Remember when I said Fritz must have gone around telling everyone about his escape plans in hopes someone would take some initiative and get him out of there? And instead, everyone tried to talk him out of it, and he had to come up with his own plan, and part of the reason it failed was because *everyone* knew he wanted out of there?
We have that exact sequence of events happening in Suhm's letter to his boss King Augustus. Reminder: it's October 1728, so two years before the escape attempt.
Suhm shows up at Wusterhausen, Fritz accosts him and starts telling him how terrible his life is, so emphatically that Suhm is flustered. Fritz says, "I say this to all my friends that I believe I can count on, in the hope that someone will get me out of this slavery in which I've been so cruelly placed." Actual quote, in direct discourse as reported by Suhm.
Suhm: I counseled patience and said that advertising his discontent just makes it harder for him to change the opinions he expresses so that his father is pleased with him, and that demonstrating his love for his father will lead to his father treating him better.
Fritz: I'VE TRIED THAT! Nothing works. Nothing moves him. Please, let your king have pity on me and intervene so that I can travel. I'll go anywhere he wants, just to be able to live more freely.
Suhm: That's not so easy to do, and the more you make it known that you want to get out of here, the harder your father's going to make it.
They get interrupted.
Fritz: *won't stop begging for someone to have pity on him and the state he's in*
Suhm: *does not stop explaining how making his opinions more acceptable to his father is the way to go*
Yes, literally, "il me réitéra sans cesse la prière," "he repeated his prayer ceaselessly to me," and "je ne cessay," "I did not stop."
And thus, when 1730 rolls around, Fritz has already tried to escape at least once (November 1729), with Peter, who's sent away to Wesel in January 1730, and by August, everyone in charge of Fritz knows to keep an eye on him, which makes his well-advertised escape plan even more likely to fail.
And then, in the next paragraph, Fritz is forced by Dad to get drunk! Avec une grande répugnance! And it causes him to start complaining about his treatment in one breath and reiterate in the next how much he loves Dad. And then want hugs and kisses.
And then people don't even believe it's real.
SMH.
Also, from reading the French, it appears that I mis-parsed the German: it's not that Fritz told Suhm the next day that he had hated getting drunk; he told him at the time that he hated drinking so much and was sure that he'd be really sick the next day. So my morning-after hurt/comfort headcanon is an AU. Bloody hell, can't the boy get some hurt/comfort instead of hurt/"have you tried appeasing your abuser better?" I know everyone means well and has limited options, but, you know, we're still telling abuse victims/bullied kids that today.
And before anyone wonders if maybe Suhm got to comfort Fritz the next day anyway, well...if I'm reading the letters correctly, Suhm arrives in Wusterhausen on the 17th, the drinking episode took place on the 19th, and Suhm is back in Berlin on the 20th.
Well. I knew Fritz was telling everyone about his desire to get out of there as a cry for help and a hope someone else would rescue him, without him having to figure out his own escape plan, and I knew that no one did, but seeing it spelled out like that is so painful.
Ugh.
On a more cheerful note, Koser has a bit on the four reasons Manteuffel thought Fritz liked him, which I ran across when looking for Suhm:
Wenn der Kronprinz ihm sein Vertrauen schenkte, so geschah es, wie Manteuffel annahm, „aus vier Gründen": erstens vermöge seines ungewöhn lichen Triebes, sich zu unterrichten, zweitens aus etwas guter Meinung für Manteuffel, drittens in der Voraussetzung, daß derselbe ein unabhängiger und uninteressierter alter Mann sei, und endlich, weil dieser alte Mann nie im Lehrton zu ihm sprach.
My interpretation of this, please correct any mistakes:
1) Manteuffel's unusual drive to teach himself. 2) A good opinion of Manteuffel. 3) He was an independent and disinterested old man. (I still wonder when the scales fell from Fritz's eyes.) 4) He never lectured Fritz.
I'm sure (4) was key!
Looking for Manteuffel mentions in the Suhm correspondence, I found one.
