I'll put it up at Rheinsberg after reading some more of the orignal documents, in order to possible insert quotes.
Maupertuis: I misread Volz saying "letzerer" - it's 1745 for Maupertuis and 1748 for La Mettrie according to him.
Speaking of dates, yes, 1749 mentioned after 1750 (by both Volz and me) to clarify that just after putting out an "wanted for arrest and harsh punishment: all deserters on foreign soil!" order in 1749, Fritz is ready to issue a pardon in 1750 - not 1752, typing dates quickly is haaaard -.
No batman: not at Soor, at any rate. Volz doesn't say what position Trenck held other than "Cornett", but he does believe Trenck's in-law's brother (described, naturally, as a total soulless bastard in Trenck's memoirs) story which has Trenck show Fritz the first of the letters from Austrian Trenck. As in, show Fritz personally, not his next superior officer who then shows Fritz. Now, this doesn't have to mean Trenck was on talking terms with Fritz before that - maybe he even thought reporting a letter form his Austrian cousin wuld get him the King's attention! - , but it could mean that.
That said, Prades was released from prison after the war, after having been imprisoned for espionage, and told to stay in Silesia, so Fritz telling him to stay in East Prussia and behave himself sounds maybe in character? TBD.
Yes, but Prades was a) a civilian, while Trenck had been a Prussian officer, b) a French citizen, not a Prussian citizen, and c) an actual member of the church - yes, he'd been temporarily excommunicated, but he had been accepted back into the Church. The "Abbé" wasn't just for show, and whether or not you could condemn clerics the same way as laymen was still not completely settled by universal law. Much as Fritz was into mocking Catholicism, a sizable part of his subjects, courtesy of Silesia, were now Catholics, and he needed goodwill to rebuild.
Now, Trenck was also an officer of the Austrian army and as Kaunitz himself (! saw this when having a quick look) told his people to argue a citizen of Austria, not Prussia anymore, but he'd been Prussian first. Mind you, I doubt Fritz would have been amused if, say, Uncle George had George Keith, Lord Marishal arrested at Versailles on the rationale that Keith was a British subject and deserter, then had him extradited to GB. Ahem.
Speaking of Keith, seems Trenck in a OMG HELP! letter from Danzig to another officer of his current Austrian regiment thinks "Mylord Keith" will help him, but the footnote by Volz tells me he means Robert Keith, current British envoy in Vienna. HOW MANY GODDAM KEITHS ARE THERE?
The "wit" makes it sound like Fritz met him at least once and found him memorable, though perhaps he's just going by report.
Direct quote form the letter: "Il ny's sera pas tout-à-fait inutile, vu que c'est proprement un homme d'épée, ne manquant pas d'esprit ni de bravoure."
Now it could just be, like Volz suggests, he wants to make Trenck someone else's problem and thereby defuse the situaton with the Austrians. But "defusing the situation with the Austrians" and "Fritz" do not go usually in the same sentence, especially pre 7 Years War. What it does refute, though, is the idea that Fritz absolutely wanted to see Trenck suffer by any means at this point. Also that there had been no trial, for that matter, since there had been a war tribunal post escape from Glatz, complete with sentence.
No one left Katte's door unlocked. :`-(
FW was scarier? Actually, I do have a theory, because glancing at the war tribunal sentence for both Trenck and Schell, I see that Schell isn't from Prussia. He's from "Müncherode in Swabia" according to the judgment. Google didn't give me a Müncherode in Swabia, but it did give me one in Thuringia, near Jena (at this point, belonging to the Dukedom Sachsen-Weimar, the one unborn great nephew Carl August will rule one day. Either way, it's not Prussia. At a guess: maybe Schell had the dubious joy of being forcibly recruited into Prussian service, like so many others. And thought this was a great opportunity for his very own "Fuck you, Fritz!"
Letter to Amalie: I've only seen the mention by German wiki, providing this citation:
Christopher Frey: Friedrich von der Trencks Beziehung zu Prinzessin Amalie von Preußen sowie ein bisher unbekannter Brief Trencks. In: Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 116. Band, Heft 1–2 (2008), S. 146–158.
German wiki, btw, does have the correct date for Trenck joining the army (1744, not 1742 as the memoirs claim), but is also sure he did become a batman in 1745. Then again, German wiki, like English wiki, thinks Fredersdorf embezzled, so...
Oh! One of the documents is the secretary-written letter from Amalie accepting the godmotherhood which Volz mentions:
Berlin, 116 mars 1771/ Je vous félicite, Monsieur, de la naissance de votre fille, et comme je me suis toujours intéressée à votre sort, j'accepte avec plaisir d'etre sa marraine, vous assurant que je prends part à tout les evenenments heureux qui vous surviennent, étant avec estime, Monsieur, votre affectionée, Amèlie.
Okay, here I have to slightly disagree with Volz in that while it's not a love letter, it also doesn't sound like just a letter to someone she never met or heard of before, either. I would say it sounds as if the very least they've met in ye olde pre Magdeburg days.
