Flemming, like Eugene, was first impressed and then less so, probably because my spy tells tended to be a bit on the colorful and less on the factual side.
Everything about this guy's introduction was amazing, but this made me go, "Oh, of *course* this guy was like that."
Honest Clement
LOL
a Hungarian who is NOT a Catholic
So I keep running into the Rakoczy (under a variety of spellings) family in Hungary, and so I read their Wikipedia page, and they were apparently notable for being Calvinists.
Francis/Ferenc II led an unsucessful rebellion against Habsburgs during the War of the Spanish Succession. After his defeat, he went and lived in Poland, where Peter the Great apparently wanted to make him king of Poland twice. Then he went to England, but they were allied with the Habsburgs, and forced him to leave. Then he went to France, where he was treated well but his claims never recognized (and his sons, who were basically hostages in Vienna, apparently never got to leave Vienna to be with him). Then he went to the Ottoman Empire, where the Sultan refused to extradite him ever, though he also refused to let him lead a Christian army against the Habsburgs. (Remember that the Ottomans and Hapsburgs share a lot of borders and are at war more often than not. (The Ottoman conflicts with Russia and Austria will later play a role in why Heinrich and Catherine are like, "...Why don't we just divide up Poland instead of starting another ginormous war."
A lot of Hungarians joined him there, and he lived the rest of his life and died in what is now modern-day Turkey (the European part).
Prince Eugene, Grumbkow and others at my court have hatched a plot to kill me, and via controlling my Schwedt cousin become regent for my son, little Fritz, who will be raised A CATHOLIC and a tool of Rome.
OMG. Just, OMG.
.Those letters from Eugene Clement presented were declared really Eugene's handwriting by other courtiers who know it.
A+ forging, Honest Clement!
she dares to compare me to Tiberius, and even though I hated my Latin and ancient history lessons, I know that wasn't a compliment.
LOLOL
Clement: This is where I make my mistake. I claim Old Dessauer is part of the conspiracy as well.
FW and Old Dessauer: *have a scene of manly tears where old Dessauer says if FW believes this of him, he should kill him right away. Take up your sword again or take up me!*
FW: *takes up Dessauer*
Touching, I have to admit!
Old Dessauer: I can't stand Grumbkow, or Flemming, or Manteuffel, and I'm gonna slap that whore Baspiel, literally, but maybe you should demand an explanation from Vienna and Dresden before proceding any further?
Lol, this is *such* a wild ride. It just keeps getting better!
Flemming: Fuck, fuck, fuck. This will set us back decades.
Manteuffel: But we're innocent?
For some reason, I loved this.
My scepticism regarding the use of torture or the threat of torture as a truth finding instrument will not come up again in 1730, though.
My thoughts exactly! I guess they're reliable when you need someone to change their story about this *not* being a giant conspiracy against you but just your abused son trying to run away with a couple BFFs, but they're TOTALLY unreliable when someone changes their story from there being a conspiracy to there not being one. The moral of the story is: it's always a conspiracy!
FW: ...Okay. You're innocent. Eugene is, too. BUT SOMEONE CONSPIRED AGAINST ME, I JUST KNOW IT.
Wow, yeah, I see where the paranoia began.
But wait, did he ever catch on to the actual conspiracy to overthrow him and put Fritz on the throne, the French Count Rottembourg-Knyphausen-Fritz one? Because there actually was a conspiracy once, but I don't recall anyone getting tortured over it. :P
Oh, wait, I think Lavisse said FW got suspicious about that one and forced Fritz to drink, but even drunk, Fritz refused to give anything away. I'm not sure what the source on that is, though.
A plus compassionate ruler, FW!
Morgenstern: The reputation for cruelty was a misunderstanding based on the beatings, tortures, and executions!
Self: Incidentally, aren't the intervening years when Suhm is Saxon envoy and FW hates his guts?
You got it! 1720-1730. 1727 is the year of threatening to hang Suhm.
