Okay, got my Orieux copy again, and checked the: the Corneille subscriptions. He doesn't use footnotes (there's an extensive bibliograhy at the end, though), alas, but I reread the passage, I could figure out the divergence on Louis XV. and Fritz at least, which was a misunderstanding of mine. In a text about Voltaire in his old age, I automatically tend to assume that "the King" = Fritz if there's no further designation given. But to Orieux the Frenchman, "the King", no further designation given, is automatically "the King of France".
Here's the relevant text passage, literally: The King subscribes 200 copies, Catherine II. imitates him in this, the Empress does the same, Voltaire himself takes a hundred, the Marquise du Pompadour 50, Choiseul likewise. The noble lords don't abstain, their friends follow their example, headed by the English nobility. Voltaire offers to a free copy of one of his to the literati who can't afford to subscribe. He's Voltaire at his best.
(Since he's also been Voltaire at his worst, bickering with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the previous chapter.)
While this explains Louis and Fritz (who does not get mentioned at all by Orieux if "the King" is Louis), we're still left with Catherine vs Elisaveta. Given the date, I assume the following: whoever Orieux' source was just said "the Czarina", and when doing his write up he assumed this would be Voltaire's declared fan Catherine without keeping in mind she wasn't on the throne yet. After all, events and people outside of France can be his weak spot, see also Fredersdorf as Fritz' secretary, "Marie-Christine" instead of Elisabeth Christine, Lessing (aka great German writer of the enlightenment, playwright and essay writer, who as a young man was Voltaire's translator in the Hirschel trial and got very disilluioned about him) as a subsequently famous for his poetry), staging and acting in Voltaire's plays keeping Fritz' brothers from scheming against him, and so forth.
Re: Random things
Here's the relevant text passage, literally: The King subscribes 200 copies, Catherine II. imitates him in this, the Empress does the same, Voltaire himself takes a hundred, the Marquise du Pompadour 50, Choiseul likewise. The noble lords don't abstain, their friends follow their example, headed by the English nobility. Voltaire offers to a free copy of one of his to the literati who can't afford to subscribe. He's Voltaire at his best.
(Since he's also been Voltaire at his worst, bickering with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the previous chapter.)
While this explains Louis and Fritz (who does not get mentioned at all by Orieux if "the King" is Louis), we're still left with Catherine vs Elisaveta. Given the date, I assume the following: whoever Orieux' source was just said "the Czarina", and when doing his write up he assumed this would be Voltaire's declared fan Catherine without keeping in mind she wasn't on the throne yet. After all, events and people outside of France can be his weak spot, see also Fredersdorf as Fritz' secretary, "Marie-Christine" instead of Elisabeth Christine, Lessing (aka great German writer of the enlightenment, playwright and essay writer, who as a young man was Voltaire's translator in the Hirschel trial and got very disilluioned about him) as a subsequently famous for his poetry), staging and acting in Voltaire's plays keeping Fritz' brothers from scheming against him, and so forth.