Mildred, you asked about which anonymous pamphlet Catt got his AW death intel from.
So I went back to the German preface to the edition of Catt's original diary you uploaded in the Fritzian library, which was where I had the "anonymous pamphlet" bit from. And because the preface is quite extensive on how Catt beefed up the diaries to the more twice the size memoirs, I thought I'd transcribe & translate the most interesting passages. BTW, the preface also explains the "nach Ausfertigung eigenhändig" from the letters - part of Henri de Catt's and Prades and all the lectors before and after job was that if Fritz wanted a letter on a literary, non-political matter, he gave them the rough outlines, they wrote a concept for the letter in perfect French, he wrote down the final version in his own hand.
Now, as to De Catt' use of his source material - both hish own diary and other source material - and his rearranging. The preface says, referring to Henri de Catt as "the author":
Moreover, the author has, where his diaries testified the subject of conversation to him, given said subject a liberal treatment; he has grown out of already existent crystals entire sparkling creations. Where the diaries render the words of the King verbatim, the memoirs stick to them faithfully; but it happenes in a chonological reordering, so that statements which belong to different days and different conversations get thrown together, i.e. get connected through an always aptly invented transition.
The author also put certain statements, especially the flood of characteristic traits, witty ideas and anecdotes which he had jotted down in his exercise books from a variety of sources, in the memoirs into the mouth of the King, even if the diaries did not give him the right for this. Especially in the time before and after the battle of Kunersdorf when Catt had been left with Prince Heinrich's army by the King, the diaries (p. 394 ff.) are rich with stories of the type mentioned, which our author thus has heard from others, not from the King. At one point, the diaries name explicitly someone else, Secretary Eichel, as the source for a story (p.417), which in the memoirs is ascribed to the King.
(Sidenote by me: if Catt talked to Eichel, who of course knew that Fritz had the Catte trial files ordered up upon becoming King and resealed, and also knew a lot about Küstrin, that gives him another valid source.) (...) The memoirs are more than twice the size of the diaries. As much as the original material was stretched via rearrangement, the difference in size isn't explainable by this alone. The author has used other material in addition to his Diary.
Something that surprises in the military lessons he has the King give him is the incredibly accuracy of numbers. Are we supposed to believe that the King, when he after lunch talks to his companion about military matters of the morning (...) already has the exact numbers at hand when the report by troops involved usually took longer than that? Certainly not, and thus it is no surprise that the "military crash course" has only been given to the Catt of the memoirs, not to the Catt of the diaries. (...)
A comparison between the work which at the current state of research is still the basis for all studies of the 7-Years-War proves an great equivalance between Tempelhof's depiction of the 1758 campaign and that in Catt's memoirs. The second volume of Tempelhof's history was published in 1785; thus there was the chance for Catt to draw his military wisdom from this source. If his description of the battle of Zorndorf has an impressive similarity to the description given by Tielcke in 1776 in the second volume of his "Beyträge zur Kriegs-Kunst und Geschichte des Krieges von 1756 - 1763", one could further suspect that our author borrowed from the Saxon Colonel as he had done from the Prussian Major. But Catt did not speak German, he would have to get the works of Tempelhof and Tieclke translated for himself. He was, however, not in need of this; he was the owner of a French written journal about the campaign of 1758 which is still among the material in his archive and this very extensive manuscript has proved, in a German version, the source for both these military writers. (Footnote says where Tielcke and Tempelhof got it from; from a collection of 7 Wars Material made by the secretary of the late von Wobersnow and from a partial publication in a miltary journal named "Bellona" in Dresden, 1781 ff, respectively.)
Catt isn't above borrowing literal phrases from this material and rendering it as the King's military expertise in his memoirs. Not enough that Friedrich has to narrate the facts evening for evening, even his strategic judgment is that of the military Anonymous. A fleeting mistake of Catt's in the use of his source then has the consequence that the King in the memoirs mourns for a General on June 17th, 1758, who in real life on that day simply got a strong reproof. (...)
With the year 1759, this oracle (the anonymous military journal) ceases to be available. But the author of the memoirs knew how to help himself. When Glatz fell on July 1760, the war files of Fouque and thus also the letters of Frederick the Great to this general had been captured by the enemy. In various printings fragments of this correspondance got in print and thus known to the public soon after the ending of the war. One of these editions was owned by Catt; he used them for 1759 in a similar way as the military journal for 1758. Whatever the King writes to Fouque in confidence, he tells in the same confidence to his reader. In the "Recuiel" of the letters to Fouque Catt also found a copy of the memorandum the Prince of Prussia had written as a justification of his behavior in the Bohemia campaign of 1757; it gave Catt the possibility to describe the argument between the Prince and his royal brother.
