Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

[cahn]

So for anyone who is reading this and would like to learn more about Frederick the Great and his contemporaries, but who doesn't want to wade through 500k (600k?) words worth of comments and an increasingly sprawling comment section:

We now have a community, rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

Comments

MT Marriage AU Reborn

[selenak]

Now, if I go by the editorial remarks Förster in his first volume thought there was an evil Catholic-Imperial plot afoot to make Fritz in his hour of need a Catholic. Here, in volume 3, he admits the documents don't bear that out, as the Imperials are less than thrilled by the MT/Conversion idea, which is that of Fritz, but he assures his readers that the hero of the Protestant faith surely was just looking to incriminate Grumbkow & Seckendorff in the eyes of FW and never would he ever. Meanwhile, in 1731, Prince Eugene seems to be far from senile, for upon hearing from Grumbkow that Fritz is interested in aquiring an Archducess, he makes this assessment of Junior:

The proposal sent by the Crown Prince to Grumbkow is strange, and Grumbkow did well to give his response in such a way, for it seems likely that the Crown Prince suggested such a project to deduce from the replly as to whether the King has any attention of looking for a marriage with an Archduchess. This is enlightening regarding the Crown Prince's falsehood, as is his reply through Hille to Grumbkow that he would have to do violence to his nature in such case, as so far he has little love for the Archhouse. This new project as well as the one from some months ago which came to us via Natzmer, shows how far reaching ideas this young man has, and while these are currently spontanous and not well thought through, he does not appear energy or common sense. Which is why he ought to become more dangerous to his neighbours in time, if he can't be rid of his current principles. Other than the Bevern marriage, there's little or nothing to hope for him right now. The harder the King treats him, the more he'll insist on changing all his father does once it is his time.

Eugene, I'm impressed.

Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn

[mildred_of_midgard]

he assures his readers that the hero of the Protestant faith surely was just looking to incriminate Grumbkow & Seckendorff in the eyes of FW and never would he ever.

Ahahahahaa, of course. I still wish I knew whether Carlyle's "Oh no, Herr Muller, nobody but very foolish persons could imagine such a thing of this young Herr" about Muller's son's insistence that Fritz NEVER proposed an Austrian marriage and Catholic conversion was sarcastic or not.

Meanwhile, in 1731, Prince Eugene seems to be far from senile

Yep, MacDonogh says much the same:

Prince Eugene was less senile about one thing, however: he warned Seckendorff against the possible effects of Frederick William's punishing his son. 'The harder the king deals with him, the more stubborn he will become, and in time he will change everything that his father has done.'

I might add that MacDonogh is the one we learned about the Austrian marriage project from--he's good for providing information, just not reliable info!

he does not appear energy or common sense

Could you clarify the verb there?

Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn

[selenak]

Lack! „He does not appear to lack energy or common sense“! Curse on swallowed verbs, I thought I had typed it.

Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn

[mildred_of_midgard]

Gotcha!

Well, well spotted, Eugene. And from secondhand info, too! Maybe MT would have been caught less unawares if you had been the one reporting on Fritz.

Seckendorff, Jr.: He'll be just like his grandfather.
FS: He's so charming in person. And he sent me a salmon. How bad can he be?
Eugene: Dangerous to his neighbors! Watch out!

Btw, Wikipedia tells me that Eugene thought an army and a treasury would serve MT better than some signatures from European powers, but Karl VI overrode him.

Eugene: No slouch in the energy or common sense department himself.

Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, speaking of the MT marriage AU, MacDonogh says Thiébault says FW was responsible for the idea. So maybe your miniseries scriptwriters were reading Thiébault! (That may be giving them too much credit.)

(Which Thiébault, I can't tell; I've never been able to track down a single MacDonogh reference, so either he's working from a copy with radically different page numbers than mine, or else, as I sometimes suspect, he's in a parallel universe reading a different author by the same name.)

Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn

[selenak]

Definitely too much credit. And I'm starting to suspect that Thiebault, like Voltaire, might have written two sets of memoirs...