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Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 27
Still going! :D
Hahn: informative, though not suspenseful. His approach is not chronological but ordered by subject matter. (I.e. inner politics, foreign politics, law reform, etc.).
The next round of books from the Stabi is ordered, so I'll tell you what I'll find.
French Revolution: I immediately thought of Stefan Zweig, master of the biographie romancee in the 1920s. His biography of Joseph Fouché is my Dad's all time favourite biography, and it is very good, an illustration of how you don't have to write about a "likeable" character to make a compelling book. He also wrote a biography of Marie Antoinette which was groundbreaking for its time (though not anymore, of course), since it was the first one to address the wretched matter of the royal couple's sex life (or lack of same) for the first seven years of their marriage squarely and without euphemisms, and discussed the likely psychological effects this had on Marie Antoinette. You can also tell that Zweig, who was Austrian, felt in the post WWI world about the Habsburgs like an increasing amount of Germans post WWI (and even more post WWII, of course) felt about Fritz and the Hohenzollern, i.e. after years of uncritical and often over the top glorification going into hardcore debunking mode about the lot of them, though he's not without sympathy for MA, and even admires her in her final years.
Anyway, while Zweig doesn't write short sentences, exactly, he writes beautiful German, and he's a superb storyteller. As he was fluent in French and loved French culture, he had an advantage about a great many French and English biographers in that he could read primary sources in either language. The Fouché biography covers, like Fouchés life, the French Revolution and Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy from a unique pov. I'd compare it to fanfic written from the villain's pov WITHOUT the woobiefication that usually goes with it. And course Fouché was very good at what he did, so we do have an extremely, chillingly competent antihero/villain protagonist to follow.
The next round of books from the Stabi is ordered, so I'll tell you what I'll find.
French Revolution: I immediately thought of Stefan Zweig, master of the biographie romancee in the 1920s. His biography of Joseph Fouché is my Dad's all time favourite biography, and it is very good, an illustration of how you don't have to write about a "likeable" character to make a compelling book. He also wrote a biography of Marie Antoinette which was groundbreaking for its time (though not anymore, of course), since it was the first one to address the wretched matter of the royal couple's sex life (or lack of same) for the first seven years of their marriage squarely and without euphemisms, and discussed the likely psychological effects this had on Marie Antoinette. You can also tell that Zweig, who was Austrian, felt in the post WWI world about the Habsburgs like an increasing amount of Germans post WWI (and even more post WWII, of course) felt about Fritz and the Hohenzollern, i.e. after years of uncritical and often over the top glorification going into hardcore debunking mode about the lot of them, though he's not without sympathy for MA, and even admires her in her final years.
Anyway, while Zweig doesn't write short sentences, exactly, he writes beautiful German, and he's a superb storyteller. As he was fluent in French and loved French culture, he had an advantage about a great many French and English biographers in that he could read primary sources in either language. The Fouché biography covers, like Fouchés life, the French Revolution and Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy from a unique pov. I'd compare it to fanfic written from the villain's pov WITHOUT the woobiefication that usually goes with it. And course Fouché was very good at what he did, so we do have an extremely, chillingly competent antihero/villain protagonist to follow.
I feel like FW-enforced intoxication was more ad hoc and less systematic!
That's how it struck me, too. Though no wonder FW and Peter got along when they met. I remember from one of the Manteuffel biographies that Le Diable, who was the envoy in Berlin during Peter's last tour there, wasn't impressed with either of them and their revels in his reports to Fleming (though of course unlike poor Whitworth, he could roll with it enough when required to beome a member of the club.
Mind you, in that age, it's more difficult to find the monarchs or supreme rulers who valued sobriety instead. I mean, Philippe d'Orleans the Regent also got drunk so often that Saint-Simon thought it contributed to his early death at the age of 45. (Though he didn't get drunk with foreign envoys, he did it with his mates.) And it's a miracle August the Strong didn't die far sooner given all he ate and drank.
Though to point out the obvious: even if Rottembourg *did* long for FW's Prussia from Spain, it wasn't high praise of FW but more of a "it's a low bar, but you're better than Philip V urinating in bed and thinking he's a frog," imo.
Naturally. BTW, does the Philip biography have much to say about Farinelli? Covering the musical angle here for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cahn.
In terms of envoys debating which was the worst posting: I'm trying to decide how the Hannover Georges would fare. On the one hand, London offers a great deal, from highbrow (Händel operas, Royal Society, great literature being written) to low brow (thriving brothels to the point that supposedly every fifth woman worked as a prostitute at least at some point in her life mid century, and there were "molly houses" for gay men, too). The press was freer than in any other European country. On the downside, no matter whether you arrived in the G1, G2 or G3 era, you were bound to have a constellation where the reigning monarch and the Prince of Wales cordially hate each other's guts. As envoy, you must of course mainly be on good terms with the reigning monarch, but pissing of the next one also isn't good idea. And because most of the power at this point is in the hands of the PM and parliament, you also have to get along with the top ministers.
Btw.: if instead of Fritz trying to escape Prussia, Fritz of Wales had shown up in Berlin/Potsdam, declaring himself a refugee from paternal (and maternal) naltreaatment, how do you think FW would have reacted? (Army desertion would not have been a factor in this case, since Fritz of Wales, unlike younger brother Cumberland, was not a member of the British army.) (Or the Hannoverian one, for that matter.) Delighted at the chance to annoy G2? Inconvenienced as what to do with the nephew? Caught between "children must obey and honor their fathers above all" and "hey, he's still the future heir, right? Let's get all the concessions!"
Newly crowned Fritz asked his Hanoverian envoy to keep the search for Peter discreet. Any thoughts on why?
That's easy, imo. Remember, everyone - well, not the French envoy, or Suhm, or Manteuffel - expected Fritz become a peacenik, pleasure loving king who, depending on your own pov, will be a philosopher or putty in the hand of his favourites. Recalling your old teacher openly is one thing - that's commendable, he's old, he's not a scandalous person, everyone will see this as positive and becoming gratitude in a monarch. Instantly summoning Algarotti: also not a problem, Algarotti is a new aquaintance and a much sought after international celebrity, he had nothing to do with pre 1730 Fritz. Promoting Hans Heinrich to Field Marshal: also not a problem. He has had the career to deserve it, and Hans Herrmann is dead. Again, very commendable. But Peter? Peter is the living embodiment of 1730. He is, without a question, a deserter, and Fritz' policy is to surprise his father's generals by solely dissolving the Giants and dispensing them onto other regiments but otherwise be behind the army 100%, no more "Sterbekittel" slanders. Peter also exactly who FW has always imagined King Fritz would be dominated by - a friend who from FW's pov encouraged him in his worst instincts, i.e. to go against his father'sabuse wishes.
If Katte really met up with him in Paris, then maybe they were still super close, but it's no longer evidence for that, nor for the strength of the apparent crisis.
That is unfortunate, but then, you yourself have said you still wouldn't mind the Rokoko babysitting plot despite being convinced now that the unnamed brother from Fritz' letter was AW. Just proceed with Mentor!Rottembourg.
That's how it struck me, too. Though no wonder FW and Peter got along when they met. I remember from one of the Manteuffel biographies that Le Diable, who was the envoy in Berlin during Peter's last tour there, wasn't impressed with either of them and their revels in his reports to Fleming (though of course unlike poor Whitworth, he could roll with it enough when required to beome a member of the club.
Mind you, in that age, it's more difficult to find the monarchs or supreme rulers who valued sobriety instead. I mean, Philippe d'Orleans the Regent also got drunk so often that Saint-Simon thought it contributed to his early death at the age of 45. (Though he didn't get drunk with foreign envoys, he did it with his mates.) And it's a miracle August the Strong didn't die far sooner given all he ate and drank.
Though to point out the obvious: even if Rottembourg *did* long for FW's Prussia from Spain, it wasn't high praise of FW but more of a "it's a low bar, but you're better than Philip V urinating in bed and thinking he's a frog," imo.
Naturally. BTW, does the Philip biography have much to say about Farinelli? Covering the musical angle here for
cahn. In terms of envoys debating which was the worst posting: I'm trying to decide how the Hannover Georges would fare. On the one hand, London offers a great deal, from highbrow (Händel operas, Royal Society, great literature being written) to low brow (thriving brothels to the point that supposedly every fifth woman worked as a prostitute at least at some point in her life mid century, and there were "molly houses" for gay men, too). The press was freer than in any other European country. On the downside, no matter whether you arrived in the G1, G2 or G3 era, you were bound to have a constellation where the reigning monarch and the Prince of Wales cordially hate each other's guts. As envoy, you must of course mainly be on good terms with the reigning monarch, but pissing of the next one also isn't good idea. And because most of the power at this point is in the hands of the PM and parliament, you also have to get along with the top ministers.
Btw.: if instead of Fritz trying to escape Prussia, Fritz of Wales had shown up in Berlin/Potsdam, declaring himself a refugee from paternal (and maternal) naltreaatment, how do you think FW would have reacted? (Army desertion would not have been a factor in this case, since Fritz of Wales, unlike younger brother Cumberland, was not a member of the British army.) (Or the Hannoverian one, for that matter.) Delighted at the chance to annoy G2? Inconvenienced as what to do with the nephew? Caught between "children must obey and honor their fathers above all" and "hey, he's still the future heir, right? Let's get all the concessions!"
Newly crowned Fritz asked his Hanoverian envoy to keep the search for Peter discreet. Any thoughts on why?
That's easy, imo. Remember, everyone - well, not the French envoy, or Suhm, or Manteuffel - expected Fritz become a peacenik, pleasure loving king who, depending on your own pov, will be a philosopher or putty in the hand of his favourites. Recalling your old teacher openly is one thing - that's commendable, he's old, he's not a scandalous person, everyone will see this as positive and becoming gratitude in a monarch. Instantly summoning Algarotti: also not a problem, Algarotti is a new aquaintance and a much sought after international celebrity, he had nothing to do with pre 1730 Fritz. Promoting Hans Heinrich to Field Marshal: also not a problem. He has had the career to deserve it, and Hans Herrmann is dead. Again, very commendable. But Peter? Peter is the living embodiment of 1730. He is, without a question, a deserter, and Fritz' policy is to surprise his father's generals by solely dissolving the Giants and dispensing them onto other regiments but otherwise be behind the army 100%, no more "Sterbekittel" slanders. Peter also exactly who FW has always imagined King Fritz would be dominated by - a friend who from FW's pov encouraged him in his worst instincts, i.e. to go against his father's
If Katte really met up with him in Paris, then maybe they were still super close, but it's no longer evidence for that, nor for the strength of the apparent crisis.
That is unfortunate, but then, you yourself have said you still wouldn't mind the Rokoko babysitting plot despite being convinced now that the unnamed brother from Fritz' letter was AW. Just proceed with Mentor!Rottembourg.
Mostly for cahn and [Bad username or unknown identity: iberiandoctor"], if either wants to use some historical factoids in potential Schiller/Verdi Don Carlos fanfiction, brought to you by the fact I just read a recent (2018) Charles V. biography.
Important reminder, not just for this but for any period, of just how much territory Charles inherited from all four grandparents
From Maximilian I., HRE: Austrian heartlands (these included Austria, a great deal of Switzerland and today's Southern Tyrolia)
From Mary of Burgundy: Burgundy (which consisted of the actual province Burgundy, today Franche-Comte, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands)
From Ferdinand of Aragon: Aragon, Sicily, Naples and Sardinia (all ruled by the House of Aragon since the high middle ages)
From Isabella of Castile: Castile and the new overseas territories. (Read: Latin America except for Brazil, which was Portuegese)
Hence: the Empire in which the sun does not set. Hence also a great many people people in it sideyeing a great many others, and that's before we get to the fact that just when Charles was starting his rule, a monk named Martin Luther got busy in Wittenberg. (Key factor.)
Now Charles, as mentioned before was raised in Flanders, unlike his younger brother Ferdinand, who was raised with Granddad Ferdinand. This, and the fact that his aunt Margaret was a brilliant governor of the Netherlands, and after her his sister Mary was very good as well, meant that while Charles lived, there might have been the occasional rumble as Protestantism started to spread in Flanders, but by and large, the Netherlands still felt the emotional connection to him; he was seen as one one of theirs. In fact, when Charles declared his abdication in Gent, the city where he was born, William of Orange (not that one, an earlier one of the same name, the Ur-William of Orange, even) was present and Charles, who was suffering from extreme gout, was leaning on him when entering the room. However, son Philip was seen as utterly Spanish, a complete foreigner, plus by the time Philip ruled, the religious strife was really kicking into high gear and Philip's reply of slamming down hard with the counter reformation and the hardcore laws in general settled it.
=> 80 years of the Dutch fighting for independence from Spain, a fight started by the same William of Orange whom Charles had leaned on during the abdication.
Back to the early days. Now Charles had been raised by Aunt Margaret in the tradition of a Duke of Burgundy, but the "Burgundy" part of Burgundy had been lost for the first time in the ongoing wars between Grandpa Max and France, then regained, then lost again and so forth in the endless wars between Charles and Francis I. If anyone of the European princes was Charles' arch nemesis, it was Frances. Their first personal conflict started when Grandpa Maximilian died and thus the election of a new Emperor was due. Now remember, unlike the various territories Charles inherited, the job office of Emperor was NOT inheritable per se. It had to be voted for by the various Princes Electors.
Rest of Europe: Do we really want the kid who inherited all that land to become HRE as well?
France: We certainly don't. Francis for HRE!
England: We're thinking Henry VIII. for HRE, mostly because Henry thinks he rocks that much. Also the Pope has just appointed him Defender of the Faith. No more faithful Catholic than Henry, ever! All the titles for Henry!
Duke of Saxony: You're kidding, right? Are any of you aware that more and more Germans are listening to ex-Brother Martin whom I happen to be shielding in my territories? That whoever gets to be Emperor should, like, maybe have a clue about German affairs? This doesn't mean a guy raised in the Netherlands and currently hanging out in Spain. I'm nominating myself.
