Because I would feel like a cruel Royal Reader indeed if I didn't translate it for Mildred, instead of just summarizing it.
I previously didn't dare to protest against the commonly shared tale that (Katte) had been with the King and the Crown Prince in Wesel. But now Landrat Baron v. Hertefeld zu Boetzelaar near Xanten has been kind enough to share with me from the trustworthy narration of his late father the true circumstances of the arrest of the unfortunate Herr v. Katte. I believe my readers will thank me for sharing the both interesting and trustworthy news in this gentleman's own words.
"My father, born in the year 1709, served in the year 1730 with the Gens d'Armes at a Lieutenant, together with his unfortunate friend, Lieutenant von Katte. The later, Lieutenant von Keith and Lieutenant von Spaen were the confidants of the then crown prince, who were meant to support his escape to England. Katte remained in Berlin and was supposed to follow the Crown Prince via Leipzig through the HRE. Keith, who was stationed in Wesel, had the task to prepare the flight. Spaen, then a Lieutenant with the tall guard at Potsdam, knew about the plans but had no active part in them. The escape of the Crown Prince was supposed to happen in the moment when the King departed from Wesel; for as the Crown Prince usually travelled behind the King from their various stops, he would have won a few hours before his escape became known to the King. Katte had taken a leave of absence when the King had departed from Berlin in order to visit the countryside. 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. At the evening of his departure he met Major v. Asseburg from the Gens d'Armes who told him with a frightened face: "Are you still here? I am amazed!"
Katte replied to him: I travel this very night. Asseburg knew that a courier had brought the news of the Crown Prince's arrest, but he couldn't say more due to the distrust which was then dominating in Berlin. 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; and at half past 8 Katte was brought in the Colonel's carriage in the company of the AD and the guard to my father in the Gens d'Armes guards house, with the order: he was now responsible for the prisoner with his head, to be transmitted from one officer on guard's duty to the next.
When Katte was transported to Küstrin, my father took leave of him with the words: j'espére de vous revoir bientot; and (Katte) replied: Non, mon ami, le Tyran demande du sang. He gave my father some books as presents in which he'd written his name, as a souvenir, and I still own some of them.
Spaen was arrested the very same day at Potsdam by Colonel von Kneseback. After Katte's death, he was casheered, and brought to Spandau for a yar; immedately after his release, he went to the Netherlands to serve there, and died in the year 1768 at his country estate Bellevue near KLeve, as a Generalmajor in Dutch service. He told everyone that the Crown Prince had planned to go to England in order to marry an English Princess; and that, if Katte had managed to escape, he himself would have lost his head for sure, since the raging King would have demanded another sacrifice. Frederick the Great had done nothing for Spaen after his ascension; but when he travelled to Kleve in the year 1763, he did take lodgings with General von Spaen, was very gracious and confidential towards him, reminded him of stories of their shared youth, but did not mention the year 1730 with one word; which is why General von Spaen used to joke that the King had an excellent memory right up to 1730.
Keith had been in Wesel when the Crown Prince was arrested. The later found means and ways to send a note to him, on which he'd written with a pencil: Sauvez-vous, tout es découvert. Keith recognizes the handwriting, goes to his stable, puts his saddle on his horse himself and 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, where he goes to an ambassador - I forgot whether my father said it was the English or the French ambassador -, tells him of his fate, and pleads for his protection. The envoy promises said protection to him, and escorts him personally to the mansard roof, and orders his valet to serve this gentleman exclusively, and not to tell anyone else that there is a stranger lodging in this house. The envoy advised Keith to go to England and from there to Portugal, where foreign officers were sought after.
Meanwhile, the King was angry to the utmost degree that Keith had escaped him. At once Colonel von Dumoulin, later General lieutenant von Dumoulin, had to take up the pursuit of Keith, and he was given a letter to the King's envoy at the Hague, which ordered the later to assist Dumoulin in demanding Keith should be surrendered. Dumoulin and Meinertzhagen learned that one day a foreign officer had arrived and had gone to the envoy in question, without ever having been seen again. Their spies told them that in the mansard roof of the envoy's house, light was burning late at night, and that this room had not been used before. From these circumstances they concluded that Keith was hiding at the envoy's, and now their spy didn't let the envoy's house out of his sight. The envoy learned of this and that Keith's habit of reading late at night had given him away.
The following morning, the envoy came to Keith and told him: You are betrayed. Your King has spies after you, so be ready, I'll bring you to Scheveningen today, and everything there is ready for your transport to England. In the evening, he brought Keith in his own carriage to Scheveningen, and gave him letters of reccomendation for London, and didn't leave him until he saw him depart on a fisherman's boat. Keith happily arrived in England, from where he went into Portueguese service armed with reccommendations from the court. A few days later, Dumoulin learned by accident that Keith had escaped. He had gone to Scheveningen in order to see the fishermen arrive and was surprised that they dared to brave the sea in such little boats. One of the fishermen told him: With such a boat, we even make the trip to England; I'm just returning from there, and have transported a foreign officer. Dumoulin demanded a description of the officer, and from the circumstance that said man had been crosseyed, he concluded that it had been Keith.
Keith returned to Berlin in the year 1741, was appointed Colonel lieutenant and Master of the Horse, and became curator at the Academy of Sciences. My father knew Herr von Keith very well, and was told by him the way of his escape. V. Hertefeld."
selenak, you are the very best, and I am a deeply grateful royal readee! <3
Mondays and Tuesdays are the worst days for me in terms of having time for salon, but I am reading avidly (perhaps too avidly :P), and will comment as soon as I can.
I must go to bed now, but have only 2 meetings tomorrow, and aside from that am hoping to spend some time in salon. As you can see, I'm putting off the really juicy stuff until I have time to devote to it properly. ;)
my father took leave of him with the words: j'espére de vous revoir bientot; and (Katte) replied: Non, mon ami, le Tyran demande du sang.
:( I know you'd summarized this for us before, but really: :(
reminded him of stories of their shared youth, but did not mention the year 1730 with one word; which is why General von Spaen used to joke that the King had an excellent memory right up to 1730.
Okay, this breaks my heart. :((((((((((((((
I am sort of simultaneously charmed and saddened by the story of Keith being betrayed by his habit of reading late at night!
my father took leave of him with the words: j'espére de vous revoir bientot; and (Katte) replied: Non, mon ami, le Tyran demande du sang.
