cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

...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

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

They have arrived! I haven't magically acquired the ability to read German since I ordered it, but it's a nice thick hardcover book, and that alone sparks joy.

Observations so far:

There are 305 letters, most of which are extremely short, some as short as a couple lines, not many as long as a page. My impression is 2/3 of the book is commentary. That would be just as awesome, if I could read German, or even spend more than 5 minutes poring through a physical book looking for the interesting parts. One day.

No letters after the start of the Seven Years' War. April 18, 1756 is the last one. That means nothing on the final year of Fredersdorf's life after he retired. I have not been able to spot any references to the retirement or any purported estrangement or wrongdoing, but I will have to sift through 50 some pages of introduction and conclusion looking, as health permits.

Haven't even looked for the marriage letter(s) yet, since there are so many letters from that period and a ton of commentary.

One thing I did find was this absolutely endearing anecdote from the dog episode at Soor.

Oh! That reminds me. The editor agrees that Annemarie and Champion in "Meine ganze Equipage zum Teufela, Annemarie ist todt gehauen, der Champion muss auch todt sein; Eichel, Müller, der Dechiffreur und Lesser sind noch nicht ausgefunden" are animals, but says, "presumably horses." That hadn't occurred to me, especially since he usually had multiple greyhounds at any given time. (It's not hard when they're small and have their own staff.)

I don't care, nobody knows, I'm sticking with greyhounds for the fic. :P

Anyway. The editor doesn't give a source for this anecdote, but says Biche was returned after "repeated requests" (that part's new to me), and adds that someone quietly let Biche into the room where Fritz was writing a letter. She jumped up onto the table and put her paws on his neck, at which point, Rococo man that he was, he was so happy that tears came to his eyes. (I'm not certain if the editor felt the need to explain this in the intro.)

...Now I kind of want to rewrite the ending of my fic to include this. <3 (I have it being a surprise and him crying, but not her jumping up on the desk when he's not looking and putting her paws on his neck, omg.)

Will report more if I manage to extract more.

From:

selenak

I have not been able to spot any references to the retirement or any purported estrangement or wrongdoing,

Been meaning to say - if Lehndorff assumes Fredersdorf retired out of his own volition and isn't informed of any dishonorable dismissal for financial irregularities, it can't have been common gossip. Because he's usually good in reporting this kind of thing, and something of a snob about commoners advancing thus far, he's bound to have mentioned it if he'd heard it.

(By contrast, the rumors of AW's disgrace as mentioned were apparantly going around like wildfire before even his and Heinrich's letters reached Berlin. Granted, AW was the Crown Prince, but Fredersdorf was the most important non-military man in Fritz' administration for twenty years.)

Anyway, I'm thrilled you have the letters! And awww on the Biche story. Whom exactly did Fritz ask to return the dogs? FS' younger brother (who I think was the Austrian commander at Soor)? Others?

If he was temporary dog-less when getting those mysterious anonymous letters framing Trenck as an Austrian spy, it also explains something about his mood and lack of willingness to give Trenck the benefit of the doubt. Especially if Trenck simultanously got the horses.

Letters in general: I wonder whether the editor mentions those two packages Fredersdorf's widow sent back to Fritz upon his request, and where these come in? I.e. which time period has significant gaps, other than the one post retirement?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

if Lehndorff assumes Fredersdorf retired out of his own volition and isn't informed of any dishonorable dismissal for financial irregularities, it can't have been common gossip.

Oh, yeah, I've been assuming he didn't know of any such thing, if it existed.

Whom exactly did Fritz ask to return the dogs?

The only one I know of is Nádasdy, Hungarian commander whose troops were doing the raiding. I gather he was at the top of their chain of command, though he may not have been on site and in command when the raiding happened (that may even have been Trenck, or Trenck may have been one of several commanders, I'm not sure).

If he was temporary dog-less when getting those mysterious anonymous letters framing Trenck as an Austrian spy

I did absolutely think of this. He was temporarily flute-less too--consider that. And those replacement flutes Fredersdorf sent from Quantz, Fritz immediately complained about the quality of. Not in a good mood. (I really want to know on what day Fritz got the dogs back. I had to pick one for my story, but I don't know. If he had to make repeated requests, it sounds like my guess of "about a week" might be roughly correct, even if one of my secondary sources said "the next day", which I was skeptical about, albeit without much evidence.)

Do you know how long after the battle Fritz got those anonymous letters?

Letters in general: I wonder whether the editor mentions those two packages Fredersdorf's widow sent back to Fritz upon his request, and where these come in? I.e. which time period has significant gaps, other than the one post retirement?