Margaret of Austria: Gentlemen, calm down. Have some Fugger money. And some propaganda. Surely the Empire shouldn't be ruled by a Frenchman or Mr. Clueless Redbeard from accross the channel, but by another Habsburg. My nephew is the completely German offspring of a German dynasty, I swear.
Francis: Excuse you. Your nephew has one German grandparent and won't speak more German than Fritz will in the future, even using the "German is how I speak to my horses" simile Fritz will steal. Also, can it be that you still hold a grudge from when my Greatuncle ditched you?
Margaret of Austria: what I'm holding are more bags of money than you can count, and the future of the Habsburg dynasty.
Pope: It's just, the last time a HRE ruled over parts of Italy along with the German territories, my predecessors and those Emperors kept having showdowns.
Margaret: Won't happen this time. I raised my nephew as a devoted Christian, your Holiness.
=> Charles for Emperor.
Diet of Worms: Happens.
Martin Luther: Shows up.
New Emperor Charles: Not impressed. Seriously, he wasn't. This particular event is key to Luther's reputation - "here I stand, I can do no other" etc. - but Charles was just, like, meh. I expected more. Possibly one reason why he let Luther go instead of arresting him on the spot, something he would agonize over decades later. Another reason was that Charles was still young enough that having given his word about free passage for Luther meant something to him.
Charles: Okay. I'm absolutely for church reform. But no heresy! The famous Council of Trent will be largely on my initiative. My stated life goal was Christian unity in my Empire. I only thought I'd have to duke it out with the Turks, in the true spirit of my Spanish grandparents. Instead, this Luther thing got totally out of control in the German principalities, Francis and I were at each other's throats for decades and the bastard even teamed up with the goddam Turks, and three Popes in a row hated my guts.
Pope Clement: Can you blame me? Your troops sacked Rome!
Charles: Not on my orders. I wasn't even in Italy at the time. The actual commander was even murdered before that happened.
Pope Clement: You still benefited. And scared the hell out of me. Which is why...
Henry VIII: Hey, Pope Clement, you're currently besieged by Charles' marauding troops in Rome, so I'm thinking this is the perfect time to ask you to declare my marriage to Charles' aunt Catherine of Aragon null and void!
Charles:...
Clement: ...
Henry VIII: FINE. Don't blame for the consequences.
Pope Paul III: As for me, I was willing to work with you. One of my illegitimate sons married your illegitimate daughter, even. But then you had to go and look the other way when one of your people killed another of my illegitimate sons. Naturally, I hated you from this point onwards. Hey, Francis, I just recalled France is the first daughter of the Church, not Spain, and certainly NOT Germany, which gets more heretical by the second. Want to team up?
Francis: With pleasure.
Charles: WTF? He's tight with the goddam Muslims!
Overseas Territories: Are we not going to mention the terrible bloody story of the Conquistadores?
selenak: Not in depth, but I have to share this with the class:
2018 Biographer of Charles: Look, colonialism = terrible, I entirely agree. But I would like to point out that Charles allowed a public dispute between Bartolomé Las Casas (Freedom for the Indios! J'Accuse!) and Selpudeva (forced conversion and slaves = legitimate life goals for conquest), listened to Las Casas at least somewhat and reformed his laws which now forbade enslaving the Indios. Both these men were among the top theologians of their time. That is to say, Spain under Charles had these debates about the ethics of coloniasm on the highest level, while it would be centuries more until such debates happened in the Protestant countries like England and Netherlands who weren't one jot better in their overseas colonialism and profited merrily from it while self righteously fostering the "Black Legend" about Charles and son Philip as the suppressors of every bit of Gedankenfreiheit. There was no English equivalent to Las Casas until the freaking tail end of the 18th century, was there!
Overseas colonies: Considering Philip when starting to be short of cash went back on Charles' reformed laws, allow us not to weep for their reputation.
Charles: Speaking of reputations. Between my contemporaries Francis and Henry, I actually win at husbandry. I was famously devoted to my wife Isabel of Portugal, made her regent of Spain in my absences and never remarried after her death, despite Philip being my sole legitimate son. I may not have seen him for years at a time, due to the sheer size of the Empire and my constant travelling from one emergency to the next, but I wrote him "I don't have another son but you" and touchingly added "and I don't want another son, either" when he was a teenager. However, I will admit that my love life before and after my marriage was somewhat more unorthodox.
Germaine de Fox: I'm the second, MUCH younger wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, Charles' granddad. Ferdinand married me to get of out Habsburgs ruling Spain, remember? Sadly, our one son lived for less than a day. Ferdinand died when I was still in my later 20s. Which is when Charles came to Spain to inherit. He was 17. What can I say? We hit it off. For a time, until he was about 19, I was constantly at his side. And then I got pregnant, giving birth to an illigitimate daughter. He didn't acknowledge her, but in my last will I said he was the dad. Anyway, naturally her birth happened in secret and Charles then thankfully arranged for me to marry again, one of his vassals, the Margrave of Brandenburg. Small world, eh?
Johanna van der Gheynst: I was a Flemish ladies' maid; Charles and I had a fling, which resulted in my daughter Margaret, named after his aunt of course. He acknowledged her as his bastard, had her raised by his aunt and later by his sister. She's the one who married the Pope's bastard. She also governed the Netherlands for a time in the proud tradition female Regents. (Charles' biographer would like to point out that the Habsburgs were really into female regents in the 15th and 16th century.) As for me, Charles arranged a marriage and paid me a rent for the rest of my days. My grandson, Alessandro Farnese, is one of Philip II's most trusted generals. He will go in the same school together with Don Carlos, fictional Posa and Juan d'Austria.
Barbara Blomberg: I was Charles' last fling from when he had to attend the Diet at Ratisbon in his last decade. There is still a sign at the inn in Ratisbon pointing out where Charles and I had passionate, if short lived sex, mainly because my kid Juan de Austria became a hero. Charles had him brought to Spain and raised there under the cover name of Jeronimo. He met him a few times in his final years when he was retired into a monestary, but did not tell the boy he was his father. However, he asked his son Philip in his last will to take care of Juan and openly acknoweldge him as his brother, which Philip did. He also had Juan raised along with his own son Don Carles and with Alessandro Farnese at that school. Meanwhile, I, like my precessors, had been married off and settled down in the Netherlands. But when my husband died, I took a distinctly different approach.
Duke of Alba, writing a letter to Philip: Sire, we have a problem. I suggested to your half brother's mother that she should retire into a nunnery, because that's what ladies do. I even picked a nice Nunnery for her. But you know what she said? She likes sex too much for that and would prefer it if you paid her a rent so she can enjoy her retirement years with wine, men and song.
Philip: You're my most feared general and the Dutch are afraid of you - and you can't convince a single woman to retire into a nunnery?
Barbara Blomberg: I'm not Dutch. I'm a fun loving southern German, my son Juan d'Austria has just achieved the greatest Spanish victory in two generations at the battle of Lepanto against the Turks and has been hailed as a hero even by Protestants while all your other generals are loathed.
Alba: I'm off fighting with some more Protestants. If you really want to convince her, you should send her son to talk to her.
Juan d'Austria: Mom!
Barbara: Son!
Juan: Mom, we've never seen each other since I was a baby, and it's nice to finally meet my other brothers and sisters, but seriously, Philip isn't down with this free love for women approach when it comes to members of the royal family. And while I am a national hero, I'm also still a bastard. If I pick a really nice nunnery, will you go? Otherwise, I might not get the job I'm currently eyeing, which is replacing Alba in the Netherlands and trying a less heavy handed approach there.
Barbara: Okay, for you. *enters a nunnery*
Juan d'Austria: dies young.
Nation: *mourns*
Barbara Blomberg: Dear sort of step son Philip II, I'm heartbroken, and also our deal is off. I'm not staying in a nunnery now my boy is dead. The only thing which can console me is a) a nice real estate for me and my other kids, and b) a return to wine, men and song! You don't want to say no to the grieving mother of the dead national hero, do you?
Philip: ...you know what, fine. Contrary to my Schillerian reputation, I'm giving you a generous unconditional retirement rent, allow you to settle whereever you want and continue to live your life however you want.
Barbara: Thank you. I'm dying at age 70 with no regrets and a life fully lived. Some YouTube users are slutshaming me in their comments to my scene with Charles like you wouldn't believe. Ignore them.
*rewind to earlier, when Juan de Austria is still alive*
Juan: Schiller mentions me along with Alessandro Farnese as being present in some public scenes, but we don't get any lines. Which is possibly because it would have interfered with the plot of his play, because in reality, this happened:
Don Carlos: Juan, old schoolmate, I want to conspire against Dad and either want to engineer a coup or take off to the Netherlands, depending on whom you believe. In any event, I'm telling you all about it. Want to join?
Juan: I'm telling you yes, because I'm not suicidal and you are famous for your uncertain temper in real life. And then I immediately go and tell half brother Philip. Because guess what? I've sworn my oath to him, he was the one to welcome me into the family, and unlike fictional Rodrigo de Posa, I just like Philip better than you. Sorry. Adios, Carlos.
Schiller: And that's why he didn't get any lines in my play. Look, Philip is a tragic antagonist, and Domingo is scum, Alba is the Old Dessauer as a Spaniard and the Grand Inquisitor is all I loathe, but even the black Legend of Spain doesn't offer me negatives on Juan de Austria.
Black Legend: Sure we do! We claim Barbara Blomberg wasn't his real mother and that he was Charles' incest baby with either his sister Mary of Hungary or his daughter Margaret instead!
Schiller: Sorry. Even hardcore Protestant writers don't buy that one anymore in the 18th century. Not least because neither Charles' sister nor his daughter were either with him at the appropriate time or out of the public eye enough for a secret pregnancy, unlike Queen Germaine decades earlier, and incest accusations were the most popular 16th century thing ever against political opponents.
Black Legend: Well, if Charles did it with his stepgrandmother, that was incest too. Typical Habsburg.
Schiller: They weren't related by blood and only met when he was an impressionable late teen. He grew up with his sister. I'm sure you see the difference. Anyway: Charles and his love life don't fit in my drama where Carlos in love with this stepmother needs to be the only big taboo breaker. Also Charles is dead when my plot takes place.
Verdi: Not in one variation of my opera, he's not. Maybe that's why old Charles saves young Carlos - he sympathizes!
cahn and [Bad username or unknown identity: iberiandoctor"], if either wants to use some historical factoids in potential Schiller/Verdi Don Carlos fanfiction, brought to you by the fact I just read a recent (2018) Charles V. biography. Important reminder, not just for this but for any period, of just how much territory Charles inherited from all four grandparents
From Maximilian I., HRE: Austrian heartlands (these included Austria, a great deal of Switzerland and today's Southern Tyrolia)
From Mary of Burgundy: Burgundy (which consisted of the actual province Burgundy, today Franche-Comte, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands)
From Ferdinand of Aragon: Aragon, Sicily, Naples and Sardinia (all ruled by the House of Aragon since the high middle ages)
From Isabella of Castile: Castile and the new overseas territories. (Read: Latin America except for Brazil, which was Portuegese)
Hence: the Empire in which the sun does not set. Hence also a great many people people in it sideyeing a great many others, and that's before we get to the fact that just when Charles was starting his rule, a monk named Martin Luther got busy in Wittenberg. (Key factor.)
Now Charles, as mentioned before was raised in Flanders, unlike his younger brother Ferdinand, who was raised with Granddad Ferdinand. This, and the fact that his aunt Margaret was a brilliant governor of the Netherlands, and after her his sister Mary was very good as well, meant that while Charles lived, there might have been the occasional rumble as Protestantism started to spread in Flanders, but by and large, the Netherlands still felt the emotional connection to him; he was seen as one one of theirs. In fact, when Charles declared his abdication in Gent, the city where he was born, William of Orange (not that one, an earlier one of the same name, the Ur-William of Orange, even) was present and Charles, who was suffering from extreme gout, was leaning on him when entering the room. However, son Philip was seen as utterly Spanish, a complete foreigner, plus by the time Philip ruled, the religious strife was really kicking into high gear and Philip's reply of slamming down hard with the counter reformation and the hardcore laws in general settled it.
=> 80 years of the Dutch fighting for independence from Spain, a fight started by the same William of Orange whom Charles had leaned on during the abdication.
Back to the early days. Now Charles had been raised by Aunt Margaret in the tradition of a Duke of Burgundy, but the "Burgundy" part of Burgundy had been lost for the first time in the ongoing wars between Grandpa Max and France, then regained, then lost again and so forth in the endless wars between Charles and Francis I. If anyone of the European princes was Charles' arch nemesis, it was Frances. Their first personal conflict started when Grandpa Maximilian died and thus the election of a new Emperor was due. Now remember, unlike the various territories Charles inherited, the job office of Emperor was NOT inheritable per se. It had to be voted for by the various Princes Electors.
Rest of Europe: Do we really want the kid who inherited all that land to become HRE as well?
France: We certainly don't. Francis for HRE!
England: We're thinking Henry VIII. for HRE, mostly because Henry thinks he rocks that much. Also the Pope has just appointed him Defender of the Faith. No more faithful Catholic than Henry, ever! All the titles for Henry!
Duke of Saxony: You're kidding, right? Are any of you aware that more and more Germans are listening to ex-Brother Martin whom I happen to be shielding in my territories? That whoever gets to be Emperor should, like, maybe have a clue about German affairs? This doesn't mean a guy raised in the Netherlands and currently hanging out in Spain. I'm nominating myself.
Margaret of Austria: Gentlemen, calm down. Have some Fugger money. And some propaganda. Surely the Empire shouldn't be ruled by a Frenchman or Mr. Clueless Redbeard from accross the channel, but by another Habsburg. My nephew is the completely German offspring of a German dynasty, I swear.