:( I know you'd summarized this for us before, but really: :(
Wait, had we seen this quote before? It's the first I remember seeing it. That's why Selena wasn't sure at first if it was real, before she realized the date.
I am sort of simultaneously charmed and saddened by the story of Keith being betrayed by his habit of reading late at night!
Same, but I'm mostly just glad that it didn't result in his death!
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?
I wonder what was involved in that. Since Peter, as we know, left a week before Fritz was even due to arrive.
One the one hand: it actually would make sense if the original plan had been for Fritz to escape from Wesel for all the reasons Hertefeld gives, plus if England is your intended destination, then that's the pest route. However, in the interrogations Fritz says that he wanted to go to France first because he knew that if he went to England directly, then FW would blame SD (and Wilhelmine) as conspirators. (BTW: he had to know FW would blame them anyway.) If you want to go to France, then of course Fritz' far earlier point of departure is better. So: what was the original plan, and when and how did they all talk about it, given Peter is transferred to Wesel at the end of January 1730? If it was always for Fritz to leave from southern Germany and go to France, then Peter's participation is actually not necessary at all. He could have, like Spaen, be someone who knows but stays where he is and hopes FW won't suspect later he knows. Not to mention: unlike Katte, Peter has no useful connections in England or France, he doesn't know G1's former mistress or French Count Rottembourg. Involving Peter in the active planing at all also carries the risk of the mail to and from Wesel being read.
Now I think you brought this up before, but it does point towards the escape idea originally being hashed out between Fritz and Peter, and modified later once Katte came on board. Maybe what Hertefeld Sr. and Jr. recall was the original plan, but hadn't been any longer after March when the last attempt at an English marriage fell through and Fritz talked Katte into joining him, and that's another thing that got simplified with the various retellings, because "first it was this plan, and then it was that plan" is tricky to remember along with everything else.
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.said (whether it was true or not) to his Gens d'Armes comrades when they asked him during the weeks of his arrest in Berlin why the hell he hadn't left earlier that it was because *instrument for method of transportation* needed to be repaired, and Wilhelmine heard it from another member of the regiment. (Indirectly, because my new theory here is that Wilhelmine had it from Fräulein von Pannewitz, FW puncher and sister to Katte's commander Colonel von Pannewitz, when she visited Berlin for eight months between late 1732 and 1733, and that Fräulein von Pannewitz had it from her brother.)
Conversely, it doesn't necessarily contradict Fritz telling Mitchell that he heard from the Danish envoy Katte remained because of "some girl", because that might have been the reason Katte gave to the Dane when talking to him before his arrest, especially if we're right and Katte actually meant that he needed to burn all the stuff incriminating Wilhelmine. I could see Katte giving a different reasons to regiment comrades, who'd know more about whether or not he was involved with someone at the time, and the Danish envoy, who doesn't, in both cases avoiding to name the actual reason for reasons of discretion.
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.
Yes, and since Dad Hertefeld had no way of looking that up while narrating the story to Hertefeld Jr., I think that makes it canon that Hertefeld was the guy on guard duty that day and did receive Katte etc.
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.
My thinking precisely. If it's an authentic quote, we're given a rare glimpse of what Katte actually thought about FW sentencing him to death, as opposed to what he felt he had to write to his father and to Fritz, knowing in either case his letters would have to pass censorship. Now, if this was an account like Voltaire's written outside Prussia, I'd be more sceptical. But inside Prussia, criticism of FW even in the age of FW3, two generations removed, is not a given thing, and the takes at the time Nicolai publishes this Hertefeld letter that I've read so far toe the line of "very tragic, this fallout between FW and Fritz, but thankfully, they made up later and we can root for both Kings!" And the description of Katte before his death all focus on what a model prisoner he was and how he died in the faith. So this quote is really bucking the trend and risking censorship tickling here, which makes me believe it is authentic.
(Also: Lehndorff's negative descriptions of Hertefeld focus on him being boring; he doesn't say he thinks Hertefeld is a liar or prone to exaggaration.)
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).
Very useful for future fanfic writers!
Kita is short for Kindertagesstätte, so it's a daycare centre.
I suspect we have another simplification
Yes. Since Hertefeld Jr. isn't sure about the English or the French envoy, I think it's even more likely he just recalled about Peter's ten years of absence that he ended up serving in Portugal on reccommendation of some British nobles, and simplified this to the rec having been given by the English envoy himself in the Hague. It's an obvious mistake to make.
Like you two, I'm very charmed by Peter reading late at night, and I think that's another authentic detail. As is, of course, Peter being cross-eyed, which, again, the two Hertefelds had no way of looking up when giving their version, unlike us, so Jr. correctly remembered from what Sr. had told him.
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?
See above to my take on the "le tyran" quote and the "why did Katte stay in Berlin" question, as well as "was Fritz escaping from Wesel the original plan, and if so, why then did Peter leave before Fritz was supposed to get there?". Yours?
(Indirectly, because my new theory here is that Wilhelmine had it from Fräulein von Pannewitz, FW puncher and sister to Katte's commander Colonel von Pannewitz, when she visited Berlin for eight months between late 1732 and 1733, and that Fräulein von Pannewitz had it from her brother.)
LOL! I woke up this morning thinking, "Wait, I bet Fräulein von Pannewitz is Wilhelmine's source! I need to go tell everyone!" and I jumped out of bed and came downstairs...to find that I'd been scooped. :D
My reason, though, was that Wilhelmine, many years later, and Stratemann, shortly thereafter, both give very similar renditions of the lines Katte wrote on/below his window in prison. And I have *always* wondered how Wilhelmine got those so many years later, when as far as I know, they were never published (unlike the letters). And now that I realize that Colonel Pannewitz was not just Katte's commander, but this closely involved in his arrest, and that Katte was held in the Gens d'Armes guard house and not something more generic...I think we have a plausible transmission route for something as detailed and word-specific as a poem. (There are noticeable differences between Stratemann and Wilhelmine, but comparative method I learned tells me that they must ultimately go back to the same source, which means they both have good intel on this point.)
