Frederick the Great, discussion post 14
Apr. 7th, 2020 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnCheck out the opera clips at Rheinsberg!
(both the real-life place, whichselenak found out hosts a festival for young opera singers! and the community ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rheinsberg)
Also! our fandom has been producing lovely fic at a rapid clip (okay, well,selenak has):
Sibling dysfunction: Promises to Keep and My Brother Narcissus
Sibling dysfunction PLUS sibling M/M love triangle: The moon flies face to face with me
VOLTAIRE! Between the hour and the age
(both the real-life place, which
selenak found out hosts a festival for young opera singers! and the community rheinsberg)Also! our fandom has been producing lovely fic at a rapid clip (okay, well,
selenak has):Sibling dysfunction: Promises to Keep and My Brother Narcissus
Sibling dysfunction PLUS sibling M/M love triangle: The moon flies face to face with me
VOLTAIRE! Between the hour and the age
Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-08 09:10 am (UTC)This is from a chapter called "Let's Talk About Money", just to balance the fighting for justice stuff. Orieux gives an example of Voltaire the early modern Capitalist. Renember, "get wealthy" had been an early goal just as "become the greatest writer of the age" had been.
He didn't get much out of his first tragedy, Oedipe, money wise, though there was some income through the subscriptions to his verse epic about Henri IV, the Henriad. Nothing that would have enabled him to live in the same type of comfort as his noble friends did, though. Then there was some inheritance money (never the main thing, but some) from Dad and pious brother Armand later. Also, kid!Francois had managed to charm legendary courtesan Ninon de Lenclos - who'd hit the Paris salon scene in the reign of Louis XIII, lived through the entire reign of Louis XIV and died very old, very rich and still with boyfriends proving that age does not wither and a life in sin does pay. (In addition to being a high class courtesan, she was also famous for her witty letters.) Kid Francois got introduced to her via one of the guys he named as potentially his Dad (according to Orieux mostly to annoy his actual father, since Orieux does not believe Mme Arouet ever cheated on the notary), the Abbé Chateauneuf, and she was charmed enough to leave him a sum to buy books from when she died. Which he did, this being before he figured out about working capitalism.
So after his return from England, adult and having figured out early modern capitalilsm Voltaire invested his money int busying shares of a trade company in Cadiz which equipped ships sailing to and from the West Indies, and he used his connections to get in a position to arrange army supplies (food, mainly, but also clothing). This was hitting the jack pot, since despite the French army in the 20s and 30s being relatively unoccupied (War of Polish succession with the little action Fritz complained about aside), it existed, and wanted to be fed. And once he'd made money, he also lend it to other people, with interest. It was the interest that by the late 1740s provided most of his incone. (Interestingly, as Orieux says, all this money only existed on paper. I.e. you couldn't have broken into Cirey and robbed Voltaire of big boxes of money.) But it certainly by now amounted to a lot. Orieux gives a list from 1749, i.e. the year of Émilie's death, showing that most of Voltaire's income indeed derived from people who owed him money paying him interest. "Historiographer of France" was the one court position at Versailles Voltaire managed to get, along with "gentleman of the chamber, which came with it":
Contract with the town of Paris - 14 025 livres
Contract with M. Le Duc de Richelieu - 4 000 livres
Contract with M. le Duc du Buillon - 5 250 livres
Contract with M. le duc de Villars - 2 100 livres
Contract with m. le Marquis de Lezeau - 2 300 livres
Contract with M. le Comte d'Estaing - 2 000 livres
Contract with M. le Prince de Guise - 25 500 livres
Contract with M. le Président d'Aunueuil - 2 000 livres
Contract with M. Fontaine - 2600 livres
Contract with M. Marchand - 2 400 livres
Contract with the Compagnie des Indes - 605 livres
Income as Historiographer of France - 2 000 livres
Income as Gentleman of the Chamber - 1 620 livres
Contract with M. Le Comte de Guebriant 540 livres
Contract with M. de Bourdeille - 1 000 livres
Contract with the Royal Lottery - 2 000 livres
Contract with M. Marchand - 1 000 livres
Contract with 2S (no, I don't know what that means) - 9 900 livres
Food for the Royal Army in Flandres - 17 000 livres
Income in totem: 74 038 livres.