Manteuffel: works his magic, so that when FW and Fritz visit Dresden in 1728, they actually stay at his house.
Ahhh, I had forgotten that!
Fritz' first preserved letter to Wilhelmine, which contains a "hot or not?" report on August, was written there.
And I had forgotten this exists!
This is also when the "Society against Sobriety" is founded, with Grumbkow as President, August as "patron", FW as "compatron" , and Manteuffel as, what else, Le Diable.
See, when you've got someone who doesn't naturally like drinking, that's a real chameleon at work. It's a useful skill for a diplomat!
Summer of 1729: FW and G2 have their almost-duel
Was the almost-duel referenced in Seydewitz, or are you supplementing it with salon knowledge?
Suhm in Berlin: FW, August could totally negotiate between you and Hannover and reconcile you with your brother-in-law.
Manteuffel: WTF, Suhm? WTF?
Seydewitz doesn't say so, she just says he was indignant, but I think the timing works: this is when Suhm is recalled as envoy.
Huh, yes. Polenz is sent in September 1729, as co-envoy according to my memory (which is probably the dissertation), and in October, Stratemann is reporting (unfounded, as we know) rumors that Suhm has been locked up--but he attributes it to the fact that Flemming is gone. But if Flemming's replacement is Hoym, who is pro-France-and-Britain, then I'm curious how Manteuffel had the power to have him recalled.
Again according to my notes based largely on the dissertation, Polenz is the kind of hard-drinking military guy the Saxons think can get on FW's good side, unlike poor Suhm--oh, and I kind of remember the dissertation author saying they specifically wanted to compete with Seckendorff's influence. Now, this makes sense if Hoym's policies are exactly opposed to Seckendorff's pro-Imperial policies, but it would mean that Suhm was replaced not because he was in favor of France and Britain, but because he had no chance of winning FW over. Maybe.
(I'm also sure Suhm had many sound political reasons for wanting to reconcile FW and G2, but I also like to imagine him thinking maybe the marriages will work out just so Fritz has a way out that doesn't involve running away.)
And yes, when I saw that Manteuffel could adopt a public persona suited to FW, I remembered Fritz telling Suhm that he was very poorly suited to a hard-drinking, hard-fucking court like St. Petersburg. It's pretty clear Suhm's style of diplomacy doesn't involve being a chameleon, but rather keeping people from being offended. (Which might have something to do with his laconic style.) I remain impressed at how he managed to get Fritz to go, "Oh, yeah, my bad, thank god I have you to point out my mistakes," in a completely non-defensive, emotionally mature way. And having recently reread the letter in question, I can see just how veeeery skillfully Suhm couches his "That was a really bad idea, Fritz" feedback.
Since, however, even a retired to Pomerania Manteuffel has a correct instinct as to whom to befriend, he becomes buddies with young Brühl, which means, as reported elsewhere, that when Hoym falls, he's in contact with an up and coming power again.
Oh, cool. I love all these connections.
For starters, he asks Brühl for money to buy presents for various ladies (!) who could win Fritz' favour and/or have influential husbands, and for the various young men around Fritz who look like they could have lasting power. Then, he mentions le Chetardie and he are after the same prostitute ("grisette") whom Fritz supposedly visited in Ruppin and who could be a really useful channel, and anyway, it's prostitutes in general, not ladies in general.
Now, since Manteuffel later will have no doubt Fitz doesn't swing that way ("Hadrian"), it's interesting that at this point, when his knowledge is that of an avarage good courtier but not yet intimate, he sees Fritz as someone into women enough that this could work as an in. And of course it actually fits with all the stories of young Fritz "debauching" himself with prostitutes.
You know, with the accumulating evidence, I'm starting to think he might have during his questioning phase! What I'm most impressed with is that he managed to pull it off with all the strict supervision.