Also, you're missing some words (possibly due to bad html?) in:
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.said (whether it was true or not) to his Gens d'Armes comrades
I can mentally supply sth like "This may have been what Katte said," but if you said more before that, I can't reconstruct it. ;)
Yes, bad formatting seems to have swallowed several sentences from me. After "needed to travel", I had that Hertefeld said Katte was waiting for a carriage he needed to travel, and that while these are different things, they are similar enough to point to a possible shared well of information. Also that I didn't necessarily see it contradicting Katte telling the Danish envoy (who told Fritz, who told Mitchell, unless, of course, Fritz for whatever reason was lying to Mitchell) that he was remaining for "some girl" - Katte's comrades from the regiment would know better than the Danish envoy whether or not Katte was currently having a love affair, so they need another story. I'm assuming here that both stories aren't really true but cover stories for "I first need to destroy all the stuff incriminating the Princess and the Queen", which of course might not be true.
Both of us deducing the Pannewitz connection: Salon hivemind strikes again! *highfives*
Now I think you brought this up before, but it does point towards the escape idea originally being hashed out between Fritz and Peter, and modified later once Katte came on board.
I don't think there was an "original plan"; there were the impulses of a scared and angry abused teenager changing from day to day. The following is all off the top of my head, so slight details may be wrong, but I think the basic outline is correct.
What we know from the 1730 trial protocols is that in November 1729, Fritz was making plans to escape that involved Peter (and Ingersleben, I think?), but not yet Katte. In January 1730, FW was tipped off by anonymous note (curse you, anonymous!), and that was why Peter was sent to Wesel.
Wilhelmine depicts Fritz coming to her with a different plan on multiple occasions and getting talked out of them (dates unknown).
Then in June 1730, Fritz wanted to escape from Zeithain with Katte, who obtained a list of post stations for horse changes, and was supposed to disguise himself as a postillion. Either on this occasion or the November 1729, Ingersleben (and Spaen?) had gotten as far as ordering carriages.
When Fritz finally left on the fatal trip with FW, Katte (and others? Wilhelmine?) were trying to talk him into at least waiting until Wesel, but Fritz refused. He tried to escape the royal party on multiple occasions in southwest Germany before not!Robert finally fessed up.
On that occasion, Katte was supposed to get leave to go recruiting in the Rhineland, and was supposed to meet Fritz in Stuttgart, but his request for leave was denied (by Natzmer or Pannewitz, I forget).
Fritz gave conflicting messages to Katte and Keith as to where to meet him (the Hague, Stuttgart, Leipzig?, England) as the situation evolved.
It was a mess.
For all we know, Katte wrote to Peter saying, "Look, I'm trying to get him to leave from Wesel, so if he shows up, have the horses and disguises ready to go! Also, FW will be with him, so *facepalm* do your best."
in the interrogations Fritz says that he wanted to go to France first because he knew that if he went to England directly, then FW would blame SD (and Wilhelmine) as conspirators. (BTW: he had to know FW would blame them anyway.)
Agreed. Though I think it arguably would have been slightly less bad for them, as it would have looked less like an international conspiracy to overthrow FW. This is the plot point in my fix-it fic that leads to Fritz staying in France longer than intended, because FW is making loud threats about what he's going to do to the hostages if his Wretched Son turns up in England or Hanover. And then, thanks to Rottembourg's machinations, that just turns into staying there and living happily ever after, because the author said so. :P
Conversely, it doesn't necessarily contradict Fritz telling Mitchell that he heard from the Danish envoy Katte remained because of "some girl", because that might have been the reason Katte gave to the Dane when talking to him before his arrest, especially if we're right and Katte actually meant that he needed to burn all the stuff incriminating Wilhelmine.
This could be! I like your theory that his regimental comrades would have been very surprised to hear about a girl (though I imagine that's the kind of thing you could keep under wraps, especially if the relationship was inappropriate in some way).
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.
Yes, and since Dad Hertefeld had no way of looking that up while narrating the story to Hertefeld Jr., I think that makes it canon that Hertefeld was the guy on guard duty that day and did receive Katte etc.
Yep, exactly. Lehndorff! You could have gotten these stories! He's clearly willing to talk when asked!
But inside Prussia, criticism of FW even in the age of FW3, two generations removed, is not a given thing, and the takes at the time Nicolai publishes this Hertefeld letter that I've read so far toe the line of "very tragic, this fallout between FW and Fritz, but thankfully, they made up later and we can root for both Kings!" And the description of Katte before his death all focus on what a model prisoner he was and how he died in the faith. So this quote is really bucking the trend and risking censorship tickling here, which makes me believe it is authentic.
That is an interesting point, like Quantz making Katte look good at his own expense, and so I'm now adopting this as headcanon.
I mean, it's also psychologically plausible that Katte wasn't *too* happy about the abusive father he'd pitied Fritz for living with, enough to risk his life trying to rescue him, deciding to chop off Katte's head in the face of the official verdict. (Even little AW had objections!)
Just like it was plausible that Hans Heinrich, before we saw the full context of his letters, was struggling to forgive FW rather than Fritz.
Btw, Hans "My son has forgiven, so must I" Heinrich? Your son may well have said, "The tyrant demands blood" when he was being honest, and so the forgiveness may have been the facade of appeasement that I originally thought the sudden piety was. :P
(Also: Lehndorff's negative descriptions of Hertefeld focus on him being boring; he doesn't say he thinks Hertefeld is a liar or prone to exaggaration.)
True!
Hmm. Maybe Hertefeld did tell stories about Katte? And Lehndorff was so firmly Team Keith that Katte was "that other guy, the one who lost his head" (the only mention in his diaries that I remember), and that's why Lehndorff thought the Katte arrest stories were boring? Especially if they recounted in excruciating detail the time of arrest and the presence of a subaltern officer and four men, etc., etc. Lehndorff might have tuned out instead of taking notes like he should have Nicolai did. :P
Kita is short for Kindertagesstätte, so it's a daycare centre.
Aha! I was seeing both and figured it was one or the other. And now I've learned a new word in German!
Since Hertefeld Jr. isn't sure about the English or the French envoy, I think it's even more likely he just recalled about Peter's ten years of absence that he ended up serving in Portugal on recommendation of some British nobles, and simplified this to the rec having been given by the English envoy himself in the Hague. It's an obvious mistake to make.
Agreed. I once made the same mistake, before we dug into the details. Lehndorff, btw, has Peter going to Scotland and Ireland, which implies he knows the story better, either from Peter directly or from Ariane. Scotland is not something I've seen mentioned anywhere else (it's not in Formey), but I can imagine Peter passed through on his way to Dublin, since his family originates from there.