Francis: Excuse you. Your nephew has one German grandparent and won't speak more German than Fritz will in the future, even using the "German is how I speak to my horses" simile Fritz will steal. Also, can it be that you still hold a grudge from when my Greatuncle ditched you?
Margaret of Austria: what I'm holding are more bags of money than you can count, and the future of the Habsburg dynasty.
Pope: It's just, the last time a HRE ruled over parts of Italy along with the German territories, my predecessors and those Emperors kept having showdowns.
Margaret: Won't happen this time. I raised my nephew as a devoted Christian, your Holiness.
=> Charles for Emperor.
Diet of Worms: Happens.
Martin Luther: Shows up.
New Emperor Charles: Not impressed. Seriously, he wasn't. This particular event is key to Luther's reputation - "here I stand, I can do no other" etc. - but Charles was just, like, meh. I expected more. Possibly one reason why he let Luther go instead of arresting him on the spot, something he would agonize over decades later. Another reason was that Charles was still young enough that having given his word about free passage for Luther meant something to him.
Charles: Okay. I'm absolutely for church reform. But no heresy! The famous Council of Trent will be largely on my initiative. My stated life goal was Christian unity in my Empire. I only thought I'd have to duke it out with the Turks, in the true spirit of my Spanish grandparents. Instead, this Luther thing got totally out of control in the German principalities, Francis and I were at each other's throats for decades and the bastard even teamed up with the goddam Turks, and three Popes in a row hated my guts.
Pope Clement: Can you blame me? Your troops sacked Rome!
Charles: Not on my orders. I wasn't even in Italy at the time. The actual commander was even murdered before that happened.
Pope Clement: You still benefited. And scared the hell out of me. Which is why...
Henry VIII: Hey, Pope Clement, you're currently besieged by Charles' marauding troops in Rome, so I'm thinking this is the perfect time to ask you to declare my marriage to Charles' aunt Catherine of Aragon null and void!
Charles:...
Clement: ...
Henry VIII: FINE. Don't blame for the consequences.
Pope Paul III: As for me, I was willing to work with you. One of my illegitimate sons married your illegitimate daughter, even. But then you had to go and look the other way when one of your people killed another of my illegitimate sons. Naturally, I hated you from this point onwards. Hey, Francis, I just recalled France is the first daughter of the Church, not Spain, and certainly NOT Germany, which gets more heretical by the second. Want to team up?
Francis: With pleasure.
Charles: WTF? He's tight with the goddam Muslims!
Overseas Territories: Are we not going to mention the terrible bloody story of the Conquistadores?
selenak: Not in depth, but I have to share this with the class: 2018 Biographer of Charles: Look, colonialism = terrible, I entirely agree. But I would like to point out that Charles allowed a public dispute between Bartolomé Las Casas (Freedom for the Indios! J'Accuse!) and Selpudeva (forced conversion and slaves = legitimate life goals for conquest), listened to Las Casas at least somewhat and reformed his laws which now forbade enslaving the Indios. Both these men were among the top theologians of their time. That is to say, Spain under Charles had these debates about the ethics of coloniasm on the highest level, while it would be centuries more until such debates happened in the Protestant countries like England and Netherlands who weren't one jot better in their overseas colonialism and profited merrily from it while self righteously fostering the "Black Legend" about Charles and son Philip as the suppressors of every bit of Gedankenfreiheit. There was no English equivalent to Las Casas until the freaking tail end of the 18th century, was there!
Overseas colonies: Considering Philip when starting to be short of cash went back on Charles' reformed laws, allow us not to weep for their reputation.
Charles: Speaking of reputations. Between my contemporaries Francis and Henry, I actually win at husbandry. I was famously devoted to my wife Isabel of Portugal, made her regent of Spain in my absences and never remarried after her death, despite Philip being my sole legitimate son. I may not have seen him for years at a time, due to the sheer size of the Empire and my constant travelling from one emergency to the next, but I wrote him "I don't have another son but you" and touchingly added "and I don't want another son, either" when he was a teenager. However, I will admit that my love life before and after my marriage was somewhat more unorthodox.
Germaine de Fox: I'm the second, MUCH younger wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, Charles' granddad. Ferdinand married me to get of out Habsburgs ruling Spain, remember? Sadly, our one son lived for less than a day. Ferdinand died when I was still in my later 20s. Which is when Charles came to Spain to inherit. He was 17. What can I say? We hit it off. For a time, until he was about 19, I was constantly at his side. And then I got pregnant, giving birth to an illigitimate daughter. He didn't acknowledge her, but in my last will I said he was the dad. Anyway, naturally her birth happened in secret and Charles then thankfully arranged for me to marry again, one of his vassals, the Margrave of Brandenburg. Small world, eh?
Johanna van der Gheynst: I was a Flemish ladies' maid; Charles and I had a fling, which resulted in my daughter Margaret, named after his aunt of course. He acknowledged her as his bastard, had her raised by his aunt and later by his sister. She's the one who married the Pope's bastard. She also governed the Netherlands for a time in the proud tradition female Regents. (Charles' biographer would like to point out that the Habsburgs were really into female regents in the 15th and 16th century.) As for me, Charles arranged a marriage and paid me a rent for the rest of my days. My grandson, Alessandro Farnese, is one of Philip II's most trusted generals. He will go in the same school together with Don Carlos, fictional Posa and Juan d'Austria.
Barbara Blomberg: I was Charles' last fling from when he had to attend the Diet at Ratisbon in his last decade. There is still a sign at the inn in Ratisbon pointing out where Charles and I had passionate, if short lived sex, mainly because my kid Juan de Austria became a hero. Charles had him brought to Spain and raised there under the cover name of Jeronimo. He met him a few times in his final years when he was retired into a monestary, but did not tell the boy he was his father. However, he asked his son Philip in his last will to take care of Juan and openly acknoweldge him as his brother, which Philip did. He also had Juan raised along with his own son Don Carles and with Alessandro Farnese at that school. Meanwhile, I, like my precessors, had been married off and settled down in the Netherlands. But when my husband died, I took a distinctly different approach.
Duke of Alba, writing a letter to Philip: Sire, we have a problem. I suggested to your half brother's mother that she should retire into a nunnery, because that's what ladies do. I even picked a nice Nunnery for her. But you know what she said? She likes sex too much for that and would prefer it if you paid her a rent so she can enjoy her retirement years with wine, men and song.
Philip: You're my most feared general and the Dutch are afraid of you - and you can't convince a single woman to retire into a nunnery?
Barbara Blomberg: I'm not Dutch. I'm a fun loving southern German, my son Juan d'Austria has just achieved the greatest Spanish victory in two generations at the battle of Lepanto against the Turks and has been hailed as a hero even by Protestants while all your other generals are loathed.
Alba: I'm off fighting with some more Protestants. If you really want to convince her, you should send her son to talk to her.
Juan d'Austria: Mom!
Barbara: Son!
Juan: Mom, we've never seen each other since I was a baby, and it's nice to finally meet my other brothers and sisters, but seriously, Philip isn't down with this free love for women approach when it comes to members of the royal family. And while I am a national hero, I'm also still a bastard. If I pick a really nice nunnery, will you go? Otherwise, I might not get the job I'm currently eyeing, which is replacing Alba in the Netherlands and trying a less heavy handed approach there.
Barbara: Okay, for you. *enters a nunnery*
Juan d'Austria: dies young.
Nation: *mourns*
Barbara Blomberg: Dear sort of step son Philip II, I'm heartbroken, and also our deal is off. I'm not staying in a nunnery now my boy is dead. The only thing which can console me is a) a nice real estate for me and my other kids, and b) a return to wine, men and song! You don't want to say no to the grieving mother of the dead national hero, do you?
Philip: ...you know what, fine. Contrary to my Schillerian reputation, I'm giving you a generous unconditional retirement rent, allow you to settle whereever you want and continue to live your life however you want.
Barbara: Thank you. I'm dying at age 70 with no regrets and a life fully lived. Some YouTube users are slutshaming me in their comments to my scene with Charles like you wouldn't believe. Ignore them.
*rewind to earlier, when Juan de Austria is still alive*
Juan: Schiller mentions me along with Alessandro Farnese as being present in some public scenes, but we don't get any lines. Which is possibly because it would have interfered with the plot of his play, because in reality, this happened:
Don Carlos: Juan, old schoolmate, I want to conspire against Dad and either want to engineer a coup or take off to the Netherlands, depending on whom you believe. In any event, I'm telling you all about it. Want to join?
Juan: I'm telling you yes, because I'm not suicidal and you are famous for your uncertain temper in real life. And then I immediately go and tell half brother Philip. Because guess what? I've sworn my oath to him, he was the one to welcome me into the family, and unlike fictional Rodrigo de Posa, I just like Philip better than you. Sorry. Adios, Carlos.
Schiller: And that's why he didn't get any lines in my play. Look, Philip is a tragic antagonist, and Domingo is scum, Alba is the Old Dessauer as a Spaniard and the Grand Inquisitor is all I loathe, but even the black Legend of Spain doesn't offer me negatives on Juan de Austria.
Black Legend: Sure we do! We claim Barbara Blomberg wasn't his real mother and that he was Charles' incest baby with either his sister Mary of Hungary or his daughter Margaret instead!
Schiller: Sorry. Even hardcore Protestant writers don't buy that one anymore in the 18th century. Not least because neither Charles' sister nor his daughter were either with him at the appropriate time or out of the public eye enough for a secret pregnancy, unlike Queen Germaine decades earlier, and incest accusations were the most popular 16th century thing ever against political opponents.
Black Legend: Well, if Charles did it with his stepgrandmother, that was incest too. Typical Habsburg.
Schiller: They weren't related by blood and only met when he was an impressionable late teen. He grew up with his sister. I'm sure you see the difference. Anyway: Charles and his love life don't fit in my drama where Carlos in love with this stepmother needs to be the only big taboo breaker. Also Charles is dead when my plot takes place.
Verdi: Not in one variation of my opera, he's not. Maybe that's why old Charles saves young Carlos - he sympathizes!
though of course unlike poor Whitworth, he could roll with it enough when required to beome a member of the club
It's 1716, and Whitworth has just announced that he likes Berlin best of all his postings so far! Considering his experience has been Regensburg both when under foreign occupation and when the Peace of Utrecht is being hammered out (and Whitworth is frustrated by the Diet's complete inability to get anything productive done), and Moscow, this is a low bar, but:
You see I am now settling into my new post, something more agreable, but much more expensive than Ratisbonne [Cahn: Regensburg] tho my Revenue is lesen'd by my new Establishment, but for better or for worse should be the motto of Ministers & married Men.
Whitworth, btw, is one of those relatively rare diplomats who *isn't* independently wealthy. Since salaries were low and more often than not, paid out several years after they were due, he's constantly asking his family for money, apologizing to them, complaining to his bosses, and wondering whether this is actually a viable career.
Fritz: See, this is why I said Peter Keith not being rich was a strike against him as envoy!
Naturally. BTW, does the Philip biography have much to say about Farinelli? Covering the musical angle here for cahn.
A little bit, yeah. Will include that in my Philip V write-up when I'm not hoping my insomnia ends soon.
Caught between "children must obey and honor their fathers above all" and "hey, he's still the future heir, right? Let's get all the concessions!"
This is my guess!
But Peter? Peter is the living embodiment of 1730.
I figured that would be your take on it. Poor Peter. :(
That is unfortunate, but then, you yourself have said you still wouldn't mind the Rokoko babysitting plot despite being convinced now that the unnamed brother from Fritz' letter was AW. Just proceed with Mentor!Rottembourg.
Oh, sure, for fanfic! It's just that putting on my historian hat, I have to adjust my headcanon now. But Mentor!Rottembourg is exactly the kind of fleshing out that fanfic is *for*! (I do think, historically, that Rottembourg was a mentor figure. I just no longer believe in "I need to talk to you in person SO BADLY that I will make an unauthorized detour to Spain!") Totally keeping the detour to Spain for fanfic, though, especially since there's additional plot reason for it.
And yes, would read the heck out of Heinrich babysitting even now that I think it was AW!
It's 1716, and Whitworth has just announced that he likes Berlin best of all his postings so far! Considering his experience has been Regensburg both when under foreign occupation and when the Peace of Utrecht is being hammered out (and Whitworth is frustrated by the Diet's complete inability to get anything productive done), and Moscow, this is a low bar, but:
You see I am now settling into my new post, something more agreable, but much more expensive than Ratisbonne [Cahn: Regensburg] tho my Revenue is lesen'd by my new Establishment, but for better or for worse should be the motto of Ministers & married Men.
Whitworth, btw, is one of those relatively rare diplomats who *isn't* independently wealthy. Since salaries were low and more often than not, paid out several years after they were due, he's constantly asking his family for money, apologizing to them, complaining to his bosses, and wondering whether this is actually a viable career.
Fritz: See, this is why I said Peter Keith not being rich was a strike against him as envoy!
Naturally. BTW, does the Philip biography have much to say about Farinelli? Covering the musical angle here for cahn.
A little bit, yeah. Will include that in my Philip V write-up when I'm not hoping my insomnia ends soon.
Caught between "children must obey and honor their fathers above all" and "hey, he's still the future heir, right? Let's get all the concessions!"
This is my guess!
But Peter? Peter is the living embodiment of 1730.
I figured that would be your take on it. Poor Peter. :(
That is unfortunate, but then, you yourself have said you still wouldn't mind the Rokoko babysitting plot despite being convinced now that the unnamed brother from Fritz' letter was AW. Just proceed with Mentor!Rottembourg.
Oh, sure, for fanfic! It's just that putting on my historian hat, I have to adjust my headcanon now. But Mentor!Rottembourg is exactly the kind of fleshing out that fanfic is *for*! (I do think, historically, that Rottembourg was a mentor figure. I just no longer believe in "I need to talk to you in person SO BADLY that I will make an unauthorized detour to Spain!") Totally keeping the detour to Spain for fanfic, though, especially since there's additional plot reason for it.