Re: Trenck discussion
Maupertuis: I misread Volz saying "letzerer" - it's 1745 for Maupertuis and 1748 for La Mettrie according to him.
Speaking of dates, yes, 1749 mentioned after 1750 (by both Volz and me) to clarify that just after putting out an "wanted for arrest and harsh punishment: all deserters on foreign soil!" order in 1749, Fritz is ready to issue a pardon in 1750 - not 1752, typing dates quickly is haaaard -.
No batman: not at Soor, at any rate. Volz doesn't say what position Trenck held other than "Cornett", but he does believe Trenck's in-law's brother (described, naturally, as a total soulless bastard in Trenck's memoirs) story which has Trenck show Fritz the first of the letters from Austrian Trenck. As in, show Fritz personally, not his next superior officer who then shows Fritz. Now, this doesn't have to mean Trenck was on talking terms with Fritz before that - maybe he even thought reporting a letter form his Austrian cousin wuld get him the King's attention! - , but it could mean that.
That said, Prades was released from prison after the war, after having been imprisoned for espionage, and told to stay in Silesia, so Fritz telling him to stay in East Prussia and behave himself sounds maybe in character? TBD.
Yes, but Prades was a) a civilian, while Trenck had been a Prussian officer, b) a French citizen, not a Prussian citizen, and c) an actual member of the church - yes, he'd been temporarily excommunicated, but he had been accepted back into the Church. The "Abbé" wasn't just for show, and whether or not you could condemn clerics the same way as laymen was still not completely settled by universal law. Much as Fritz was into mocking Catholicism, a sizable part of his subjects, courtesy of Silesia, were now Catholics, and he needed goodwill to rebuild.
Now, Trenck was also an officer of the Austrian army and as Kaunitz himself (! saw this when having a quick look) told his people to argue a citizen of Austria, not Prussia anymore, but he'd been Prussian first. Mind you, I doubt Fritz would have been amused if, say, Uncle George had George Keith, Lord Marishal arrested at Versailles on the rationale that Keith was a British subject and deserter, then had him extradited to GB. Ahem.
Speaking of Keith, seems Trenck in a OMG HELP! letter from Danzig to another officer of his current Austrian regiment thinks "Mylord Keith" will help him, but the footnote by Volz tells me he means Robert Keith, current British envoy in Vienna. HOW MANY GODDAM KEITHS ARE THERE?
The "wit" makes it sound like Fritz met him at least once and found him memorable, though perhaps he's just going by report.
Direct quote form the letter: "Il ny's sera pas tout-à-fait inutile, vu que c'est proprement un homme d'épée, ne manquant pas d'esprit ni de bravoure."
Now it could just be, like Volz suggests, he wants to make Trenck someone else's problem and thereby defuse the situaton with the Austrians. But "defusing the situation with the Austrians" and "Fritz" do not go usually in the same sentence, especially pre 7 Years War. What it does refute, though, is the idea that Fritz absolutely wanted to see Trenck suffer by any means at this point. Also that there had been no trial, for that matter, since there had been a war tribunal post escape from Glatz, complete with sentence.
No one left Katte's door unlocked. :`-(FW was scarier? Actually, I do have a theory, because glancing at the war tribunal sentence for both Trenck and Schell, I see that Schell isn't from Prussia. He's from "Müncherode in Swabia" according to the judgment. Google didn't give me a Müncherode in Swabia, but it did give me one in Thuringia, near Jena (at this point, belonging to the Dukedom Sachsen-Weimar, the one unborn great nephew Carl August will rule one day. Either way, it's not Prussia. At a guess: maybe Schell had the dubious joy of being forcibly recruited into Prussian service, like so many others. And thought this was a great opportunity for his very own "Fuck you, Fritz!"
Letter to Amalie: I've only seen the mention by German wiki, providing this citation:
Christopher Frey: Friedrich von der Trencks Beziehung zu Prinzessin Amalie von Preußen sowie ein bisher unbekannter Brief Trencks. In: Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 116. Band, Heft 1–2 (2008), S. 146–158.
German wiki, btw, does have the correct date for Trenck joining the army (1744, not 1742 as the memoirs claim), but is also sure he did become a batman in 1745. Then again, German wiki, like English wiki, thinks Fredersdorf embezzled, so...
Oh! One of the documents is the secretary-written letter from Amalie accepting the godmotherhood which Volz mentions:
Berlin, 116 mars 1771/ Je vous félicite, Monsieur, de la naissance de votre fille, et comme je me suis toujours intéressée à votre sort, j'accepte avec plaisir d'etre sa marraine, vous assurant que je prends part à tout les evenenments heureux qui vous surviennent, étant avec estime, Monsieur, votre affectionée, Amèlie.
Okay, here I have to slightly disagree with Volz in that while it's not a love letter, it also doesn't sound like just a letter to someone she never met or heard of before, either. I would say it sounds as if the very least they've met in ye olde pre Magdeburg days.