and could not have been adequately reproduced in part by his brothers and nephew, that does change a lot, and you know, yeah, almost certainly for the better. And yes, on the one hand I can acknowledge that Fritz played his role in a sequence of events that culminated in the Nazis, and on the other, maintain that their propaganda that he would have been totally on board with their program is completely unjustified and he would have been appalled. (Lol, I have this whole reincarnation AU in my head where he ends up going on a rant to which everyone is like, "It's...great that you're so opposed to the Third Reich, but, um, way to make the Holocaust all about you?")
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That may well be the case, but I don't remember coming across this; I remember that he visited London when he did the Grand Tour, but that's all. I'll keep an eye out for it.
Though it is interesting to contemplate what would have happened to European history if, say, Friedrich Wilhelm after a successful escape from Fritz & Katte would have disinherited his oldest son in favour of one of the younger ones.
Yeah, there are so many ways a successful escape attempt could have gone down. Fritz *said* he was always planning on coming back as soon as FW agreed to treat him better. I think that's quite likely; the real question in my mind is whether FW would have backed down in the face of foreign opposition and succession problems, or whether the prospect of losing face would have pushed him into "I never did anything wrong, how sharper than a serpent's tooth, etc." mode.
The problem with disinheriting your oldest son is that you then end up with a Jacobite situation. Just because he's disinherited doesn't mean he doesn't come back with a foreign army; and then if you think there are strong sympathies for him in your own country, you might back down for these reasons alone. But then the ability of FW and Fritz to go toe-to-toe and stare each other in the face and never back down (especially with the power differential mitigated) should not be underestimated. That would have been one interesting game of chicken. "In short, I think there are on this earth no two men quite like them, father and son." (Grumbkow to Seckendorff)
I'm sure the British family would not have been thrilled to have him show up, but, if he's not a permanent penniless exile, he becomes a potential game piece in getting concessions from Prussia. (Question: didn't Versailles agree to offer him asylum?) Like, if he refuses to accept his disinheritance, and there are local sympathies in Prussia, not to mention the Queen's party, you don't even necessarily have to provide your exile with an army. You just spend a lot of time half-bluffing that if he shows up after FW is dead, he's got a plausible claim to the throne and military backing, game over. Then maybe FW backs down, and there's a tearful public reconciliation and a lot of private back-stabbing.
Or maybe Fritz ends up stranded like the Stuarts in Rome, who knows. (With a stronger personality, I still think that's an interesting situation.)
Would Augustus Wilhelm, under his father's tutelage and with Heinrich's services as general, have invaded and held Silesia? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If so, would the brothers then have gotten Prussia politically maneuvered into the Seven Years' War in the first place? (Again, the politics of the Diplomatic Revolution are more complex than I have mastered, but I seem to recall Fritz blithely making enemies left, right, and center and then going, "I am innocent of this war.") *cough*
If Friedrich is forced to accept his disinheritance, maybe decides living on a country estate and writing poetry is not the worst life ever, then my familiarity with later history is not strong enough for me to speculate intelligently on the AUs (my "period" of European history kind of stops after Napoleon).
Would it have been "enough" for Prussia's future momentum to hold Lower Silesia and concede Upper Silesia? (A plausible outcome of a Fritz-less Prussia, imo.) Would the First Partition of Poland have come along anyway, and might Prussia have benefited from it? Or was the mystique from winning the Seven Years' War against all comers necessary to Prussia's later development through Bismarck into Nazi Germany?
Definitely if Friedrich's personal contributions to the alphaness of Prussia were necessary and could not have been adequately reproduced in part by his brothers and nephew, that does change a lot, and you know, yeah, almost certainly for the better. And yes, on the one hand I can acknowledge that Fritz played his role in a sequence of events that culminated in the Nazis, and on the other, maintain that their propaganda that he would have been totally on board with their program is completely unjustified and he would have been appalled. (Lol, I have this whole reincarnation AU in my head where he ends up going on a rant to which everyone is like, "It's...great that you're so opposed to the Third Reich, but, um, way to make the Holocaust all about you?")