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Frederick the Great discussion post 12
Every time I am amazed and enchanted that this is still going on! Truly DW is the Earthly Paradise!
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rheinsberg :)
All the good stuff continues to be archived at
rheinsberg :)
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.
Re: Trenck discussion
It is! As I well know.
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.
Hmm, okay. I guess it's no longer clear whether Trenck counts as evidence for Fritz's witty pretties that turned out to be no good.
At the very least, we have to cross at least one item off the list of "Fritz and the very upsetting week of winning the Battle of Soor":
- dogs gone
- flute gone
- older sister met with arch nemesis
- younger sister has been getting it on with batman
- batman possibly Austrian spy
- MT Empress now due to having crowned FS at Frankfurt.
And depending on how the Trenck/Amalie thing went and when Fritz found out and whether he was the batman at all, possibly two items.
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
True. Though as noted, he supposedly offered pardons to Prussian deserters during wartime.
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?
Robert Keith the envoy is mentioned in the Confusion of Keiths write-up! (Oh, man, that reminds me I need to update that post to include the fact that Kloosterhuis' documentary evidence does *not* support Peter's younger brother, betrayer of escape plans to FW, being named Robert Keith. Notwithstanding all the biographies that do name him that.)
There are actually even more Keiths, since both Peter and James have kids, and I think it's James' kid who shows up in the letters between Fritz and Maria Antonia, but so far, they haven't caused problems for us yet. ;)
But "defusing the situation with the Austrians" and "Fritz" do not go usually in the same sentence, especially pre 7 Years War.
Trufax. I laughed.
Also that there had been no trial, for that matter, since there had been a war tribunal post escape from Glatz, complete with sentence.
But there had been no trial for the initial imprisonment, am I right?
FW was scarier?
What I was thinking. As much as Fritz enjoyed ruining your life, he was pretty reluctant to chop off heads, whereas FW not only chopped off your head, he made sure everyone watched, especially if they cared about you.
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!"
Very likely! Good thinking.
I would say it sounds as if the very least they've met in ye olde pre Magdeburg days.
Agreed.
Re: Trenck discussion
The Rittmeister (i.e. Trenck) showed no restraint whatsoever and told everyone his name, rank and service, he visited me day in and day out. Yesterday this officer showed up in the middle of the night around twelve, delivered a letter signed by the King in (!) Prussia‘s own hand to the City Council, and thus two officers and several grenadiers were sent to his quarters, which were at the boatsmen‘s guildhouse, to arrest him, and he was brought to a local prison via a Porte-Chaise. An hour later, this was told to me through his servant.
Then Abramson protested with the city fathers, etc., to no avail. In the next letter to Kaunitz, he describes further attempts to provent Trenck getting sent to Prussia, and sighs: I do not know what on earth made the Baron of Trenck consider this journey, all the more so since I have reminded him of the danger he was in many times during my daily interactions with him. Still he believed himself safe, and did not want to show the least bit of caution. After his arrest, his servant, named Kayser, who along with a hunter and a footman of his is still here, has told me that he (Trenck) didn‘t have any money with him and that this had been the reason why he had to remain in Danzig for so long; he (Kayser) had advised him repeateadly to open up to me about this. But (Trenck) supposedly replied every time that he wasn‘t afraid of anything and was utterly safe here. By now I‘ve discovered that a brother of his brother-in-law, named v. Meyerentz, who is staying here as a Polish Lt. Colonel, has denounced him to Berlin as a revengfe for the refused payment of 200 Ducats which the Baron of Trenck owes him as well as due to various quarrels from their time in Vienna, thus causing this arrest. I‘ve written all of this with today‘s mail to the Marquis de La Puebla. I await the Empress-Queen‘s orders how to behave towards the city council from now on.
As we‘ve said before, it‘s a miracle Trenck lived long enough to get beheaded in Paris when in his 70s.
