cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

Yuletide nominations:

18th Century CE Federician RPF
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria
Voltaire
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Ernst Ahasverus von Lehndorff
Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Anna Amalie von Preußen | Anna Amalia of Prussia (1723-1787)
Catherine II of Russia
Hans Hermann von Katte
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf
August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758)

Circle of Voltaire RPF
Emilie du Chatelet
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (Madame de Pompadour)
John Hervey (1696-1743)
Marie Louise Mignot Denis
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Armand de Vignerot du Plessis de Richelieu (1696-1788)
Francesco Algarotti

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Heinrich pre 7 Years War was not an important, influential person, nor one with financial means that he didn't derive from Fritz. I totally feel justified by canon for one particular dialogue "My brother Narcissus" now.

Headcanon!

Also, do you know what year this was? The Fritz/Algarotti relationship was kind of rocky after 1740, and Heinrich's obviously going to be in a position of influence if anything happens to Fritz. Algarotti hedging his bets?

I still wish we had the alternate poems for Fritz and MT, depending on who'd win the war, which Lady Mary mentions, but evidently not, instead, two essays tell me that Algarotti supposedly completely bought into the Fritzian propaganda like calling the battle of Prague in May 1757 the modern "Battle of Pharsalus" (with Fritz as Caesar, of course), the decisive battle between Caesar and Pomey, which became a bit awkward when the war kept happening afterwards, not to mention Prussian defeats.

Oops. :P

Algarotti loyally kept comparing Fritz to Caesar (as in, Fritz surpassing good old Gaius Iulius) all through the war in his letters, though.

Aww, Algarotti loyal to his ex.

I was also reminded that Algarotti sending Fritz broccoli is canon.

Yep! That's why I was so surprised a couple days after I found this to see an email notification from you with the word "broccoli" in it. I thought you'd found this episode and had something to say about it! (Your actual post, of course, turned out to be much, much more exciting.)

makes his "he's mourning so loudly that I have no doubt he doesn't mean it and he'll get over it at once" dig, and Algarotti disagrees

Go Algarotti! I have to say, while I will acknowledge that Fritz did many bad things, emotionally, I won't yell at him on other people's behalf in my head, just gently suggest he should stay away from them until he gets some therapy. EXCEPT ÉMILIE. Émilie I will fight Fritz for.

So good for Algarotti and his priorities. :P

b) A first, short version of a travel book in the form of nine letters addressed to Lord Hervey, "Saggio di lettere sopra la Russia", published by Algarotti in 1760
c) an extended version which adds twelve more letters to other people drafted in 1763, and
d) the final version from 1764, going into print after Algarotti's death

Oooohhh. This makes sense of all these copies that I was finding when I was researching the chronology of Algarotti's life. For lo:

Dissertation author points out that Preuss says the first letter from Fritz to Algarotti, after the latter's first visit to Rheinsberg is misdated by about a month (September 1, when they didn't meet until September 20). Then the dissertation author footnotes a letter from Algarotti talking about his visit with Fritz, gives the date, and doesn't notice the date is August 30.

"Both letters were misdated?" I thought. So I did a little digging, found another edition of Algarotti's letters on Russia, and found the same letter had been dated to late October!

So now we've got three misdated letters.

Long story short, I did some cross-referencing, concluded Preuss is correct, and we actually do have three misdated letters. If two of them are from a literary correspondence-cum-travel guide, that makes a lot more sense.

Also, I clearly care waaaay too much about chronology. :P

(Sidenote: Russian nobility, who famously owned serfs longer than anyone else in Europe, as slaves, that's... one interesting simile, Algarotti. But you're in the best tradition of Rule, Britannia here , as in "Britons never never never shall be slaves".. they'll just own them.)

Fritz: I'm a galley slave!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Could it be that what Voltaire at first intended to do when reworking his correspondance with Madame Denis from 1750 - 1753 was something similar in form though of course not in spirit, i.e. a "Prussia Letters" travelogue (doubling as Fritz trashing)

Seems plausible to me! Now that we know that this is a thing. I notice both Lady Mary and Voltaire wanted theirs released posthumously, though for very, very different reasons. ;)

Because while they're called "memoirs" in English

And French, I note: Memoires Pour Servir A La Vie De M. De Voltaire.

Essay: ....which during the war were stored in Hubertsburg.
Self: Err.
Essay: ....where they ended up destroyed or sold when Fritz had Lentulus vandalize it.

*facepalm*

Let's hope the majority were sold because Fritz needed money?

From:

selenak

Also, do you know what year this was?

Alas no. Heinrich is only mentioned along with James Keith as one of Algarotti's non-Fritz dedicatees from his Prussian era in the preface - as part of the larger point of him knowing everyone - , and they don't even provide a footnote to say which works were dedicated to whom. (The dedication of the second edition of *I'll have to look it up* to Fritz is mentioned in the essay about their correspondance, though.)

