During this miserable autumn of 1728 [Fritz] unburdened himself to his confidant and possible lover, Lieutenant Friedrich von Borcke.
Borcke shows up in Lavisse just enough and in just suggestive enough contexts that I had begun to wonder if we had a new boyfriend here. But this is the first time I've seen someone else suggest it.
I haven't been able to find much about him. He was born in 1702, so he was 10 years older than Fritz. I found a collection of correspondence between Fritz and the Borcke brothers (older brother Borcke is notable enough to get his own Wikipedia page, possible boyfriend Borcke is not), but there's no extant correspondence between 1728 and 1731. The editor thinks that Fritz may have turned from him to people who were more congenial and supportive of the escape plans. Borcke may have known nothing about the escape at all. The editor thinks it's certain that he didn't approve, because Borcke wrote a letter to his brother in August 1730 expressing disapproval after it became clear.
I find that possible, but less than convincing, because...
"Wow, it's too bad he didn't make it, the King's been really awful to him"...said no one ever.
But yes, if Fritz started hanging out more with Keith and Katte, it's possible it's because Borcke wasn't giving him the sympathy and support he was looking for.
Not sure to what extent Asprey can be trusted on this, but this was interesting, if true. It's from the late 1720s, when the British double marriage negotiations are kicking off, and Austria wants to prevent the alliance.
[Seckendorff] unveiled a secret weapon, the Prussian resident secretary in London, one Benjamin Reichenbach, "a Person," as the important British minister Lord Townshend had earlier complained," whose Behaviour is such , that neither the [English] King nor his Ministers can put the least confidence in him." Reichenbach was a paid agent of Seckendorff and Grumbkow. For some time he had been reporting to the Prussian king what his employers told him to report. English archives contain copies of over forty of his letters, the originals of which were found in Grumbkow's effects. They were generally long, written in French, and employ a simple number code. They showed the three principals — Grumbkow, Reichenbach, and Seckendorff - to be extremely intelligent, at home in the classics, and complete masters of the Prussian king.
Wars of aggression are okay if they involve men over six feet tall:
Prussian recruiting officers illegally at work in Hanover had been arrested and would not be released until ten Hanoverians who had recently been impressed into the Prussian army were freed. Frederick William, who learned of the arrests from newspapers and not through diplomatic channels, lost his temper and immediately ordered preparations for the Prussian army to march.
[Everyone sane: "Omg no."]
Frederick William...seemed determined to have his war. In ensuing weeks orders went out to purchase horses for the heavy cannon, procure blacksmiths for work on artillery carriages, grind corn for magazines, and all the other measures necessary to put his army on the march. Dubourgay reported that the king would spend over 600,000 thalers in the first stages of mobilization; the Danish envoy reported that he had just returned from parade "where everything breathes war"; a few days later: he wrote that "preparations for war are redoubled from one day to the next."
More amusing Asprey comparisons:
Sir Charles Hotham is one of those figures who suddenly and unexpectedly appears. on center stage of a historical drama, a deus ex machina who performs badly and returns to virtual anonymity when the play goes bust.
cahn, this is *not* Lehndorff's Sir Charles Hotham, this is a relative (I think an uncle?) who was the English envoy negotiating the unsuccessful double marriage project between Fritz & Wilhelmine and Amelia (whom Asprey calls Emily, the first time I've seen that) & the Prince of Wales.
Asprey blames Hotham, I don't know how fairly or unfairly, for mishandling the marriage negotiations and causing their eventual failure.
I was starting to think I'd read this quote in a fanfic somewhere, but no, it's Asprey.
"Starvation for starvation, I prefer Cüstrin to Potsdam."
No citation given. Lavisse gives a quote with the same thrust but different wording, so this may be Asprey paraphrasing for snappiness.
Asprey seems to think Fritz actually fathered a daughter on Wreech, although Fritz denied it. He agrees with our interpretation of FW's reaction: "hoping that he will do the same for la Bevern."
Blanning said she wasn't pregnant at all. When two unreliable biographers disagree...*sigh*
Re Wreech:
A few years later he would write to Voltaire of this "little wonder of nature" who had taught him love and poetry "with taste and delicacy." "I did well enough in love but poorly in poetry."
I thought Orzelska had taught him love and poetry? Or did he write two quotes like this to Voltaire? Or am I misremembering?