Re: war tribunals - yes, one after the escape from Glatz, but not before that. So whatever cousin Austrian Trenck wrote might not have been available as evidence? Or maybe Fritz just didn‘t bother. Incidentally, for all his lying, the documents do prove Trenck did make a couple of inventive escape attempts from both prisons before in one case succeeding and in the other not so much, so if nothing else, he was a terrier, too.
Another quote, this one from Ried to Finckenstein in 1763: Le cas de Trenck est differént: S.M. L‘Impératrice, par un simple mouvement de pitíe, m‘a recommandé fortement de tacher d‘ effectuer sa liberté. Ma souveraine est bien éloignée de contredire S.M. Le Roi sur la conduite et la charactère de Trenck. Tout le monde connait que c‘est un mauvais garnement. Cependant à tout pécheur rémission! Si on considère la longueuer du temps qu‘ il est déjà en prison, et qu, lorsqu‘il fut arrété a Danzig, il était actuellement dans le service de L‘Impératrice, il pairait qu‘il ne devrait pas etre impossible de fléchir S.M. Le Roi.
At the same time, Ried writes to Kaunitz in German: Regarding Trenck, (...) it just depends on finding a good moment to petition the King. For now, I haven‘t achieved anything beyond making his imprisonment somewhat more bearable for him, and gotten permission to allow him to improve his conditions through third parties sending him money now and then. This man‘s regular behavior, however, is so badly that one can‘t take his party in public, for as soon as he sees the slightest hope to expect some help, he starts with his debaucheries. Not withstanding this, I still hope to free him; for those who have his fate in their hands are as much invested in his cause as I am.
Now I knew noble prisoners paid for their imprisonment (food, creature comfort etc.), but - debaucheries? And Ried writes „Ausschweifungen“ ? What is going on in Magdeburg? I mean, beyond Prades cleaning everyone out with card games. (BTW, Trenck did not make up being chained to a wall, there is among the documents a Fritz signed order to that effect after his first three escape attempts.)
Also, I do wonder what he did for the Austrians to deserve all this, or maybe I‘m too cynical and Mt did just feel sorry for him. I mean, it‘s not like even if he got letters from Austrian Trenck and wrote back „yep, on your side now!“, they got much out of this. And since he got arrested at the end of June, and Soor wasn‘t until the end of September, he can‘t have told them that Eichel and the war chest would be around, either...
Re: Trenck discussion
Now I'm curious too!
Re: Trenck discussion
Ried (via messenger, he was in Berlin, after all, not Magdeburg): Trenck, good news! We're working on your case, and here's some money from your sister and other friends so you can buy yourself some nice cushions and maybe some books.
Trenck: Cushions nothing. I haven't gotten laid in nine years. Get me some Magdeburg working girls, stat.
Then again: as Lehndorff's diaries constantly tell me, (war time) imprisonment for nobles who weren't Trenck didn't prevent them from getting visits (like he shows up at old Seckendorff's) and to a degree socialize with the local Prussian nobility, at least the officers. (Hence lots of Austrian and French officers flirting with the Prussian court ladies and dancing with them at balls before being returned to their fortresses.) Now peace time imprisonment is probably a different issue, not to mention that someone like Trenck, with his jail break record, probably would be suspected to make a run for it even in his last few months if they let him out of Magedburg Fortress, but maybe he was allowed to hang out with the other prisoners now?
Re: Trenck discussion
Clarification for
Historically, the cornet, like his infantry equivalent the ensign, was responsible for carrying the flag for his unit. By the 18th century, though, there wasn't a 1-1 relationship between cornets/ensigns and standard-bearers.
Lol, I just discovered a neat thing. There's this one book I read in second grade that's what I always think of when I think of carrying a flag. It's called Did You Carry the Flag Today, Charley?, and it's about a boy who wants to be chosen to carry the flag at school. Amazon tells me the protagonist is named Charley Cornett. I can tell you that flew right past me when I was seven!
