Frederick the Great discussion post 9

[cahn]

...I leave you guys alone for one weekend and it's time for a new Fritz post, lol!

I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)

Frederick the Great links

Comments

Re: Brotherly Conduct III: The Aftermath

[mildred_of_midgard]

Knew the outlines, absolutely did not know the full gory details, thank you SO MUCH.

A couple additional historical notes for cahn:

Your ears are only accustomed to the language of flatterers; Daun didn't flatter you, and you see the aftermath.

Daun is the Austrian general who capitalized on the botched Prussian retreat from Bohemia. So you see the shade-throwing here.

He wasn't the only one finding himself in this position. The Prince of Bevern in Breslau, Schmettau in Dresden and Finck at Maxen had all, by following the King's orders against their better knowledge, experienced a fiacso. They were all punished with disgrace, with a casheering.

What the verb tense doesn't make it clear here is that all of these were in AW's future, so this is a commentary on Fritz's leadership style, not a list of examples that AW would have had in mind. AW was one of the first victims of Fritz's scapegoating during the Seven Years' War.

Heinrich: I will do both! I will be cautious and also decisive and never make mistakes of action or inaction. Cashier THAT, Big Bro!

Fritz: Well done! You never made a mistake. Just think if you had.

Meanwhile, the following year (1758) at Hochkirch:
Fritz's most experienced generals: We're camped in a really vulnerable position! "If they don't attack us here, they deserve to be hanged."
Fritz: "It is to be hoped that they fear us more than the hangman." [Actual quotes.] It'll be fine, everyone. Unsaddle your horses, settle in, go to sleep.
Fritz: *goes to sleep*
Generals: Unsaddle your horses, men, since the fucking King isn't listening. But resaddle them at midnight, because the Austrians are going to attack tonight, I guarantee it.
Austrians: *attack at night*
Prussians: *are semi-prepared, no thanks to Fritz*
Prussian generals: Somebody wake up the fucking King and tell him the battle's on.
Fritz: *is chronically sleep-deprived and very hard to wake up*
Prussian army: *stops just short of being totally annihilated* In part because Fritz, once awake, does manage to pull together a decent defense and retreat with great personal courage. But it's still a catastrophic defeat*.

After the catastrophic defeat:
Fritz: Mistakes were made.

This is where I'm like, "Fritz! It's okay if you're not the greatest tactician ever, there are tactical specialists and you're a polymath, but the hypocrisy about mistakes has got to stop! It's okay to make mistakes. Learn from your mistakes, make new mistakes. Let your people learn from their mistakes!"

* Enough that Lehndorff (wrongly) thinks it will overshadow Wilhelmine's death for Fritz. Wilhelmine dies the day of this battle. The news reaches Fritz a few days later. He takes her death much harder than the defeat. He spends his life wrestling with the rational belief that his defeat couldn't have killed her, and the emotional sense of guilt that it did.

Re: Brotherly Conduct III: The Aftermath

[selenak]

absolutely did not know the full gory details

Yes, the Fritz biographies I've read tend to skip from the chasheering to AW's death in terms of relating his story, and I thought this might be the case with the ones you've read as well. When the more I think about it, the more it's the year long aftermath which makes it so horrendous. If AW had died shortly after the public disgrace, it still would have been tragic, but you could say Fritz acted on impulse and mid-war didn't have time to take an emotional step back and reconsider. But that he kept up the unrelenting verbal (well, written) abuse for a year and absolutely refused to let AW see him or to visit AW which would have been possible until AW leaves Leipzig in December 1757 makes so particularly devastating. (BTW, I think this is also why Fritz takes Ferdinand's various illnesses that show up after AW's death very seriously indeed, immediately sends Cothenius et al, and allows Ferdinand to go to Berlin without accusing him of cowardice or faking it even once.)

Now, when you read the letters to Amalie, where Fritz sounds extremely complimentary, proud and affectionate about Heinrich, and Heinrich's letters to Ferdinand at the same time, where he's absolutely sure that Fritz is just waiting for the opportunity to destroy him and will do it without batting an eyelash if Heinrich gives him the slightest opening for that, you'd think Heinrich is overly paranoid, especially with the hindsight that Fritz never does to Heinrich what he did to AW, and that he did, in fact, turn out to need this younger brother not just as a military backup. But it's not paranoia at all if one keeps in mind that what Heinrich had to go on was this: Fritz had given every sign of being fond of AW pre-Seven Years War, from those early letters to kid AW from Rheinsberg onward. They'd never had a stormy relationship, unlike Fritz and Heinrich, and Fritz still had been capable of systematically destroying his brother for a year. "If he did it to AW, he will do it to me" from Heinrich's pov is just a natural assumption.