When Fritz shows up to Wilhelmine's wedding celebrations:
He responded to Wilhelmina's impassioned embraces and words with distinct coolness, and when she presented her husband, Frederick refused to speak to him. She partially recovered on learning that von Grumbkow had advised Frederick to seem aloof in order to impress the king
Huh, I didn't realize she had spelled this out, but admittedly I've only selectively read volume 2 of her memoirs, and haven't read their correspondence. At any rate, Asprey supports selenak's reconstruction of events here!
Asprey thinks the Fritz-reforming project is working pretty well:
[Fritz] came down with three - day fever, and although he had learned to prefer beer, in accordance with paternal desires, he drank champagne because the doctors prescribed it.
Considering he continued to prefer champagne for the rest of his life, I'm with MacDonogh that Fritz was faking liking beer and excusing his continued champagne drinking to his father by saying it was medicinal.
Hee:
He was forced to correspond with his fiancée, but his letters were short and desultory, significantly lacking verses, which he normally inflicted on friends.
Death of August the Strong:
Early in 1733, while traveling to Poland, the sixty-three-year old monarch had summoned Grumbkow to Crossen to discuss his ambitious diplomatic plans. Acting on Frederick William's instructions to pump the Polish king for all he was worth, the general had turned the meeting into a prolonged drinking bout, from which neither participant ever fully recovered. Throughout January, August weakened so much that he told his confessor, “I have not at present strength to name my many and great sins."
So remember when one of Fritz's "brothers" visited him with two companions and they were all more interested in food than learning, leading Fritz to complain to Suhm that he was forced to entertain when would rather be reading? Asprey claims this was...Henry! Who was all of 10 years old.
He gives no citation, as usual, and I'm heavily question marking the purported identification.
The early correspondence between Fritz and Voltaire:
A modern French historian has noted that Voltaire in various letters saw in Frederick "a Caesar, an Augustus, a Marcus Aurelius, a Trajan, an Anthony, a Titus, a Julian, a Virgil, a Pliny, a Horace, a Mécène, a Cicero, a Catullus, a Homer, a Rochefoucauld, a Bruyère, a Boileau, a Solomon, a Prometheus, an Apollo, a Patroclus, a Socrates, an Alcibiades, an Alexander, a Henry IV, and a Francis I."
Meanwhile, post-breakup Voltaire, in his memoirs:
Epithets cost us nothing. They have printed some of these ridiculous things in a collection of my works, and happily they have not printed the thirtieth part of them.
More Asprey snark about the early correspondence:
In truth, neither correspondent was much of a philosopher and the exchange of thoughts was not very deep, but in those shallow waters the Prussian crown prince more than held his own. Mercifully, they soon lost interest in the subject.
Okay, so I knew Fritz got money from Dickens (the English envoy) in 1730 because the British were trying to pressure him out of trying to escape and come to England, I knew he was getting money later in the 1730s from the Austrians via Seckendorff, Liechtenstein, and Manteuffel, the Brunswicks via EC, and the Russians via Suhm, but apparently the British decided to send him more money in 1739 via Dickens.
Asprey comments:
The first payment was like the first drink to an alcoholic. At Frederick's urging, Truchsess was soon again on the way to Rheinsberg to deliver another two thousand pounds. Frederick meanwhile had in formed Dickens that "he was greatly mistaken in his Calculations": he owed four years of accumulated debts at home and abroad (Dickens reported a total of several hundred thousand thalers) and needed an other six thousand pounds. In addition, he wanted an annual allowance of fifty thousand thalers, to begin in a few weeks.
As usual, the code was books:
In a November dispatch, Dickens somewhat frantically noted that he had given the student" a few "brochures" in advance but that he now demanded “folios"!
On the subject of paying back the loans:
Frederick was constantly and often heavily in debt. Thanks mainly to Voltaire's biased Mémoires, the legend grew that as king he did not have to repay these debts. This is false. (Granier, "Kronprinzlichen Schulden.") From 1749-1750 he repaid debts in the sum of 272,242 thalers. One debt incurred in 1738 was repaid with interest in 1782! (Preuss, Friedrich . . . eine Lebensgeschichte, Volume 1.)
The British money was paid back promptly according to Asprey, the Russians as far as I can tell from the Suhm correspondence got paid back in 1740 (although I suppose I only know that he *started* paying them back then, not that he didn't wait until 1782 to finish), we know Liechtenstein had to wait until after the Seven Years' War...I wonder if this means we can answer Fontane's question about whether the Austrians got repaid in the positive. Or if he made an exception for them.
Also, Asprey, I'm sorry, but "Preuss, volume 1" is not a citation. FFS.
