cahn | Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

As much boyfriend action and family dysfunction as you could want, all in one entry!

showing him "all the tendernesses imaginable", took him into his room afterwards and there confided in him about this family:

Fritz: I can be the most tender person imaginable when there's money involved!

It's worth spelling out to

cahn that Manteuffel is a successor to Suhm, i.e. Saxon envoy to Prussia, and that Suhm in a few months will become Saxon envoy to Russia, drumming up money for Fritz in St. Petersburg. Right now (July 1736), Suhm is in Dresden.

Let's pause here for the only moment good old Ferdinand, age six at this point (Heinrich is ten), gets singled out for the prediction he'll exceed in anything. Ferdinand, coming menace, this was your day!

Lolsob. Remember, Joseph is also going to be the menace of Europe as soon as he gets a chance!

You get the impression Fritz is incredibly paranoid and pessimistic, and as Lavisse says, he and Wilhelmine were taught from a young age to look for the worst in people and expect the worst. :/

I venture to guess this is an allusion to a French saying unknown to us.

Unknown to us no longer!

https://www.expressio.fr/expressions/une-fine-mouche

"Un fine mouche", "a fine fly," is someone clever, astute, observant. As early as 1389, used to designate someone good at spying and concealing what they know. It's a bit like English "fly on the wall": someone who can listen and learn without being detected.

Iunior showed the Devil a small present that he intends for him. It's a golden apple for a cane that he had comissioned to be made. It represents the image of Socrates and there are engraved French verses above, which Iunior composed himself. This composition is most flattering for the Devil: because Iunior in these verses represents himself as Alcibiades and looks at the Devil like Socrates.

Are you serious? Are you fucking SERIOUS? Omg, all I can take away from this is 1) Fritz is a troll, 2) Fritz wants an erastes SO BAD ~~and Suhm is in Dresden :-((((~~.

I thought you were practically broke?

Oh, please, Fritz is only broke because he's a total spendthrift. He runs through money like water and can never get enough. Commissioning golden walking stick heads for ~~prospective erastes~~ friends is just one way of running through his money. He's always got a sob story, but let's be real, this is WHY he's constantly broke.

Who was the original intended recipient, Voltaire or Mantteuffel?

Both? Fritz playing a numbers game? :P

Heinrich totally kicked him under the table. Or Ferdinand did, since he gets to be the coming menace.

Someone did! Or else somebody (probably Ferdinand) dissed education.

1.) Fritz, cheating on Voltaire this early on in the relationship?

It's not cheating if the other guy isn't willing to commit either!

3.) Younger brothers, your educational day will come. Junior is a man with a mission here, clearly.

Yes, and his educational methods won't make *anyone* bitter!

4.) So did he have sex with Mantteuffel, and do we count Mantteuffel among the boyfriends or the witty pretties?

Well, Manteuffel is, if Wikipedia can be trusted, 60 years old in 1736, thus 36 years older than Fritz (Suhm is "only" 21 years older than Fritz, Voltaire 17). If anyone is playing the witty pretty in this relationship, it's Fritz! Not that Fritz is especially pretty, but I have to imagine being young and Crown Prince is even better.

So I see two possibilities here. One is that Manteuffel, Saxon ambassador, patron of Wolff, that Fritz is showing tenderness to and trying to drum up money from, is a surrogate Suhm. Potential boyfriend with a heavy dose of wishful thinking on Fritz's part. It would help to know at what date Fritz turned sour on him. With everyone lying to everyone else, it's hard to tell.

But aww, poor lonely Crown Prince, what with Katte dead, Suhm only around for a few weeks a year (and soon not at all), Voltaire not willing to give up freaking Émilie, and I'm telling you, Fredersdorf may fill more niches than is humanly possible, but he *does not* satisfy those erastes cravings!

Alternately, what I really think I'm getting here is a "make nice to foreign envoy to get some leverage against FW" vibe. Maybe it's just because I got to this passage in Lavisse today, but I'm reminded of the part where he recounts 14-yo Fritz going to French Rottenburg (Katte's Rottenburg, not Fritz's Prussian Rottenburg), envoy from Paris to Berlin, showering him with unsolicited attentions, and trying to get a conspiracy going. [ETA: I have confirmed my memory that Lavisse and Asprey report one key detail differently: Lavisse says Fritz demanded Rottenburg tell him everything he knew about the King was up to. Asprey says Fritz offered to tell Rottenburg everything he knew about what the King was up to. That's quite a difference!]

Given that it's 1736, and Fritz is systematically trying to get money out of everyone with access to any money--he's *just* moved or is about to move into Rheinsberg--and favors out of everyone, down to AW probably spying on Dad for him, and is even willing to use Grumbkow as long as G can make himself useful...one can read the Manteuffel relationship with a great deal of cynicism.

Quite likely: Fritz starts out hoping that Manteuffel will be another Suhm but conveniently close at hand, gets disillusioned, starts using him, has no hesitation in kicking him out as soon as it's time to invade Silesia. At what point we switch from "hoping" to "disillusioned," I don't know. I don't even know whether it's before or after that October 1737 letter to Grumbkow.

Sex? Not impossible, but imo, unlikely.

I reserve the right to change any and all opinions with more data. :)

Edited Date: 2020-02-02 03:32 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

As much boyfriend action and family dysfunction as you could want, all in one entry!

