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: Voltaire memoirs I

[cahn]

So I am super enjoying in these discussions that I get two points of view on these things :D (And, of course, sometimes they agree but they are things that one person might have just not got around to saying :) ) -- in particular, here, I appreciate having your informed perspective that Voltaire was probably just over-dramatizing (which, once you say so, is obvious, and I'm sure that was obvious to mildred_of_midgard, but I don't know how to evaluate the historical sources well enough :) )

Re: Voltaire memoirs I

[mildred_of_midgard]

I don't know if it would have been obvious per se to me (other than FW being present), but his memoirs are so widely quoted that I had already read biographers calling him out on the Wilhelmine episode. Although, it might have been obvious after reading the whole thing and going..."You really have no idea about recent Prussian history, do you?" He gets the bare outlines correct, but the details are so wrong it's like a Frenchman showed up in Prussia for 2 years and tried to write about it from memory some number of years later. :-P I mean, Wilhelmine gets flak for detail, but there's a world of difference between the overdramatization and unreliability of her accounts and the unreliability and overdramatization of Voltaire's.

So I am super enjoying in these discussions that I get two points of view on these things :D (And, of course, sometimes they agree but they are things that one person might have just not got around to saying :) )

Multiple points of view on the Katte execution coming soon! (I'm fleshing out my textual criticism a little, including adding another source and making sure there's both the original French or German text and an English translation of each source, which should buy us some more time before I'm ready to post.)

Re: Voltaire memoirs I

[selenak]

I mean, Wilhelmine gets flak for detail, but there's a world of difference between the overdramatization and unreliability of her accounts and the unreliability and overdramatization of Voltaire's.

Quite. In this particular case, Wilhelmine‘s account is also backed up by one Guy Dickens, Englishman, who in the very week this happened wrote home to GB that FW had: dragged his oldest daughter by her hair across the room, punched her a couple of times with his fist in the face, on the breasts and in the stomach. (Then as mentioned in all accounts but Voltaire‘s SD‘s lady in waiting intervened successfully.) All this in full few of the younger siblings and the servants, whom Dickens had this story from. Since Dickens‘ letter was unavailable to Wilhelmine when writing her memoirs in Bayreuth, I assume the reason why her account and his account mention the same details is because that is what happened.

ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melchior_Guy_Dickens