From the Anti-Machiavel (which I need to reread, seriously):
A good prince will cultivate his mind before seeking such riotous and brutalizing pleasures as the hunt. (Take notice, King Frederick William.)
Asprey's parenthesis.
Late 1739, FW is dying:
The king was in constant pain from severe gout, not to mention dropsy and shortness of breath with frequent vomiting. He sometimes recovered sufficiently to conduct state business in the mornings, but a relapse usually followed. He could not sleep and frequently held night-long sessions of the Tabagie, insisting that old comrades smoke and tell stories; sometimes he dozed off, but if someone stopped talking he instantly awakened. To pass lonely and painful hours he made wooden boxes, furiously hammering on a special bed table. On occasion he would have some of the Potsdam giants march through the bedroom. The sight of them invariably made him feel better, and sometimes he would hug one or paint a portrait.
I knew about the marching through his sickroom and the painting, of course, but the hugging is new to me. Citation needed!
Also, I wonder if both Fritz and FW died of congestive heart failure due to excessive tobacco consumption.
March 1740:
In March he told Old Dessauer that since Frederick did not enjoy hunting, he wanted the prince to take his pick of the royal hounds and hoped he would continue to derive much pleasure from the chase.
After watching FW verbally abuse Fritz all the way up to 1739, we reach May 1740:
Frederick now received a letter from his father with the salutation, the first time ever, "My beloved Son." He returned to Potsdam the following day expecting to find his father dead. Instead, the king was in the palace gardens, supervising the laying of a cornerstone for a blacksmith's cottage!
I'm not sure it was the first, though? Checking...Okay, the one I was thinking of, from December 1731, was "lieber", and this is "geliebter." Okay!
Not long after:
The king next summoned various officers and officials to his deathbed, "Has God not graced me by having given me such a courageous and worthy son?" he asked them. Frederick rose, gripped the royal hand, and cried. The king embraced him and said, "My God, I die content, since I leave behind such a worthy son and successor."
When a chaplain sang one of his favorite hymns, “Naked I came into this world, naked I shall fare hence," the king interrupted: "That isn't true; I shall be wearing my uniform."
And now that FW has died in uniform and Fritz is no longer Crown Prince, I leave Asprey and return to Blanning, who is a breath of fresh air in terms of responsible scholarship, in that when he blatantly misrepresents what an author says, he at least cites a page number so you can tell!
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Asprey 2
Date: 2020-02-26 09:50 am (UTC)Borcke shows up in Lavisse just enough and in just suggestive enough contexts that I had begun to wonder if we had a new boyfriend here. But this is the first time I've seen someone else suggest it.
I haven't been able to find much about him. He was born in 1702, so he was 10 years older than Fritz. I found a collection of correspondence between Fritz and the Borcke brothers (older brother Borcke is notable enough to get his own Wikipedia page, possible boyfriend Borcke is not), but there's no extant correspondence between 1728 and 1731. The editor thinks that Fritz may have turned from him to people who were more congenial and supportive of the escape plans. Borcke may have known nothing about the escape at all. The editor thinks it's certain that he didn't approve, because Borcke wrote a letter to his brother in August 1730 expressing disapproval after it became clear.
I find that possible, but less than convincing, because...
"Wow, it's too bad he didn't make it, the King's been really awful to him"...said no one ever.
But yes, if Fritz started hanging out more with Keith and Katte, it's possible it's because Borcke wasn't giving him the sympathy and support he was looking for.
Not sure to what extent Asprey can be trusted on this, but this was interesting, if true. It's from the late 1720s, when the British double marriage negotiations are kicking off, and Austria wants to prevent the alliance.
[Seckendorff] unveiled a secret weapon, the Prussian resident secretary in London, one Benjamin Reichenbach, "a Person," as the important British minister Lord Townshend had earlier complained," whose Behaviour is such , that neither the [English] King nor his Ministers can put the least confidence in him." Reichenbach was a paid agent of Seckendorff and Grumbkow. For some time he had been reporting to the Prussian king what his employers told him to report. English archives contain copies of over forty of his letters, the originals of which were found in Grumbkow's effects. They were generally long, written in French, and employ a simple number code. They showed the three principals — Grumbkow, Reichenbach, and Seckendorff - to be extremely intelligent, at home in the classics, and complete masters of the Prussian king.