Re: Trenck discussion
Schell, the guy who leaves Trenck's door in Glatz unlocked and deserts with him, whom I suspect of having been gangpressed into Prussian service due to him not having been a Prussian, is a Lieutenant.
Re: Trenck discussion
Hmmm, yeah. Looks like he skipped right over second lieutenant and first lieutenant.
I want to know what exactly he contributed to the Austrian cause more than ever.
Circumstantial evidence is certainly damning!
Schell, the guy who leaves Trenck's door in Glatz unlocked and deserts with him, whom I suspect of having been gangpressed into Prussian service due to him not having been a Prussian, is a Lieutenant.
I don't know enough about impressment practices: were foreign noblemen impressed as officers? He is a von Schell and he is a lieutenant. I could be wrong, but it strikes me as dangerous to have your officers serving involuntarily, and impressing noblemen is probably going to cause a hue and cry that impressing lower and middle classes isn't.
Googling around, I'm not finding evidence that noblemen and officers were impressed, and am finding statements that press gangs worked the lower and middle classes, and that noblemen were exempt. I remember Duffy saying that Prussian recruiters would trick people into enlisting voluntarily by telling them they would be officers, and then when they signed up, they were forced into service as common soldiers and not allowed to leave. But if you know of any examples where nobles were impressed as officers, let me know. It's hard to prove a negative after a few minutes of googling.
While googling, I ran across something else that backed up my sense that pardons for desertion were common: "Desertion was to be punished by death. Yet, most deserters were in fact not executed but often enough pardoned and re-admitted to the service if they requested a pardon." This is from Prussian Army Soldiers and the Seven Years' War: The Psychology of Honour, a scholarly volume that was published in 2019, costs $80, and has something like 12 footnotes per page. This particular line has a footnote citing a 1996 scholarly volume. So it looks legit. Again, the book is about the Seven Years' War, but this particular page seems to be talking about practices in general, including peacetime practices. The citation is Disziplin und Desertion: Strukturprobleme militärischer Organisation im 18. Jahrhundert (Historische Forschungen), page 288, which would probably tell us everything we ever wanted to know about how exceptional Trenck's pardon offer was (my sense without reading it is: not enough to warrant concluding that he slept or at least flirted with one of the royal siblings).
Btw, Google is giving me Müncherode as an acceptable alternate spelling for Rot_an_der_Rot Abbey in Swabia, and Wikipedia tells me the town developed out of the abbey, so I'm guessing Schell's from the town called Rot an der Rot today.
Re: Trenck discussion
Hey, I have access to that! Thank you for introducing this to me!
There's lots of stuff on the structure of the Prussian army, recruitment, the role of women and Africans in the army, primary sources etc. Here's just some stuff I found interesting, not necessarily about Friedrich. I'm smashing together quotes from the book:
Tidbits about the recruitment of the army:
The majority of Prussian soldiers were Kantonisten, draftees from the recruiting districts (Kantone) of the regiments. They were the second, third or fourth sons of peasants and craftsmen, coming from the centre of Prussian society. Most of them were Lutheran Protestants of the Pietist brand, who believed that the faithful and professional fulfillment of their duties would secure them a place in heaven. The regiment as the basic organizational unit had its own area of recruitment. There, all male peasants, artisans and small traders who reached a certain height and were not only sons were enrolled at the age of thirteen and drilled for two months during the summer each year once they reached the age of twenty. When it was war time, who was actually called up was decided by the regiment together with the local authorities. More than half of those who had been enrolled were able to evade service. Rich merchants and certain religious minorities such as Jews, Quakers, and Mennonites were excluded from the draft.
The other soldiers were Ausländer (foreigners), which were not always foreigners in the modern sense of the word. The term meant that the person came from outside the Kanton, or was a mercenary, who came from the Kanton but was not required to serve. The Ausländer who volunteered signed six year contracts. But many were not volunteers, and were forcibly recruited by violence, deceit and press gangs.