See above to my take on the "le tyran" quote and the "why did Katte stay in Berlin" question, as well as "was Fritz escaping from Wesel the original plan, and if so, why then did Peter leave before Fritz was supposed to get there?". Yours?
I suspect Peter was getting conflicting messages from Fritz (and speculatively from Katte), but I believe Peter knew Fritz was writing to him to meet him somewhere else (the Hague and/or London), and that's what he did. It's a lot safer than waiting until FW arrives, and since those were Fritz's orders, that's what I would do too. That's why I'm surprised that Hertefeld's story includes Peter being supposed to prepare the way; if that happened, I suspect it was the result of Fritz changing his mind from day to day.
Not to mention: unlike Katte, Peter has no useful connections in England or France, he doesn't know G1's former mistress or French Count Rottembourg. Involving Peter in the active planing at all also carries the risk of the mail to and from Wesel being read.
I meant to say, Wilhelmine, when trying to talk Fritz out of escaping in her memoirs, has Fritz say:
Katt is in my interest: he is attached to me, and will follow me to the farthest corner of the globe, if I chuse. Keith will also join me.
I've always imagined that one reason Fritz wants his boyfriends with him when he goes to England is not just because now they can have sex Katte has connections, but because he needs people around him he can trust. He'll be stranded in a foreign court where, family or no, everyone has their own agenda (and Parliament has a large say in things). I can't imagine he wouldn't want a trusted confidant with him, and even if he already has Katte, two trusted confidants for spying, message carrying, delegation, etc. would be even better.
But then there's this, which we've discussed: Peter probably wanted to get the fuck out of Prussia asap. There is no way he liked FW's Prussia. And, he was personal page! I imagine that was in no way a pleasant job, between the short temper and the close oversight (reading very difficult, must be done at night, very dangerous), etc. I imagine Peter was veeeery sympathetic to Fritz's desire to GTFO as long as he could go too. (I think that was another reason he jumped at the chance on August 6th.)
He seems to have enjoyed his 10 years outside of Prussia, though of course we have Formey's skewed toward the positive account. Still, the guy who wanted to be educated but wasn't, stayed up late at night reading in the Hague, spent a few years at Trinity in Dublin, hung out in learned circles in London, and then spent a lot of time in Portugal studying languages, and came back to join the Academy of Sciences, proooobably liked exile quite a bit better than being FW's page, or even being in the Prussian army in one of the least prestigious regiments.
So it's probable that Peter was the most gung-ho about the escape attempt, the only one in 1729 who wanted to go with Fritz as opposed to just help him out, and quite possibly even in 1730, the only one who Fritz could be sure *would* go, when Katte was evidently dragging his feet so much he had to be lied to.
So if I were Fritz, in July/August 1730, who'd probably spent all of 1729 talking with Peter about how great it was going to be in England together, I'd include Peter in the actual escape too. He's not only ideally situated (except for all the long-distance communication), but he's probably the only one who'll be disappointed if he doesn't get to desert with me!
This is my headcanon, and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, it seems to be close to canon that Peter was planning to go with Fritz in 1729, and it's likely that he was the only one at the time.
I'm glad you made it, Peter. <3 I'm sorry about literally everything else.
I can't imagine he wouldn't want a trusted confidant with him, and even if he already has Katte, two trusted confidants for spying, message carrying, delegation, etc. would be even better.
Quite true, and I agree that Peter is likely to have been gung-ho from the start, and thus could be relied upon to go through with it. And there's this: if he doesn't desert, then, as a younger son of a not that important family, he has zero protection from an angry FW if FW should choose to hold him responsible once Fritz and Katte have made their successful escape. Which, if Peter got transfered to Wesel on suspicion because of an anonymous tip in the first place, he's almost bound to. At the very least, what happened to Spaen in rl would have happened to Peter. Probably worse, for as Spaen himself said, if Katte doesn't die, FW still is going to want a blood sacrifice.
Speaking of Spaen: I have to confess that before reading Nicolai, I didn't remember him. Though admittedly I only remembered Ingersleben because of [Bad username or unknown identity: prinzsorgenfrei"]'s tea cups art and because he got blamed for chaperoning Fritz with Doris Ritter. So, Spaen - did he exaggarate the degree of his involvement and/or friendship with pre-escape Fritz? I mean, if he got one year of Spandau anyway, he could have dealt with it better by reshaping his relatonship with the Crown Prince to one where he was an intimate friend on the same level as Katte and Keith, he just chose not to come along.
Otoh, if he really was a good friend, then we have an interesting "road not taken" for Peter, because Spaen, too, goes abroad into foreign service, only he stays abroad, and has his life and career there. Of course Peter ended up having a good life in Prussia, too, but early on, in 1741, say, before his marriage and with the difference betweeen Crown Prince Fritz and King Fritz being glaringly obvious even in absentia, there must have been times when he thought: Should have stayed in Portugal.
Of course, both of them had a fate infinitely preferable to Doris Ritter's. :(
MacDonogh gives the escape attempt in some detail, so while I couldn't have given you all the Spaen detail off the top of my head, I did remember him and Ingersleben.
On Spaen:
In the course of the hearing, [Fritz] carelessly implicated Robert [sic!] Keith, Katte and Lieutenant von Spaen. The last two were arrested as a result.
The prince’s friends the subalterns Spaen and Ingersleben were rounded up and thrown into prison. So too was poor Doris Ritter.
[The court martial's] job was to try Frederick, Katte, Ingersleben, Spaen and Lieutenant Keith. The different members of the court martial delivered their verdicts according to rank on 27 and 28 October. Ingersleben’s offence of running between Frederick and Doris Ritter was considered minor. Suggestions for Ingersleben’s punishment ranged from six weeks’ confinement to quarters (major-generals) to six months’ fortress detention (majors and colonels). Spaen was privy to certain secrets. He merited a stiffer sentence: to be dismissed from his regiment and incarcerated for anything up to six years.
Peter Keith had well and truly deserted. Here the verdicts were consistent with Prussian law. In his garrison the drum should be beaten three times. If Keith did not appear, he should be declared ‘unspeakable’, his sword broken, and his image hanged in effigy.
On 1 November the king wrote from Wusterhausen to confirm the court’s sentences on Spaen and Keith, and pardoned Ingersleben. Others who had simply been close to Frederick were banished: the prince’s librarian Jacques, and the brother and sister von Bülow, who had been friends of Frederick. Duhan de Jandun was exiled to Memel. The Freiherr von Montolieu, who had lent Frederick money, wisely fled before he was asked.