His indulgence of Keyserlingk's daughter's less than flawless for by the standards of the day sexual behavior comes to mind...as does the passage in Wilhelmine's memoirs in which Fritz is debauching himself in his teens, and...Peter Keith was the "pandar of all his vices."
Since one thing she reports about Peter is him passing info on FW to Fritz that makes Fritz's life easier, I wonder if Peter was enabling Fritz sneaking off without getting caught! Of course, it's hard to say how much has been exaggerated in the telling, but there is that letter from Fritz to Duhan in the 1730s regretting his misspent youth.
The girls don't pay off, but the various gents in Fritz' social circle do. (Seydewitz doesn't name names, but I'm eyeing young Wartensleben
Seydewitz needs to name names, darn it! But yes, you've convinced me re Wartensleben, especially with this latest piece of evidence that Manteuffel was actively bribing young men Fritz was close to. Between that, the letter listing Wartensleben as one of the six (and he managed to stay on both Fritz's and FW's good side in the late 1730s, meaning *maybe* he had some of Manteuffel's chameleon-like skills), and the evidence you found from the Strasbourg reports with the Wartensleben POV...cahn, I know you like salon solving mysteries, and we might have one here, thanks to Selena!
Side note: this is probably the less euphemistically put same explanation Suhm gives in his write-up of Fritz to Brühl later. BTW, it also shows that despite the 1729 clash, there wasn't long term animosity between Suhm and Manteuffel.
Agreed on both counts.
Bronisch said that in 1739, FW invited Fritz to the Tobacco Parliament again. Fritz enters. Everyone rises.
FW: *death glare at all his tobacco chums*
FW: *does not visit the tobacco college ever again*
FW: *does not forgive if people give him the impression they are ditching him for the rising sun, not ever*
Wooow, that makes sense! Yeah, 1739 as the year when everyone knows that FW is dying and FW knows they know makes perfect sense for FW to get suspicious and start muttering again about changing the succession.
only with Fritz he'd bitten off more than he could chew
You were neither the first nor the last, Manteuffel.
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Re: Le Diable: The Political Biography - B
Date: 2021-03-13 09:01 pm (UTC)Flemming, like Eugene, was first impressed and then less so, probably because my spy tells tended to be a bit on the colorful and less on the factual side.
Everything about this guy's introduction was amazing, but this made me go, "Oh, of *course* this guy was like that."
Honest Clement
LOL
a Hungarian who is NOT a Catholic
So I keep running into the Rakoczy (under a variety of spellings) family in Hungary, and so I read their Wikipedia page, and they were apparently notable for being Calvinists.
Francis/Ferenc II led an unsucessful rebellion against Habsburgs during the War of the Spanish Succession. After his defeat, he went and lived in Poland, where Peter the Great apparently wanted to make him king of Poland twice. Then he went to England, but they were allied with the Habsburgs, and forced him to leave. Then he went to France, where he was treated well but his claims never recognized (and his sons, who were basically hostages in Vienna, apparently never got to leave Vienna to be with him). Then he went to the Ottoman Empire, where the Sultan refused to extradite him ever, though he also refused to let him lead a Christian army against the Habsburgs. (Remember that the Ottomans and Hapsburgs share a lot of borders and are at war more often than not. (The Ottoman conflicts with Russia and Austria will later play a role in why Heinrich and Catherine are like, "...Why don't we just divide up Poland instead of starting another ginormous war."
A lot of Hungarians joined him there, and he lived the rest of his life and died in what is now modern-day Turkey (the European part).
Prince Eugene, Grumbkow and others at my court have hatched a plot to kill me, and via controlling my Schwedt cousin become regent for my son, little Fritz, who will be raised A CATHOLIC and a tool of Rome.
OMG. Just, OMG.
.Those letters from Eugene Clement presented were declared really Eugene's handwriting by other courtiers who know it.
A+ forging, Honest Clement!
she dares to compare me to Tiberius, and even though I hated my Latin and ancient history lessons, I know that wasn't a compliment.