Tidbits about the role of women:
A soldier did not need to marry a woman for her to be formally recognised as a companion. Direct quote: "Sweethearts: A Prussian idiosyncrasy was the legalization of the Liebsten (sweethearts). Soldiers, who were not allowed to marry due to a lack of money or permission by their master, could get a Liebstenschein (sweetheart diploma). With this, the army recognized the girlfriend of a soldier as a legitimate companion, cared for the women in times of war and made the relationship honourable." Basically, just like wives, they were Soldatenfrauen ("soldiers' women") who could travel between the army and the Kanton if they desired. Or send letters. Friedrich established a free postal service so soldiers and their families could communicate. Women in most soldiers' families needed to take on paid work in addition to housework, and soldiers often took on second jobs. Soldiers’ wives could also take over the military duties of their absent men, such as guard duties or supervising the cleaning of stables. Up to 72 women were allowed to accompany each Prussian regiment in wartime, and they cooked, mended uniforms, sold looted goods, etc.
The Potsdam Orphanage:
"One of the darkest chapters of the Prussian army’s history was the handling of the military orphanage in Potsdam. While Frederick William I had carefully built up the orphanage and provided the inmates with spiritual guidance and a good education by Pietist chaplains and musical instructors, Frederick II sent the children to the arms factories, where many of them perished due to a harsh labour regime and long working hours."
Later in the book, when talking about musicians in the Prussian army: "Some the drummers also came from the military orphanage in Potsdam. During the reign of the Soldier King, orphaned boys were taught to play the drum by older invalid drummers and at the same time taught to write and read in order to join one of the regiments of the elite Potsdam garrison. Under Frederick II, the orphanage degenerated and became a prison-like institution which supplied cheap labour to the nearby factories. The king was not interested in educating the orphans and music and drumming lessons were abandoned."
Sympathy to the author:
The pains of historical scholarship: "(...)but the documents were missing. Unfortunately, the Household Archive could not be accessed at the time of writing as the heirs of the Prince of Stolberg-Wernigerode and the state of Sachsen-Anhalt are involved in a legal dispute about the further use of the Archive."
Sorbs:
Frederick II – and some of his generals – valued soldiers from Magdeburg, Pomerania and Brandenburg greatly. Officers seem to have agreed that men from the West Slavic minority of the Sorbs, who lived in Brandenburg, were ‘the best infantrymen in the world’, as they were totally obedient to their king.
Child soldiers:
Child soldiers were used by the Prussians in siege of Schweidnitz in 1762:
"the regiments used to besiege the fortress were amongst the worst of the entire army and almost entirely composed of children. One day, the garrison staged a sortie and some of the Prussian soldiers began to cry. The colonel commanding the trenches feared that they might do something worse [flee, K. & S.M.], [but] did not abuse them, not even with words but shouted: ‘Cry as much as you want, my children, but open fire and do not run away.’ His gentle behaviour made them fight as good soldiers."
Former slaves in the Prussian army:
I think I remember Mildred being curious, at some point, about the status of black people in Prussia - after she read about a 're-naming ceremony' in Count Lehndorff's diaries? This book provides some answers in the military sense:
"Some of the musicians [in the Prussian army] were black Africans. For example, the Pfeifer (fifers) of the Potsdam Giants were slaves bought in the Netherlands or England. Upon their arrival in Prussia, they were taught German, baptized and given German names. Legally, they were freed and theoretically had the same rights as other non-noble subjects of the king. There were twenty-three of these former slaves in the army at the end of Frederick William’s reign."
This blogpost has visual illustrations of African musicians in the Prussian army, in Friedrich's lifetime. It's an interesting article overall.
Related, here's Friedrich's own opinions about the slave trade, found in Christopher Duffy's biography:
'He replied with angry sarcasm to one of his customs officials who asked for leave for his brother, a Bordeaux merchant, to go slaving under the Prussian flag:
I have always been of the opinion that the trade in negroes is a blight on the human race. Never shall I do anything to authorise or promote it. However, if this business is so attractive to you, you have only to go back to France to be able to indulge your taste. May God keep you in his holy and fond care! (Preuss, 1832-4. IV. 296).'
