Frederick the Great discussion post 11

[cahn]

In our last installment, our heroes found that Henri de Catt's memoirs, a major source for current biographers of Frederick the Great, are not to be trusted!!

rheinsberg

Comments

Re: Catt

[selenak]

Honest to god, that reads like Catt meant to fix it later and never did.

Didn't he go blind in his old age? So I bet this was literally the case - he couldn't fix it, and the memoirs remained unpublished in his life time.

Re: Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

I've only ever seen that in Wikipedia (unless it was in Rosebery's preface and I forgot), but yes, that is what I've been told. So you're right, especially if he was composing/editing after 1784 (i.e. the Voltaire memoir year), he was getting pretty close to blindness years, and he might well have run out of time. I mean, he probably could have gotten an amanuensis, but it might not have been his top priority.

But seriously, scholars need to call more attention to the visible seams and general unreliability of these memoirs.