new edition of the Life of Prince Eugene is such a hilarious code for bribe money, I love it.
Seneca's contempt for riches: doubly hilarious because even his contemporaries used that to make fun of Seneca, who was one of the richest Romans around courtesy of Agrippina having appointed him as Nero's teacher. Tacitus has some very sarcastic things to say as I seem to recall.
Old Fritz indulges in some Senecan "when nations get rich, morals and strength go down the toilet" grumbling towards Heinrich, too. (Who doesn't appear to by it. I'm guessing here based on Fritz' continues replies because the Trier collection is really faulty with both the AW and the Heinrich correspondance and seems to be missing most of the letters Ziebura quotes in her biographies.) He doesn't go as far as FW in extolling the Spartan life style but raves about modesty, which, granted, also has to be seen in terms of Versailles excess and France being evidently broke in the early 1780s.
I wonder if Suhm's recent appointment to Russia (his new Greece) inspired Fritz's interest in Peter I and hence his correspondence with Voltaire on same. Hmm, I should check the dates on that.
Could be, though given that Peter himself showed up in Prussia during Fritz' childhood and was an object of fascination and a lot of gossip much as Fritz would be later, I'd have thought a general interest predating Suhm's appointment. Fritz really seems to go hot and cold on Peter, though; there's the letter to Voltaire along the lines of "having now read this latest book on him which I'm forwarding to you, I can see he was really not great but a tyrant and only lucked out in his battles and okay, some of the reforms were cool, but omg bloodshed!" , and a few decades later he's telling Catt (according to Catt) "how dare Voltaire critisize Peter and talk up Swedish Carl instead when Peter was really great, Voltaire just doesn't get him the way I do, he has no idea what it takes to be King!" etc. At a guess, the fact that Peter was both a reformer & expansionist general on the one hand and a brutal son killer on the other made it tricky as to whether to identify with him or his son?
Suhm: could maybe have prevented the Seven Years' War if he'd lived a bit longer? Or maybe older, kingly Fritz doesn't admit wrongdoing and is a lost cause. Anyway. Another on-brand moment for our guy Fritz.
The thing is, older Fritz is quite capable to be diplomatic when needs must. Or maybe the 7 Years War taught him something after all. When Heinrich makes his first trip to Catherine, Fritz tells him he'll write letters that can be shown to Catherine and the moment Heinrich is within the Russian sphere of influence, suddenly every single time Fritz mentions Catherine in a letter he's positively gushing about how great she is. We're a far, far cry from "one of the three whores of Europe" and all those other compliments he called Elisaveta. (When Heinrich gets back, these accolades for Catherine in Fritz' letters stop as soon as his brother has crossed the Prussian border again.) So I suspect that Suhm would have made no difference. Fritz would still have kept insulting everyone and flexing his muscles pre 7 Years War, not because he couldn't have acted otherwise but because he didn't want to and hadn't yet gone through the experience of major war losses and staring int o the abyss repeatedly pre eventual victory.
Incidentally, when Heinrich is in St. Petersburg Fritz gives him one of those typical Fritzplaing moments of "let me tell you all I know about St. Petersburg", because it's not like Heinrich is there at the moment and Fritz never will be. At least it's good to know that via Suhm, Fritz did have some actual knowledge of the place.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Russia
Seneca's contempt for riches: doubly hilarious because even his contemporaries used that to make fun of Seneca, who was one of the richest Romans around courtesy of Agrippina having appointed him as Nero's teacher. Tacitus has some very sarcastic things to say as I seem to recall.
Old Fritz indulges in some Senecan "when nations get rich, morals and strength go down the toilet" grumbling towards Heinrich, too. (Who doesn't appear to by it. I'm guessing here based on Fritz' continues replies because the Trier collection is really faulty with both the AW and the Heinrich correspondance and seems to be missing most of the letters Ziebura quotes in her biographies.) He doesn't go as far as FW in extolling the Spartan life style but raves about modesty, which, granted, also has to be seen in terms of Versailles excess and France being evidently broke in the early 1780s.
I wonder if Suhm's recent appointment to Russia (his new Greece) inspired Fritz's interest in Peter I and hence his correspondence with Voltaire on same. Hmm, I should check the dates on that.
Could be, though given that Peter himself showed up in Prussia during Fritz' childhood and was an object of fascination and a lot of gossip much as Fritz would be later, I'd have thought a general interest predating Suhm's appointment. Fritz really seems to go hot and cold on Peter, though; there's the letter to Voltaire along the lines of "having now read this latest book on him which I'm forwarding to you, I can see he was really not great but a tyrant and only lucked out in his battles and okay, some of the reforms were cool, but omg bloodshed!" , and a few decades later he's telling Catt (according to Catt) "how dare Voltaire critisize Peter and talk up Swedish Carl instead when Peter was really great, Voltaire just doesn't get him the way I do, he has no idea what it takes to be King!" etc. At a guess, the fact that Peter was both a reformer & expansionist general on the one hand and a brutal son killer on the other made it tricky as to whether to identify with him or his son?
Suhm: could maybe have prevented the Seven Years' War if he'd lived a bit longer? Or maybe older, kingly Fritz doesn't admit wrongdoing and is a lost cause. Anyway. Another on-brand moment for our guy Fritz.
The thing is, older Fritz is quite capable to be diplomatic when needs must. Or maybe the 7 Years War taught him something after all. When Heinrich makes his first trip to Catherine, Fritz tells him he'll write letters that can be shown to Catherine and the moment Heinrich is within the Russian sphere of influence, suddenly every single time Fritz mentions Catherine in a letter he's positively gushing about how great she is. We're a far, far cry from "one of the three whores of Europe" and all those other compliments he called Elisaveta. (When Heinrich gets back, these accolades for Catherine in Fritz' letters stop as soon as his brother has crossed the Prussian border again.) So I suspect that Suhm would have made no difference. Fritz would still have kept insulting everyone and flexing his muscles pre 7 Years War, not because he couldn't have acted otherwise but because he didn't want to and hadn't yet gone through the experience of major war losses and staring int o the abyss repeatedly pre eventual victory.
Incidentally, when Heinrich is in St. Petersburg Fritz gives him one of those typical Fritzplaing moments of "let me tell you all I know about St. Petersburg", because it's not like Heinrich is there at the moment and Fritz never will be. At least it's good to know that via Suhm, Fritz did have some actual knowledge of the place.