LOLOL
Clement: This is where I make my mistake. I claim Old Dessauer is part of the conspiracy as well.
FW and Old Dessauer: *have a scene of manly tears where old Dessauer says if FW believes this of him, he should kill him right away. Take up your sword again or take up me!*
FW: *takes up Dessauer*
Touching, I have to admit!
Old Dessauer: I can't stand Grumbkow, or Flemming, or Manteuffel, and I'm gonna slap that whore Baspiel, literally, but maybe you should demand an explanation from Vienna and Dresden before proceding any further?
Lol, this is *such* a wild ride. It just keeps getting better!
Flemming: Fuck, fuck, fuck. This will set us back decades.
Manteuffel: But we're innocent?
For some reason, I loved this.
My scepticism regarding the use of torture or the threat of torture as a truth finding instrument will not come up again in 1730, though.
My thoughts exactly! I guess they're reliable when you need someone to change their story about this *not* being a giant conspiracy against you but just your abused son trying to run away with a couple BFFs, but they're TOTALLY unreliable when someone changes their story from there being a conspiracy to there not being one. The moral of the story is: it's always a conspiracy!
FW: ...Okay. You're innocent. Eugene is, too. BUT SOMEONE CONSPIRED AGAINST ME, I JUST KNOW IT.
Wow, yeah, I see where the paranoia began.
But wait, did he ever catch on to the actual conspiracy to overthrow him and put Fritz on the throne, the French Count Rottembourg-Knyphausen-Fritz one? Because there actually was a conspiracy once, but I don't recall anyone getting tortured over it. :P
Oh, wait, I think Lavisse said FW got suspicious about that one and forced Fritz to drink, but even drunk, Fritz refused to give anything away. I'm not sure what the source on that is, though.
A plus compassionate ruler, FW!
Morgenstern: The reputation for cruelty was a misunderstanding based on the beatings, tortures, and executions!
Self: Incidentally, aren't the intervening years when Suhm is Saxon envoy and FW hates his guts?
You got it! 1720-1730. 1727 is the year of threatening to hang Suhm.
Manteuffel: works his magic, so that when FW and Fritz visit Dresden in 1728, they actually stay at his house.
Ahhh, I had forgotten that!
Fritz' first preserved letter to Wilhelmine, which contains a "hot or not?" report on August, was written there.
And I had forgotten this exists!
This is also when the "Society against Sobriety" is founded, with Grumbkow as President, August as "patron", FW as "compatron" , and Manteuffel as, what else, Le Diable.
See, when you've got someone who doesn't naturally like drinking, that's a real chameleon at work. It's a useful skill for a diplomat!
Summer of 1729: FW and G2 have their almost-duel
Was the almost-duel referenced in Seydewitz, or are you supplementing it with salon knowledge?
Suhm in Berlin: FW, August could totally negotiate between you and Hannover and reconcile you with your brother-in-law.
Manteuffel: WTF, Suhm? WTF?
Seydewitz doesn't say so, she just says he was indignant, but I think the timing works: this is when Suhm is recalled as envoy.
Huh, yes. Polenz is sent in September 1729, as co-envoy according to my memory (which is probably the dissertation), and in October, Stratemann is reporting (unfounded, as we know) rumors that Suhm has been locked up--but he attributes it to the fact that Flemming is gone. But if Flemming's replacement is Hoym, who is pro-France-and-Britain, then I'm curious how Manteuffel had the power to have him recalled.
Again according to my notes based largely on the dissertation, Polenz is the kind of hard-drinking military guy the Saxons think can get on FW's good side, unlike poor Suhm--oh, and I kind of remember the dissertation author saying they specifically wanted to compete with Seckendorff's influence. Now, this makes sense if Hoym's policies are exactly opposed to Seckendorff's pro-Imperial policies, but it would mean that Suhm was replaced not because he was in favor of France and Britain, but because he had no chance of winning FW over. Maybe.
