Leafing through these reports, I keep thinking "OMG Mildred has to see this"
Lol, I checked my email this morning right before I had two consecutive meetings, and when I got to this line and saw the length of the write-up, I had to stop, because otherwise I wasn't going to be able to focus on work. :P
Just from flipping through the pdf before handing it over, I saw that Stratemann looked like he had potentially interesting stuff on the royal family, and of course the 1728-1733 dates meant that I knew I didn't have to ask you to tell me about the parts that you knew would be Relevant to My Interests (TM). ;)
But now I have read this, and wooooow.
First I have to say, you go, eight-year-old AW! You tell your dad off!
What then happened should rather be covered with silence
Um. I hope this doesn't but fear that it does mean that AW got a beating. :(
Also, Brunswick envoy guy, we count on you for Rococo frankness! Silence is for Victorians. :P
But yeah, poor AW. He had to intercede for a long fellow, then FW did that "I'm going to cut off your fingers" joke that it took AW a minute to decide was a joke, and now Katte. :/
Ihro Hoheit haben nicht Ursache um Vergebung zu bitten, weil Sie mir nichts zu wieder gethan und ich selbst meines Todes Ursache bin.
Yet another slight variant on the last words! The new part is "I myself am the cause of my death." This is consistent with "Not Fritz's fault, but also not FW's fault, definitely God punishing me for my ambitions." [ETA: To be fair, he didn't actually say "punish", he went for something a little less self-critical. What he said, as I recall, was that God was using him as a tool in his grand divine plan to illustrate the vanity of human ambitions, which is theologically different.]
I'm still with cahn that Hans Heinrich is trying to forgive FW, not Fritz. :P
So how come his intel on the execution is suddenly dead on? S., you are a man of mystery.
My theory is that the Danish ambassador, von Johnn, who wrote *his* envoy report on November 11, and who evidently leaked the letters and an eyewitness description to Cologne, so that EVERYONE could know about it, was going, "You know what he did? You know what that bastard did?" to his fellow envoys. November 11 to November 25 is two weeks for Stratemann to have gotten the info, directly or indirectly, from the guy who wanted everyone to know what FW did.
Okay, so my German reading list just got a little longer. :P Thank you for this!
ETA: OH WAIT. I just realized that November 25 is when you said S reads the letters; November 11 is the date of the Katte execution entry. WELL THEN. Seckendorff's and Dickens' envoy reports also date to November 11, per Koser. I have to conclude at this point that all the envoys found out that day, or the day before. And I'm starting to suspect some of them were talking to each other.
Oh, that's right, Lavisse says Sauveterre obviously based his execution report on Dickens', because he didn't have good intel of his own. (Sauveterre was Rottembourg's secretary, who took over for Rottembourg after he left, and was apparently much less proactive than his former boss.) So if Dickens is talking to Sauveterre and the latter is basing his report on the former's, and Stratemann's is very similar to von Johnn's and *suddenly* S has very detailed info and access to letters where before he had nothing...I'm going with: Katte's execution was a shocking event that got everyone gossiping, and people shared notes.
Moreover, the Danish envoys were, from what I've seen, unhappy with FW and vice versa during 1730 for a number of reasons (including the usual FW recruiting in their territory reason). Since von Johnn's eyewitness report is nearly verbatim the same as the Cologne pamphlet, even more so than Stratemann's, I'm in agreement with Koser that Johnn is the most likely leaker, and since Løvenørn is suspected of tipping off Katte, I can't imagine Johnn would hesitate to share this info, which was, after all, meant to be public. *And* I'm speculating that Johnn might actually have been annoyed with FW's fanboy and wanted to try to clear some of the stars out of his eyes. :P
Stratemann's strategy, in contrast, got three children of his duke married to three children of FW, including the two most politically important ones, so...I guess that paid off. :P
Btw, I was googling Løvenørn just to get the characters that aren't on my keyboard, because I'm oddly lazy about random technical things :P, and I saw that he died in February 1740. That makes even more sense of why Fritz in 1739 is asking Fouqué, who's about to join Danish service, if he has any news on Løvenørn. I wonder if Fritz heard he was sick. In any case, as I've pointed out, Fritz didn't see Løvenørn after 1730 that I know of, and to still be asking after him in 1739 speaks of some fondness.
We know you tried, Løvenørn.
(If I don't get a lot of German done today, detective work is why. ;) )
Son of ETA: Let's not forget that Johnn and the pamphlet he leaked have the only variant of Katte's last words (so far) to mention FW, i.e., "If I had ten lives, I would give them all to reconcile Your Royal Highness with your lord father the King." Johnn: not a fan!
English translation, because I need you to understand this if google doesn't deliver:
I applaud your priorities, and also the sense of urgency you managed to convey in the word "need." :D I extremely needed to understand that, so thank you very much for the translation.
