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.
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 for cahn:
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.
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.
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!
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.
By the way, I have twice escaped the designs of the Austrian hussars [viz, to capture him]. If I suffer the misfortune of being taken alive, I absolutely order you, and you will answer for it with your head, that in my absence you will not respect my orders, that you will serve as counselor to my brother, and that the state will not take any unworthy action to gain my freedom. On the contrary, I wish and I order that, in this event, the state act even more vigorously than ever.
1757:
If I have the fate of being taken prisoner by the enemy, I forbid anyone to have the slightest regard for me, or to make the slightest reflection on what I might write about my detention. If such a misfortune should happen to me, I want to sacrifice myself for the State, and we must obey my brother, who, as well as all my ministers and generals, will answer to me with their heads that neither province nor ransom will be offered for me, and that the war will continue, pushing its advantages as if I had never existed in the world.
Nope, no abdication. I feel like there's another one that's a year or two later than 1757, but I doubt it's any different in detail.
Well, one key difference would be that in 1757, AW was still alive, so the "brother" referred to must be him, not Heinrich, even if he was in disgrace and casheered, because there would have been no getting around the fact that he was the next in line for the throne and unlike his son an adult. Now there's a thought I hadn't had before: Fritz gets captured at Leuthen instead of achieving his most glorious victory. AW is just about to go to Berlin from Leipzig where he hung out with a recovering Heinrich. Unlike Heinrich, AW would have been capable of saying at this point "to hell with these instructions, I think the war's lost anyway. MT, you can have Silesia, and also, we surrender if that means the war is over instantly. I don't see what Fritz can do to me that he hasn't done already if you send him back." (Otoh, presumably Heinrich would talk him out of the surrender.) But really, the Fritz capture plot has to happen after the summer of 1758, i.e. with AW dead.
To get back to the abdication subject, figures that Fritz pointedly does not include this option in his instructions.(And for all his talk to Catt and others of how after the war, he'd have abdicated and handed government over to AW if AW hadn't died/intends to abdicate after the war and hand things over to young FW, there's just no way he'd have done it.)
so the "brother" referred to must be him, not Heinrich
Well, yes, what I meant by "Sorry, Heinrich" was a reference to you saying "it's a difference for Heinrich whether he's Regent for absent-but-could-come-back Fritz or Regent for future FW2!" Sorry, fictional Heinrich, you're regent for absent-but-could-come-back Fritz. Obviously the 1741 and 1757 heir is AW. By "not different in detail" I meant that if he wasn't abdicating in favor of adult brother in 1741-1757, I doubt he's abdicating in favor of minor nephew in ~1760.
there's just no way he'd have done it.
This is why I wrote his other self in "Grind" talking about stepping down after the war and not being able to do it. Fritz managed to give up command to Finck + Heinrich + FW2 after Kunersdorf for 3 days max, handing over command on the 13th of August at the earliest and taking it back on the 16th at the latest. (The battle was on the 12th.).
And incidentally, the exact words are:
Weilen mir eine schwere Krankheit zugestossen, so übergebe das Commando meiner Armee währender Krankheit bis an meine Besserung an den General Finck
and
Er muss meinem Bruder, den ich Generalissimus bei der Armee declariret, von allem berichten. Dieses Unglück ganz wieder herzustellen gehet nicht an; indessen was mein Bruder befehlen wird, das muss geschehen. An meinen Neveu muss die Armee schwören.
Dieses ist der einzige Rath, den ich bei denen unglücklichen Umständen im Stande zu geben bin; hätte ich noch Ressourcen, so wäre ich darbei geblieben.
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Philip V: The Later Years
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.
Re: Philip V: The Later Years
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
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.
Re: Philip V: The Later Years
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: Philip V: The Later Years
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!
Re: Philip V: The Later Years
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.
Instructions in the event of Fritz's capture
By the way, I have twice escaped the designs of the Austrian hussars [viz, to capture him]. If I suffer the misfortune of being taken alive, I absolutely order you, and you will answer for it with your head, that in my absence you will not respect my orders, that you will serve as counselor to my brother, and that the state will not take any unworthy action to gain my freedom. On the contrary, I wish and I order that, in this event, the state act even more vigorously than ever.
1757:
If I have the fate of being taken prisoner by the enemy, I forbid anyone to have the slightest regard for me, or to make the slightest reflection on what I might write about my detention. If such a misfortune should happen to me, I want to sacrifice myself for the State, and we must obey my brother, who, as well as all my ministers and generals, will answer to me with their heads that neither province nor ransom will be offered for me, and that the war will continue, pushing its advantages as if I had never existed in the world.
Nope, no abdication. I feel like there's another one that's a year or two later than 1757, but I doubt it's any different in detail.
Sorry, Heinrich. :P
Re: Instructions in the event of Fritz's capture
To get back to the abdication subject, figures that Fritz pointedly does not include this option in his instructions.(And for all his talk to Catt and others of how after the war, he'd have abdicated and handed government over to AW if AW hadn't died/intends to abdicate after the war and hand things over to young FW, there's just no way he'd have done it.)
Re: Instructions in the event of Fritz's capture
Well, yes, what I meant by "Sorry, Heinrich" was a reference to you saying "it's a difference for Heinrich whether he's Regent for absent-but-could-come-back Fritz or Regent for future FW2!" Sorry, fictional Heinrich, you're regent for absent-but-could-come-back Fritz. Obviously the 1741 and 1757 heir is AW. By "not different in detail" I meant that if he wasn't abdicating in favor of adult brother in 1741-1757, I doubt he's abdicating in favor of minor nephew in ~1760.
there's just no way he'd have done it.
This is why I wrote his other self in "Grind" talking about stepping down after the war and not being able to do it. Fritz managed to give up command to Finck + Heinrich + FW2 after Kunersdorf for 3 days max, handing over command on the 13th of August at the earliest and taking it back on the 16th at the latest. (The battle was on the 12th.).
And incidentally, the exact words are:
Weilen mir eine schwere Krankheit zugestossen, so übergebe das Commando meiner Armee währender Krankheit bis an meine Besserung an den General Finck
and
Er muss meinem Bruder, den ich Generalissimus bei der Armee declariret, von allem berichten. Dieses Unglück ganz wieder herzustellen gehet nicht an; indessen was mein Bruder befehlen wird, das muss geschehen. An meinen Neveu muss die Armee schwören.
Dieses ist der einzige Rath, den ich bei denen unglücklichen Umständen im Stande zu geben bin; hätte ich noch Ressourcen, so wäre ich darbei geblieben.