One of the first things he did when moving to Prussia was buying shares of a shipping company Fritz had founded in Emden for 200 000 livres. (The money resulting from this, he invested in buying estate in Horburg and Reichenweier in Alscace, which was a very smart move, since this was French territory but was administred by the Duchy of Würtemberg. Which meant that neither Fritz nor Louis could get their hands on it.) And then of course he invested in the Saxon government bonds via Hirschel, and shadiness exploded.
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-08 09:44 pm (UTC)I haven't quite figured it out either, but, from googling, it's a right that appears to work like a cut or tax. It's "contrat sur les 2 s. pour livres," which I take to mean 2 sols/sous (smaller unit of currency) per livre (larger unit of currency). That means for every qualifying livre, Voltaire has the right to collect 2 sous. There are 20 sous per livre, so he's getting a 10% cut of something. Of what, I do not know.
The money resulting from this, he invested in buying estate in Horburg and Reichenweier in Alscace, which was a very smart move, since this was French territory but was administred by the Duchy of Würtemberg. Which meant that neither Fritz nor Louis could get their hands on it.
Clever move. Of course, I expect nothing less from our man Voltaire!
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-16 04:49 am (UTC)Heh, also that he did manage to figure out that interest was a good way to do that, which I feel like is not necessarily an obvious thing in the 18th C?
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-16 06:39 am (UTC)Beaumarchais in general like Voltaire was a mixture of shady and idealistic in his dealings, involved in a couple of law suits, and the occasional secret agent stint. The most ridiculous of which was this one:
Beaumarchais: *Most likely pens an anonymous pamphlet about how the new young King Louis and Marie Antoinette not producing any kids is problematic*
Beaumarchais: *Travels to Austria* MT, you should totally hire me as your secret agent in France to find out who the bastard writing that pamphlet was! Don't you want to protect your daughter and your alliance? I have already had a duel with this guy while he was masked and in disguise, see my wounds! He escaped, though.
Kaunitz: Your majesty, there's this shady French character, who just faked some injuries, but don't worry, we've just locked him up.
Beaumarchais: I'm oppressed! Is this the gratitude I get? Also, friends at court, pray point out to the queen I've got a hot new play about a barber in Seville in the making in which she could play the heroine at a court peformance. She's bored, right?
Marie Antoinette: Mom, please release Beaumarchais. He means well. And I want to star in his hot new play at a court performance.
MT: I have a bad feeling about this. But fine.
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-17 03:03 am (UTC)Some extremely trivial trivia that I have not had the opportunity to share before this:
The first ambassador from France to the newly recognized United States was Conrad-Alexandre Gérard. He was born at Masevaux, where his father was secretary to French envoy Comte Conrad-Alexandre de Rottembourg, of whom we've heard a thing or two, and managed his estates. Gérard the son was named after Rottembourg, and his decision to pursue a diplomatic career was thus along the lines of going into the family business, even if he and Rottembourg weren't directly related. (Though I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Rottembourg was his godfather.)
This is why, if you go to Masevaux today (or you spend a lot of time exploring it on Google maps *cough*), you will see a school named Collège Conrad Alexandre Gérard, and if you go to Philadelphia, you can see a portrait of the man.
This post brought to you by: the best way to acquire extremely specific historical information is to write fanfic!
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-17 06:11 am (UTC)To recapitulate: Lessinng: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, major figure of the German enlightenment, this guy. Came up twice, briefly, in our discussoins, once via his play Minna von Barnhelm, set shortly after the 7 Years War and doing just what Molière did in his day, i.e. attack present day problems via satiric comedy, which is why, as more than one German Fritz biographer said, one can be sure Fritz, who enjoyed Molière, would not have liked it even if he'd been able to get over himself and read/watch it. The other time Lessing came up was when I mentioned Charlotte gave him a job as librarian in Braunschweig, thus proving she may have been a lousy mother in the family tradition but really did have independence of mind instead of just taking Big Bro's cultural dictation.
Well, this same Lessing, as a young man, crossed paths with Voltaire in the most face-palming way.