(I'm also sure Suhm had many sound political reasons for wanting to reconcile FW and G2, but I also like to imagine him thinking maybe the marriages will work out just so Fritz has a way out that doesn't involve running away.)
And yes, when I saw that Manteuffel could adopt a public persona suited to FW, I remembered Fritz telling Suhm that he was very poorly suited to a hard-drinking, hard-fucking court like St. Petersburg. It's pretty clear Suhm's style of diplomacy doesn't involve being a chameleon, but rather keeping people from being offended. (Which might have something to do with his laconic style.) I remain impressed at how he managed to get Fritz to go, "Oh, yeah, my bad, thank god I have you to point out my mistakes," in a completely non-defensive, emotionally mature way. And having recently reread the letter in question, I can see just how veeeery skillfully Suhm couches his "That was a really bad idea, Fritz" feedback.
Since, however, even a retired to Pomerania Manteuffel has a correct instinct as to whom to befriend, he becomes buddies with young Brühl, which means, as reported elsewhere, that when Hoym falls, he's in contact with an up and coming power again.
Oh, cool. I love all these connections.
For starters, he asks Brühl for money to buy presents for various ladies (!) who could win Fritz' favour and/or have influential husbands, and for the various young men around Fritz who look like they could have lasting power. Then, he mentions le Chetardie and he are after the same prostitute ("grisette") whom Fritz supposedly visited in Ruppin and who could be a really useful channel, and anyway, it's prostitutes in general, not ladies in general.
Now, since Manteuffel later will have no doubt Fitz doesn't swing that way ("Hadrian"), it's interesting that at this point, when his knowledge is that of an avarage good courtier but not yet intimate, he sees Fritz as someone into women enough that this could work as an in. And of course it actually fits with all the stories of young Fritz "debauching" himself with prostitutes.
You know, with the accumulating evidence, I'm starting to think he might have during his questioning phase! What I'm most impressed with is that he managed to pull it off with all the strict supervision.
His indulgence of Keyserlingk's daughter's less than flawless for by the standards of the day sexual behavior comes to mind...as does the passage in Wilhelmine's memoirs in which Fritz is debauching himself in his teens, and...Peter Keith was the "pandar of all his vices."
Since one thing she reports about Peter is him passing info on FW to Fritz that makes Fritz's life easier, I wonder if Peter was enabling Fritz sneaking off without getting caught! Of course, it's hard to say how much has been exaggerated in the telling, but there is that letter from Fritz to Duhan in the 1730s regretting his misspent youth.
The girls don't pay off, but the various gents in Fritz' social circle do. (Seydewitz doesn't name names, but I'm eyeing young Wartensleben
Seydewitz needs to name names, darn it! But yes, you've convinced me re Wartensleben, especially with this latest piece of evidence that Manteuffel was actively bribing young men Fritz was close to. Between that, the letter listing Wartensleben as one of the six (and he managed to stay on both Fritz's and FW's good side in the late 1730s, meaning *maybe* he had some of Manteuffel's chameleon-like skills), and the evidence you found from the Strasbourg reports with the Wartensleben POV...
Side note: this is probably the less euphemistically put same explanation Suhm gives in his write-up of Fritz to Brühl later. BTW, it also shows that despite the 1729 clash, there wasn't long term animosity between Suhm and Manteuffel.
Agreed on both counts.
Bronisch said that in 1739, FW invited Fritz to the Tobacco Parliament again. Fritz enters. Everyone rises.
FW: *death glare at all his tobacco chums*
FW: *does not visit the tobacco college ever again*
FW: *does not forgive if people give him the impression they are ditching him for the rising sun, not ever*
Wooow, that makes sense! Yeah, 1739 as the year when everyone knows that FW is dying and FW knows they know makes perfect sense for FW to get suspicious and start muttering again about changing the succession.
only with Fritz he'd bitten off more than he could chew
You were neither the first nor the last, Manteuffel.