When the letters to Fouque end, Catt helps himsef for the second half of 1759 with the King's "Histoire de la guerre des sept ans", which he seems to have known before its publication in the "ouevres posthumes". Finally, he used the correspondance between the King and the Marquis d'Argens for the third and fourth part of his memoirs in a similar thorough way as he did the letters to Fouque. He seems to have had a copy of this correspondance at his disposal; at least there have been letters to the Marquis used which are missing in the edition "Ouevres Posthumes".
Catt took the stones and pebbles for the mosaic forming his memoirs thus from this series of recognizable quarries. (...) Thus when the memoirs let the King describe the history of the Prince of Prussia's sickness exactly with the words used in an anonmously published biography of the Prince. (Footnote here says "See p. 104, p. 170" which I take it is a reference to Catt's memoirs. But doesn't say which anonymous biography.) In other cases, you can see he used the official military dispatches as they had been given out from Berlin and later collected in anthologies. (....)
Catt repeatedly shows the weakness of memoir writesrs to put their own person in a beaming light. Thus inevitably the author knows the King basically much better and can judge him much better than he knows himself. (p. 128, 233) (...) Whenever there is an important moment happening in Friedrich's life, Catt is there as a witness and confidant. When the news of the death of the Prince of Prussia arrives, Catt is according to his memoirs the first to whom the brother speaks of his pain; whereas the diaries proof that the reader wasn't even received by the King in the first four days after the arrival of the mournful news. When three months later the sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth dies, according to the Memoirs the King immediately must speak to Catt, who gets woken up for this at 2 am; once the King dismisses him three hours later, he sends immediately a letter of condolence, which after all the verbal condolences given in the previous pages seems somewhat redundant, but which makes the recepient send for him again only fifteen minutes later, only to receive him in the evening for the third time and this time for four hours. Whereas the diaries prove that Catt had first written the condolence letter before the King ever talked to him, which makes sense, and then showed up in the afternoon at the regular hour (p. 195).
Preface writer gives some more examples, none of which are related to Küstrin and Katte. Which, incidentally, is curious; you'd think if Catt added that without a basis in his diaries, it would be much more worth mentioning than his letting Fritz give him a military crash course. But maybe that's our gossipy sensationalist priority speaking.
Also: while Henri de Catt's memoirs and diaries - along with his other papers and Collection of 7 Years War material - weren't published yet, Preuß did have access to them because at that point they had ended up in the Prussian state archive, and he was allowed to use them for his biography. Which explains why he quotes from them in a biography published in the mid 19th century when you told me the memoirs themselves weren't published until a few decades later.
Henri de Catt
So I went back to the German preface to the edition of Catt's original diary you uploaded in the Fritzian library, which was where I had the "anonymous pamphlet" bit from. And because the preface is quite extensive on how Catt beefed up the diaries to the more twice the size memoirs, I thought I'd transcribe & translate the most interesting passages. BTW, the preface also explains the "nach Ausfertigung eigenhändig" from the letters - part of Henri de Catt's and Prades and all the lectors before and after job was that if Fritz wanted a letter on a literary, non-political matter, he gave them the rough outlines, they wrote a concept for the letter in perfect French, he wrote down the final version in his own hand.
Now, as to De Catt' use of his source material - both hish own diary and other source material - and his rearranging. The preface says, referring to Henri de Catt as "the author":
Moreover, the author has, where his diaries testified the subject of conversation to him, given said subject a liberal treatment; he has grown out of already existent crystals entire sparkling creations. Where the diaries render the words of the King verbatim, the memoirs stick to them faithfully; but it happenes in a chonological reordering, so that statements which belong to different days and different conversations get thrown together, i.e. get connected through an always aptly invented transition.
The author also put certain statements, especially the flood of characteristic traits, witty ideas and anecdotes which he had jotted down in his exercise books from a variety of sources, in the memoirs into the mouth of the King, even if the diaries did not give him the right for this. Especially in the time before and after the battle of Kunersdorf when Catt had been left with Prince Heinrich's army by the King, the diaries (p. 394 ff.) are rich with stories of the type mentioned, which our author thus has heard from others, not from the King. At one point, the diaries name explicitly someone else, Secretary Eichel, as the source for a story (p.417), which in the memoirs is ascribed to the King.
(Sidenote by me: if Catt talked to Eichel, who of course knew that Fritz had the Catte trial files ordered up upon becoming King and resealed, and also knew a lot about Küstrin, that gives him another valid source.)
(...) The memoirs are more than twice the size of the diaries. As much as the original material was stretched via rearrangement, the difference in size isn't explainable by this alone. The author has used other material in addition to his Diary.
Something that surprises in the military lessons he has the King give him is the incredibly accuracy of numbers. Are we supposed to believe that the King, when he after lunch talks to his companion about military matters of the morning (...) already has the exact numbers at hand when the report by troops involved usually took longer than that? Certainly not, and thus it is no surprise that the "military crash course" has only been given to the Catt of the memoirs, not to the Catt of the diaries. (...)