Voltaire: *has an impending trial in his law suit against the banker Hirschel*
Voltaire: *at least pretends not to speak a word of German*
Voltaire: *therefore needs a German translator*
Lessing: *is a young guy of 20 bedazzled by the thought of being of service to the most famous writer of Europe*
Lessing: *translates for Voltaire*
Lessing: Okay, this Voltaire/Hirschel thing is less than edifying, I, the future author of Nathan the Wise and future best buddy of Moses Mendelssohn, expected more from Voltaire than shady dealings and antisemitism. Hey, Voltaire's secretary, is it true he has a new history in the works? I'm reminding you I'm doing this translation thing for free.
Voltaire's secretary: Sure, kid. Have a look at Le siècle de Louis XIV.
Lessing: Awesome! Now I know again why I wanted to work for this guy.
Lessing: *may be the future primary figure of the German Enlightnment, but right now is a young man on a reading high, therefore*
Lessing: FRIENDS! I have the new Voltaire in my hands! It's awesome! Here are some copies for you!
Voltaire: Excuse you. Did you just illegaly distribute my work which isn't even finished? What in this trial made you think I wouldn't come down like a hawk on you for this? THIEF!
Lessing: *is stuck with the "the one who stole Voltaire's manuscripts' reputation for the next few years*
Lessing: The moral lesson I learned from this is that feuding is the way to go in the literary scene. Hey, Gottsched! I agree with you that German literature needs to be a thing, but I think you're dead wrong about us following the French model of drama. Shakespeare is the way to go!
Lessing: *has started the first big feud of the German enlightenment*
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-17 04:31 pm (UTC)Lessing: The moral lesson I learned from this is that feuding is the way to go in the literary scene.
That's...one takeaway.
But go Lessing for anti-anti-Semitism!
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-18 05:05 am (UTC)Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-18 05:03 am (UTC)Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-18 05:02 am (UTC)I have already had a duel with this guy while he was masked and in disguise, see my wounds! He escaped, though.
Kaunitz: Your majesty, there's this shady French character, who just faked some injuries, but don't worry, we've just locked him up.
LOLOLOLOL omg Beaumarchais!
I feel like playwrights these days don't get up to ridiculous secret agent hijinks, why not?? :)
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-18 05:44 pm (UTC)Known to have been secret were the following novelists:
During the war: Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John Le Carré
For a good while after the war: John Le Carré
And Le Carré is still alive.
Also, one of the two headwriters of the tv series The Americans actually was a CIA agent, so if we're counting scriptwriters, this is still a thing.
Back to Beaumarchais: he had a pretty adventuruous life. This was the century for adventurers, full stop. Come the Revolution, he was all for it at first and was a member of the National Assembly, but then the same thing happened to him which did to many a revolution-minded fellow when the Terreur came - Beaumarchais and his family had to get the hell out of France before he himself could get beheaded. He lived long enough to return in safety, and die after a good dinner with family and friends, so - happy ending of sorts? After life full of spectacular ups and downs.
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-20 04:10 am (UTC)...I did not know that about Beaumarchais, possibly because when I learned about the Terreur in high school I didn't know who Beaumarchais was :P (I came across Figaro for the first time in college, and didn't get really interested in it until years after that.)
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-20 05:32 am (UTC)John Le Carré, I have a soft spot for. Not in the sense of liking every single book, of course, and the tropes he came up with that remade the spy genre have by now long become standards or even clichés (still effective ones, tough), but: he has never stopped being engaged with the world around him. He pointed out third world exploitation and the pharmaceutical industry in the early 90s already. And he's seen, to his horror, the rise of nationalism in England. Now, in in the novel a young Le Carré revolutionized the genre with in the 1950s, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, he advanced the cause of shadiness in the spy genre, but it for all its moral ambiguity, it did so with the underlying assumption that acting thus was still justified by the need to not let the Soviet Union win the Cold War. A Legacy of Spies, written by a much older John Le Carré who is thoroughly disgusted by current day politics, has its narrator wonder increasingly what any of it was for. And then Le Carrès most famous character, George Smiley, in his Old Luke Skywalker cameo answers that question with a passionate declaration that's very obviously also an authorial fourth wall breaking, of a writer in the age of Brexit and Trump. Smiley, on why he did the things he did:
"For world peace, whatever that is? Yes, yes, of course. There will be no war, but in the struggle for peace no stone will be left standing, as our Russian friends used to say. (...) Or was it all in the great name of capitalism? God forbid. Christendom? God forbid again. (...) So was it all for England, then?" he resumed. "There was a time, of course there was. But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I'm a European, Peter. If I had a mission - if I ever was aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I was heartless, I was heartless for Europe. If I had an unattainable ideal, it was to lead Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still.
