cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!

All Yuletide requests are out!

Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!

-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)

Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!

-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French

-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

why on earth a Hohenzollern would marry another Hohenzollern

HOMG.

The roleplay: they finished it before the Diplomatic Revolution. But yes, Prussia wins.

But after the Diplomatic Revolution, when it ceased to be a hypothetical RPG and started to be life-or-death, did they have opinions about whether Fritz/Prussia could pull off a victory against these odds?

All I remember is Heinrich gloating after Kolin, which doesn't bode well for commitment to the cause...

Fritz! Encouraging a woman to overrule her man on the throne when it suits you!

Look, principles are not important when you're king. Only the state is important. If only Montezuma had known this, the Spanish conquest might have gone very differently. :P

I checked out Wikipedia just to see if niece Wilhelmine survived Fritz, and thank goodness she did. Both because we have enough people dying young in this century, and also because he survived enough people he cared about.

From:

selenak

Von Krockow quotes the "Phaeton has fallen" quip from Heinrich post-Kolin, as well as Heinrich being overheard to say, when celebrating his 30th birthday on 18th January 1756 and hearing about Fritz' treaty with England: "The idiot will plunge us all into misery." (Though as opposed to "Phaeton has fallen", which is a letter quote, the later remark doesn't exist in writing but was reported years later, so take it with the due caution of anecdotes written with the benefit of hindsight. Of course, it's possible Heinrich guessed that by allying himself with Britain at a time wheren England and France were duking it out in the American colonies, Fritz had just given the French the last incentive they needed to respond positively to MT's overtures, but then again, everyone, including him, was surprised by the Diplomatic Revolution. Both he and AW found out about the Fritzian decision to invade Saxony pretty much with the rest of the army, but by then this was no longer a surprise (that he didn't tell them about wars he intended to conduct, that is, despite AW being his heir presumptative).

As for AW, it's worth noting that as opposed to his youthful reaction to Fritz invading Silesia, which was basically "You're the coolest, Big Brother! But why didn't you tell me anything! Can I come, too! Wow, just wow!", he in the 1750s had a far darker view of war in general. In 1753, he wrote to the French Ambassador from Spandau:

"I'm getting up at four and am shooting at sparrows until seven. If one looks at this from a philosophical point of view, it sounds ridiculous, but if one considers that it's practice for the annihilation of human life, one wonders: where in this is our humanity? By now, it has become such a well practiced habit in the world to murder each other that the passing of time allows a crime which can't be justified through anything. The defense of our fatherland, the support of our allies can force us to see this with different eyes. That's why we go through the motions here. Add to this a pinch of vanity, and you are getting the picture."

(The French ambassador in question was that same Marquis de Valori who once quipped about Fritz: "Il n'est guère possible d'avoir plus d'esprit, et il est très possible d' en faire un meilleur usage.")

So basically, the dccumented reactions from both him and Heinrich in 1756 as to what this implied for Prussia can be summed up with "Shit, shit, can't we at least persuade the French to like us again, argh, must join the war effort to save the country!"

Von Krockow also quotes this bitter assessment from Heinrich in 1760 (i.e. at a point where AW is already dead but Heinrich himself, even in Fritz' estimation, has emerged as the major military talent of this war)where he writes to Ferdinand: "You are kind enough to ascribe the saving of the state to me; but even if I had all the abilities you are ascribing to me, they wouldn't be of any use, since I can't go against the will of the one who is dragging us all with him. He who commands under the King loses honor and reputation. (...) 'The State', my dear brother, is a name that gets used to throw sand into the eyes of the public; a villain who claims every success for himself and whom one serves like a human sacrifice."

To be fair,

cahn, Fritz famously post Seven Years War toasted Heinrich, in public, as the only general, including himself, who never made any mistakes in said war. How Heinrich reacted to that one is nowhere described. Von Krockow guesses he probably just bowed silently and went home to Rheinsberg.

Edited Date: 2019-11-25 07:42 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

by then this was no longer a surprise (that he didn't tell them about wars he intended to conduct, that is, despite AW being his heir presumptative)

Going back in time a couple thousand years, to the wars among Alexander's successors, this reminds me of the time Demetrius wanted his father the king, Antigonus, to tell him when he planned to march, and Antigonus quipped, "Why? Are you afraid you alone of all the army will not hear the trumpet?"

From:

cahn

Oh wow, that AW quote. :( <3 And Heinrich's too, although in a different more specifically-Fritz-bitter way -- but AW's view of war in general is just heartbreaking to me.

From:

selenak

Same here. It also goes directly against the "well-meaning, dumb jock" image 19th century historians have given him. If you want a bit more heartbreak, Fontane points out that before their fall-out, despite the bossing around, Fritz actually showed consistently signs of being fond of AW, for that praise-and-instruction poem from his crown prince time turns out not to have been a singular event: "(Fritz) dedicated his great poem to him. "The art of war," he also dedicated to him "The History of Our House" and pronounced it in the masterful introduction of this work in front of the whole world and the future, why he held this brother, who was to succeed him, especially dear as both friend and prince. "The gentleness, the humanity of your character, is what I treasure; a heart open to friendship is above sublime ambition; you know no commandment other than justice, and no other will, than the desire to earn the esteem of the wise. "

Fontane's summary of the disastrous event: As my readers know, Prince August Wilhelm was put in command of those troops who were to withdraw to Lausitz; Winterfeldt was added to him. Things went badly, and when the two brothers met again, that terrible scene took place, which Count Schwerin, Winterfeldt's adjutant, described as follows: "A circle of witnesses was formed in which the prince and all his generals stood. Not the king entered the circle, but Winterfeldt instead of him. On the King's orders he had to say: 'They would all deserve to have a council of war over their conduct, where they would not escape the dictum of losing their heads; however, the King did not want to push it so far, because he did not forget his brother in the General. "The King was standing near the circle," continues Count Schwerin, "and paid attention as to whether Winterfeldt was using the expressions demanded of him. Winterfeldt did so, but with a shudder, and he could at once see the impression of his words, for the prince immediately left the circle and rode to Bautzen without speaking to the King."

Now how much of this was scapegoating for a military disaster, or correct blame for a military disaster, or at long last channelling some buried resentment toward's Dad's favorite, or channelling his father in the worst way, or all and any of this, biographers have been debating ever since.

From:

cahn

ugh ugh ugh FRITZ

From this description I could totally see him thinking that he had done right by AW, like, "what is your problem?? I would totally have been justified in killing him outright and I DIDN'T and look I'm just a merciful kind of guy why are you all so mad at me??"

FRITZ YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT