Oh, one thing I've had on my list to talk about re Showalter, might as well do it now.
Way back when, in October, I had a funny experience in which on one fine Saturday, Selena reported the following:
When Boswell arrives at Dresden, he is well and truly shocked by the scars from the war, and his Fritz opinion plunges downwards. No more hero of the Protestant faith, for:
Tuesday 9 October: I strolled about & viewed the city. It is finely built of freestone. It gave me great pain to see the ruins made by the Prussian bombardments. I hated the barbarous hero. He was under no necessity to bombard Dresden. It was from mere spite that he did it.
The next day, on Sunday, I was reading Krockow, and I read about Fritz shelling civilian neighborhoods in Dresden for no reason, and Heinrich congratulating him sarcastically on his victory.
Then on Monday, I discovered that the ghost of Fritz really wanted me to know about the bombing of Dresden *right now*, because I then read this in Showalter:
For Frederick, Dresden was a means to an operational and strategic end. He hoped to draw Daun back from Silesia and into a major battle on Frederick’s terms – a replication of the Battle of Prague in 1756, only this time presumably with more positive results. For the lure to work, the threat to Dresden had to be something more immediate and more spectacular than a formal siege, for which in any case Frederick lacked the resources. Instead, he brought up a dozen heavy guns and opened a general bombardment of the city on 19 July. In sharp contrast to normal eighteenth-century practice, civilian buildings, especially the centrally located Kreuz-Kirche, were specifically designated as targets. resulting fires burned down much of the city without affecting the 14,000-strong Austrian garrison. The moral impact was correspondingly negative. Even in his own camp Frederick’s actions were interpreted as the product of malice or frustration. The King’s principal modern military biographer [Mildred: principal English-language modern military biographer? Because surely even after 1945 German scholarship hasn't totally abandoned the subject to the Brits?] charitably suggests that Frederick did not expect Dresden to be so inflammable after his experience at Prague. In fact, when Frederick ended the blockade it was because of Daun’s continued reluctance to meet the King’s expectations.
So again I was struck by Showalter presenting a strategic reason for an action that's attributed to emotional reasons. I haven't had a chance to read the biography he's referring to (Duffy's--it's been on my wishlist since day 1), so I don't have an opinion of my own on the matter. I was planning on waiting until I had read it to bring this point up, but I've read another of Duffy's military histories and know that I shouldn't take on a book by him until I have both the concentration and finances to justify the $40, and the stars haven't aligned there yet, so while I'm here talking about Showalter's tendency to justify everything everyone on any side of the war does as being totally the decision of a rational actor...here's another example of something that's come up in our fandom before. Fritz was totally trying to lure Daun back from Silesia while bombing Dresden civilians!
Which is still what we call a war crime, Fritz, even by the standards of your contemporaries Heinrich and Boswell.
Meanwhile, Lord Hervey is the outlier in the "blame the minion!" game in that he's fine with blaming Fritz of Wales entirely for being a love rat the worst
Another thing I had on my list was that your intro to Hervey and the love rat included the line,
I terminate our relationship, your highness. My bitchy memoirs about my time at the Georgian court lack the three years of our relationship completely and only resume afterwards, when I have decided to hate you forever and ever.
which at the time I remembered as Hervey omitting all mention of him from his memoirs out of spite, so I was surprised when encountering Horowski's statement that it was the bowdlerizing 19th century descendant Lord Bristol who is to blame! I mention this in case anyone else took that interpretation of a sentence that I now see doesn't say that at all. Thus does misremembrance make Zimmermanns of us all. ;)
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Re: Reply to the RomCom
Date: 2021-03-06 10:15 pm (UTC)Way back when, in October, I had a funny experience in which on one fine Saturday, Selena reported the following:
When Boswell arrives at Dresden, he is well and truly shocked by the scars from the war, and his Fritz opinion plunges downwards. No more hero of the Protestant faith, for:
Tuesday 9 October:
I strolled about & viewed the city. It is finely built of freestone. It gave me great pain to see the ruins made by the Prussian bombardments. I hated the barbarous hero. He was under no necessity to bombard Dresden. It was from mere spite that he did it.
The next day, on Sunday, I was reading Krockow, and I read about Fritz shelling civilian neighborhoods in Dresden for no reason, and Heinrich congratulating him sarcastically on his victory.
Then on Monday, I discovered that the ghost of Fritz really wanted me to know about the bombing of Dresden *right now*, because I then read this in Showalter:
For Frederick, Dresden was a means to an operational and strategic end. He hoped to draw Daun back from Silesia and into a major battle on Frederick’s terms – a replication of the Battle of Prague in 1756, only this time presumably with more positive results. For the lure to work, the threat to Dresden had to be something more immediate and more spectacular than a formal siege, for which in any case Frederick lacked the resources. Instead, he brought up a dozen heavy guns and opened a general bombardment of the city on 19 July. In sharp contrast to normal eighteenth-century practice, civilian buildings, especially the centrally located Kreuz-Kirche, were specifically designated as targets. resulting fires burned down much of the city without affecting the 14,000-strong Austrian garrison. The moral impact was correspondingly negative. Even in his own camp Frederick’s actions were interpreted as the product of malice or frustration. The King’s principal modern military biographer [Mildred: principal English-language modern military biographer? Because surely even after 1945 German scholarship hasn't totally abandoned the subject to the Brits?] charitably suggests that Frederick did not expect Dresden to be so inflammable after his experience at Prague. In fact, when Frederick ended the blockade it was because of Daun’s continued reluctance to meet the King’s expectations.
So again I was struck by Showalter presenting a strategic reason for an action that's attributed to emotional reasons. I haven't had a chance to read the biography he's referring to (Duffy's--it's been on my wishlist since day 1), so I don't have an opinion of my own on the matter. I was planning on waiting until I had read it to bring this point up, but I've read another of Duffy's military histories and know that I shouldn't take on a book by him until I have both the concentration and finances to justify the $40, and the stars haven't aligned there yet, so while I'm here talking about Showalter's tendency to justify everything everyone on any side of the war does as being totally the decision of a rational actor...here's another example of something that's come up in our fandom before. Fritz was totally trying to lure Daun back from Silesia while bombing Dresden civilians!
Which is still what we call a war crime, Fritz, even by the standards of your contemporaries Heinrich and Boswell.
Meanwhile, Lord Hervey is the outlier in the "blame the minion!" game in that he's fine with blaming Fritz of Wales entirely for being a love rat the worst
Another thing I had on my list was that your intro to Hervey and the love rat included the line,
I terminate our relationship, your highness. My bitchy memoirs about my time at the Georgian court lack the three years of our relationship completely and only resume afterwards, when I have decided to hate you forever and ever.
which at the time I remembered as Hervey omitting all mention of him from his memoirs out of spite, so I was surprised when encountering Horowski's statement that it was the bowdlerizing 19th century descendant Lord Bristol who is to blame! I mention this in case anyone else took that interpretation of a sentence that I now see doesn't say that at all. Thus does misremembrance make Zimmermanns of us all. ;)