(But Fredersdorf bought an entire plantation didn't he...??? Fritz????)
Re: Trenck discussion
Potsdam orphanage: that is terrible. And a really black mark against Friedrich.
Incidentally, re: socially beneficial institutions founded by FW, the most famous of these which is still ongoing is the Charité, the famous Berlin hospital. (Though it became famous for its high medical standards only in the later half of the 19th century.)
Citation for Fredersdorf buying a plantation? Is it in this book? Because I don't recall it mentioned in the sources we've had so far. As far as I know, over the years he bought additional estates once given Zernikow in 1740, which became the Fredersdorfischen Güter, but these were all within Brandenburg. Don't know whether directly attached to Zernikow. I'm ready to stand corrected - any additional information is welcome!
Re: Trenck discussion
The source is not this book, but I explicitly remember reading that he bought a plantation in Mexico. This newspaper article mentions that Fredersdorf "bought a plantation in South America", and I'm assuming they're drawing from the same source I read that I can't remember. Giles MacDonogh writes that he had a 'colony' in the East Indies. His doesn't quote sources for each sentence but has a list of sources for the paragraph about Fredersdorf, in the frustrating truncated way he lays out his references. Since that information is in the first sentence, and the first reference in the list is Johannes Richter "Die Briefe Friedrichs des Grossen an seinen vormaligen Kammerdiener Fredersdorf" 1979, pages 20-21, I'm assuming the information is there.
Fredersdorf
His doesn't quote sources for each sentence but has a list of sources for the paragraph about Fredersdorf, in the frustrating truncated way he lays out his references.
MacDonogh is terribly unreliable about his sources actually saying what he says they say, but in this case, he's got it in one. Richter, page 20, "...kaufte Fredersdorf später noch mehrere Besitzungen hinzu, ja er wurde sogar, wie wir aus der früher erwähnten Urkunde des Grafen Schlitz wissen, Besitzer einer 'Kolonie' in Ostindien."
Aaaand, it does appear that the slave trade was thriving in the 18th century in the East Indies (about which I know virtually nothing and had to check).
:(
Nothing in Richter on South America or Mexico, or even the West Indies, that I can see, but I'm hindered by my rudimentary German. Still.
The past is a terrible place, I mean we already knew that. :( A few props to Fritz for speaking out about the slave trade, I guess, though Fredersdorf has some splainin to do.
Oh,
Re: Fredersdorf
Yeah! I'll offer up some more public domain Volz from archive.org that doesn't seem to be on there yet - it's the Grumbkow-Hille-Wolden correspondence, which gives insight into Friedrich's mindset/behaviour at Küstrin as well as other things.
My German is rudimentary too, but I see a pretty sad entry on pages 15 to 16:
Hille to Grumbkow, 23rd of December 1730
"[You?] will have heard from the King from the relay sent yesterday that the Crown Prince had two attacks of Wechselfieber [malaria]. So much excitement, grief and fear must have had a violent effect on his body. Thank God it didn't result in anything more serious(...)" (cont but Google Translate struggles)
I suppose it would be better to post about it on the new discussion topic, hah.
Re: Fredersdorf
Let's just acknowledge that I personally would be a terrible person in the past.
Yeah! I'll offer up some more public domain Volz from archive.org that doesn't seem to be on there yet - it's the Grumbkow-Hille-Wolden correspondence, which gives insight into Friedrich's mindset/behaviour at Küstrin as well as other things.
Oh, that's the first volume of the three-volume work I've been trying to get from our royal patron! I don't know why I didn't see it on archive.org. Oh, it looks like they only have the first volume, so maybe I ignored it in favor of getting all three volumes from the same source.
I don't suppose you have access to download entire volumes from Hathitrust? I was assuming you didn't, because it's US-only, but it doesn't hurt to ask?
