Because I would feel like a cruel Royal Reader indeed if I didn't translate it for Mildred
You are the best of royal readers, truly! <3
Keith, who was stationed in Wesel, had the task to prepare the flight.
I wonder what was involved in that. Since Peter, as we know, left a week before Fritz was even due to arrive.
Katte had taken a leave of absence when the King had departed from Berlin in order to visit the countryside.
Per Koser, Katte and Holtzendorff (remember: the friend who receives a book from Katte in November for which we still have Katte's letter in his own handwriting bequeathing him the book; he shows up in Zeithain as a pre-Fritz lover) got permission to travel to Malchow on the 15th. He was arrested in the morning of the 16th.
He delayed his departure to the date when he supposed the King would arrive at Wesel, and the need to repair his carriage kept him a day longer than he wanted in Berlin.
FW arrived in Wesel on the 13th, give or take half a day, I believe.
Also, interestingly, Wilhelmine says he was waiting for a saddle to be made that could contain all the papers and money and stuff he needed to travel with.
At night, Colonel von Pannewitz, the commander of the Gens d'Armes, received the order to arrest Lieutenant von Katte; he delayed this until morning in the hope Katte would have been escaped by then, then he sent the regiment's AD to him who still found him and brought him the order to immediately report to the Colonel.
At 8 o'clock in the morning my father, who had then guard duty, the order to send a subaltern officer and four men to the Colonel's quarters
Reminder: according to the official August 30 protocol, the order arrived in the night of the 15th, the postmaster swore someone had overlooked the "urgent" postmark, and Glasenapp got the order to arrest Katte in the morning of August 16th between 6 and 7 am. So either it happened like that, or everyone is testifying that the order wasn't received until 6-7 am.
At any rate, the 8 am detail in the anecdote matches the protocol's 6-7 am quite closely. With all the back and forth, I could see an hour passing before Hertefeld was notified. That means at least one detail of this anecdote, and a surprisingly specific one, is attested.
Non, mon ami, le Tyran demande du sang
As noted downthread, the chronology actually works out on this. Which means no "Lang lebe der König" from Katte here! It also, if it actually happened like this, makes me question the point in the Puncta where Katte repeats that this is extremely not FW's fault, just God's will! Genuine piety or not, "the tyrant demands blood" is a little less saintly and more martyr-like than the document for FW's consumption shows.
Much like Hans Heinrich talking about the King's "gracious letter" but also struggling to forgive.
if Katte had managed to escape, he himself would have lost his head for sure, since the raging King would have demanded another sacrifice
Seems likely.
General von Spaen used to joke that the King had an excellent memory right up to 1730.
Well, I can see not wanting to reminisce about it! Not doing anything for him is less great-- Fritz!--but Spaen's in good company there.
under the pretense of a leisurely ride he happily leaves through the Brün Gate, from which he gallops until Dingden, the first village belonging to Münster, one mile away from Wesel; from there, he hurries through upper Wesel county straight the The Hague
Okay, I'm having way too much fun with this, but between this source, Seckendorff, and the Mylius report, I've got the following itinerary for Peter's flight!
Brün Gate (Wesel) - Dingden - Nijmegen - Rhenen - Utrecht - Hague (and of course the nearby port at Scheveningen, where everyone agrees he was smuggled to England from).
Also worth noting that Baron v. Hertefeld zu Boetzelaar near Xanten's family is from the area. Here's their family seat, and Xanten is just 15 km west of Wesel, just across the Rhine.
And the Brün gate (Brüner Tor) took some hunting, but I turned it up in this picture (upper right) on this page, which has great old black-and-white photos and maps and citadel plans of the old town!
Oh, wait, knowing exactly where to look, I found it on Google maps. Or at least a school/daycare/sth named after it, because the gate is no longer there (the nearby Berliner Gate still stands). Kita Brüner Tor.
You can see the Rhine off to the lower left, and a horizontal dotted line just north of the Kita Brüner Tor that outlines that segment of the old city wall.
The envoy advised Keith to go to England and from there to Portugal, where foreign officers were sought after.
Now, this is looking less reliable, because per his memoirs (via Formey's summary), Peter didn't end up in Portugal until 1736, and it was for reasons unrelated to escaping from FW. Nicolai/Hertefeld's not the only one who says Peter went straight to Portugal, though, and I suspect we have another simplification. (Peter's actually quite complicated, what the younger Keith brother who was with Fritz in the trip, being (like Katte) in a separate place from Fritz on the escape trip, fleeing Wesel without being warned, fleeing within the Hague after being warned, fleeing to England, fleeing Ireland, then coming back to England, then going to Portugal. "Fato profugus...multum ille et terris iactatus et alto" from the Aeneid comes to mind! (Fleeing before fate/driven forward by his fate, much tossed around on both land and sea.))
The envoy learned of this and that Keith's habit of reading late at night had given him away.
Peter, my low-key fave. <3 I'm sure he either developed this habit or put it to good use in his page days while trying to sneak some quality time with books after FW had gone to bed.
Dumoulin demanded a description of the officer, and from the circumstance that said man had been crosseyed, he concluded that it had been Keith.
It's hard to be incognito with a visible disability. This marks the 4th (?) account that mentions this: FW, Lehndorff, Formey, and now Nicolai.
Keith returned to Berlin in the year 1741
Late 1740, I think.
In conclusion, this guy seems to have a much more accurate account of the particulars of Katte's fate than of Peter's, which makes sense since Hertefeld, Sr. was present for much of Katte's, and only heard about Peter's 10-20 years later (and as we've discussed, Peter may have been fudging his own story, we don't know).
The big question: does this mean we can trust the Katte details that we haven't encountered elsewhere or that we have but not in a trustworthy source?