Selena wonders:
So, Spaen - did he exaggarate the degree of his involvement and/or friendship with pre-escape Fritz? I mean, if he got one year of Spandau anyway, he could have dealt with it better by reshaping his relatonship with the Crown Prince to one where he was an intimate friend on the same level as Katte and Keith, he just chose not to come along.
Well, if he said or implied he was on the same level as Keith, I'm going to guess he was exaggerating, based partly on the fact that Wilhelmine didn't see him as a threat! And based partly on the fact that he doesn't seem to have been nearly as involved in the escape as Katte and Keith.
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timeasmymeasure
The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-23 03:02 pm (UTC)I previously didn't dare to protest against the commonly shared tale that (Katte) had been with the King and the Crown Prince in Wesel. But now Landrat Baron v. Hertefeld zu Boetzelaar near Xanten has been kind enough to share with me from the trustworthy narration of his late father the true circumstances of the arrest of the unfortunate Herr v. Katte. I believe my readers will thank me for sharing the both interesting and trustworthy news in this gentleman's own words.
"My father, born in the year 1709, served in the year 1730 with the Gens d'Armes at a Lieutenant, together with his unfortunate friend, Lieutenant von Katte. The later, Lieutenant von Keith and Lieutenant von Spaen were the confidants of the then crown prince, who were meant to support his escape to England. Katte remained in Berlin and was supposed to follow the Crown Prince via Leipzig through the HRE. Keith, who was stationed in Wesel, had the task to prepare the flight. Spaen, then a Lieutenant with the tall guard at Potsdam, knew about the plans but had no active part in them. The escape of the Crown Prince was supposed to happen in the moment when the King departed from Wesel; for as the Crown Prince usually travelled behind the King from their various stops, he would have won a few hours before his escape became known to the King.
Katte had taken a leave of absence when the King had departed from Berlin in order to visit the countryside. 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. At the evening of his departure he met Major v. Asseburg from the Gens d'Armes who told him with a frightened face: "Are you still here? I am amazed!"
Katte replied to him: I travel this very night. Asseburg knew that a courier had brought the news of the Crown Prince's arrest, but he couldn't say more due to the distrust which was then dominating in Berlin. 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; and at half past 8 Katte was brought in the Colonel's carriage in the company of the AD and the guard to my father in the Gens d'Armes guards house, with the order: he was now responsible for the prisoner with his head, to be transmitted from one officer on guard's duty to the next.
When Katte was transported to Küstrin, my father took leave of him with the words: j'espére de vous revoir bientot; and (Katte) replied: Non, mon ami, le Tyran demande du sang. He gave my father some books as presents in which he'd written his name, as a souvenir, and I still own some of them.
Spaen was arrested the very same day at Potsdam by Colonel von Kneseback. After Katte's death, he was casheered, and brought to Spandau for a yar; immedately after his release, he went to the Netherlands to serve there, and died in the year 1768 at his country estate Bellevue near KLeve, as a Generalmajor in Dutch service. He told everyone that the Crown Prince had planned to go to England in order to marry an English Princess; and that, if Katte had managed to escape, he himself would have lost his head for sure, since the raging King would have demanded another sacrifice. Frederick the Great had done nothing for Spaen after his ascension; but when he travelled to Kleve in the year 1763, he did take lodgings with General von Spaen, was very gracious and confidential towards him, reminded him of stories of their shared youth, but did not mention the year 1730 with one word; which is why General von Spaen used to joke that the King had an excellent memory right up to 1730.
Keith had been in Wesel when the Crown Prince was arrested. The later found means and ways to send a note to him, on which he'd written with a pencil: Sauvez-vous, tout es découvert. Keith recognizes the handwriting, goes to his stable, puts his saddle on his horse himself and 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, where he goes to an ambassador - I forgot whether my father said it was the English or the French ambassador -, tells him of his fate, and pleads for his protection. The envoy promises said protection to him, and escorts him personally to the mansard roof, and orders his valet to serve this gentleman exclusively, and not to tell anyone else that there is a stranger lodging in this house. The envoy advised Keith to go to England and from there to Portugal, where foreign officers were sought after.
Meanwhile, the King was angry to the utmost degree that Keith had escaped him. At once Colonel von Dumoulin, later General lieutenant von Dumoulin, had to take up the pursuit of Keith, and he was given a letter to the King's envoy at the Hague, which ordered the later to assist Dumoulin in demanding Keith should be surrendered. Dumoulin and Meinertzhagen learned that one day a foreign officer had arrived and had gone to the envoy in question, without ever having been seen again. Their spies told them that in the mansard roof of the envoy's house, light was burning late at night, and that this room had not been used before. From these circumstances they concluded that Keith was hiding at the envoy's, and now their spy didn't let the envoy's house out of his sight. The envoy learned of this and that Keith's habit of reading late at night had given him away.
The following morning, the envoy came to Keith and told him: You are betrayed. Your King has spies after you, so be ready, I'll bring you to Scheveningen today, and everything there is ready for your transport to England. In the evening, he brought Keith in his own carriage to Scheveningen, and gave him letters of reccomendation for London, and didn't leave him until he saw him depart on a fisherman's boat. Keith happily arrived in England, from where he went into Portueguese service armed with reccommendations from the court. A few days later, Dumoulin learned by accident that Keith had escaped. He had gone to Scheveningen in order to see the fishermen arrive and was surprised that they dared to brave the sea in such little boats. One of the fishermen told him: With such a boat, we even make the trip to England; I'm just returning from there, and have transported a foreign officer. Dumoulin demanded a description of the officer, and from the circumstance that said man had been crosseyed, he concluded that it had been Keith.
Keith returned to Berlin in the year 1741, was appointed Colonel lieutenant and Master of the Horse, and became curator at the Academy of Sciences. My father knew Herr von Keith very well, and was told by him the way of his escape.
V. Hertefeld."
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-23 05:00 pm (UTC)Mondays and Tuesdays are the worst days for me in terms of having time for salon, but I am reading avidly (perhaps too avidly :P), and will comment as soon as I can.
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-26 01:12 am (UTC)Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-27 06:12 pm (UTC):( I know you'd summarized this for us before, but really: :(
reminded him of stories of their shared youth, but did not mention the year 1730 with one word; which is why General von Spaen used to joke that the King had an excellent memory right up to 1730.