(cont but Google Translate struggles)
I think I've noticed you saying this before. If you ever want to post something and ask for help, we have a native German speaker here, and with my year or two of German at school, I usually don't have trouble getting the gist of a text when Google Translate struggles. I usually get it, sometimes miss nuance, rarely get stumped, and frequently ask
Anyway, you can get basic German support from me and advanced German support from her, if you ever have any questions. And I occasionally post something short in German or French on the assumption that everyone here can handle a sentence or two, but if that's no longer true, then I can get better about translating. And feel free to poke if I don't.
For example, that Fredersdorf quote from Richter says that Fredersdorf later acquired still more possessions, and as we learned in the Count Schlitz document mentioned earlier, he even became the owner of a 'colony' in the East Indies.
And yeah, I suppose we should drift over to the new place. :)
Re: Fredersdorf
Sorry for the late reply on this; unfortunately, I don't. Oxford isn't on the list of partner institutions rip
Re: Google Translate
My issue is that I can't read the old-timey German font that everything 18th-century Prussian-related is written in. :\ And neither, apparently, can Google Translate (for archive PDFs my go-to has been taking pictures of my laptop screen with my phone and using GT that way, which is extremely inefficient, I realise). If it's in regular font, I'm usually fine with a bit of German (thanks to Duolinguo LOL). I feel bad asking for translations for minute things that I'm curious about, since I don't want to take up anybody's time
Re: Fredersdorf
Re: Fredersdorf
Re: Fredersdorf
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Re: Trenck discussion
ETA: Oh, I see you already found the sentence. The „earlier mentioned document“ refers to the one in which Fredersdorf‘s widow doesn‘t sign herself „von“, which is how Richter concludes Fredersdorf wasn‘t ennobled. Also, belatedly it’s occured to me that before the demise of the East India Trading Company it‘s not British India yet, but in terms of 18th century use of the term „Ostindien“ in the fictional texts I‘ve seen it in, it was employed for the continent and not the islands. Again: „I could be wrong“ caveat, big time.
Fredersdorf
Hmm. What I had found was that Wikipedia says the Dutch East India Company was involved in slaving in the 18th century, though whether that geographically lines up with the use of the German term Ostindien in the 18C, I'm not sure. It looks like most of the focus on slavery in Wikipedia is the Cape Colony, which is a very specific location on the African continent (Cape of Good Hope). I don't know about slavery practiced by the East Indies company outside of that region, and I don't know if Fredersdorf could have had his "Kolonie" (whatever that is) in one of the slave-based regions.
This person, of unknown scholarly rigor, is making a case that the British East Indies engaged in the slave trade, and that this aspect has been downplayed in the literature due to the low numbers relative to the transatlantic slave trade.
Wikipedia says "Ostindien" is "a historical designation for a large region in Asia, consisting of the Vorderindien (roughly the Indian subcontinent), Mainland Southeast Asia (Hinterindien) and the East Indies Islands." It predates the later use of the term for British India.
To what extent slavery was widespread there, as opposed to the Cape Colony in South Africa, I don't know.
So for now, I'm going to say Fredersdorf's possible involvement as an overseas slaveowner is inconclusive. If he was dealing with either the British or Dutch East Indies companies, he certainly profited indirectly from the slave trade, but then, who didn't? All that tobacco's got to come from somewhere, and I don't think most of it was what you'd call ethical labor practices.
Wow. So far Fredersdorf has been accused of murder, embezzlement, and slaveowning, and so far he's eluded a guilty verdict on all three! (Please let it stay that way, she says, ever the objective historian.)
Re: Trenck discussion
Ooh, you lucky dog!
A Prussian idiosyncrasy was the legalization of the Liebsten (sweethearts).
Did not know about that! Or that the women could take over some of the military duties. I did know about the free postal service and that both soldiers and their wives worked for extra pay to supplement their meager income from serving.