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Re: The Braunschweig Perspective : First Impressions
Date: 2020-09-30 10:14 pm (UTC)Lol, I checked my email this morning right before I had two consecutive meetings, and when I got to this line and saw the length of the write-up, I had to stop, because otherwise I wasn't going to be able to focus on work. :P
Just from flipping through the pdf before handing it over, I saw that Stratemann looked like he had potentially interesting stuff on the royal family, and of course the 1728-1733 dates meant that I knew I didn't have to ask you to tell me about the parts that you knew would be Relevant to My Interests (TM). ;)
But now I have read this, and wooooow.
First I have to say, you go, eight-year-old AW! You tell your dad off!
What then happened should rather be covered with silence
Um. I hope this doesn't but fear that it does mean that AW got a beating. :(
Also, Brunswick envoy guy, we count on you for Rococo frankness! Silence is for Victorians. :P
But yeah, poor AW. He had to intercede for a long fellow, then FW did that "I'm going to cut off your fingers" joke that it took AW a minute to decide was a joke, and now Katte. :/
Ihro Hoheit haben nicht Ursache um Vergebung zu bitten, weil Sie mir nichts zu wieder gethan und ich selbst meines Todes Ursache bin.
Yet another slight variant on the last words! The new part is "I myself am the cause of my death." This is consistent with "Not Fritz's fault, but also not FW's fault, definitely God punishing me for my ambitions." [ETA: To be fair, he didn't actually say "punish", he went for something a little less self-critical. What he said, as I recall, was that God was using him as a tool in his grand divine plan to illustrate the vanity of human ambitions, which is theologically different.]
I'm still with
So how come his intel on the execution is suddenly dead on? S., you are a man of mystery.
My theory is that the Danish ambassador, von Johnn, who wrote *his* envoy report on November 11, and who evidently leaked the letters and an eyewitness description to Cologne, so that EVERYONE could know about it, was going, "You know what he did? You know what that bastard did?" to his fellow envoys. November 11 to November 25 is two weeks for Stratemann to have gotten the info, directly or indirectly, from the guy who wanted everyone to know what FW did.
Okay, so my German reading list just got a little longer. :P Thank you for this!
ETA: OH WAIT. I just realized that November 25 is when you said S reads the letters; November 11 is the date of the Katte execution entry. WELL THEN. Seckendorff's and Dickens' envoy reports also date to November 11, per Koser. I have to conclude at this point that all the envoys found out that day, or the day before. And I'm starting to suspect some of them were talking to each other.
Oh, that's right, Lavisse says Sauveterre obviously based his execution report on Dickens', because he didn't have good intel of his own. (Sauveterre was Rottembourg's secretary, who took over for Rottembourg after he left, and was apparently much less proactive than his former boss.) So if Dickens is talking to Sauveterre and the latter is basing his report on the former's, and Stratemann's is very similar to von Johnn's and *suddenly* S has very detailed info and access to letters where before he had nothing...I'm going with: Katte's execution was a shocking event that got everyone gossiping, and people shared notes.
Moreover, the Danish envoys were, from what I've seen, unhappy with FW and vice versa during 1730 for a number of reasons (including the usual FW recruiting in their territory reason). Since von Johnn's eyewitness report is nearly verbatim the same as the Cologne pamphlet, even more so than Stratemann's, I'm in agreement with Koser that Johnn is the most likely leaker, and since Løvenørn is suspected of tipping off Katte, I can't imagine Johnn would hesitate to share this info, which was, after all, meant to be public. *And* I'm speculating that Johnn might actually have been annoyed with FW's fanboy and wanted to try to clear some of the stars out of his eyes. :P
Stratemann's strategy, in contrast, got three children of his duke married to three children of FW, including the two most politically important ones, so...I guess that paid off. :P
Btw, I was googling Løvenørn just to get the characters that aren't on my keyboard, because I'm oddly lazy about random technical things :P, and I saw that he died in February 1740. That makes even more sense of why Fritz in 1739 is asking Fouqué, who's about to join Danish service, if he has any news on Løvenørn. I wonder if Fritz heard he was sick. In any case, as I've pointed out, Fritz didn't see Løvenørn after 1730 that I know of, and to still be asking after him in 1739 speaks of some fondness.
We know you tried, Løvenørn.
(If I don't get a lot of German done today, detective work is why. ;) )
Son of ETA: Let's not forget that Johnn and the pamphlet he leaked have the only variant of Katte's last words (so far) to mention FW, i.e., "If I had ten lives, I would give them all to reconcile Your Royal Highness with your lord father the King." Johnn: not a fan!
English translation, because I need you to understand this if google doesn't deliver:
I applaud your priorities, and also the sense of urgency you managed to convey in the word "need." :D I extremely needed to understand that, so thank you very much for the translation.