A comparison between the work which at the current state of research is still the basis for all studies of the 7-Years-War proves an great equivalance between Tempelhof's depiction of the 1758 campaign and that in Catt's memoirs. The second volume of Tempelhof's history was published in 1785; thus there was the chance for Catt to draw his military wisdom from this source. If his description of the battle of Zorndorf has an impressive similarity to the description given by Tielcke in 1776 in the second volume of his "Beyträge zur Kriegs-Kunst und Geschichte des Krieges von 1756 - 1763", one could further suspect that our author borrowed from the Saxon Colonel as he had done from the Prussian Major. But Catt did not speak German, he would have to get the works of Tempelhof and Tieclke translated for himself. He was, however, not in need of this; he was the owner of a French written journal about the campaign of 1758 which is still among the material in his archive and this very extensive manuscript has proved, in a German version, the source for both these military writers. (Footnote says where Tielcke and Tempelhof got it from; from a collection of 7 Wars Material made by the secretary of the late von Wobersnow and from a partial publication in a miltary journal named "Bellona" in Dresden, 1781 ff, respectively.)
Catt isn't above borrowing literal phrases from this material and rendering it as the King's military expertise in his memoirs. Not enough that Friedrich has to narrate the facts evening for evening, even his strategic judgment is that of the military Anonymous. A fleeting mistake of Catt's in the use of his source then has the consequence that the King in the memoirs mourns for a General on June 17th, 1758, who in real life on that day simply got a strong reproof. (...)
With the year 1759, this oracle (the anonymous military journal) ceases to be available. But the author of the memoirs knew how to help himself. When Glatz fell on July 1760, the war files of Fouque and thus also the letters of Frederick the Great to this general had been captured by the enemy. In various printings fragments of this correspondance got in print and thus known to the public soon after the ending of the war. One of these editions was owned by Catt; he used them for 1759 in a similar way as the military journal for 1758. Whatever the King writes to Fouque in confidence, he tells in the same confidence to his reader. In the "Recuiel" of the letters to Fouque Catt also found a copy of the memorandum the Prince of Prussia had written as a justification of his behavior in the Bohemia campaign of 1757; it gave Catt the possibility to describe the argument between the Prince and his royal brother.
When the letters to Fouque end, Catt helps himsef for the second half of 1759 with the King's "Histoire de la guerre des sept ans", which he seems to have known before its publication in the "ouevres posthumes". Finally, he used the correspondance between the King and the Marquis d'Argens for the third and fourth part of his memoirs in a similar thorough way as he did the letters to Fouque. He seems to have had a copy of this correspondance at his disposal; at least there have been letters to the Marquis used which are missing in the edition "Ouevres Posthumes".
Catt took the stones and pebbles for the mosaic forming his memoirs thus from this series of recognizable quarries. (...) Thus when the memoirs let the King describe the history of the Prince of Prussia's sickness exactly with the words used in an anonmously published biography of the Prince. (Footnote here says "See p. 104, p. 170" which I take it is a reference to Catt's memoirs. But doesn't say which anonymous biography.) In other cases, you can see he used the official military dispatches as they had been given out from Berlin and later collected in anthologies. (....)
Catt repeatedly shows the weakness of memoir writesrs to put their own person in a beaming light. Thus inevitably the author knows the King basically much better and can judge him much better than he knows himself. (p. 128, 233) (...) Whenever there is an important moment happening in Friedrich's life, Catt is there as a witness and confidant. When the news of the death of the Prince of Prussia arrives, Catt is according to his memoirs the first to whom the brother speaks of his pain; whereas the diaries proof that the reader wasn't even received by the King in the first four days after the arrival of the mournful news. When three months later the sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth dies, according to the Memoirs the King immediately must speak to Catt, who gets woken up for this at 2 am; once the King dismisses him three hours later, he sends immediately a letter of condolence, which after all the verbal condolences given in the previous pages seems somewhat redundant, but which makes the recepient send for him again only fifteen minutes later, only to receive him in the evening for the third time and this time for four hours. Whereas the diaries prove that Catt had first written the condolence letter before the King ever talked to him, which makes sense, and then showed up in the afternoon at the regular hour (p. 195).
Preface writer gives some more examples, none of which are related to Küstrin and Katte. Which, incidentally, is curious; you'd think if Catt added that without a basis in his diaries, it would be much more worth mentioning than his letting Fritz give him a military crash course. But maybe that's our gossipy sensationalist priority speaking.
Also: while Henri de Catt's memoirs and diaries - along with his other papers and Collection of 7 Years War material - weren't published yet, Preuß did have access to them because at that point they had ended up in the Prussian state archive, and he was allowed to use them for his biography. Which explains why he quotes from them in a biography published in the mid 19th century when you told me the memoirs themselves weren't published until a few decades later.