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-16 04:58 pm (UTC)Yes and no. That moneylending with interest is an *effective* way to get rich had been known for thousands of years. The sticking point is that many ethical systems have decided that it is an *immoral* way to get rich.
Christian doctrine has for a long time banned the practice of "usury", or charging any interest at all. Judaism, in contrast, bans interest in loans from Jews to other Jews, *but* allows Jews to charge interest to non-Jews. The different moneylending practices of Christians and Jews is also a key plot point in The Merchant of Venice, with which I believe you are familiar.
This difference has been critical for the dynamics between Jews and Christians over the millennia.
See, when you don't charge interest, it's very hard to get up enough money to do large-scale moneylending, and when you do have the money, it's hard to get up the motivation to take the risk of losing it. If you're allowed to charge interest, the cost-benefit ratio changes dramatically.
So Jews were simultaneously resented and tolerated in Christian communities because of their ability to lend large sums of money. On the one hand, the Christians needed those large sums. Especially kings/governments. So kicking Jews out, or just refusing to have anything to do with their "dirty" money, kept running up hard against the self-interest of the Christians, and self-interest kept winning out.
On the other hand: the ability of Jews to lend money combined with their general otherness to feed a lot of resentment. The loans with interest were seen as proof of their sinfulness (while simultaneously being envied). It also meant that Jews were seen as rich. Because *some* Jews were capable of providing larger sums of money than Christians were, it followed in many people's minds that *all* Jews were making unearned profits off virtuous and innocent Christians. Therefore, if you were poor and there was a rich Jew anywhere (no matter how much his life sucked otherwise), "blame all the Jews" became an easy out. With consequences that we know about.
So you had this tension between periodic bouts of "interest is evil; expel (or worse) the Jews!" and "interest is evil but we need the fruits of interest, so to protect our own citizens we're giving the Jews a monopoly on moneylending, but that's the *only* thing we're giving them!", both of which resulted in general horribleness to Jews. Interest wasn't the only reason for anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution, but it did form an important part of the discourse.
Now, over the millennia, some Christians, like the Medici, have found workarounds for ways to lend money and still make a profit, and in more recent capitalistic centuries, the definition of "usury" has seen a widescale change from "any interest" to "too much interest," but for Voltaire's situation, it's important to know that the papacy was still officially condemning the charging of any interest at all in 1745. (The fact that the Pope had to issue yet another statement banning it, of course, can only mean one thing: people were doing it*.)
This is where being only a nominal Catholic came in handy for Voltaire. He had an advantage over his fellow Frenchmen, not in figuring out that interest was a really neat way to get rich, but in not worrying about the risk to his immortal soul.
* I'll never forget the first time someone told me about the notoriously detailed Hittite laws against all kinds of sexual misbehavior, especially involving bestiality, necrophilia, and incest, and pointed out, "If they had to make a law against it, you know people were doing it!" It's also interesting that intercourse with some kinds of animals got you the death penalty, and others made you ritually unclean and disqualified for certain positions in society, but if you thought that was a fair trade, carry on having sex with your horse, by all means.
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-18 05:13 am (UTC)This is where being only a nominal Catholic came in handy for Voltaire. He had an advantage over his fellow Frenchmen, not in figuring out that interest was a really neat way to get rich, but in not worrying about the risk to his immortal soul.
AH. And yet I would not have made (did not make) this connection. That makes perfect sense!
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-18 06:06 pm (UTC)AH. And yet I would not have made (did not make) this connection. That makes perfect sense!
I will qualify this by saying that I don't know how *much* of a barrier Catholicism would have been for Frenchmen in the 18th century. Like I said, people were doing it, or there wouldn't have been a need for an encyclical. Obviously, the Church was not a big fan of adultery either, and yet. So how much of an advantage Voltaire had, I don't know, but I'm sure it helped that he was an old hand at making his own rules and pissing off the Church.
Re: Money makes the world go round
Date: 2020-04-20 04:09 am (UTC)