Okay, this breaks my heart. :((((((((((((((
I am sort of simultaneously charmed and saddened by the story of Keith being betrayed by his habit of reading late at night!
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-27 07:19 pm (UTC):( I know you'd summarized this for us before, but really: :(
Wait, had we seen this quote before? It's the first I remember seeing it. That's why Selena wasn't sure at first if it was real, before she realized the date.
I am sort of simultaneously charmed and saddened by the story of Keith being betrayed by his habit of reading late at night!
Same, but I'm mostly just glad that it didn't result in his death!
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-28 01:14 am (UTC)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?
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-28 07:24 am (UTC)One the one hand: it actually would make sense if the original plan had been for Fritz to escape from Wesel for all the reasons Hertefeld gives, plus if England is your intended destination, then that's the pest route. However, in the interrogations Fritz says that he wanted to go to France first because he knew that if he went to England directly, then FW would blame SD (and Wilhelmine) as conspirators. (BTW: he had to know FW would blame them anyway.) If you want to go to France, then of course Fritz' far earlier point of departure is better. So: what was the original plan, and when and how did they all talk about it, given Peter is transferred to Wesel at the end of January 1730? If it was always for Fritz to leave from southern Germany and go to France, then Peter's participation is actually not necessary at all. He could have, like Spaen, be someone who knows but stays where he is and hopes FW won't suspect later he knows. Not to mention: unlike Katte, Peter has no useful connections in England or France, he doesn't know G1's former mistress or French Count Rottembourg. Involving Peter in the active planing at all also carries the risk of the mail to and from Wesel being read.
Now I think you brought this up before, but it does point towards the escape idea originally being hashed out between Fritz and Peter, and modified later once Katte came on board. Maybe what Hertefeld Sr. and Jr. recall was the original plan, but hadn't been any longer after March when the last attempt at an English marriage fell through and Fritz talked Katte into joining him, and that's another thing that got simplified with the various retellings, because "first it was this plan, and then it was that plan" is tricky to remember along with everything else.
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.said (whether it was true or not) to his Gens d'Armes comrades when they asked him during the weeks of his arrest in Berlin why the hell he hadn't left earlier that it was because *instrument for method of transportation* needed to be repaired, and Wilhelmine heard it from another member of the regiment. (Indirectly, because my new theory here is that Wilhelmine had it from Fräulein von Pannewitz, FW puncher and sister to Katte's commander Colonel von Pannewitz, when she visited Berlin for eight months between late 1732 and 1733, and that Fräulein von Pannewitz had it from her brother.)
Conversely, it doesn't necessarily contradict Fritz telling Mitchell that he heard from the Danish envoy Katte remained because of "some girl", because that might have been the reason Katte gave to the Dane when talking to him before his arrest, especially if we're right and Katte actually meant that he needed to burn all the stuff incriminating Wilhelmine. I could see Katte giving a different reasons to regiment comrades, who'd know more about whether or not he was involved with someone at the time, and the Danish envoy, who doesn't, in both cases avoiding to name the actual reason for reasons of discretion.
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.
Yes, and since Dad Hertefeld had no way of looking that up while narrating the story to Hertefeld Jr., I think that makes it canon that Hertefeld was the guy on guard duty that day and did receive Katte etc.
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.
My thinking precisely. If it's an authentic quote, we're given a rare glimpse of what Katte actually thought about FW sentencing him to death, as opposed to what he felt he had to write to his father and to Fritz, knowing in either case his letters would have to pass censorship. Now, if this was an account like Voltaire's written outside Prussia, I'd be more sceptical. But inside Prussia, criticism of FW even in the age of FW3, two generations removed, is not a given thing, and the takes at the time Nicolai publishes this Hertefeld letter that I've read so far toe the line of "very tragic, this fallout between FW and Fritz, but thankfully, they made up later and we can root for both Kings!" And the description of Katte before his death all focus on what a model prisoner he was and how he died in the faith. So this quote is really bucking the trend and risking censorship tickling here, which makes me believe it is authentic.
(Also: Lehndorff's negative descriptions of Hertefeld focus on him being boring; he doesn't say he thinks Hertefeld is a liar or prone to exaggaration.)
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).
Very useful for future fanfic writers!
Kita is short for Kindertagesstätte, so it's a daycare centre.
I suspect we have another simplification
Yes. Since Hertefeld Jr. isn't sure about the English or the French envoy, I think it's even more likely he just recalled about Peter's ten years of absence that he ended up serving in Portugal on reccommendation of some British nobles, and simplified this to the rec having been given by the English envoy himself in the Hague. It's an obvious mistake to make.
Like you two, I'm very charmed by Peter reading late at night, and I think that's another authentic detail. As is, of course, Peter being cross-eyed, which, again, the two Hertefelds had no way of looking up when giving their version, unlike us, so Jr. correctly remembered from what Sr. had told him.
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?
See above to my take on the "le tyran" quote and the "why did Katte stay in Berlin" question, as well as "was Fritz escaping from Wesel the original plan, and if so, why then did Peter leave before Fritz was supposed to get there?". Yours?
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-28 12:42 pm (UTC)(Indirectly, because my new theory here is that Wilhelmine had it from Fräulein von Pannewitz, FW puncher and sister to Katte's commander Colonel von Pannewitz, when she visited Berlin for eight months between late 1732 and 1733, and that Fräulein von Pannewitz had it from her brother.)
LOL! I woke up this morning thinking, "Wait, I bet Fräulein von Pannewitz is Wilhelmine's source! I need to go tell everyone!" and I jumped out of bed and came downstairs...to find that I'd been scooped. :D
My reason, though, was that Wilhelmine, many years later, and Stratemann, shortly thereafter, both give very similar renditions of the lines Katte wrote on/below his window in prison. And I have *always* wondered how Wilhelmine got those so many years later, when as far as I know, they were never published (unlike the letters). And now that I realize that Colonel Pannewitz was not just Katte's commander, but this closely involved in his arrest, and that Katte was held in the Gens d'Armes guard house and not something more generic...I think we have a plausible transmission route for something as detailed and word-specific as a poem. (There are noticeable differences between Stratemann and Wilhelmine, but comparative method I learned tells me that they must ultimately go back to the same source, which means they both have good intel on this point.)