And yes, would read the heck out of Heinrich babysitting even now that I think it was AW!
Edited 2021-05-29 11:13 (UTC)
Have sent the Zweig Kindle samples (woot, actually available in the US and for cheap, too!) to my Kindle, thanks! Sounds promising.
Anyway, while Zweig doesn't write short sentences, exactly
That's fine, neither did Horowski! I want to improve my facility with German. It's just that I need the content to compensate for the difficulty of the language. Which Horowski did perfectly. And Lehndorff, despite short sentences, did not (he's wonderful and invaluable as a resource, of course! but you--or at least I--have to be able to either read quickly through the parts that you don't have context for, or do research/salon chat to get that context).
Anyway, while Zweig doesn't write short sentences, exactly
That's fine, neither did Horowski! I want to improve my facility with German. It's just that I need the content to compensate for the difficulty of the language. Which Horowski did perfectly. And Lehndorff, despite short sentences, did not (he's wonderful and invaluable as a resource, of course! but you--or at least I--have to be able to either read quickly through the parts that you don't have context for, or do research/salon chat to get that context).
Man, this is awesome :D
England: We're thinking Henry VIII. for HRE, mostly because Henry thinks he rocks that much. Also the Pope has just appointed him Defender of the Faith. No more faithful Catholic than Henry, ever! All the titles for Henry!
HAHAHAHAHA omg, especially when paired with
Henry VIII: FINE. Don't blame for the consequences.
LOL FOREVER
New Emperor Charles: Not impressed. Seriously, he wasn't. This particular event is key to Luther's reputation - "here I stand, I can do no other" etc. - but Charles was just, like, meh. I expected more. Possibly one reason why he let Luther go instead of arresting him on the spot, something he would agonize over decades later. Another reason was that Charles was still young enough that having given his word about free passage for Luther meant something to him.
This is a hilariously engaging way of telling the story, but also this is fascinating (my knowledge of the story from Lutherans is, predictably, heavy on Luther and not at all on Charles). Also makes me feel for Charles. I have a huge trope-love for people who keep their word even when it kind of sucks for them.
and touchingly added "and I don't want another son, either" when he was a teenager.
Aww, that's touching! Seems like most people in that era would have wanted another son <3
Seems like generally speaking he treated his illegitimate kids pretty well too. (What happened to his daughter by Germaine de Fox?) Also I got a kick out of his unorthodox love life :D (Also I really like Barbara Blomberg!)
Philip: You're my most feared general and the Dutch are afraid of you - and you can't convince a single woman to retire into a nunnery?
HAHAHAHAHHA okay I burst out laughing here
would totally be up for Duke of Alva fic where he gets outmanuevered by Barbara
Also, aww Philip and Barbara :D <3
Juan: I'm telling you yes, because I'm not suicidal and you are famous for your uncertain temper in real life. And then I immediately go and tell half brother Philip. Because guess what? I've sworn my oath to him, he was the one to welcome me into the family, and unlike fictional Rodrigo de Posa, I just like Philip better than you. Sorry. Adios, Carlos.
...ALSO would read this. HA.
(Also I have seen one staging of Verdi which looked not so different from this in the auto-da-fe scene, although mostly I think due to really poor direction plus a lackluster Carlos coupled with Rene Pape as a compelling Philip that did come across as much cooler than Carlos; that would be interesting as an intentional directorial construction, though)
Schiller: They weren't related by blood and only met when he was an impressionable late teen. He grew up with his sister. I'm sure you see the difference.
*blinks*
:D
England: We're thinking Henry VIII. for HRE, mostly because Henry thinks he rocks that much. Also the Pope has just appointed him Defender of the Faith. No more faithful Catholic than Henry, ever! All the titles for Henry!
HAHAHAHAHA omg, especially when paired with
Henry VIII: FINE. Don't blame for the consequences.
LOL FOREVER
New Emperor Charles: Not impressed. Seriously, he wasn't. This particular event is key to Luther's reputation - "here I stand, I can do no other" etc. - but Charles was just, like, meh. I expected more. Possibly one reason why he let Luther go instead of arresting him on the spot, something he would agonize over decades later. Another reason was that Charles was still young enough that having given his word about free passage for Luther meant something to him.
This is a hilariously engaging way of telling the story, but also this is fascinating (my knowledge of the story from Lutherans is, predictably, heavy on Luther and not at all on Charles). Also makes me feel for Charles. I have a huge trope-love for people who keep their word even when it kind of sucks for them.
and touchingly added "and I don't want another son, either" when he was a teenager.
Aww, that's touching! Seems like most people in that era would have wanted another son <3
Seems like generally speaking he treated his illegitimate kids pretty well too. (What happened to his daughter by Germaine de Fox?) Also I got a kick out of his unorthodox love life :D (Also I really like Barbara Blomberg!)
Philip: You're my most feared general and the Dutch are afraid of you - and you can't convince a single woman to retire into a nunnery?
HAHAHAHAHHA okay I burst out laughing here
would totally be up for Duke of Alva fic where he gets outmanuevered by Barbara
Also, aww Philip and Barbara :D <3
Juan: I'm telling you yes, because I'm not suicidal and you are famous for your uncertain temper in real life. And then I immediately go and tell half brother Philip. Because guess what? I've sworn my oath to him, he was the one to welcome me into the family, and unlike fictional Rodrigo de Posa, I just like Philip better than you. Sorry. Adios, Carlos.
...ALSO would read this. HA.
(Also I have seen one staging of Verdi which looked not so different from this in the auto-da-fe scene, although mostly I think due to really poor direction plus a lackluster Carlos coupled with Rene Pape as a compelling Philip that did come across as much cooler than Carlos; that would be interesting as an intentional directorial construction, though)
Schiller: They weren't related by blood and only met when he was an impressionable late teen. He grew up with his sister. I'm sure you see the difference.
*blinks*
:D
Edited 2021-05-29 17:10 (UTC)
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: 1709 and Malplaquet
mildred_of_midgard
2021-05-29 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not as into military battles as you are -- who is?
Haha, well, no one in salon, certainly! But my interest is very casual, and if you start getting into the subject, you find that there are people who are waaaaay more into them than I am.
but I do find them interesting, especially when explained accessibly like this :)
I'm glad it was accessible. My problem with a book like The War of the Spanish Succession, is that events are presented in chronological order. So you get bogged down in years of battle tactics and marches before you even have a clear picture of what's going on.
I would write military history like this:
- First, the politics, diplomacy, and personalities.
- Then, military strategy.
- Then, tactics.
Instead, I get, "I'm in my tenth flanking maneuver in 7 years of the war and I don't even know why this battle was important."
This is why learning not to feel bad about reading books out of order was so important! I was able to do the Spanish Succession by approaching the material strategically ;) instead of passively.
ALSO MAPS WHY NO MAPS AUTHOR?? There were maps, but aside from the march up the Rhine, the wrong maps, and too few, and I was like, "But what even is going on here???" (This is one reason you didn't get any of the battles in Spain; I don't know Spanish geography and topology nearly as well, so it was like, "Let's talk about the Rhineland and the Low Countries, where Mildred can fill in the gaps!")
Haha, well, no one in salon, certainly! But my interest is very casual, and if you start getting into the subject, you find that there are people who are waaaaay more into them than I am.
but I do find them interesting, especially when explained accessibly like this :)
I'm glad it was accessible. My problem with a book like The War of the Spanish Succession, is that events are presented in chronological order. So you get bogged down in years of battle tactics and marches before you even have a clear picture of what's going on.
I would write military history like this:
- First, the politics, diplomacy, and personalities.
- Then, military strategy.
- Then, tactics.
Instead, I get, "I'm in my tenth flanking maneuver in 7 years of the war and I don't even know why this battle was important."
This is why learning not to feel bad about reading books out of order was so important! I was able to do the Spanish Succession by approaching the material strategically ;) instead of passively.
ALSO MAPS WHY NO MAPS AUTHOR?? There were maps, but aside from the march up the Rhine, the wrong maps, and too few, and I was like, "But what even is going on here???" (This is one reason you didn't get any of the battles in Spain; I don't know Spanish geography and topology nearly as well, so it was like, "Let's talk about the Rhineland and the Low Countries, where Mildred can fill in the gaps!")
Some algorithm decided I needed to see this in one of my feeds. It was right.
Map of 1789 HRE, put together by a Reddit poster. Warning, that link is safe in that it will take you to a page with a preview, but clicking on the preview to load the full image may crash your browser. YMMV. Detailed map is detailed!
I make no guarantees about accuracy or precision, but it was clearly a labor of love!
Map of 1789 HRE, put together by a Reddit poster. Warning, that link is safe in that it will take you to a page with a preview, but clicking on the preview to load the full image may crash your browser. YMMV. Detailed map is detailed!
I make no guarantees about accuracy or precision, but it was clearly a labor of love!
This is a hilariously engaging way of telling the story, but also this is fascinating (my knowledge of the story from Lutherans is, predictably, heavy on Luther and not at all on Charles)
The 2018 biographer of Charles, Heinz Schilling, is, as no review at the time forgot to point, the first Charles biographer who write a biography of Luther first, in fact to this day the only Luther biographer who also wrote a biography of Charles. Which is why he's really good at all the religious issues. (That he's way better informed on Luther than on, say, Francis I., otoh, is also evident. I mean, think of Francis what you will, but culturally disinterested, he was not. (And not just because he offered Leonardo da Vinci a nice retirement in Amboise.) ) Back to Luther - something I hadn't known: after Charles had won his greatest victory over the Protestant princes (at Mühlbach), he didn't just visit Wittenberg, he visited Luther's tomb. What he did not do was to order Luther's corpse to be exhumed and his bones shattered etc., which is what his daughter-in-law Mary Tudor did with one of the dead big Calvinist thinkers who had ended up in England under Edward IV., and which certainly some of Charles' more hardcore advisors urged him to do.
This respect for the dead should not be confused with tolerance in the modern sense. Charles went to his death tormented by the idea that under his rule, Christianity had been split into factions and as he saw it heresy had spread throughout the Empire. He wasn't cynical about his faith, he really was a committed Catholic, and so he believed that an increasing number of his subjects were condemming themselves to hell, and he hadn't done enough to stop this and might have been able to if only he'd broken his word back in the day and had locked the ex-monk up. And certainly Philip II's hardcore Catholic fundamentalism was driven by the idea he had to make up for Dad not having done enough to contain heresy. But defiling the dead still was the kind of thing that seemed pointless to Charles, and so he didn't do it. What he thought when standing at Luther's tomb in Wittenberg, who knows.
Aww, that's touching! Seems like most people in that era would have wanted another son <3
Quite. Mind you, being Charles' only son for the longest time (and his only legitimate son ever) put a great weight on Philip from early childhood onwards. If you want iron woobie material: Philip's mother Isabella died after a stillbirth when he was 13. It was summer. As per ceremony, the coffin had to be reopened so Philip could identify the body when leading her funeral (Charles not being there, which made Philip head of the family in absentia). Decomposition had already set in, and he fainted. He also never forgot it. (But when waking up again, still went through with the ceremony.)
hat happened to his daughter by Germaine de Fox?
She died as a child.
would totally be up for Duke of Alva fic where he gets outmanuevered by Barbara
Yuletide, maybe? The nineteenth century Allgemeine Deutsche Biography which is online and which otherwise as a very 19th century Protestant German work deeply disapproves of the Duke of Alva, scourge of brave Protestant Dutch freedom fighters, nonetheless takes his side there and calls Barbara a shameless hussy. Thankfully, in this case German wiki uses a more modern source (though the old article is linked) and calls her a "selbstbestimmte Frau" instead.
The Spanish tv series about Charles also does a Don Carlos nay, Juan de Austria yay thing, both of them as children, though, as they each meet Charles after his abdication in his retirement. Btw, the tv series is correct and Verdi is wrong about Charles NOT wearing a monk's habit, but his usual clothing. He didn't join the order when he moved in, he just wanted to spend his remaining years (two, as it turned out) there, and brought a small household with him, as well as some books and a lot of watches. (He was a keen amateur clockmaker.)
Charles meets grandson Don Carlos
Charles meets his son Juan de Austria for the first time
Charles meets his son the second time
(BTW, Charles slapping the insect away at the end of this last clip is ominous because he will die of Malaria.)
Lastly, Charles V. in TV Tropes
The reason why the originally named Jeronimo was renamed into Juan, btw, was that Charles when writing the last version of his will (wherein he openly acknowledged him) wanted to name him after his mother Juana (who had wanted Charles himself to be named Juan, but Philip le Bel insisted on naming his oldest son after his grandfather Charles the Bold of Burgundy). Remember, Juana had died shortly before Charles abdicated (and you might even say he could only abdicate because Juana had died, because if he had abdicated while she was still alive and technically the still reigning Queen of Castile, the question of rulership would again be on the table). Was it guilt? Memory? You decide.
Juana's death scene from the same show (in the presence of her oldest daughter Eleanor)
Yo! I've finished all my exams and only have to tie up a few loose ends over the next week, then I'm free! I have some older sources to point to as well as some newer books in the coming weeks.
Quick question: I've seen you all talking about a "restricted" section of the Rheinsberg Library before - what's it for? I think I might have some really difficult to find books/papers to contribute to it, but I'm not sure if that's its purpose or how to access it?
Quick question: I've seen you all talking about a "restricted" section of the Rheinsberg Library before - what's it for? I think I might have some really difficult to find books/papers to contribute to it, but I'm not sure if that's its purpose or how to access it?
Yay, awesome, congrats! I'm looking forward to you coming back. Also, you should be super proud of yourself. :DDD
Check your DMs. ;)
Check your DMs. ;)
I've now finished reading the Philip V bio, Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice, by Henry Kamen (1997), and here are my findings.