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Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-27 07:18 pm (UTC)You are the best of royal readers, truly! <3
Keith, who was stationed in Wesel, had the task to prepare the flight.
I wonder what was involved in that. Since Peter, as we know, left a week before Fritz was even due to arrive.
Katte had taken a leave of absence when the King had departed from Berlin in order to visit the countryside.
Per Koser, Katte and Holtzendorff (remember: the friend who receives a book from Katte in November for which we still have Katte's letter in his own handwriting bequeathing him the book; he shows up in Zeithain as a pre-Fritz lover) got permission to travel to Malchow on the 15th. He was arrested in the morning of the 16th.
He delayed his departure to the date when he supposed the King would arrive at Wesel, and the need to repair his carriage kept him a day longer than he wanted in Berlin.
FW arrived in Wesel on the 13th, give or take half a day, I believe.
Also, interestingly, Wilhelmine says he was waiting for a saddle to be made that could contain all the papers and money and stuff he needed to travel with.
At night, Colonel von Pannewitz, the commander of the Gens d'Armes, received the order to arrest Lieutenant von Katte; he delayed this until morning in the hope Katte would have been escaped by then, then he sent the regiment's AD to him who still found him and brought him the order to immediately report to the Colonel.
At 8 o'clock in the morning my father, who had then guard duty, the order to send a subaltern officer and four men to the Colonel's quarters
Reminder: according to the official August 30 protocol, the order arrived in the night of the 15th, the postmaster swore someone had overlooked the "urgent" postmark, and Glasenapp got the order to arrest Katte in the morning of August 16th between 6 and 7 am. So either it happened like that, or everyone is testifying that the order wasn't received until 6-7 am.
At any rate, the 8 am detail in the anecdote matches the protocol's 6-7 am quite closely. With all the back and forth, I could see an hour passing before Hertefeld was notified. That means at least one detail of this anecdote, and a surprisingly specific one, is attested.
Non, mon ami, le Tyran demande du sang
As noted downthread, the chronology actually works out on this. Which means no "Lang lebe der König" from Katte here! It also, if it actually happened like this, makes me question the point in the Puncta where Katte repeats that this is extremely not FW's fault, just God's will! Genuine piety or not, "the tyrant demands blood" is a little less saintly and more martyr-like than the document for FW's consumption shows.
Much like Hans Heinrich talking about the King's "gracious letter" but also struggling to forgive.
if Katte had managed to escape, he himself would have lost his head for sure, since the raging King would have demanded another sacrifice
Seems likely.
General von Spaen used to joke that the King had an excellent memory right up to 1730.
Well, I can see not wanting to reminisce about it! Not doing anything for him is less great-- Fritz!--but Spaen's in good company there.
under the pretense of a leisurely ride he happily leaves through the Brün Gate, from which he gallops until Dingden, the first village belonging to Münster, one mile away from Wesel; from there, he hurries through upper Wesel county straight the The Hague
Okay, I'm having way too much fun with this, but between this source, Seckendorff, and the Mylius report, I've got the following itinerary for Peter's flight!
Brün Gate (Wesel) - Dingden - Nijmegen - Rhenen - Utrecht - Hague (and of course the nearby port at Scheveningen, where everyone agrees he was smuggled to England from).
Also worth noting that Baron v. Hertefeld zu Boetzelaar near Xanten's family is from the area. Here's their family seat, and Xanten is just 15 km west of Wesel, just across the Rhine.
And the Brün gate (Brüner Tor) took some hunting, but I turned it up in this picture (upper right) on this page, which has great old black-and-white photos and maps and citadel plans of the old town!
Oh, wait, knowing exactly where to look, I found it on Google maps. Or at least a school/daycare/sth named after it, because the gate is no longer there (the nearby Berliner Gate still stands). Kita Brüner Tor.
You can see the Rhine off to the lower left, and a horizontal dotted line just north of the Kita Brüner Tor that outlines that segment of the old city wall.
The envoy advised Keith to go to England and from there to Portugal, where foreign officers were sought after.
Now, this is looking less reliable, because per his memoirs (via Formey's summary), Peter didn't end up in Portugal until 1736, and it was for reasons unrelated to escaping from FW. Nicolai/Hertefeld's not the only one who says Peter went straight to Portugal, though, and I suspect we have another simplification. (Peter's actually quite complicated, what the younger Keith brother who was with Fritz in the trip, being (like Katte) in a separate place from Fritz on the escape trip, fleeing Wesel without being warned, fleeing within the Hague after being warned, fleeing to England, fleeing Ireland, then coming back to England, then going to Portugal. "Fato profugus...multum ille et terris iactatus et alto" from the Aeneid comes to mind! (Fleeing before fate/driven forward by his fate, much tossed around on both land and sea.))
The envoy learned of this and that Keith's habit of reading late at night had given him away.
Peter, my low-key fave. <3 I'm sure he either developed this habit or put it to good use in his page days while trying to sneak some quality time with books after FW had gone to bed.
Dumoulin demanded a description of the officer, and from the circumstance that said man had been crosseyed, he concluded that it had been Keith.
It's hard to be incognito with a visible disability. This marks the 4th (?) account that mentions this: FW, Lehndorff, Formey, and now Nicolai.
Keith returned to Berlin in the year 1741
Late 1740, I think.
In conclusion, this guy seems to have a much more accurate account of the particulars of Katte's fate than of Peter's, which makes sense since Hertefeld, Sr. was present for much of Katte's, and only heard about Peter's 10-20 years later (and as we've discussed, Peter may have been fudging his own story, we don't know).
The big question: does this mean we can trust the Katte details that we haven't encountered elsewhere or that we have but not in a trustworthy source?