Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

[cahn]

...I think we need another one (seriously, you guys, this is THE BEST) and I'd better make it now before I disappear into the wilds of music performance.

(also, as of this week there are two Frederician fics in the yuletide archive and eeeeeeeeeee)
(huh, only one of them is actually tagged with Frederick the Great even though two with Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine, eeeeeee this is awesome I CAN'T WAIT)

Frederick the Great masterpost

Comments

Re: Lehndorff: The Bitter Years

[selenak]

You know, my reaction to Fritz's "the only general who never made a mistake" has always been, "That sounds good on paper, but honestly, that's not the kind of general you want."

Found a quote here!

One thing that keeps tripping me when leaving through Lehndorff (both the plugged and unplugged versions) is that noble officers from enemy armies mostly, unless specifically ordered otherwise by Fritz, were kept only slightly supervised at the court and thus took part at social events. Since most of the men (except for non-military guys like Lehndorff) were off fighting for Fritz the fatherland, that meant all the women were dancing with the enemy, lilterally.

Lehndorff's own list of hottest best foreign officers predictably went 1.) French officers, 2) English (visiting) officers (usually non captive), 3.) Austrians, 4.) Russians. (The Russians moved up when Peter became Czar, but down again when he heard the shocking news of Catherine's coup.) He did use his time to ask one of the opposing generals one of the most hotly debated questions by even present day historians, though, to wit: which Hohenzollern brother is the best general in the Seven-Years-War? And the answer according to one General Nugent, currently serving with the Austrians, is….


I had a longer conversation with General Nugent, whom our troops took prisoner in Dresden. He is an amiable man. Irish by birth, but he thinks like an Englishman, and seems to judge the current situation without bias. He has personal veneration for our King, and admires his sterling qualities. But of Prince Heinrich he says that he knows no more dangerous general than him; during their entire last compaign, they were unable to do anything against this Prince despite their superiority in numbers, not without his highness seeing through their plans in advance, no matter how subtly spun those plans were. In short, this conversation was of highest interest to me. (I bet, Lehndorff, I bet.) I do consider him the most important of all the Austrian Generals we've captured so far. General Nugent was the right hand of Marshal Daun, and privy to all the plans. It would be nice if the Marshal now that he's without him can be seduced into mistakes. But Daun strikes me as too careful a general for that. Despite us decying him as a coward, I find that he keeps having us at checkmate, and thus damages us more than if he won open battles. He follows the system the Austrian have developed in the last war already, he seeks to draw the war out without going into battle, and thus to exhaust the King and his armies. This tactic has led us to more than one overeager attack, and thus we have lost our best armies.

Re: Lehndorff: The Bitter Years

[cahn]

This is really cool, to see what he reports one of his contemporaries thought about this vexed question.