French Throne
Remember when I said I wasn't sure if Philip would have claimed the French throne, just because there were people in France and Spain who thought he should? And then I read further and reported that he had pamphlets printed and distributed in France asserting his claims? It gets even better: any time young Louis XV was sick, Philip hopped out of his depression sickbed and started preparing to rush to France to claim the throne and assert himself against that upstart Philippe d'Orleans.
Yeeeeah. There would have been a war if Louis had died. Good job, Madame de Ventadour!
His obsession with ruling France was so well-known that people speculated that the reason he abdicated the crown of Spain was that he wanted to be free to claim the French throne. Kamen argues that there's no evidence for this and that it needs to be kept in mind that this is unknowable.
Languages
He did learn some Spanish, and apparently could handle paperwork in Spanish. But he always spoke French with his family, his ministers, his generals, and his confessor.
Mental Health
The author (Henry Kamen) does a good job of destigmatizing mental illness. He repeatedly refers to Philip's "neurobiological disorder" and refutes claims that Philip was "lazy" or "weak"; if he spent all day in bed and couldn't rule his kingdom, those were symptoms of his illness. The 1997 publication date no doubt helps tremendously.
Where I'm more hesitant is over the diagnosis. Kamen asserts that Philip was bipolar, because he veered between bedridden (depressed) and energetic (manic). I'm less certain that the episodes of activity fit the clinical criteria for mania. I think I would need to see a lot more primary sources to look for evidence.
Two things make me suspicious. One, that these "manic" episodes seem to only hit when there's a war to be fought or a kingdom to be claimed. I.e., the triggers seem purely external. Two, that his "symptoms" don't seem to impair his ability to do what needs to be done; this seems to be when he actually gets stuff done. It's quite possible that his passion for war and for claiming France gave him a burst of adrenaline that afforded him temporary relief from the depression, but that what he had was straight-up major depression, whose intensity fluctuated.
The one thing that makes me think of mania were the occasional episodes where he talked a lot, and very fast. That sounds like an actual symptom. Risk-taking may be one of the standard symptoms of mania, but I don't accept Philip's risking his life in battle as a symptom by itself; there's too much cultural context for that. He had a love of warfare, and we might just be seeing that and calling it mania because it contrasts with the depression.
So I'm ready to say he had depression, but I'm agnostic on bipolar.
Abdication
So, Philip definitely had a lot of guilt, anxiety, and self-esteem issues that are part and parcel of his depression, and which fed into his pathological piety. He flagellated himself, despite not being encouraged to do so by his confessor.
In one scribbled note to the confessor, the king wrote, 'Father, as this evening is my day for discipline [i.e. flagellation], please let me know what I should do, if I can say a Miserere in its place, and if you can relieve me of the obligation'; The confessor wrote back: 'Sire, Your Majesty has no obligation to do the discipline, or to say the Miserere, or to do anything in its place. I relieve you of the need to do anything.'
But Philip continues to obsess over saving his soul. He becomes convinced he can only do this by retiring to a place of complete tranquility. As early as 1720, he and Isabella sign their first vow to someday abdicate. 1720 is key because it's right after the 1718-1720 war of the Quadruple Alliance, where Spain tried to regain territory lost in the War of the Spanish Succession, and France, England, Austria, and the Netherlands ganged up on them and made them give it back. France invaded Spain, which was deeply traumatic for Philip, who was still kinda-sorta French at heart. (Remember when I said the Duke of Berwick really didn't want to invade Spain and fight against the king he'd fought *on behalf of* for over 10 years? Berwick's son was actually in Philip's service! It was tough for everyone.)
So that was depressing, and Philip got worse and started thinking about abdication. He and Isabella repeated this vow in writing in 1721, 1722, and 1723. Finally, in 1724, when their oldest son reached his majority, Philip abdicated. The reasons he gave are:
Having for the last four years considered, and reflected deeply and profoundly on, the miseries of this life, through the illnesses, wars and upheavals that God has seen fit to send me in the twenty-three years of my reign... [and now that my son is old enough to rule, I'm abdicating.]
Any other reasons, like wanting to rule France, are speculation. So then Philip and Isabella stepped down and went to live in their palace retreat.
...Where they held court and told their son what to do from afar and just generally couldn't give up power.
Then the new king died, seven months later, from smallpox. His brother was only 11 and not ready to rule. There was debate over what to do. Philip V ended up reclaiming the crown, but there were those who thought he could only legally become regent.
Philip himself often felt this. He was tormented over whether he had the right to be king, after having abdicated. As we've seen, he dealt with this by trying to abdicate; then, when Isabella foiled that, by refusing to talk, or refusing to talk to anyone but her (or one time his valet). Can't talk, can't rule!
Btw, just as I'm sometimes left thinking, "Did Voltaire really design a war chariot or can I not read German as well as I think I can?" or "Is German 'Kickboxer' a false friend and it actually means something else??" I've spent the last couple days worried that I misread or misremembered, and it didn't actually say that he thought he was a frog and I've misled everyone...
Nope, I'm staring at the page again, and it does say: "At one time in July he believed that he was a frog."
So that happened.
In the end, Philip reigned just short of 46 years, minus the 7 months of unofficially ruling from his retreat.
Relationship with Isabella
So it appears that reports of Isabella's dominance may have been exaggerated. Young Philip V was shy and insecure, and Louis XIV, through his ministers, and then increasingly Marie Louise, made the decisions. But the older he got, the more he seems to have had his own opinions. He apparently felt especially strongly on matters of foreign policy.
Like Marie Louise, Isabella was his main emotional support. And he definitely had much worse depression during his second marriage than his first. Quite possibly because war had a therapeutic effect on him, and Marie Louise died just at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Isabella got him during a mixture of peacetime and wartime, so she got to see the worst episodes. It's also likely that since he wasn't getting actual therapy, his mental health continued deteriorating as he got older. Since, you know, war isn't *actually* therapeutic and the guy clearly needed real therapy.
When he was bedridden, he and Isabella were inseparable. She seems to have worn herself out trying to live a normal life and also meet all of his needs, including the nocturnal schedule. It was impossible for ambassadors to meet with one of them alone; it was always both of them, and in fact, she stayed so close to him, that you basically couldn't catch either of them alone.
During audiences, he would listen and refuse to talk, and she would do all the talking. And when he was really badly off, she wouldn't let anyone see him. This led contemporaries to believe she was making all the decisions. A conclusion that was made all the easier by the fact that when you don't like the decision, it's easier to blame the bad advisor than the king, and especially when the decision-maker is a woman, which goes against the laws of nature! As we've discussed, Contemporaries concluded that he was sexually dependent, and that she dominated him because of her sexual hold on him. Nonsense, says Kamen, he was mentally ill, and their relationship just didn't fit into the contemporary worldview.
When it came to politics, Kamen argues that Philip was making the decisions, communicating them to her in private, and she was just enforcing them. His take on Isabella is that she basically molded herself to be whatever her husband needed. She nursed him, was his therapist, was his first minister, and implemented all his ideas without having any of her own.
The problem here is that some of his evidence is Isabella asserting that she was just carrying out Philip's ideas and that she had no wishes apart from his. And Kamen just refutes all the ambassadors' claims and uncritically accepts hers.
Whereas I would submit that maybe an unpopular woman whose power derived from her husband might actually feel the need to say that. Maybe she was doing a Caroline of Ansbach with George II, convincing her husband that her ideas originated with him!
If you step away from what they say and look at what they *do*, this is what I see:
- Isabella's first act on arriving is to dismiss the Princess d'Ursins for being insolent, and then say to Philip, upon meeting him, "Hope you don't mind I got rid of your late wife's advisor who's either been or been perceived the dominant power in Spain for the last decade and a half."
- When Philip abdicates the first time, Isabella goes along with it. After he returns to the throne, she does everything in her power to stop him, from keeping him under lock and guard, to having her messenger burst in on the council meeting and tear up the paper Philip wrote.
- Philip has opinions of his own when he's not laid up with depression, and he devotes himself to ruling, and I don't see a strong reversal of policy when he's incapacitated and Isabella's doing the talking.
What I see here is the royal couple working as a team and presenting a united front. On the one hand, I don't see evidence that Isabella has no ideas that diverge from his. It seems like she's the kind of person who's willing to take the initiative when she feels strongly. Which means that she's probably got strong feelings about other things as well, we just don't see her fighting Philip unless she can't get him to agree with her using milder means.
On the other hand, given his level of activity when he's not incapacitated, and given the continuity in some of his opinions between his first marriage and second, it does seem like he was doing at least some of the ruling. So Isabella's dominance may well have been overestimated, because she was an obvious scapegoat.
Finally, I regret to report, when his mental health plummeted, Philip was known to fight with Isabella and hit her hard enough on at least one occasion that she had to explain the scratches and bruises to Rottembourg (pretty sure "the French ambassador" is him), thus moving him off the "candidate for decent marriage" list and into the "no no no" list for me. Plus there's the whole requiring my non-stop attendance on him all night while he refuses to bathe or dress and is soiling the bed. I'm not sure running Spain is worth it.
Music therapy
By popular demand, Kamen's account of the Farinelli episode!
In 1737, Farinelli's in London, where he's had a contract since 1734. Isabella invites him to Spain. On his way, he performs for Louis XV. When he arrives in Spain, Philip is depressed and not attending the royal concert. But...
As the clear tones of his voice rose into the air, they penetrated to the bedroom where the afflicted Philip lay. The divine voice immediately resuscitated the king, who snapped out of his depression and began to attend once more to his work routine. Astonished by the therapeutic effects of Farinelli's music, the king and queen demanded that he sing for them every day.
He finds the workload, especially the nocturnal part, demanding, but he uses his position to introduce Italian opera to Spain, where it's a big hit, and in general create closer cultural ties between Italy and Spain. He writes, 'my achievement is that I am considered not as mere Farinelli, but as ambassador Farinelli.'
It was said by many that Philip only wanted to hear the same handful of arias, but that's slander, says Kamen. If you look at Farinelli's own papers, he had to sing hundreds of different pieces.
Through Farinelli, the king had discovered at last, after many years of suffering, a satisfactory therapy for his disorder.
That said, "satisfactory therapy" isn't the same thing as "immediate cure"; he continues to struggle with depression for the rest of his life. He dies in 1746.
Death
It was very quick: he woke up at noon, felt suddenly sick at 1:30, and was dead three minutes later. He was 62.
Interestingly, while Kamen says his sudden death was the result of long-term deterioration of mind and body, and Spanish Wikipedia says he died of a stroke, the actual symptoms Kamen gives (Wiki gives none) suggest something very different to me:
At 1:30, he said to Elizabeth [Isabella] that he thought he was going to vomit. She immediately called for a doctor, but was told that the king's physician was out at lunch. Philip's throat started swelling, as did his tongue, and he fell back on the bed. Within seconds he was dead. It had been three minutes from the moment that he mentioned vomiting.
That sounds like anaphylaxis to me: the swelling, the nausea, and the speed of the attack. Whatever he was allergic to, he might have died of it no matter how healthy he'd been.
French Throne
Remember when I said I wasn't sure if Philip would have claimed the French throne, just because there were people in France and Spain who thought he should? And then I read further and reported that he had pamphlets printed and distributed in France asserting his claims? It gets even better: any time young Louis XV was sick, Philip hopped out of his depression sickbed and started preparing to rush to France to claim the throne and assert himself against that upstart Philippe d'Orleans.
Yeeeeah. There would have been a war if Louis had died. Good job, Madame de Ventadour!
His obsession with ruling France was so well-known that people speculated that the reason he abdicated the crown of Spain was that he wanted to be free to claim the French throne. Kamen argues that there's no evidence for this and that it needs to be kept in mind that this is unknowable.
Languages
He did learn some Spanish, and apparently could handle paperwork in Spanish. But he always spoke French with his family, his ministers, his generals, and his confessor.
Mental Health
The author (Henry Kamen) does a good job of destigmatizing mental illness. He repeatedly refers to Philip's "neurobiological disorder" and refutes claims that Philip was "lazy" or "weak"; if he spent all day in bed and couldn't rule his kingdom, those were symptoms of his illness. The 1997 publication date no doubt helps tremendously.
Where I'm more hesitant is over the diagnosis. Kamen asserts that Philip was bipolar, because he veered between bedridden (depressed) and energetic (manic). I'm less certain that the episodes of activity fit the clinical criteria for mania. I think I would need to see a lot more primary sources to look for evidence.
Two things make me suspicious. One, that these "manic" episodes seem to only hit when there's a war to be fought or a kingdom to be claimed. I.e., the triggers seem purely external. Two, that his "symptoms" don't seem to impair his ability to do what needs to be done; this seems to be when he actually gets stuff done. It's quite possible that his passion for war and for claiming France gave him a burst of adrenaline that afforded him temporary relief from the depression, but that what he had was straight-up major depression, whose intensity fluctuated.
The one thing that makes me think of mania were the occasional episodes where he talked a lot, and very fast. That sounds like an actual symptom. Risk-taking may be one of the standard symptoms of mania, but I don't accept Philip's risking his life in battle as a symptom by itself; there's too much cultural context for that. He had a love of warfare, and we might just be seeing that and calling it mania because it contrasts with the depression.
So I'm ready to say he had depression, but I'm agnostic on bipolar.
Abdication
So, Philip definitely had a lot of guilt, anxiety, and self-esteem issues that are part and parcel of his depression, and which fed into his pathological piety. He flagellated himself, despite not being encouraged to do so by his confessor.
In one scribbled note to the confessor, the king wrote, 'Father, as this evening is my day for discipline [i.e. flagellation], please let me know what I should do, if I can say a Miserere in its place, and if you can relieve me of the obligation'; The confessor wrote back: 'Sire, Your Majesty has no obligation to do the discipline, or to say the Miserere, or to do anything in its place. I relieve you of the need to do anything.'
