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

You know, I've always thought Heinrich would have been more of a risk-taker as top dog, but it should have occurred to me that Heinrich was specifically trying to avoid being scapegoated. Duh, of course he was.

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." To quote very good advice I once got from a good leader, who was apparently quoting Salman Rushdie (who I just looked the context for this up and he's talking about bumpy relationships with fathers, oof): "Make different mistakes." Fritz even told Catt (excusing his own mistakes without court-martialing himself, of course), that it was impossible to wage war without making mistakes.

But when you're as afraid of looking your own mistakes in the eye as he was, you have to scapegoat, and then everyone becomes afraid of making mistakes.

Fritz, I'm sorry you learned mistakes were catastrophic and unforgivable. Therapy. For you and all your scapegoats.

From:

selenak

You know, I've always thought Heinrich would have been more of a risk-taker as top dog, but it should have occurred to me that Heinrich was specifically trying to avoid being scapegoated. Duh, of course he was.

Yep, when he's channelling his inner Fritz in the rpg with AW in the early 1750s, he's either due to being in character or due to own inclination at that Point definitely agressive. Though to be fair: there are no real lives at stake when you conduct an imaginary war. And Heinrich did take his that FW admonishing about having to account for every single life of a soldier quite seriously, it seems. (And he's never lacking physical courage, not just when running into rivers to encourage his men to follow him.)

But post AW court martial, it's a double survival technique. I mean, Ferdinand's method was probably the smartest thing you could do in the circumstances - getting the hell out of there, especially since Ferdinand seems to have been neither very good nor notably bad as an officer - just avarage, and if you're avarage in a three front war, you're bound to fail at some point. And Ferdinand, the youngest, had been exposed to FW's doctrine of duty to the state and being a soldier as the one true male occupation the least anyway.

Whereas Heinrich's method of choice probably sprang from a variety of motives - just quitting under the pretext of illness was out, both because Prussia was in a desperate situation and he had the sense of duty drummed into him, but also because of his inner terrier which made him respond with "fuck you, you're not going to do this to me, I'll fight in such a way that you won't be able to pin a single thing on me and I'm going to win this way, too!"

...and then there's that interlude after a crushing defeat where Fritz has his breakdown, withdraws to his tent, temporarily hands things over to Heinrich and has to be pep talked into resuming command again. Which also has to number among the most fascinatingly messed up moments of the Seven-Years-War.

Going back to that early 50s rpg: I find it interesting that as early as that, there's no question as to who gets to play Fritz between AW and Heinrich. But then, as Ziebura notes in her AW biography, partly because of the way AW's teacher neglected his education due to FW being delighted this second son wasn't book-mad, you got the four years younger Heinrich able to share these lessons and keep up, so this particular fraternal relationship seems to have included the awareness that Heinrich was the smarter one early on. (Not that AW was stupid or not capable of seeing long term consequences, see also his reaction when Ulrike wants money to overthrow the constitutional monarchy of Sweden, but it's a different type of intelligence.) And there's the Fritz-AW argument about younger brother in letters where Fritz writes "Heinrich is your idol" - which is really not how younger/older sibling relationships otherwise work. But if Fritz comes out of his FW nightmare with his sense of self intact though scarred because everyone other than FW around him tells him his hopes and dreams are okay/good/justified, Heinrich not backing down might be due to that childhood dynamic where he gets love and even admiration from AW. (FW seems to have minimum interest on son No.3 - Heinrich is listed in the plural of "princes" in his instructions to the men in charge of AW's household, not singled out for anything either good or bad.)

Sidenote: doesn't Fritz when talking to Catt credit Wilhelmine with his own determination to learn as a child? I.e. that he wouldn't have gotten into it and into books if she hadn't encouraged him both by example and by telling him he should? I seem to remember a quote like that.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

"fuck you, you're not going to do this to me, I'll fight in such a way that you won't be able to pin a single thing on me and I'm going to win this way, too!"

Sounds very plausible, on top of all the other reasons he had for not quitting. Other self indeed.

...and then there's that interlude after a crushing defeat where Fritz has his breakdown, withdraws to his tent, temporarily hands things over to Heinrich and has to be pep talked into resuming command again. Which also has to number among the most fascinatingly messed up moments of the Seven-Years-War.

Fritz's collapse post-Kunersdorf is painful to read about. My impression is that actually getting some proper sleep a few days after the battle definitely helped him recover mentally (and of course the failure of the Russians to follow up on the victory).

Did he hand command over to Heinrich, though?! I had always heard it was Finck he handed his command over to, and that he talked about abdicating in favor of Heinrich, but not that Heinrich had been handed command. But you're the one who's read the Heinrich side of things. I will look at Fritz's wars in more detail when my health cooperates, but for now I'm going off impressionistic memories.

Sidenote: doesn't Fritz when talking to Catt credit Wilhelmine with his own determination to learn as a child?

You remember correctly. The quote goes thus: "Do you know to whom I owe this habit and my taste for study which is the pleasantest thing in my life? It is my sister of Baireuth. Seeing that I never sought to occupy myself and to read, that I only loved to gad about, she said to me one day: 'But, my dear brother, are you not ashamed to be continually gadding about? I never see you with a book in your hand. You neglect your talents, and what part will you play when you are called upon to play one?' This language and the tears that followed it, touched me keenly. I began to read, but I started with novels.

"There were, however, orders to keep me from reading. Obliged to hide my books, and to take steps not to be perceived reading, when Marshal Finck, my governor, and my valet were asleep, I stepped over my valet's bed, and gently, most gently, I went into another room, where, near the fireplace, there was a night-light. Crouched over this lamp, I read Pierre de Provence and other books which my sister and people I could trust procured for me. This nocturnal reading lasted some time; but one night the marshal took into his head to cough, and, not hearing my breathing, he felt my bed, and, not finding me, cried out, 'My prince, my prince, where are you?' Everybody got up; I heard the noise, and ran to my bed saying I had had a pressing need. They believed me; but I did not dare to do it again; the thing would have become dangerous; but I recompensed myself at Rheinsberg, where I read prodigiously."

Chronology again for

cahn: remember that Rheinsberg starts 6 years after the escape attempt. So we're talking several years later. :(

I sympathize with illicit reading by nightlight, but at least the consequences if I got caught were much much lower.

Immediately following up on this passage is one that rather makes me laugh (in a tragedy plus time kind of way): "My father did everything he could to make me a hunter, and I was so little of one that at the post in which I would be placed, where I ought certainly have to seen the game pass before me, I used to be busy reading, and I allowed buck and hare to escape, without ever seeing them even." You go, Fritz.

From:

cahn

"My father did everything he could to make me a hunter, and I was so little of one that at the post in which I would be placed, where I ought certainly have to seen the game pass before me, I used to be busy reading, and I allowed buck and hare to escape, without ever seeing them even."

Ahahaha. yeeeep, been there. Although not with hunting, or even with a parent who disapproved of reading -- my parents were very much for it -- just the general obliviousness when reading, I totally empathize with.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Not hunting, but I sympathize with this attitude toward being forced to participate in PE. Oh, the ball went by? I didn't see it. :P

From:

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.

Edited Date: 2019-12-11 01:58 pm (UTC)