I knew Fritz's wartime practices were indefensible, but did not know that about the children, ouch. It's worse because from everything I've seen, his labor conditions in his porcelain factory were *above* average for the time, but "win at all costs" Fritz during wartime is a different beast than Fritz during peacetime, and this isn't the first time I've had occasion to make that observation.
I think I remember Mildred being curious, at some point, about the status of black people in Prussia - after she read about a 're-naming ceremony' in Count Lehndorff's diaries?
It's definitely something we discussed before.
I second
This book sounds interesting--I wish it weren't $82! Or that I could read library books. But thank you for sharing cool details with us!
Re: Trenck discussion
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.
Check the library!
Re: Trenck discussion
Re: Trenck discussion
And since he got arrested at the end of June, and Soor wasn‘t until the end of September, he can‘t have told them that Eichel and the war chest would be around, either...
True, and also my impression is that the plundering of the Prussian camp and train was not an organized effort carried out under orders from superiors, but the officers losing control of the hussars, which happened more than once during Fritz's wars. Loot was seen as one of the major perks of being a soldier, and the hussars were "irregulars" anyway.
It might also be worth adding to
Re: Trenck discussion
Amalie‘s physical state: no, I only mentioned near blindness before the end, not the difficulties of moving after what appears to have been a stroke or a series of short ones.
Frey also has some other interesting stuff, including that Thièbault, who is the one having worked for Fritz memoirist who subscribes to the Trenck/Amalie sotry, hadn‘t just read Trenck‘s memoirs, as I had guessed from even the rewritten into two volumes version of Thiebault‘s book, but had met Trenck himself, in 1789 in Paris, and talked to him about this. Unfortunately, this makes the entire thing not more or less plausible, since again, Trenck is Thièbault‘s only source, but it‘s possibly worth noting that Thièbault, who knew Fritz for 20 years, is willing to buy the story.
Then again, Trenck must have been enormously convincing. I mean, he got FW2 to actually order that Trenck was to be paid a pension as an officer of the Prussian army. With retroactive payment covering the Magdeburg years. (Might have been because of FW2‘s general „think about what Uncle Fritz would do, then do the opposite“ mantra, of course.)
Oh, and this happened, since Trenck also got an Austrian pension. Bear in mind he was in Paris twice, once when the Revolution started and once in the middle of the Terreur, when he got himself beheaded.
Trenck: *returns in 1790 from Paris*: Vive la Revolution! A bas les aristocrats! Wow, events in Paris are just awesome. I‘m totally going to publish about this.
Leopold: Who do you think you are, Prinz Heinrich? I might not be willing to commit troops to saving my sister Marie Antoinette, but that kind of thing is not okay. Say farewell to your Austrian pension, Trenck.
Trenck: Habsburg bastard! Fine! I‘m going back to the wonderful land of liberty. While still boasting of my royal connections.
The. Dumbest. Gryffindor.
Re: Trenck discussion
I agree it's pears and oranges, but I disagree that makes it completely useless. Because imagine if we didn't have that example. Imagine if desertion were SUCH an unforgivable crime that you had to execute people for it even when you had a good reason for keeping them around as cannon fodder. Then we'd really only have Peter and Trenck as the exceptions, and the Trenck exception of forgiveness for desertion + initial crime would be mind-blowing.
As it is, there's an abundance of precedent for pardoning of desertion, possibly even during peacetime, and it's plausible that if Fritz can find a reason for letting someone come back, he will. And no, Trenck isn't joining the army again (because of his initial crime that predated the desertion), but he's bringing some money with him, which might not be a lot, but in peacetime might be the equivalent of "one more piece of fodder for cannon." Especially if they are allowing pardons and rejoins in peacetime as well, which means "one more potential piece of fodder in the event we go to war again (which I don't think we are) and you're still here."
The. Dumbest. Gryffindor.
No contest!
Re: Trenck discussion
Re: Trenck discussion
It had two magic K words, what can I say? :D I dropped everything.
ETA: Also, I should add that you did already mention in