But Philip continues to obsess over saving his soul. He becomes convinced he can only do this by retiring to a place of complete tranquility. As early as 1720, he and Isabella sign their first vow to someday abdicate. 1720 is key because it's right after the 1718-1720 war of the Quadruple Alliance, where Spain tried to regain territory lost in the War of the Spanish Succession, and France, England, Austria, and the Netherlands ganged up on them and made them give it back. France invaded Spain, which was deeply traumatic for Philip, who was still kinda-sorta French at heart. (Remember when I said the Duke of Berwick really didn't want to invade Spain and fight against the king he'd fought *on behalf of* for over 10 years? Berwick's son was actually in Philip's service! It was tough for everyone.)
So that was depressing, and Philip got worse and started thinking about abdication. He and Isabella repeated this vow in writing in 1721, 1722, and 1723. Finally, in 1724, when their oldest son reached his majority, Philip abdicated. The reasons he gave are:
Having for the last four years considered, and reflected deeply and profoundly on, the miseries of this life, through the illnesses, wars and upheavals that God has seen fit to send me in the twenty-three years of my reign... [and now that my son is old enough to rule, I'm abdicating.]
Any other reasons, like wanting to rule France, are speculation. So then Philip and Isabella stepped down and went to live in their palace retreat.
...Where they held court and told their son what to do from afar and just generally couldn't give up power.
Then the new king died, seven months later, from smallpox. His brother was only 11 and not ready to rule. There was debate over what to do. Philip V ended up reclaiming the crown, but there were those who thought he could only legally become regent.
Philip himself often felt this. He was tormented over whether he had the right to be king, after having abdicated. As we've seen, he dealt with this by trying to abdicate; then, when Isabella foiled that, by refusing to talk, or refusing to talk to anyone but her (or one time his valet). Can't talk, can't rule!
Btw, just as I'm sometimes left thinking, "Did Voltaire really design a war chariot or can I not read German as well as I think I can?" or "Is German 'Kickboxer' a false friend and it actually means something else??" I've spent the last couple days worried that I misread or misremembered, and it didn't actually say that he thought he was a frog and I've misled everyone...
Nope, I'm staring at the page again, and it does say: "At one time in July he believed that he was a frog."
So that happened.
In the end, Philip reigned just short of 46 years, minus the 7 months of unofficially ruling from his retreat.
Relationship with Isabella
So it appears that reports of Isabella's dominance may have been exaggerated. Young Philip V was shy and insecure, and Louis XIV, through his ministers, and then increasingly Marie Louise, made the decisions. But the older he got, the more he seems to have had his own opinions. He apparently felt especially strongly on matters of foreign policy.
Like Marie Louise, Isabella was his main emotional support. And he definitely had much worse depression during his second marriage than his first. Quite possibly because war had a therapeutic effect on him, and Marie Louise died just at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Isabella got him during a mixture of peacetime and wartime, so she got to see the worst episodes. It's also likely that since he wasn't getting actual therapy, his mental health continued deteriorating as he got older. Since, you know, war isn't *actually* therapeutic and the guy clearly needed real therapy.
When he was bedridden, he and Isabella were inseparable. She seems to have worn herself out trying to live a normal life and also meet all of his needs, including the nocturnal schedule. It was impossible for ambassadors to meet with one of them alone; it was always both of them, and in fact, she stayed so close to him, that you basically couldn't catch either of them alone.
During audiences, he would listen and refuse to talk, and she would do all the talking. And when he was really badly off, she wouldn't let anyone see him. This led contemporaries to believe she was making all the decisions. A conclusion that was made all the easier by the fact that when you don't like the decision, it's easier to blame the bad advisor than the king, and especially when the decision-maker is a woman, which goes against the laws of nature! As we've discussed, Contemporaries concluded that he was sexually dependent, and that she dominated him because of her sexual hold on him. Nonsense, says Kamen, he was mentally ill, and their relationship just didn't fit into the contemporary worldview.
When it came to politics, Kamen argues that Philip was making the decisions, communicating them to her in private, and she was just enforcing them. His take on Isabella is that she basically molded herself to be whatever her husband needed. She nursed him, was his therapist, was his first minister, and implemented all his ideas without having any of her own.
The problem here is that some of his evidence is Isabella asserting that she was just carrying out Philip's ideas and that she had no wishes apart from his. And Kamen just refutes all the ambassadors' claims and uncritically accepts hers.
Whereas I would submit that maybe an unpopular woman whose power derived from her husband might actually feel the need to say that. Maybe she was doing a Caroline of Ansbach with George II, convincing her husband that her ideas originated with him!
If you step away from what they say and look at what they *do*, this is what I see:
- Isabella's first act on arriving is to dismiss the Princess d'Ursins for being insolent, and then say to Philip, upon meeting him, "Hope you don't mind I got rid of your late wife's advisor who's either been or been perceived the dominant power in Spain for the last decade and a half."
- When Philip abdicates the first time, Isabella goes along with it. After he returns to the throne, she does everything in her power to stop him, from keeping him under lock and guard, to having her messenger burst in on the council meeting and tear up the paper Philip wrote.
- Philip has opinions of his own when he's not laid up with depression, and he devotes himself to ruling, and I don't see a strong reversal of policy when he's incapacitated and Isabella's doing the talking.
What I see here is the royal couple working as a team and presenting a united front. On the one hand, I don't see evidence that Isabella has no ideas that diverge from his. It seems like she's the kind of person who's willing to take the initiative when she feels strongly. Which means that she's probably got strong feelings about other things as well, we just don't see her fighting Philip unless she can't get him to agree with her using milder means.
On the other hand, given his level of activity when he's not incapacitated, and given the continuity in some of his opinions between his first marriage and second, it does seem like he was doing at least some of the ruling. So Isabella's dominance may well have been overestimated, because she was an obvious scapegoat.
Finally, I regret to report, when his mental health plummeted, Philip was known to fight with Isabella and hit her hard enough on at least one occasion that she had to explain the scratches and bruises to Rottembourg (pretty sure "the French ambassador" is him), thus moving him off the "candidate for decent marriage" list and into the "no no no" list for me. Plus there's the whole requiring my non-stop attendance on him all night while he refuses to bathe or dress and is soiling the bed. I'm not sure running Spain is worth it.
Music therapy
By popular demand, Kamen's account of the Farinelli episode!
In 1737, Farinelli's in London, where he's had a contract since 1734. Isabella invites him to Spain. On his way, he performs for Louis XV. When he arrives in Spain, Philip is depressed and not attending the royal concert. But...
As the clear tones of his voice rose into the air, they penetrated to the bedroom where the afflicted Philip lay. The divine voice immediately resuscitated the king, who snapped out of his depression and began to attend once more to his work routine. Astonished by the therapeutic effects of Farinelli's music, the king and queen demanded that he sing for them every day.
He finds the workload, especially the nocturnal part, demanding, but he uses his position to introduce Italian opera to Spain, where it's a big hit, and in general create closer cultural ties between Italy and Spain. He writes, 'my achievement is that I am considered not as mere Farinelli, but as ambassador Farinelli.'
It was said by many that Philip only wanted to hear the same handful of arias, but that's slander, says Kamen. If you look at Farinelli's own papers, he had to sing hundreds of different pieces.
Through Farinelli, the king had discovered at last, after many years of suffering, a satisfactory therapy for his disorder.
That said, "satisfactory therapy" isn't the same thing as "immediate cure"; he continues to struggle with depression for the rest of his life. He dies in 1746.
Death
It was very quick: he woke up at noon, felt suddenly sick at 1:30, and was dead three minutes later. He was 62.
Interestingly, while Kamen says his sudden death was the result of long-term deterioration of mind and body, and Spanish Wikipedia says he died of a stroke, the actual symptoms Kamen gives (Wiki gives none) suggest something very different to me:
At 1:30, he said to Elizabeth [Isabella] that he thought he was going to vomit. She immediately called for a doctor, but was told that the king's physician was out at lunch. Philip's throat started swelling, as did his tongue, and he fell back on the bed. Within seconds he was dead. It had been three minutes from the moment that he mentioned vomiting.
That sounds like anaphylaxis to me: the swelling, the nausea, and the speed of the attack. Whatever he was allergic to, he might have died of it no matter how healthy he'd been.
Hiiii, yay! congratulations on finishing your exams!!
Sadly, I am going to probably go mostly underground myself for a bit (I have a lot of church and work stuff I have to get done in the next several weeks) but I'll still be reading and with any luck will be able to be more present reasonably soon!
Sadly, I am going to probably go mostly underground myself for a bit (I have a lot of church and work stuff I have to get done in the next several weeks) but I'll still be reading and with any luck will be able to be more present reasonably soon!
It gets even better: any time young Louis XV was sick, Philip hopped out of his depression sickbed and started preparing to rush to France to claim the throne and assert himself against that upstart Philippe d'Orleans.
Philippe d'Orleans: And people kept casting me as the evil uncle hoping for the kid's demise!
BTW: how did he react when Philippe d'Orleans died? (Since this meant Philip the King's rival for the succession should young Louis die as well would have been Philippe's son, who was thus one more step removed from a throned ancestor.) And I take that when young Louis started to reproduce (and with a woman he'd ditched the adorable moppet daughter of Philip of Spain for, no less), this triggered yet more depression?
But he always spoke French with his family, his ministers, his generals, and his confessor.
After I had watched the movie A Royal Exchange, I googled reviews, and wouldn't you know it, one of them complained that Philip V. and his court don't wear properly Spanish fashion but French one, and don't speak French with a Spanish accent, and isn't that typical for Hollywoodization. I mean....
(Even if you don't know anything about the history going in, the movie does make it clear that Philip V. is the grandson of Louis XIV - he monologues to Louis' portrait, for God's sake! -, and there's even an exposition scene in which Philippe d'Orleans explains why marrying young Louis XV to the moppet and his daughter to Philip's oldest son will prevent any further Spanish/French wars, for God's sake.)
Risk-taking may be one of the standard symptoms of mania, but I don't accept Philip's risking his life in battle as a symptom by itself; there's too much cultural context for that.
*nods* Not in that day and age, when fighting wars was seen as a gold standard for manliness and taught as such to boys all over Europe.
Philip V ended up reclaiming the crown, but there were those who thought he could only legally become regent.
I'm trying to think about precedent. Certainly the wars of the roses offered two living crowned Kings at the same time - Henry VI and Edward IV., from the time of Edward's coronation to years later Henry VI's death in the Tower - , but neither of them ever abdicated. Their removal from power (Henry through his illlness and then through war, Edward through Warwick turning on him and changing teams to Lancaster) hadn't been voluntary, and so there wasn't, I think, a discussion as to whether they could legitimately return to power. (Not least because if you were Team Lancaster or Team York, the other guy was a pretender anyway.)
It gets more complicated when you go further back and branch out. Now, in the HRE, the current Emperor having his son elected as German King was a usual practice only rarely omitted, since it was the first step of having him elected Emperor later. Henry II. was the first King of England to try and important that practice for the Angevin Empire by making his oldest son crowned King of England while still alive (said son is therefore commonly known as Henry the young King and in novels ends up being called Hal in order not to be confused with Dad), which promptly turned into a disaster since he refused to give him any power to go with the title, the first Eleanor of Aquitaine & her sons vs Henry rebellion happened and it was family strife from this point till the end of Henry's life. When Henry the young King died, he sure as hell did not crown next oldest son Richard the Lionheart. But during the first rebellion, the "hey, young Henry IS a crowned King, the Lord's annointed, so basically old Henry has abdicated without admitting as much, therefore he isn't legitimately king anymore, right?" argument was actually used.
I can't think of another European monarch who did voluntarily (i.e. not forced by war and his winning enemies*) abdicate and then resumed power. Branching out some more, there was an Emperor of the Middle Ming Dynasty who was captured in battle by the Mongols, only for the eunuchs back home in Peking and his mother to promptly crown his younger brother the next Emperor and ignore all which the captured Emperor said (or was forced to say). The Mongol leader in question finally decided he was best served in letting the captured Emperor go, and indeed this made things majorly awkward in China, with two crowned sons of heaven and neither willing to budge. The first Emperor eventually resumed his role after his younger brother had died, but he also assumed a different ruling name for his second reign.
Anyway: Monarch who abdicates and then wants the top job back = major theoretical headache, to be sure.
Relationship with Isabella: I can see your point re: getting him off the list of desirable royal spouses.
Farinelli: thank you! And here are two more musical links forcahn:
Trailer for the Broadway show "Farinelli and the King", starring Mark Rylance as Philip V., from 2017.
Farinelli sings for the King, from the movie "Farinelli"
ETA *This "voluntarily" caveat is important, because there is, of course, good old August the Strong:
August: *becomes Catholic to get voted for and crowned as King of Poland*
Charles XII of Sweden: *happens*
Charles XII: among so many other things, uses his conquering to force August to abdicate as King of Poland and get Stanislas Lescyinski voted as King of Poland
Charles XII: *after an incredible winning streak, starts to lose against Peter the Great*
August: Yeah, so that abdication? Totally forced upon me by a Swedish heretic. I'm still the real King of Poland, and surely his Holiness the Pope agrees.
Pope: Indeed.
Stanislas Lesczynski: But I was crowned, too! My daughter is married to Louis XV! I'm a good Catholic! I even have a letter from August about how he pinky swears not to go back on his abdication which I'll show to Voltaire during Émilie's last months of life when they're hanging out with me in Lorraine!
Europe: You still will only be in power whenever another European monarch bothers to support you. Most of the time, they'll forget you still breathe. And August does have an argument about this abdication clearly having been forced on him.
Philippe d'Orleans: And people kept casting me as the evil uncle hoping for the kid's demise!
BTW: how did he react when Philippe d'Orleans died? (Since this meant Philip the King's rival for the succession should young Louis die as well would have been Philippe's son, who was thus one more step removed from a throned ancestor.) And I take that when young Louis started to reproduce (and with a woman he'd ditched the adorable moppet daughter of Philip of Spain for, no less), this triggered yet more depression?
