Sir not appearing in either volume at all (seriously, no single mention, not even in the footnotes): Suhm.
What!? That's surprising. I guess it would have complicated matters for his Manteuffel/Wolff vs. Le Chetardie/Voltaire premise. *side-eyes* Fits with what you say about his reliance on Koser/Droysen, though, i.e. possibly not doing too much research into the Fritzian aspect himself.
In short, which isn't as Bronish puts it, when Crown Prince Fritz is on the prowl for sugar daddies in the 1730s, Manteuffel really was a great candidate.
He doesn't put it that way? ;) Although given the emphasis on Manteuffel's good looks, he might as well. This still reads to me as Fritz having an (intellecutal) crush on someone who did indeed seem very appealing at first (and was very adept at presenting himself that way) but then quickly cooling on him.
Bronisch argues that Manteuffel being Team Habsburg here isn't contradictory or shady in terms of him also being a Saxon government official, since the HRE still exists, and thus the Emperor does have claim on his top loyalty as German noble (especially since he's been made a Reichsgraf at this point).
That I found interesting, because Manteuffel's political motivations make more sense to me that way.
However, Mantteuffel had seen where the wind was blowing for a while and thus had brought over thirty boxes filled with his secret correspondences with G & S as well as Eugene to his Pomeranian country estate, which means that when Hoym ordered a search of his vacated offices in Dresden, he found exactly nothing,
Did not know about the office search! Manteuffel being prepared seems like another sign that he was pretty good with his information and spy network. (I think there was also a mention of him burning letters at certain points, which is another reason that a lot of them didn't survive.)
To which I say, that doesn't mean he didn't mean the grave pun as well.
Especially because they fell out! Just because Fritz knew there was a precedent, doesn't mean he didn't still need a reason for going with it.
with Manteuffel commenting on it in a letter to Fritz
And Fritz responding: I have the misfortune of having attacks of hypochondria, and I have been in a very harsh prison; I know that the first is an evil that you cannot know unless you have had it, and the other is a situation where you have to arm yourself with all the consistency possible to resist boredom, loneliness, and the terrible thought of deprivation of liberty. The Earl of Hoym will surely have believed in the immortality of his soul, otherwise he would not have had the heart to reduce it to nothingness, and it is to be hoped that the good Lord, who is a God of mercy, will have compassion on him, by virtue of the fact that he did not sin so much from wickedness as from temperament. I am sure, my dear Quinze-Vingt, that your generous heart will be charmed to see the apology of a person who was once your enemy, and I expect to see you collect the ashes from his pyre.
The thing about the letters at Trier is interesting, though. A quick skim tells me that at least Fritz' last ones are pretty obviously not to Manteuffel because he switches from "Mon cher Quinze-Vingt" to "Mon Très Cher General". Since Preuss even includes a note from Grumbkow to Manteuffel saying "Voici la suite de ma correspondance avec Junior", I really don't know how Preuss didn't realize what was going on here and that letters to Grumbkow ended up in Manteuffel's collection of Fritz letters. (On top of that, Grumbkow seems to have been a go-between for letters exchanged between Fritz and Manteuffel at other times, I saw a mention of it in one of Manteuffel's letters.)
Also, this way, Fritz' last known letter to Manteuffel is from August, which makes more sense with the falling-out timeline, as opposed to a friendly one from as late as November.
ETA: Oh, by the way, does he give a source for the Manteuffel/Fritz conversation about the immortality of the soul (I think) in August 1736? Because the relevant pages weren't included in the preview and I was curious where he got that from.
Re: His name is Diable. Le Diable: Good Times
What!? That's surprising. I guess it would have complicated matters for his Manteuffel/Wolff vs. Le Chetardie/Voltaire premise. *side-eyes* Fits with what you say about his reliance on Koser/Droysen, though, i.e. possibly not doing too much research into the Fritzian aspect himself.
In short, which isn't as Bronish puts it, when Crown Prince Fritz is on the prowl for sugar daddies in the 1730s, Manteuffel really was a great candidate.
He doesn't put it that way? ;) Although given the emphasis on Manteuffel's good looks, he might as well. This still reads to me as Fritz having an (intellecutal) crush on someone who did indeed seem very appealing at first (and was very adept at presenting himself that way) but then quickly cooling on him.
Bronisch argues that Manteuffel being Team Habsburg here isn't contradictory or shady in terms of him also being a Saxon government official, since the HRE still exists, and thus the Emperor does have claim on his top loyalty as German noble (especially since he's been made a Reichsgraf at this point).
That I found interesting, because Manteuffel's political motivations make more sense to me that way.
However, Mantteuffel had seen where the wind was blowing for a while and thus had brought over thirty boxes filled with his secret correspondences with G & S as well as Eugene to his Pomeranian country estate, which means that when Hoym ordered a search of his vacated offices in Dresden, he found exactly nothing,
Did not know about the office search! Manteuffel being prepared seems like another sign that he was pretty good with his information and spy network. (I think there was also a mention of him burning letters at certain points, which is another reason that a lot of them didn't survive.)
To which I say, that doesn't mean he didn't mean the grave pun as well.
Especially because they fell out! Just because Fritz knew there was a precedent, doesn't mean he didn't still need a reason for going with it.
with Manteuffel commenting on it in a letter to Fritz
And Fritz responding: I have the misfortune of having attacks of hypochondria, and I have been in a very harsh prison; I know that the first is an evil that you cannot know unless you have had it, and the other is a situation where you have to arm yourself with all the consistency possible to resist boredom, loneliness, and the terrible thought of deprivation of liberty.
The Earl of Hoym will surely have believed in the immortality of his soul, otherwise he would not have had the heart to reduce it to nothingness, and it is to be hoped that the good Lord, who is a God of mercy, will have compassion on him, by virtue of the fact that he did not sin so much from wickedness as from temperament. I am sure, my dear Quinze-Vingt, that your generous heart will be charmed to see the apology of a person who was once your enemy, and I expect to see you collect the ashes from his pyre.
The thing about the letters at Trier is interesting, though. A quick skim tells me that at least Fritz' last ones are pretty obviously not to Manteuffel because he switches from "Mon cher Quinze-Vingt" to "Mon Très Cher General". Since Preuss even includes a note from Grumbkow to Manteuffel saying "Voici la suite de ma correspondance avec Junior", I really don't know how Preuss didn't realize what was going on here and that letters to Grumbkow ended up in Manteuffel's collection of Fritz letters. (On top of that, Grumbkow seems to have been a go-between for letters exchanged between Fritz and Manteuffel at other times, I saw a mention of it in one of Manteuffel's letters.)
Also, this way, Fritz' last known letter to Manteuffel is from August, which makes more sense with the falling-out timeline, as opposed to a friendly one from as late as November.
ETA: Oh, by the way, does he give a source for the Manteuffel/Fritz conversation about the immortality of the soul (I think) in August 1736? Because the relevant pages weren't included in the preview and I was curious where he got that from.