There have been new harassments these past days. It all comes from a jealousy that Bredow has against Wolden. The first found a way to insinuate to the King that I was a man without religion, that Manteuffel and you had contributed a lot to pervert me, and that Wolden was a madman who was the buffoon with us, and who was my favorite. You know that the charge of irreligion is the last refuge of the slanderers, and that, having said that, there is nothing more to say. The King caught fire, I held myself tight, my regiment worked wonders, and the handling of arms, a little flour thrown on the heads of soldiers, men over six feet, and many recruits, were stronger arguments than those of my slanderers. Everything is quiet now, and there is no longer talk of religion, of Wolden, of my persecutors, or of my regiment.
So one, FW thinks Manteuffel and Suhm have perverted ("pervertir") Fritz, presumably because they all like Wolff, and FW won't like Wolff for two more years. Two, when you're accused of irreligion, what do you do? Spruce up your regiment, make sure you meet quotas, and above all, those men over six feet! Strongest arguments you can get.
Hamilton tells me that Manteuffel had an unusually disappointing 1740:
It is painful to know that Manteuffel was waiting eagerly for Suhm's arrival and counting on his being appointed successor to Thulemeier, the Minister of State (who died August 4th 1740), expecting, as a matter of course, that through him he himself and his Dresden employers would at once be put in possession of the deepest secrets of the Prussian government, more directly and much more accurately than they could get them from any subordinate.
Suhm dies November 8 without ever making it, and Manteuffel gets kicked out of Prussia sometime in November, shortly before the Silesian invasion. Now there's someone who didn't foresee Frederick the Great--Manteuffel!
The question of whether Suhm would have been allowed to play a political role is an interesting one. You'd think! And yet Fritz's letter to him after becoming king asks whether he wants to give up being a minister in order to lead the reflective life of a sage, and if he can find something in Fritz's company that compensates him for politics.
Interestingly, that does support my idea that Fritz would have relegated Katte to an artistic/intellectual role. With luck, Katte would have taken that well and it would have been good for their relationship with less potential for conflict than a military and/or political role. Headcanon, anyway! (I still hope he's ready to be micromanaged.)
Saxon envoys
We have that exact sequence of events happening in Suhm's letter to his boss King Augustus. Reminder: it's October 1728, so two years before the escape attempt.
Suhm shows up at Wusterhausen, Fritz accosts him and starts telling him how terrible his life is, so emphatically that Suhm is flustered. Fritz says, "I say this to all my friends that I believe I can count on, in the hope that someone will get me out of this slavery in which I've been so cruelly placed." Actual quote, in direct discourse as reported by Suhm.
Suhm: I counseled patience and said that advertising his discontent just makes it harder for him to change the opinions he expresses so that his father is pleased with him, and that demonstrating his love for his father will lead to his father treating him better.
Fritz: I'VE TRIED THAT! Nothing works. Nothing moves him. Please, let your king have pity on me and intervene so that I can travel. I'll go anywhere he wants, just to be able to live more freely.
Suhm: That's not so easy to do, and the more you make it known that you want to get out of here, the harder your father's going to make it.
They get interrupted.
Fritz: *won't stop begging for someone to have pity on him and the state he's in*
Suhm: *does not stop explaining how making his opinions more acceptable to his father is the way to go*
Yes, literally, "il me réitéra sans cesse la prière," "he repeated his prayer ceaselessly to me," and "je ne cessay," "I did not stop."
And thus, when 1730 rolls around, Fritz has already tried to escape at least once (November 1729), with Peter, who's sent away to Wesel in January 1730, and by August, everyone in charge of Fritz knows to keep an eye on him, which makes his well-advertised escape plan even more likely to fail.
And then, in the next paragraph, Fritz is forced by Dad to get drunk! Avec une grande répugnance! And it causes him to start complaining about his treatment in one breath and reiterate in the next how much he loves Dad. And then want hugs and kisses.
And then people don't even believe it's real.
SMH.