But he always spoke French with his family, his ministers, his generals, and his confessor.
After I had watched the movie A Royal Exchange, I googled reviews, and wouldn't you know it, one of them complained that Philip V. and his court don't wear properly Spanish fashion but French one, and don't speak French with a Spanish accent, and isn't that typical for Hollywoodization. I mean....
(Even if you don't know anything about the history going in, the movie does make it clear that Philip V. is the grandson of Louis XIV - he monologues to Louis' portrait, for God's sake! -, and there's even an exposition scene in which Philippe d'Orleans explains why marrying young Louis XV to the moppet and his daughter to Philip's oldest son will prevent any further Spanish/French wars, for God's sake.)
Risk-taking may be one of the standard symptoms of mania, but I don't accept Philip's risking his life in battle as a symptom by itself; there's too much cultural context for that.
*nods* Not in that day and age, when fighting wars was seen as a gold standard for manliness and taught as such to boys all over Europe.
Philip V ended up reclaiming the crown, but there were those who thought he could only legally become regent.
I'm trying to think about precedent. Certainly the wars of the roses offered two living crowned Kings at the same time - Henry VI and Edward IV., from the time of Edward's coronation to years later Henry VI's death in the Tower - , but neither of them ever abdicated. Their removal from power (Henry through his illlness and then through war, Edward through Warwick turning on him and changing teams to Lancaster) hadn't been voluntary, and so there wasn't, I think, a discussion as to whether they could legitimately return to power. (Not least because if you were Team Lancaster or Team York, the other guy was a pretender anyway.)
It gets more complicated when you go further back and branch out. Now, in the HRE, the current Emperor having his son elected as German King was a usual practice only rarely omitted, since it was the first step of having him elected Emperor later. Henry II. was the first King of England to try and important that practice for the Angevin Empire by making his oldest son crowned King of England while still alive (said son is therefore commonly known as Henry the young King and in novels ends up being called Hal in order not to be confused with Dad), which promptly turned into a disaster since he refused to give him any power to go with the title, the first Eleanor of Aquitaine & her sons vs Henry rebellion happened and it was family strife from this point till the end of Henry's life. When Henry the young King died, he sure as hell did not crown next oldest son Richard the Lionheart. But during the first rebellion, the "hey, young Henry IS a crowned King, the Lord's annointed, so basically old Henry has abdicated without admitting as much, therefore he isn't legitimately king anymore, right?" argument was actually used.
I can't think of another European monarch who did voluntarily (i.e. not forced by war and his winning enemies*) abdicate and then resumed power. Branching out some more, there was an Emperor of the Middle Ming Dynasty who was captured in battle by the Mongols, only for the eunuchs back home in Peking and his mother to promptly crown his younger brother the next Emperor and ignore all which the captured Emperor said (or was forced to say). The Mongol leader in question finally decided he was best served in letting the captured Emperor go, and indeed this made things majorly awkward in China, with two crowned sons of heaven and neither willing to budge. The first Emperor eventually resumed his role after his younger brother had died, but he also assumed a different ruling name for his second reign.
Anyway: Monarch who abdicates and then wants the top job back = major theoretical headache, to be sure.
Relationship with Isabella: I can see your point re: getting him off the list of desirable royal spouses.
Farinelli: thank you! And here are two more musical links for
cahn: Trailer for the Broadway show "Farinelli and the King", starring Mark Rylance as Philip V., from 2017.
Farinelli sings for the King, from the movie "Farinelli"
ETA *This "voluntarily" caveat is important, because there is, of course, good old August the Strong:
August: *becomes Catholic to get voted for and crowned as King of Poland*
Charles XII of Sweden: *happens*
Charles XII: among so many other things, uses his conquering to force August to abdicate as King of Poland and get Stanislas Lescyinski voted as King of Poland
Charles XII: *after an incredible winning streak, starts to lose against Peter the Great*
August: Yeah, so that abdication? Totally forced upon me by a Swedish heretic. I'm still the real King of Poland, and surely his Holiness the Pope agrees.
Pope: Indeed.
Stanislas Lesczynski: But I was crowned, too! My daughter is married to Louis XV! I'm a good Catholic! I even have a letter from August about how he pinky swears not to go back on his abdication which I'll show to Voltaire during Émilie's last months of life when they're hanging out with me in Lorraine!
Europe: You still will only be in power whenever another European monarch bothers to support you. Most of the time, they'll forget you still breathe. And August does have an argument about this abdication clearly having been forced on him.
Edited 2021-05-31 06:41 (UTC)
BTW: how did he react when Philippe d'Orleans died?...And I take that when young Louis started to reproduce (and with a woman he'd ditched the adorable moppet daughter of Philip of Spain for, no less), this triggered yet more depression?
Kamen doesn't say directly (or not that I remembered or found in my skimming), but I checked the dates, and here goes:
Philippe: Dies December 2, 1723. Philip abdicates January 24, 1724. Now, Philip and Isabella had been signing oaths since 1720 to abdicate by All Saints' Day on 1723 at the latest, so we can't call the abdication a reaction. If there was a direct reaction, I don't know what it was.
Reproducing: well, the first three are girls, and the first two (twins) are born in August 1727. Now that is when Philip's depression gets noticeably worse, right before Rottembourg shows up for the first time, but it's unclear whether it's related (it kind of started earlier in the year, got a bit better during the summer, and then crashed again). Two years later, September 1729, the first son is born. I can't quite tell how Philip was doing during this period, but this is shortly after he and Isabella have moved to Andalucia to try to improve his mental health. I don't see a particular crash right after this, so I can't say.
Speaking of the moppet, my sources differ on who initiated the mutual sending back. Kamen says sending back Elisabeth was Philip's idea, because now that her husband was dead, she was a dowager queen and entitled to a court as such for the rest of her life, and Philip saw no reason to spend that kind of money on a 15-year-old who walked around in a transparent nightgown with nothing underneath and who ran through money like water. So Philip sent her back, and the Duc de Bourbon used that as an excuse to send back the girl who was too young to reproduce and get Louis an older wife. Whereas Lodge, author of the Treaty of Seville article I put in the library, says that Bourbon started it and an offended Philip retaliated, and I feel like other sources I've encountered use that sequence of events as well.
After I had watched the movie A Royal Exchange, I googled reviews, and wouldn't you know it, one of them complained that Philip V. and his court don't wear properly Spanish fashion but French one, and don't speak French with a Spanish accent, and isn't that typical for Hollywoodization. I mean....
Oh, for the love of...
I can't think of another European monarch who did voluntarily (i.e. not forced by war and his winning enemies*) abdicate and then resumed power. Branching out some more, there was an Emperor of the Middle Ming Dynasty who was captured in battle by the Mongols, only for the eunuchs back home in Peking and his mother to promptly crown his younger brother the next Emperor and ignore all which the captured Emperor said (or was forced to say).
Didn't know about this (my Chinese and Mongolian history is nonexistent), cool! Also, man, that reminds me, someone really needs to write the Fritz gets captured and Voltaire crusades for passive-aggressive vengeance on Fritz via rescuing him. I really like the way we've fleshed that plot out!
A little closer to home, there's my guy, Roman emperor Maximian, whom I requested for RMSE (and Yuletide before that)! Fellow emperor Diocletian talked him into abdicating, but Maximian didn't really want to, and he only stayed retired a little while before joining the fray and trying to fight to get the purple back. Then everything fell into such chaos that the several emperor candidates called Diocletian out of retirement and asked him to adjudicate. Diocletian decided who got to stay in power and who didn't, and he got Maximian to abdicate again. Then Diocletian went back into his retirement, but again Maximian's ambition couldn't bear the quiet life, and he went back into the fray again, and got himself killed in battle this time.
The major difference here is that there's no primogeniture and there wasn't really a "legal" question of whether an abdicated emperor can retake power; becoming an emperor in this period is only a question of whether you can get enough army support to
1) Get your troops to recognize you as emperor,
2) Defeat your opponents and the troops that recognize them as emperors,
3) Get the Senate to recognize you (the quasi-optional thing that made this look quasi-legal and not just anarchy),
4) Defeat any new opponents that crop up with troops recognizing them as emperor.
5) Profit!
And Maximian trying to come back from abdication failed at step 2.
Europe: You still will only be in power whenever another European monarch bothers to support you. Most of the time, they'll forget you still breathe.
So true.
This "voluntarily" caveat is important, because there is, of course, good old August the Strong:
Very close to home, there's also James II! Who was declared by Parliament to have abdicated by dint of fleeing, but neither he nor his descendants ever agreed with that.
Kamen doesn't say directly (or not that I remembered or found in my skimming), but I checked the dates, and here goes:
Philippe: Dies December 2, 1723. Philip abdicates January 24, 1724. Now, Philip and Isabella had been signing oaths since 1720 to abdicate by All Saints' Day on 1723 at the latest, so we can't call the abdication a reaction. If there was a direct reaction, I don't know what it was.
Reproducing: well, the first three are girls, and the first two (twins) are born in August 1727. Now that is when Philip's depression gets noticeably worse, right before Rottembourg shows up for the first time, but it's unclear whether it's related (it kind of started earlier in the year, got a bit better during the summer, and then crashed again). Two years later, September 1729, the first son is born. I can't quite tell how Philip was doing during this period, but this is shortly after he and Isabella have moved to Andalucia to try to improve his mental health. I don't see a particular crash right after this, so I can't say.
Speaking of the moppet, my sources differ on who initiated the mutual sending back. Kamen says sending back Elisabeth was Philip's idea, because now that her husband was dead, she was a dowager queen and entitled to a court as such for the rest of her life, and Philip saw no reason to spend that kind of money on a 15-year-old who walked around in a transparent nightgown with nothing underneath and who ran through money like water. So Philip sent her back, and the Duc de Bourbon used that as an excuse to send back the girl who was too young to reproduce and get Louis an older wife. Whereas Lodge, author of the Treaty of Seville article I put in the library, says that Bourbon started it and an offended Philip retaliated, and I feel like other sources I've encountered use that sequence of events as well.
After I had watched the movie A Royal Exchange, I googled reviews, and wouldn't you know it, one of them complained that Philip V. and his court don't wear properly Spanish fashion but French one, and don't speak French with a Spanish accent, and isn't that typical for Hollywoodization. I mean....
Oh, for the love of...
I can't think of another European monarch who did voluntarily (i.e. not forced by war and his winning enemies*) abdicate and then resumed power. Branching out some more, there was an Emperor of the Middle Ming Dynasty who was captured in battle by the Mongols, only for the eunuchs back home in Peking and his mother to promptly crown his younger brother the next Emperor and ignore all which the captured Emperor said (or was forced to say).
Didn't know about this (my Chinese and Mongolian history is nonexistent), cool! Also, man, that reminds me, someone really needs to write the Fritz gets captured and Voltaire crusades for passive-aggressive vengeance on Fritz via rescuing him. I really like the way we've fleshed that plot out!
A little closer to home, there's my guy, Roman emperor Maximian, whom I requested for RMSE (and Yuletide before that)! Fellow emperor Diocletian talked him into abdicating, but Maximian didn't really want to, and he only stayed retired a little while before joining the fray and trying to fight to get the purple back. Then everything fell into such chaos that the several emperor candidates called Diocletian out of retirement and asked him to adjudicate. Diocletian decided who got to stay in power and who didn't, and he got Maximian to abdicate again. Then Diocletian went back into his retirement, but again Maximian's ambition couldn't bear the quiet life, and he went back into the fray again, and got himself killed in battle this time.
The major difference here is that there's no primogeniture and there wasn't really a "legal" question of whether an abdicated emperor can retake power; becoming an emperor in this period is only a question of whether you can get enough army support to
1) Get your troops to recognize you as emperor,
2) Defeat your opponents and the troops that recognize them as emperors,
3) Get the Senate to recognize you (the quasi-optional thing that made this look quasi-legal and not just anarchy),
4) Defeat any new opponents that crop up with troops recognizing them as emperor.
5) Profit!
And Maximian trying to come back from abdication failed at step 2.
Europe: You still will only be in power whenever another European monarch bothers to support you. Most of the time, they'll forget you still breathe.
So true.
This "voluntarily" caveat is important, because there is, of course, good old August the Strong:
Very close to home, there's also James II! Who was declared by Parliament to have abdicated by dint of fleeing, but neither he nor his descendants ever agreed with that.
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: French, Dutch, and Bavarian Backstories
mildred_of_midgard
2021-05-31 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
1794/1795. The French Revolution is in full swing, and the French have discovered that being a republic is super compatible with invading other countries to liberate them! It starts by recognizing the "will of the people", but then the French find that the people don't always want to be liberated, so you have to do it for their own good.
Quotes from Sovereignty, International Law, and the French Revolution, a book I thinkiberiandoctor brought to my attention:
Some revolutionary officials were now suggesting in Belgium that, should a people lack the courage, intelligence, or maturity to be free, the French must assist them.
During these first campaigns of the war, the French were often genuinely baffled when they encountered foreigners who opposed revolutionary social or political changes or...voluntary [sic] opted for a despotic form of government.
Does this sound familiar? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Anyway, one of the countries that gets the dubious blessing of French "liberation" is the Netherlands. Reminder that they had tried overthrowing their stadtholder and instituting democracy in the mid-1780s, only the wife of the Stadtholder was FWII's sister. She asks him for help, and in 1787, he marches into the Netherlands with his Prussian army and puts her and her husband back. (selenak, do I remember correctly that Heinrich thought this was not the best way of handling the situation?)
Wikipedia on how the Prussian invasion ended:
The Prussian king had incurred great expenses that he wanted to be recompensed for. The Duke and the Princess negotiated him down from his initial demand of several million guilders, but he insisted on a "douceur" for the troops of exactly 402,018 guilders and 10 stuivers, to be paid by Amsterdam alone. But the States of Holland generously rounded this up to half-a-million guilders, to be paid by the entire province, and the king acquiesced. As invasions go, this was a bargain: the victorious revolutionary French forces in 1795 demanded an indemnity of 100 million guilders for their "liberation" of the Netherlands from the stadtholder's dictatorship.
