cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

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...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

"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.