Oh, and the correspondance essay gave me one little important gem I forgot to mention: with the beginning of the 7 Years War, Fritz switches his usual ending of his letters to Algarotti - and various other people - to "En ceci je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait en sa sainte et digne garde". Previously, I had assumed this was a result of him having to be the defender of the Protestant faith, or somthing like that. Not really, though not unrelated. This precise phrase was the way Henri IV of France, Henri de Navarre, Henri Quatre, aka Most Admired Of All French Kings ended his letters, and to be even more precise, Fritz knew that because Voltaire had used this fact in his epic about Henri IV., the Henriad. So he was making both a literary allusion and a historical comparison (that still cast his opponents as the bigotted Catholic league fighting against Henri IV, never mind that neither Russia nor Sweden were Catholic powers), which his correspondants, and especially a correspondant like Algarotti, were bound to understand at once.

Dating of Algarotti's letters: there's one more factor, also mentioned in the essay. Both Russia and England were still using the Julian calendar at this point. While Algarotti, as an Italian and continental European, most of the time uses the Gregorian calendar as a matter of course in his letters, he might not have done so when writing from Russia to a Brit. Then again, since he was recreating these letters anyway, he might have simply misdated.

I notice both Lady Mary and Voltaire wanted theirs released posthumously, though for very, very different reasons. ;)

Hervey: I wanted mine released posthumously, too, preferably when the love rat has just been crowned, for maximum embarrassment. How was I to know he'd die just a few years after me, and that Grandson would censor my precious manuscript? Voltaire, at least your niece didn't do that but gave posterity the full version.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

with the beginning of the 7 Years War, Fritz switches his usual ending of his letters to Algarotti - and various other people - to "En ceci je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait en sa sainte et digne garde". Previously, I had assumed this was a result of him having to be the defender of the Protestant faith, or somthing like that.

Huh, interesting. We had discussed this before (I had noticed that he sometimes did it and sometimes didn't with the same correspondents), and this is what I came up with:

Fritz does the same thing in French to a lot of other correspondents: "je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait en sa sainte et digne garde." Including Algarotti...I was looking through Trier to see who else he does this to (they remind me that he does this to Voltaire periodically, which I had seen but forgotten), and the list is long, and then I saw the editor actually talks about the formula. They conclude that he does this when he's either having a secretary copy his letter (I guess the secretary presumably adds this formula) or even having them write the letter from an outline. Otherwise, Fritz writing his own letters will add his own affectionate or otherwise personal note at the end. And they say this is why Voltaire only gets this formula when Fritz is pissed off at him. Oooh. I wondered why it was only some Voltaire letters.

So I assumed that he switched to doing it with Algarotti during the Seven Years' War because he's more pressed for time and delegating more of his letter-writing. Iirc, Rheinsberg author Hamilton claims that you can tell that the Suhm letters started being delegated as soon as Fritz became king.

Of course, I have no idea whether Preuss is correct, but it is at least worth taking into consideration.

Dating of Algarotti's letters: there's one more factor, also mentioned in the essay. Both Russia and England were still using the Julian calendar at this point...Then again, since he was recreating these letters anyway, he might have simply misdated.

I considered that, but O.S. only accounts for about 12 days, and these letters are off by about 30 in either direction. Misdating or intentional redating to fit a narrative make the most sense.

Hervey: I wanted mine released posthumously, too, preferably when the love rat has just been crowned, for maximum embarrassment.

I make this fandom sound all respectable and impressive when I talk to other people (I'm studying 18th century history!), but it's really just a tabloid meets soap opera. I'm waiting until my French native speaker friend catches on that all the ambiguous lines he gets asked to interpret have to do with sex or sexual orientation. (Seriously, 2/2 so far. :P)

From:

selenak

Of course, I have no idea whether Preuss is correct, but it is at least worth taking into consideration

Yes, but if that salutation/end of letter is a direct Henri IV/IVoltaire quote, I‘m going with Fritz styling himself as the hero of the Henriad as an in joke that‘s not entirely meant as a joke by him.

„Tabloid meets soap opera“ sounds about right. A certain friend of mine, reading the Fritz letters to Heinrich re: Marwitz for the first time: „That‘s why too over the top purple prose. I don’t buy it. Who writes like that? Are you sure these weren‘t forged?“

From:

cahn

I mean... "tabloid meets soap opera" was how you guys got me into this fandom :P :D

Who writes like that?

Heh, it's true! The Marwitz letters in particular really are way over-the-top.

Though on the other hand, anyone asking whether Voltaire's over-the-top comments about Fritz had been forged would have been right, so there's that... On the other hand, they were forged by Voltaire himself! I am continually delighted by how this fandom is totally WTF :)

From:

selenak

The 18th Century: When "over the top" was just normal and understatement had not been invented yet. :)

Seriously though: if you put, say, the Marwitz letters side by side with Lady Mary's love letters to Algarotti, Lord Hervey's fumings about Fritz of Wales and just about any letter from Voltaire to Fritz and vice versa, the over the topness becomes just a matter of perspective.

I'm still standing on my explanation as to why 19th and early 20th historians left them out of the Fritz correspondance, though. :)