Anyway, the French invaded in 1793 but were defeated, then tried again the next year. The Dutch attempted to use the rivers as natural defenses, but 1794/1795 was an unusually cold winter, and the rivers froze solid enough for the French armies to march straight over.
In 1795, the French set up the Netherlands as a client state called the "Batavian Republic", which lasted, like most things, until Napoleon.
Quotes from Sovereignty, International Law, and the French Revolution, a book I think
iberiandoctor brought to my attention:Some revolutionary officials were now suggesting in Belgium that, should a people lack the courage, intelligence, or maturity to be free, the French must assist them.
During these first campaigns of the war, the French were often genuinely baffled when they encountered foreigners who opposed revolutionary social or political changes or...voluntary [sic] opted for a despotic form of government.
Does this sound familiar? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Anyway, one of the countries that gets the dubious blessing of French "liberation" is the Netherlands. Reminder that they had tried overthrowing their stadtholder and instituting democracy in the mid-1780s, only the wife of the Stadtholder was FWII's sister. She asks him for help, and in 1787, he marches into the Netherlands with his Prussian army and puts her and her husband back. (
selenak, do I remember correctly that Heinrich thought this was not the best way of handling the situation?)Wikipedia on how the Prussian invasion ended:
The Prussian king had incurred great expenses that he wanted to be recompensed for. The Duke and the Princess negotiated him down from his initial demand of several million guilders, but he insisted on a "douceur" for the troops of exactly 402,018 guilders and 10 stuivers, to be paid by Amsterdam alone. But the States of Holland generously rounded this up to half-a-million guilders, to be paid by the entire province, and the king acquiesced. As invasions go, this was a bargain: the victorious revolutionary French forces in 1795 demanded an indemnity of 100 million guilders for their "liberation" of the Netherlands from the stadtholder's dictatorship.
Anyway, the French invaded in 1793 but were defeated, then tried again the next year. The Dutch attempted to use the rivers as natural defenses, but 1794/1795 was an unusually cold winter, and the rivers froze solid enough for the French armies to march straight over.
In 1795, the French set up the Netherlands as a client state called the "Batavian Republic", which lasted, like most things, until Napoleon.
Now I'm the only one allowed to write incest RPF in this family
Look, I've always seen you as being the far more noble, superior person, compared to me. That's why I can't stand the idea of you degrading yourself writing trashy books with lots of het sex scenes in a vain attempt to catch up with my fame! Just accept you're not meant for bestsellerdom and I am, will you?
Dear Heinrich, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR the article you wrote defending me. I feel like in school: someone hurt me and my big brother is defending me and strikes back on my behalf. (This sentence is also original.) You're the best!
Dear Heinrich, what's this about you getting engaged to a singer? I mean - will she perform after the wedding, too? IN PUBLIC? That doesn't seem like something a noble character such as yourself should go for.
Ommmggggg, these letters are amazing.
Look, I've always seen you as being the far more noble, superior person, compared to me. That's why I can't stand the idea of you degrading yourself writing trashy books with lots of het sex scenes in a vain attempt to catch up with my fame! Just accept you're not meant for bestsellerdom and I am, will you?
Dear Heinrich, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR the article you wrote defending me. I feel like in school: someone hurt me and my big brother is defending me and strikes back on my behalf. (This sentence is also original.) You're the best!
Dear Heinrich, what's this about you getting engaged to a singer? I mean - will she perform after the wedding, too? IN PUBLIC? That doesn't seem like something a noble character such as yourself should go for.
Ommmggggg, these letters are amazing.
One of the things I learned from Duffy was that Valori wrote memoirs. They seem to be legit, as in written by him. But who knows! I also don't know if they're Mitchell-style or Catt-style.
Unfortunately, I can't find the memoirs in English, so if anyone wants to read them, I'll have to put them through the no-longer-free translation algorithms. The estimated cost would be $20-$25, for about 1,000 pages in 2 volumes.
The one thing I've learned (assuming they're trustworthy) was that after the battle of Soor, at the end of September, dognapped Biche wasn't returned until the peace was made in December, and "her restoration was almost an article of the treaty."
selenak, you weren't kidding when you wrote:
Frau von Nadasty: But you told me I could keep her! She's adorable! I want to keep her!
Nadasty: How was I to know the Robber King is dog mad? Look, we've just lost a battle. The way this guy sounds, I wouldn't put it beneath him to go after us just to get the bloody dog back
!
Also, if this is correct, my fic was wrong in assuming she was returned at the same time as the POWs! (No mention of any other dogs, but that was intentional creative license anyway--Richter thinks the other animals mentioned in the letter are horses.)
So if anyone ever wants to write another take on the post-Soor events, we have Heinrich and AW present, Fritz and Heinrich drowning in overlarge shirts, and Biche not returned for 2-3 months!!
Unfortunately, I can't find the memoirs in English, so if anyone wants to read them, I'll have to put them through the no-longer-free translation algorithms. The estimated cost would be $20-$25, for about 1,000 pages in 2 volumes.
The one thing I've learned (assuming they're trustworthy) was that after the battle of Soor, at the end of September, dognapped Biche wasn't returned until the peace was made in December, and "her restoration was almost an article of the treaty."
selenak, you weren't kidding when you wrote:Frau von Nadasty: But you told me I could keep her! She's adorable! I want to keep her!
Nadasty: How was I to know the Robber King is dog mad? Look, we've just lost a battle. The way this guy sounds, I wouldn't put it beneath him to go after us just to get the bloody dog back
!
Also, if this is correct, my fic was wrong in assuming she was returned at the same time as the POWs! (No mention of any other dogs, but that was intentional creative license anyway--Richter thinks the other animals mentioned in the letter are horses.)
So if anyone ever wants to write another take on the post-Soor events, we have Heinrich and AW present, Fritz and Heinrich drowning in overlarge shirts, and Biche not returned for 2-3 months!!
Heinrich's opinion on the Dutch affair: honestly, I can't remember right now, I'd have to look it up. But [Unknown site tag] the sister in question was Wilhelmine Minor, the niece who wrote Fritz a glowing reference as a replacement Dad in her memoirs and whom he encouraged to influence her country's politics as much as she could. (Double standards? There's always the one standard: what's good for Fritz Prussia?)
The French Republic "liberating" people for their own good and being puzzled when they're not grateful: there is a movie, "Goya's Ghosts", by Milos Forman, I think, which was actually made during the (second) Iraq War and has a scene in which Napoleon, talking to his generals, is absolutely sure there will be flowers from the grateful Spaniards, because how could there not be, with their country freed from the dark ages of the Inquisition and superstition and so forth. This must have been the only time someone compared Dubya to Napoleon.
The French Republic "liberating" people for their own good and being puzzled when they're not grateful: there is a movie, "Goya's Ghosts", by Milos Forman, I think, which was actually made during the (second) Iraq War and has a scene in which Napoleon, talking to his generals, is absolutely sure there will be flowers from the grateful Spaniards, because how could there not be, with their country freed from the dark ages of the Inquisition and superstition and so forth. This must have been the only time someone compared Dubya to Napoleon.
Speaking of the moppet, my sources differ on who initiated the mutual sending back.
The movie has Bourbon starting with the sending back. Horowski does, too, I think (in the chapter "Die junge Dame reist ab"). I mean, it's clear in both that Philip and Isabella were thrilled to have the opportunity to send her back (and very very insulted that their own daughter is sent back), but the French start it. Horowski even mentions that Madame de Ventadour's letter to Isabella about it, as she went from being Louis' governess to being the Moppet's governess (which Louis in the movie does resent - he knows he's getting too old for a governess, but he loves her, has grown up without siblings and clearly hates the idea that now she's going to spend all her time with the moppet, which is why he's the sole person in Versailles other than Bourbon who does not adore the little Infanta. Anyway, Madame de Ventadour adored her in rl too, and when having to send her back wrote to Isabella a "woe, woe, I hate this, so sorry, but she'll always be MY Queen" letter from which Horowski quotes. (He even adds that she kept her word and kept writing to the moppet for the rest of her - Madame de Ventadour's - life, but also that soon, her letters weren't opened anymore, and that they were found 90% unopened just a few decades ago. Anyway, all of this sounds as if the French did start it.
Fritz gets captured plotting: I know his instructions in the case of his captivity did include to ignore anything he says after being captured - as you say, that points to the fact he's aware that during his last time in prison, he did give in and still hates the idea but knows he's capable -, but do they also say he's abdicating if that happens and his nephew is King immediately? Because it's a difference for Heinrich whether he's Regent for absent-but-could-come-back Fritz or Regent for future FW2!
The movie has Bourbon starting with the sending back. Horowski does, too, I think (in the chapter "Die junge Dame reist ab"). I mean, it's clear in both that Philip and Isabella were thrilled to have the opportunity to send her back (and very very insulted that their own daughter is sent back), but the French start it. Horowski even mentions that Madame de Ventadour's letter to Isabella about it, as she went from being Louis' governess to being the Moppet's governess (which Louis in the movie does resent - he knows he's getting too old for a governess, but he loves her, has grown up without siblings and clearly hates the idea that now she's going to spend all her time with the moppet, which is why he's the sole person in Versailles other than Bourbon who does not adore the little Infanta. Anyway, Madame de Ventadour adored her in rl too, and when having to send her back wrote to Isabella a "woe, woe, I hate this, so sorry, but she'll always be MY Queen" letter from which Horowski quotes. (He even adds that she kept her word and kept writing to the moppet for the rest of her - Madame de Ventadour's - life, but also that soon, her letters weren't opened anymore, and that they were found 90% unopened just a few decades ago. Anyway, all of this sounds as if the French did start it.
Fritz gets captured plotting: I know his instructions in the case of his captivity did include to ignore anything he says after being captured - as you say, that points to the fact he's aware that during his last time in prison, he did give in and still hates the idea but knows he's capable -, but do they also say he's abdicating if that happens and his nephew is King immediately? Because it's a difference for Heinrich whether he's Regent for absent-but-could-come-back Fritz or Regent for future FW2!
Biche-less Fritz must have been hell to live with. I mean, more so than usual. Add to this that he probably hears around this time that while he's been duking it out with Nadasty, Wilhelmine had her lunch with en route to Frankfurt MT, and the increasing bile of the sibling letters is even more explained. (Though if Biche was restorned in December, Fritz no longer has that excuse for February and March which is when he fires off the Marwitz letters at Heinrich.)
Valori: The Stabi has them online, but only in French, too. From what I can see, they are actual memoirs (i.e. not collected reports and letters a la Mitchell), though with a lengthy introduction and only published in 1820. Which could or couldn't mean they were editorialized a la Hervey.
Valori: The Stabi has them online, but only in French, too. From what I can see, they are actual memoirs (i.e. not collected reports and letters a la Mitchell), though with a lengthy introduction and only published in 1820. Which could or couldn't mean they were editorialized a la Hervey.
while he's been duking it out with Nadasty, Wilhelmine had her lunch with en route to Frankfurt MT, and the increasing bile of the sibling letters is even more explained.
This is exactly what I was thinking!
(Though if Biche was restorned in December, Fritz no longer has that excuse for February and March which is when he fires off the Marwitz letters at Heinrich.)
Alas, like Farinelli, Biche can only provide therapy, not a cure.
This is exactly what I was thinking!
(Though if Biche was restorned in December, Fritz no longer has that excuse for February and March which is when he fires off the Marwitz letters at Heinrich.)
Alas, like Farinelli, Biche can only provide therapy, not a cure.
He even adds that she kept her word and kept writing to the moppet for the rest of her - Madame de Ventadour's - life, but also that soon, her letters weren't opened anymore, and that they were found 90% unopened just a few decades ago.
Yeah, I remember that, and I think of it sometimes, because it's so poignant. I remember Horowski saying the letters were super uninteresting, too. :/
but do they also say he's abdicating if that happens and his nephew is King immediately?
I will have to check; he left instructions multiple times, and I'll have to look for the most recent one, and also make sure to exclude the "if I'm killed" instructions. But my *impression* is that Fritz was careful not to abdicate, that it was, "Do nothing dishonorable to get me back, and don't obey anything I say when I'm in the enemy power, and make sure everyone obeys my successor and the war continues," but the very strong implication is that if Fritz comes back, he's still very much king, that this is a temporary interlude in which you're authorized to disobey him. ;) But I'm going from memory and will have to do my detective work, refind the original sources, and read them closely.
Yeah, I remember that, and I think of it sometimes, because it's so poignant. I remember Horowski saying the letters were super uninteresting, too. :/
but do they also say he's abdicating if that happens and his nephew is King immediately?
I will have to check; he left instructions multiple times, and I'll have to look for the most recent one, and also make sure to exclude the "if I'm killed" instructions. But my *impression* is that Fritz was careful not to abdicate, that it was, "Do nothing dishonorable to get me back, and don't obey anything I say when I'm in the enemy power, and make sure everyone obeys my successor and the war continues," but the very strong implication is that if Fritz comes back, he's still very much king, that this is a temporary interlude in which you're authorized to disobey him. ;) But I'm going from memory and will have to do my detective work, refind the original sources, and read them closely.
The Stabi has them online, but only in French, too.
Yeah, I found them online and downloaded them in April.
From what I can see, they are actual memoirs (i.e. not collected reports and letters a la Mitchell), though with a lengthy introduction and only published in 1820. Which could or couldn't mean they were editorialized a la Hervey.
That was my takeaway, too.
Yeah, I found them online and downloaded them in April.
From what I can see, they are actual memoirs (i.e. not collected reports and letters a la Mitchell), though with a lengthy introduction and only published in 1820. Which could or couldn't mean they were editorialized a la Hervey.
That was my takeaway, too.
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