Also, from reading the French, it appears that I mis-parsed the German: it's not that Fritz told Suhm the next day that he had hated getting drunk; he told him at the time that he hated drinking so much and was sure that he'd be really sick the next day. So my morning-after hurt/comfort headcanon is an AU. Bloody hell, can't the boy get some hurt/comfort instead of hurt/"have you tried appeasing your abuser better?" I know everyone means well and has limited options, but, you know, we're still telling abuse victims/bullied kids that today.
And before anyone wonders if maybe Suhm got to comfort Fritz the next day anyway, well...if I'm reading the letters correctly, Suhm arrives in Wusterhausen on the 17th, the drinking episode took place on the 19th, and Suhm is back in Berlin on the 20th.
Well. I knew Fritz was telling everyone about his desire to get out of there as a cry for help and a hope someone else would rescue him, without him having to figure out his own escape plan, and I knew that no one did, but seeing it spelled out like that is so painful.
Ugh.
On a more cheerful note, Koser has a bit on the four reasons Manteuffel thought Fritz liked him, which I ran across when looking for Suhm:
Wenn der Kronprinz ihm sein Vertrauen schenkte, so geschah es, wie Manteuffel annahm, „aus vier Gründen": erstens vermöge seines ungewöhn lichen Triebes, sich zu unterrichten, zweitens aus etwas guter Meinung für Manteuffel, drittens in der Voraussetzung, daß derselbe ein unabhängiger und uninteressierter alter Mann sei, und endlich, weil dieser alte Mann nie im Lehrton zu ihm sprach.
My interpretation of this, please correct any mistakes:
1) Manteuffel's unusual drive to teach himself.
2) A good opinion of Manteuffel.
3) He was an independent and disinterested old man. (I still wonder when the scales fell from Fritz's eyes.)
4) He never lectured Fritz.
I'm sure (4) was key!
Looking for Manteuffel mentions in the Suhm correspondence, I found one.
There have been new harassments these past days. It all comes from a jealousy that Bredow has against Wolden. The first found a way to insinuate to the King that I was a man without religion, that Manteuffel and you had contributed a lot to pervert me, and that Wolden was a madman who was the buffoon with us, and who was my favorite. You know that the charge of irreligion is the last refuge of the slanderers, and that, having said that, there is nothing more to say. The King caught fire, I held myself tight, my regiment worked wonders, and the handling of arms, a little flour thrown on the heads of soldiers, men over six feet, and many recruits, were stronger arguments than those of my slanderers. Everything is quiet now, and there is no longer talk of religion, of Wolden, of my persecutors, or of my regiment.
So one, FW thinks Manteuffel and Suhm have perverted ("pervertir") Fritz, presumably because they all like Wolff, and FW won't like Wolff for two more years. Two, when you're accused of irreligion, what do you do? Spruce up your regiment, make sure you meet quotas, and above all, those men over six feet! Strongest arguments you can get.
Hamilton tells me that Manteuffel had an unusually disappointing 1740:
It is painful to know that Manteuffel was waiting eagerly for Suhm's arrival and counting on his being appointed successor to Thulemeier, the Minister of State (who died August 4th 1740), expecting, as a matter of course, that through him he himself and his Dresden employers would at once be put in possession of the deepest secrets of the Prussian government, more directly and much more accurately than they could get them from any subordinate.
Suhm dies November 8 without ever making it, and Manteuffel gets kicked out of Prussia sometime in November, shortly before the Silesian invasion. Now there's someone who didn't foresee Frederick the Great--Manteuffel!
The question of whether Suhm would have been allowed to play a political role is an interesting one. You'd think! And yet Fritz's letter to him after becoming king asks whether he wants to give up being a minister in order to lead the reflective life of a sage, and if he can find something in Fritz's company that compensates him for politics.
Interestingly, that does support my idea that Fritz would have relegated Katte to an artistic/intellectual role. With luck, Katte would have taken that well and it would have been good for their relationship with less potential for conflict than a military and/or political role. Headcanon, anyway! (I still hope he's ready to be micromanaged.)