I know! *handkiss*

AW "good natured but mind of a peasant", Ferdinand "most wicked child of the King", Heinrich "bad nature":

Lolsob. Remember, Joseph is also going to be the menace of Europe as soon as he gets a chance!

You get the impression Fritz is incredibly paranoid and pessimistic, and as Lavisse says, he and Wilhelmine were taught from a young age to look for the worst in people and expect the worst. :/

True, though in this instance I think there are some other things going on. To wit, as Fritz himself knows, foreign powers are totally ready to supply a prince with money and use him politically if they can. And he's talking to an envoy. He doesn't want Saxony, or anyone else, hedging their bets on AW instead of him, and certainly not share that money with Heinrich and Ferdinand once they get older (since he has no idea how long FW is going to be around for, and true, now H & F are kids, but Fritz himself was ready to conspire at 14/15, and that's only four more years for Heinrich to go).

...and H & F just kicked him under the table. I totally maintain that happened.

It occurs to me that we haven't quoted yet the famous "how to treat ~~my brothers~~ princes of the blood" pasage from Fritz' 1752 Political Testament, which goes thusly:

There are a type of hybrid creatures who are neither rulers nor private men, and who are difficult to govern. These are the princes of the blood. Their high origin infuses them with a certain arrogance which they call nobility. it makes obedience unbearable to them, and any kind of submission hateful. If there are any intrigues, cabales or plotting to be feared, it could originate from them. In Prussia, they have less power than elsewhere. But the best method to deal with them consists of putting them in their place with vigour, to treat them with the distinction due to their high origin, to heap ceremonial honors on them but to keep them far away from any business of the state, and to entrust them with a military command only with it is safe to do so, i.e. if they possess talent and a reliable character.

Now granted, "princes of the blood" in Prussia also includes the Schwedt cousins, who are, after all, grandkids from F1's half brothers (courtesy of F1's detested stepmother he accused of having poisoned his older brothers). But somehow I don't think Fritz, writing these lines in 1752 (possibly when he's just returned from celebrating Heinrich's wedding), is not thinking of the Margrave of Schwedt...

Are you serious? Are you fucking SERIOUS? Omg, all I can take away from this is 1) Fritz is a troll, 2) Fritz wants an erastes SO BAD ~~and Suhm is in Dresden~~ :-((((.

See, I'd have put as "Wanted: One Sugar Daddy". :) Well, granted, Voltaire would never have been that. He was supporting a lot of social causes in his life time with the lots of money he gathered, including schools for Swiss peasants, but I really doubt he'd have given his royal Prussian pen pal a single dime at that point. So "erastes" it is.

But aww, poor lonely Crown Prince, what with Katte dead, Suhm only around for a few weeks a year (and soon not at all), Voltaire not willing to give up freaking Émilie, and I'm telling you, Fredersdorf may fill more niches than is humanly possible, but he *does not* satisfy those erastes cravings!

Clearly. Though I agree with you it's likely a mixture of motives, i.e. that and Fritz as ever looking for leverage and money. We should also consider he's gotten pretty good at dissembling (even towards other pros) by then; Seckendorff the Nephew thinks he's really become buddies with Grumbkow (as opposed to use and be used), whereas we know that when Grumbkow kicks it, Fritz is all "yay" in a letter to Wilhelmine.

I'm still cackling about the multiple use of golden Socrates heads on canes and Socrates/Alcibiades analogies in 1736, though.

Edited Date: 2020-02-02 08:43 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

He doesn't want Saxony, or anyone else, hedging their bets on AW instead of him, and certainly not share that money with Heinrich and Ferdinand once they get older

This is an excellent point. Especially since, as you said elsewhere, Fritz was having to quash rumors about AW even into the late 1730s.

...and H & F just kicked him under the table. I totally maintain that happened.

Enjoy the kicking while you can, boys! Only a few more years till he becomes king.

keep them far away from any business of the state

Yeah, Fritz's MO is consistently: "Spot a threat a mile away, take pre-emptive action." When it comes to fight-or-flight, he's locked in "fight" mode, and his threat-detector is so oversensitive it picks up on false positive after false positive. And that's why European powers making defensive alliances could count on him to invade at some point.

See, I'd have put as "Wanted: One Sugar Daddy". :) Well, granted, Voltaire would never have been that. He was supporting a lot of social causes in his life time with the lots of money he gathered, including schools for Swiss peasants, but I really doubt he'd have given his royal Prussian pen pal a single dime at that point. So "erastes" it is.

You know, you just went through my exact thought process. :D Obviously, Fritz wants money so bad he'll go through people like Seckendorff and EC. The only part of "Wanted: One Sugar Daddy" I would quibble with is the word "one". "Wanted: As many sugar daddies as possible." ;) But Voltaire's never going to give him money, so I have to assume the Socrates/Alcibiades thing comes out of a craving for an erastes, preferably but not necessarily one with access to ready money they're wiling to make available to Fritz.

Clearly. Though I agree with you it's likely a mixture of motives, i.e. that and Fritz as ever looking for leverage and money.

Indeed. Though I threw the erastes possibility out there for the sake of gossipy sensationalism and in answer to your question of whether he and Manteuffel had sex, what I think was most likely going on was primarily self-interest. I'm sure he would have loved another Suhm, but I don't think realizing that wasn't what he had slowed him down one bit in his quest for leverage and money.

I'm still cackling about the multiple use of golden Socrates heads on canes and Socrates/Alcibiades analogies in 1736, though.

We're all still cackling about that. Hey, when you hit on a winning formula, why hold back? :D