Also, you're missing some words (possibly due to bad html?) in:
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.said (whether it was true or not) to his Gens d'Armes comrades
I can mentally supply sth like "This may have been what Katte said," but if you said more before that, I can't reconstruct it. ;)
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-28 12:55 pm (UTC)Both of us deducing the Pannewitz connection: Salon hivemind strikes again! *highfives*
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-28 12:58 pm (UTC)Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-02-28 06:37 pm (UTC)I don't think there was an "original plan"; there were the impulses of a scared and angry abused teenager changing from day to day. The following is all off the top of my head, so slight details may be wrong, but I think the basic outline is correct.
What we know from the 1730 trial protocols is that in November 1729, Fritz was making plans to escape that involved Peter (and Ingersleben, I think?), but not yet Katte. In January 1730, FW was tipped off by anonymous note (curse you, anonymous!), and that was why Peter was sent to Wesel.
Wilhelmine depicts Fritz coming to her with a different plan on multiple occasions and getting talked out of them (dates unknown).
Then in June 1730, Fritz wanted to escape from Zeithain with Katte, who obtained a list of post stations for horse changes, and was supposed to disguise himself as a postillion. Either on this occasion or the November 1729, Ingersleben (and Spaen?) had gotten as far as ordering carriages.
When Fritz finally left on the fatal trip with FW, Katte (and others? Wilhelmine?) were trying to talk him into at least waiting until Wesel, but Fritz refused. He tried to escape the royal party on multiple occasions in southwest Germany before not!Robert finally fessed up.
On that occasion, Katte was supposed to get leave to go recruiting in the Rhineland, and was supposed to meet Fritz in Stuttgart, but his request for leave was denied (by Natzmer or Pannewitz, I forget).
Fritz gave conflicting messages to Katte and Keith as to where to meet him (the Hague, Stuttgart, Leipzig?, England) as the situation evolved.
It was a mess.
For all we know, Katte wrote to Peter saying, "Look, I'm trying to get him to leave from Wesel, so if he shows up, have the horses and disguises ready to go! Also, FW will be with him, so *facepalm* do your best."
in the interrogations Fritz says that he wanted to go to France first because he knew that if he went to England directly, then FW would blame SD (and Wilhelmine) as conspirators. (BTW: he had to know FW would blame them anyway.)
Agreed. Though I think it arguably would have been slightly less bad for them, as it would have looked less like an international conspiracy to overthrow FW. This is the plot point in my fix-it fic that leads to Fritz staying in France longer than intended, because FW is making loud threats about what he's going to do to the hostages if his Wretched Son turns up in England or Hanover. And then, thanks to Rottembourg's machinations, that just turns into staying there and living happily ever after, because the author said so. :P
Conversely, it doesn't necessarily contradict Fritz telling Mitchell that he heard from the Danish envoy Katte remained because of "some girl", because that might have been the reason Katte gave to the Dane when talking to him before his arrest, especially if we're right and Katte actually meant that he needed to burn all the stuff incriminating Wilhelmine.
This could be! I like your theory that his regimental comrades would have been very surprised to hear about a girl (though I imagine that's the kind of thing you could keep under wraps, especially if the relationship was inappropriate in some way).
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.
Yes, and since Dad Hertefeld had no way of looking that up while narrating the story to Hertefeld Jr., I think that makes it canon that Hertefeld was the guy on guard duty that day and did receive Katte etc.
Yep, exactly. Lehndorff! You could have gotten these stories! He's clearly willing to talk when asked!
But inside Prussia, criticism of FW even in the age of FW3, two generations removed, is not a given thing, and the takes at the time Nicolai publishes this Hertefeld letter that I've read so far toe the line of "very tragic, this fallout between FW and Fritz, but thankfully, they made up later and we can root for both Kings!" And the description of Katte before his death all focus on what a model prisoner he was and how he died in the faith. So this quote is really bucking the trend and risking censorship tickling here, which makes me believe it is authentic.
That is an interesting point, like Quantz making Katte look good at his own expense, and so I'm now adopting this as headcanon.
I mean, it's also psychologically plausible that Katte wasn't *too* happy about the abusive father he'd pitied Fritz for living with, enough to risk his life trying to rescue him, deciding to chop off Katte's head in the face of the official verdict. (Even little AW had objections!)
Just like it was plausible that Hans Heinrich, before we saw the full context of his letters, was struggling to forgive FW rather than Fritz.
Btw, Hans "My son has forgiven, so must I" Heinrich? Your son may well have said, "The tyrant demands blood" when he was being honest, and so the forgiveness may have been the facade of appeasement that I originally thought the sudden piety was. :P
(Also: Lehndorff's negative descriptions of Hertefeld focus on him being boring; he doesn't say he thinks Hertefeld is a liar or prone to exaggaration.)
True!
Hmm. Maybe Hertefeld did tell stories about Katte? And Lehndorff was so firmly Team Keith that Katte was "that other guy, the one who lost his head" (the only mention in his diaries that I remember), and that's why Lehndorff thought the Katte arrest stories were boring? Especially if they recounted in excruciating detail the time of arrest and the presence of a subaltern officer and four men, etc., etc. Lehndorff might have tuned out instead of taking notes like
he should haveNicolai did. :PKita is short for Kindertagesstätte, so it's a daycare centre.
Aha! I was seeing both and figured it was one or the other. And now I've learned a new word in German!
Since Hertefeld Jr. isn't sure about the English or the French envoy, I think it's even more likely he just recalled about Peter's ten years of absence that he ended up serving in Portugal on recommendation of some British nobles, and simplified this to the rec having been given by the English envoy himself in the Hague. It's an obvious mistake to make.
Agreed. I once made the same mistake, before we dug into the details. Lehndorff, btw, has Peter going to Scotland and Ireland, which implies he knows the story better, either from Peter directly or from Ariane. Scotland is not something I've seen mentioned anywhere else (it's not in Formey), but I can imagine Peter passed through on his way to Dublin, since his family originates from there.
See above to my take on the "le tyran" quote and the "why did Katte stay in Berlin" question, as well as "was Fritz escaping from Wesel the original plan, and if so, why then did Peter leave before Fritz was supposed to get there?". Yours?
I suspect Peter was getting conflicting messages from Fritz (and speculatively from Katte), but I believe Peter knew Fritz was writing to him to meet him somewhere else (the Hague and/or London), and that's what he did. It's a lot safer than waiting until FW arrives, and since those were Fritz's orders, that's what I would do too. That's why I'm surprised that Hertefeld's story includes Peter being supposed to prepare the way; if that happened, I suspect it was the result of Fritz changing his mind from day to day.