I will let you know if any of this jumps out at me. There's about 50 pages of introductory material, and I can't look at a book more than like 2 minutes a day before my back pain starts to act up, so yeah...I'll see at the least if I can find the major gap(s).

From:

selenak

Not in a good mood.

Another thing re chronology for Soor and the aftermath - that's when he must have heard Wilhelmine had met MT en route to Frankfurt for the coronation. (And he didn't hear it from Wilhelmine herself.) Yes. Sorry, Trenck, you picked a really bad time to be framed (?) as a spy.

(To recapitulate: Fritz, that week: wins battle, war Looks good for him, but...

- dogs gone
- flute gone
- older sister met with arch nemesis
- younger sister has been getting it on with batman
- batman possibly Austrian spy
- MT Empress now due to having crowned FS at Frankfurt.

Looking up Soor in Trenck's memoirs, Gutenberg edition (i.e. the one shorn of emo rokoko rants), I find he says the first letter slandering him arrived "a few days" after the battle. (No more definite time frame than this.) He also says that his cousin Austrian Trenck was later accused of having failed to capture Fritz on that occasion and that this was total slander as well, because:

"Was das anbetrifft, so bin ich Augenzeuge, daß der wachsame König nicht überfallen werden konnte, besonders da er wußte, daß man ihn überfallen wollte. Ich selbst bin von Mitternacht bis gegen vier Uhr früh mit ihm im Lager herumgaloppiert, wo die Anstalten, den Feind zu empfangen, gemacht wurden. Und um fünf Uhr sprengten wir schon zum Einhauen heran. Der Trenck konnte folglich den König nicht im Bette fangen. Die Schlacht war bereits entschieden, da er erst mit seinen Panduren in das Lager fiel und des Königs Equipage erbeutete."

Regarding this, I am an eye witness that the wakeful King couldn't have been overwhelmed during a raid, especially since he knew a raid on him was planned. I myself have been on horseback with him from midnight till 4 in the morning in the camp, where the preparations to receive the enemy were made. And at five am we rode to attack. Consquently, (Austrian)Trenck would not have been able to capture the King in his bed. The battle was already decided when he arrived with his pandurs at the camp and captured the King's equipage.

I also looked at the afterword, and have to share two gems. One is Trenck's self assessment:

"Wenn ich so überdenke, was ich in meinem Leben alles gewesen bin: Liebling des einzigen Königs, Soldat dreier Monarchen, jetzt von allen Freunden umdrängt, dann nur der düstere Freund einer philosophischen Spinne, heute von Fürsten gesucht, morgen mit Geschenken überhäuft, daß ich nur wieder gehen möchte, jetzt ein glücklicher Landwirt, dann ein Schriftsteller, und hier wieder Proteus – – in jeder Lage ein so kauderwelsches Quodlibet, daß ich oft selbst nicht weiß, ob ich mich lieben oder verabscheuen, entschuldigen oder strafen soll.«

"If I think about all I've been in my life - favourite of the One King, soldlier of three monarchs, at one moment surrounded by friends, then only the friend of a philosophical spider, today sought out by princes, tomorrow so overwhelmed with presents I just want to run, now a happy farmer, then a awriter, and now Proteus again - in every situation such a weird Quodlibet that I often don't know myelf whether I should love or loathe me, apologize or seek punishment.")

The other is that the editor claims Trenck had Amalie's miniature with him and after getting his death sentence in Paris, looked at it silently, and later died with it next to his heart. Which is very romantic indeed, but sadly the Editor neglects to tell us who told him this. Seeing as Trenck was surrounded by French revolutionaries at the time.

Edited Date: 2019-12-07 01:28 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

(To recapitulate: Fritz, that week: wins battle, war Looks good for him, but...

Yeah, what struck me was that in his memoirs, Fritz said, "Well, we have to be philosophical on these occasions and not get worked up about bagatelles like that. The *important* thing is that I won." Which struck me both as how he wished he had reacted rather than how he reacted at the time, and also as him downplaying the significance of his losses for his audience.

It's worth mentioning he also lost a lot more than his dogs and flute, most notably the war chest that had been in camp. He got Eichel and the other civilians back, and Eichel had kept his head in a crisis and destroyed most of the important papers, like the cipher key, in all the chaos, before he was captured, but I've never heard of the Austrians returning the war chest, and somehow, I don't think they did.

Those are definite gems, especially the Protean one. I too wonder about the source on the second one. It's possible there was someone friendly to him in the audience who would never have defied a mob but might have recorded some details? Or this could just be apocryphal. History is mostly just making stuff up anyway, I've become convinced.

Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

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