Wars of aggression are okay if they involve men over six feet tall:
Prussian recruiting officers illegally at work in Hanover had been arrested and would not be released until ten Hanoverians who had recently been impressed into the Prussian army were freed. Frederick William, who learned of the arrests from newspapers and not through diplomatic channels, lost his temper and immediately ordered preparations for the Prussian army to march.
[Everyone sane: "Omg no."]
Frederick William...seemed determined to have his war. In ensuing weeks orders went out to purchase horses for the heavy cannon, procure blacksmiths for work on artillery carriages, grind corn for magazines, and all the other measures necessary to put his army on the march. Dubourgay reported that the king would spend over 600,000 thalers in the first stages of mobilization; the Danish envoy reported that he had just returned from parade "where everything breathes war"; a few days later: he wrote that "preparations for war are redoubled from one day to the next."
More amusing Asprey comparisons:
Sir Charles Hotham is one of those figures who suddenly and unexpectedly appears. on center stage of a historical drama, a deus ex machina who performs badly and returns to virtual anonymity when the play goes bust.
Asprey blames Hotham, I don't know how fairly or unfairly, for mishandling the marriage negotiations and causing their eventual failure.
I was starting to think I'd read this quote in a fanfic somewhere, but no, it's Asprey.
"Starvation for starvation, I prefer Cüstrin to Potsdam."
No citation given. Lavisse gives a quote with the same thrust but different wording, so this may be Asprey paraphrasing for snappiness.
Asprey seems to think Fritz actually fathered a daughter on Wreech, although Fritz denied it. He agrees with our interpretation of FW's reaction: "hoping that he will do the same for la Bevern."
Blanning said she wasn't pregnant at all. When two unreliable biographers disagree...*sigh*
Re Wreech:
A few years later he would write to Voltaire of this "little wonder of nature" who had taught him love and poetry "with taste and delicacy." "I did well enough in love but poorly in poetry."
I thought Orzelska had taught him love and poetry? Or did he write two quotes like this to Voltaire? Or am I misremembering?
When Fritz shows up to Wilhelmine's wedding celebrations:
He responded to Wilhelmina's impassioned embraces and words with distinct coolness, and when she presented her husband, Frederick refused to speak to him. She partially recovered on learning that von Grumbkow had advised Frederick to seem aloof in order to impress the king
Huh, I didn't realize she had spelled this out, but admittedly I've only selectively read volume 2 of her memoirs, and haven't read their correspondence. At any rate, Asprey supports
Asprey thinks the Fritz-reforming project is working pretty well:
[Fritz] came down with three - day fever, and although he had learned to prefer beer, in accordance with paternal desires, he drank champagne because the doctors prescribed it.
Considering he continued to prefer champagne for the rest of his life, I'm with MacDonogh that Fritz was faking liking beer and excusing his continued champagne drinking to his father by saying it was medicinal.
Hee:
He was forced to correspond with his fiancée, but his letters were short and desultory, significantly lacking verses, which he normally inflicted on friends.
Death of August the Strong:
Early in 1733, while traveling to Poland, the sixty-three-year old monarch had summoned Grumbkow to Crossen to discuss his ambitious diplomatic plans. Acting on Frederick William's instructions to pump the Polish king for all he was worth, the general had turned the meeting into a prolonged drinking bout, from which neither participant ever fully recovered. Throughout January, August weakened so much that he told his confessor, “I have not at present strength to name my many and great sins."
So remember when one of Fritz's "brothers" visited him with two companions and they were all more interested in food than learning, leading Fritz to complain to Suhm that he was forced to entertain when would rather be reading? Asprey claims this was...Henry! Who was all of 10 years old.
He gives no citation, as usual, and I'm heavily question marking the purported identification.
The early correspondence between Fritz and Voltaire:
A modern French historian has noted that Voltaire in various letters saw in Frederick "a Caesar, an Augustus, a Marcus Aurelius, a Trajan, an Anthony, a Titus, a Julian, a Virgil, a Pliny, a Horace, a Mécène, a Cicero, a Catullus, a Homer, a Rochefoucauld, a Bruyère, a Boileau, a Solomon, a Prometheus, an Apollo, a Patroclus, a Socrates, an Alcibiades, an Alexander, a Henry IV, and a Francis I."
Meanwhile, post-breakup Voltaire, in his memoirs:
Epithets cost us nothing. They have printed some of these ridiculous things in a collection of my works, and happily they have not printed the thirtieth part of them.