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-03-01 10:11 pm (UTC)I meant to say, Wilhelmine, when trying to talk Fritz out of escaping in her memoirs, has Fritz say:
Katt is in my interest: he is attached to me, and will follow me to the farthest corner of the globe, if I chuse. Keith will also join me.
I've always imagined that one reason Fritz wants his boyfriends with him when he goes to England is not just because
now they can have sexKatte has connections, but because he needs people around him he can trust. He'll be stranded in a foreign court where, family or no, everyone has their own agenda (and Parliament has a large say in things). I can't imagine he wouldn't want a trusted confidant with him, and even if he already has Katte, two trusted confidants for spying, message carrying, delegation, etc. would be even better.But then there's this, which we've discussed: Peter probably wanted to get the fuck out of Prussia asap. There is no way he liked FW's Prussia. And, he was personal page! I imagine that was in no way a pleasant job, between the short temper and the close oversight (reading very difficult, must be done at night, very dangerous), etc. I imagine Peter was veeeery sympathetic to Fritz's desire to GTFO as long as he could go too. (I think that was another reason he jumped at the chance on August 6th.)
He seems to have enjoyed his 10 years outside of Prussia, though of course we have Formey's skewed toward the positive account. Still, the guy who wanted to be educated but wasn't, stayed up late at night reading in the Hague, spent a few years at Trinity in Dublin, hung out in learned circles in London, and then spent a lot of time in Portugal studying languages, and came back to join the Academy of Sciences, proooobably liked exile quite a bit better than being FW's page, or even being in the Prussian army in one of the least prestigious regiments.
So it's probable that Peter was the most gung-ho about the escape attempt, the only one in 1729 who wanted to go with Fritz as opposed to just help him out, and quite possibly even in 1730, the only one who Fritz could be sure *would* go, when Katte was evidently dragging his feet so much he had to be lied to.
So if I were Fritz, in July/August 1730, who'd probably spent all of 1729 talking with Peter about how great it was going to be in England together, I'd include Peter in the actual escape too. He's not only ideally situated (except for all the long-distance communication), but he's probably the only one who'll be disappointed if he doesn't get to desert with me!
This is my headcanon, and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, it seems to be close to canon that Peter was planning to go with Fritz in 1729, and it's likely that he was the only one at the time.
I'm glad you made it, Peter. <3 I'm sorry about literally everything else.
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-03-02 06:39 am (UTC)Quite true, and I agree that Peter is likely to have been gung-ho from the start, and thus could be relied upon to go through with it. And there's this: if he doesn't desert, then, as a younger son of a not that important family, he has zero protection from an angry FW if FW should choose to hold him responsible once Fritz and Katte have made their successful escape. Which, if Peter got transfered to Wesel on suspicion because of an anonymous tip in the first place, he's almost bound to. At the very least, what happened to Spaen in rl would have happened to Peter. Probably worse, for as Spaen himself said, if Katte doesn't die, FW still is going to want a blood sacrifice.
Speaking of Spaen: I have to confess that before reading Nicolai, I didn't remember him. Though admittedly I only remembered Ingersleben because of [Bad username or unknown identity: prinzsorgenfrei"]'s tea cups art and because he got blamed for chaperoning Fritz with Doris Ritter. So, Spaen - did he exaggarate the degree of his involvement and/or friendship with pre-escape Fritz? I mean, if he got one year of Spandau anyway, he could have dealt with it better by reshaping his relatonship with the Crown Prince to one where he was an intimate friend on the same level as Katte and Keith, he just chose not to come along.
Otoh, if he really was a good friend, then we have an interesting "road not taken" for Peter, because Spaen, too, goes abroad into foreign service, only he stays abroad, and has his life and career there. Of course Peter ended up having a good life in Prussia, too, but early on, in 1741, say, before his marriage and with the difference betweeen Crown Prince Fritz and King Fritz being glaringly obvious even in absentia, there must have been times when he thought: Should have stayed in Portugal.
Of course, both of them had a fate infinitely preferable to Doris Ritter's. :(
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-03-04 02:38 pm (UTC)On Spaen:
In the course of the hearing, [Fritz] carelessly implicated Robert [sic!] Keith, Katte and Lieutenant von Spaen. The last two were arrested as a result.
The prince’s friends the subalterns Spaen and Ingersleben were rounded up and thrown into prison. So too was poor Doris Ritter.
[The court martial's] job was to try Frederick, Katte, Ingersleben, Spaen and Lieutenant Keith. The different members of the court martial delivered their verdicts according to rank on 27 and 28 October. Ingersleben’s offence of running between Frederick and Doris Ritter was considered minor. Suggestions for Ingersleben’s punishment ranged from six weeks’ confinement to quarters (major-generals) to six months’ fortress detention (majors and colonels). Spaen was privy to certain secrets. He merited a stiffer sentence: to be dismissed from his regiment and incarcerated for anything up to six years.
Peter Keith had well and truly deserted. Here the verdicts were consistent with Prussian law. In his garrison the drum should be beaten three times. If Keith did not appear, he should be declared ‘unspeakable’, his sword broken, and his image hanged in effigy.
On 1 November the king wrote from Wusterhausen to confirm the court’s sentences on Spaen and Keith, and pardoned Ingersleben. Others who had simply been close to Frederick were banished: the prince’s librarian Jacques, and the brother and sister von Bülow, who had been friends of Frederick. Duhan de Jandun was exiled to Memel. The Freiherr von Montolieu, who had lent Frederick money, wisely fled before he was asked.
Selena wonders:
So, Spaen - did he exaggarate the degree of his involvement and/or friendship with pre-escape Fritz? I mean, if he got one year of Spandau anyway, he could have dealt with it better by reshaping his relatonship with the Crown Prince to one where he was an intimate friend on the same level as Katte and Keith, he just chose not to come along.
Well, if he said or implied he was on the same level as Keith, I'm going to guess he was exaggerating, based partly on the fact that Wilhelmine didn't see him as a threat! And based partly on the fact that he doesn't seem to have been nearly as involved in the escape as Katte and Keith.
Re: The Escape Attempt (Nicolai Version)
Date: 2021-03-03 06:02 am (UTC)