Sidenote: your take? Would he have, if Heinrich had made a mistake?

Re: Brotherly Conduct III: The Aftermath

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hey, it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.

Sidenote: your take? Would he have, if Heinrich had made a mistake?

This is a very interesting question! I had to really think about this one.

So if you look at what Fritz normally cashiered people over, it wasn't defeats but capitulation. All the examples that Ziebura lists as parallels to AW aren't really great parallels, because all of them were in trouble for surrendering. We've also seen the Katte cousin and his replacement cashiered for surrendering Schweidnitz. I could enumerate other examples.

In contrast, Fouqué was defeated but fought to the bitter end and was captured, and Fritz, when he heard the news, said he had comported himself like a Roman. When released from captivity, Wikipedia tells me Fouqué considered himself dishonored, but Fritz disagreed, and I have external evidence that Fritz stayed on good terms with him.

Wedell was another one who lost a battle, and Fritz was definitely displeased with him, but he did not cashier him over it.

Now what do we know about Fritz and the Seven Years' War, and his terrier personality in general? You fight to the bitter end, you do not surrender. (That's why him handing over command and talking about abdicating was so interesting (I mean, he did briefly cashier himself, sort of!), and also why, if you ask me, he would never ever have done it, and why he took back command so damn fast. He was also envisioning a scenario in which Berlin was taken, Prussia was dismembered, and Fritz's goal became to preserve as much territory as possible for his heir. When that didn't happen, hey presto! it's another three years of war in which Fritz's terrier teeth latch right back onto that bone and do not let go.)

So, if Heinrich had engaged with the enemy and been defeated and captured, it would have been all "my brave brother." If Heinrich had engaged with the enemy and surrendered, it would have been "I have no brother." If Heinrich had done what AW did...

Well, what did AW do? I've been trying to fit him into the pattern of "defeats are okay but surrenders are not," and this is what I've come up with. He didn't officially hand anything over, but he failed to arrive in time to prevent Zittau from being surrendered by the force defending it, and then he didn't engage and retake it (as Fritz did with Schweidnitz later that year at Leuthen), but withdrew without fighting. And then didn't accomplish anything by withdrawing to another front. One of my sources says his army dissolved during the withdrawal.

So we have both a situation involving a surrender (which Fritz is never forgiving of), and a failure to engage.

My Fritz psychology take on this. You're supposed to prioritize his wars above all else. The following are unacceptable violations of your duty:
- Not fighting in the front lines.
- Surrendering.
- Not engaging with the enemy and thereby losing something important to the war effort.
- Being distracted from 100% commitment to the war by your grief over your dead brother.
- Having lunch with MT. (No, I'm serious. I think this is the female equivalent to the above.)
- Marrying off your lady-in-waiting to an Austrian.

These things are forgivable:
- Losing.
- Dying.
- Being captured honorably.

In conclusion, I think that if Heinrich had been even slightly less skilled at his battle-avoidant approach to warfare, and he had lost something important to Fritz as a result, Fritz would have had his head (metaphorically). If this approach to warfare was Heinrich's strategy to avoid a cashiering, it was probably entirely the wrong strategy. Safer would have been just getting into a battle and losing it. If his approach to warfare was meant to win a three-front war, as opposed to the approach of constantly underestimating the enemy and engaging with superior numbers and sustaining massive casualties even when victorious *cough*, well, there's something to be said for that, Heinrich.

I really like you guys' questions! They make me think.

Also, if the items on the first list result in imprisonment *with* a trial if you're a general, and AW temporarily responding to your letters if you're the favorite sister, I can only imagine what being suspected of spying for the enemy while being his personal batman gets you. Imprisonment without a trial seems like a natural step up, and it did happen to both Trenck and Glasow. (The gravestone still seems a bit extra, though. Maybe that's where the personal involvement with Fritz and/or Amalie comes in.)