More Asprey snark about the early correspondence:
In truth, neither correspondent was much of a philosopher and the exchange of thoughts was not very deep, but in those shallow waters the Prussian crown prince more than held his own. Mercifully, they soon lost interest in the subject.
Okay, so I knew Fritz got money from Dickens (the English envoy) in 1730 because the British were trying to pressure him out of trying to escape and come to England, I knew he was getting money later in the 1730s from the Austrians via Seckendorff, Liechtenstein, and Manteuffel, the Brunswicks via EC, and the Russians via Suhm, but apparently the British decided to send him more money in 1739 via Dickens.
Asprey comments:
The first payment was like the first drink to an alcoholic. At Frederick's urging, Truchsess was soon again on the way to Rheinsberg to deliver another two thousand pounds. Frederick meanwhile had in formed Dickens that "he was greatly mistaken in his Calculations": he owed four years of accumulated debts at home and abroad (Dickens reported a total of several hundred thousand thalers) and needed an other six thousand pounds. In addition, he wanted an annual allowance of fifty thousand thalers, to begin in a few weeks.
As usual, the code was books:
In a November dispatch, Dickens somewhat frantically noted that he had given the student" a few "brochures" in advance but that he now demanded “folios"!
On the subject of paying back the loans:
Frederick was constantly and often heavily in debt. Thanks mainly to Voltaire's biased Mémoires, the legend grew that as king he did not have to repay these debts. This is false. (Granier, "Kronprinzlichen Schulden.") From 1749-1750 he repaid debts in the sum of 272,242 thalers. One debt incurred in 1738 was repaid with interest in 1782! (Preuss, Friedrich . . . eine Lebensgeschichte, Volume 1.)
The British money was paid back promptly according to Asprey, the Russians as far as I can tell from the Suhm correspondence got paid back in 1740 (although I suppose I only know that he *started* paying them back then, not that he didn't wait until 1782 to finish), we know Liechtenstein had to wait until after the Seven Years' War...I wonder if this means we can answer Fontane's question about whether the Austrians got repaid in the positive. Or if he made an exception for them.
Also, Asprey, I'm sorry, but "Preuss, volume 1" is not a citation. FFS.
From the Anti-Machiavel (which I need to reread, seriously):
A good prince will cultivate his mind before seeking such riotous and brutalizing pleasures as the hunt. (Take notice, King Frederick William.)
Asprey's parenthesis.
Late 1739, FW is dying:
The king was in constant pain from severe gout, not to mention dropsy
and shortness of breath with frequent vomiting. He sometimes recovered sufficiently to conduct state business in the mornings, but a relapse usually followed. He could not sleep and frequently held night-long sessions of the Tabagie, insisting that old comrades smoke and tell stories; sometimes he dozed off, but if someone stopped talking he instantly awakened. To pass lonely and painful hours he made wooden boxes, furiously hammering on a special bed table. On occasion he would have some of the Potsdam giants march through the bedroom. The sight of them invariably made him feel better, and sometimes he would hug one or paint a portrait.
I knew about the marching through his sickroom and the painting, of course, but the hugging is new to me. Citation needed!
Also, I wonder if both Fritz and FW died of congestive heart failure due to excessive tobacco consumption.
March 1740:
In March he told Old Dessauer that since Frederick did not enjoy hunting, he wanted the prince to take his pick of the royal hounds and hoped he would continue to derive much pleasure from the chase.
After watching FW verbally abuse Fritz all the way up to 1739, we reach May 1740:
Frederick now received a letter from his father with the salutation, the first time ever, "My beloved Son." He returned to Potsdam the following day expecting to find his father dead. Instead, the king was in the palace gardens, supervising the laying of a cornerstone for a blacksmith's cottage!
I'm not sure it was the first, though? Checking...Okay, the one I was thinking of, from December 1731, was "lieber", and this is "geliebter." Okay!
Not long after:
The king next summoned various officers and officials to his deathbed, "Has God not graced me by having given me such a courageous and worthy son?" he asked them. Frederick rose, gripped the royal hand, and cried. The king embraced him and said, "My God, I die content, since I leave behind such a worthy son and successor."
And as
When a chaplain sang one of his favorite hymns, “Naked I came into this world, naked I shall fare hence," the king interrupted: "That isn't true; I shall be wearing my uniform."
And now that FW has died in uniform and Fritz is no longer Crown Prince, I leave Asprey and return to Blanning, who is a breath of fresh air in terms of responsible scholarship, in that when he blatantly misrepresents what an author says, he at least cites a page number so you can tell!
*headdesk*