cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 28

That is a lot of posts! :D <3

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From:

cahn

Just curious, resident salon statistician! How many words are we up to now? :D

(another two weeks for me -- maybe one, depending; we'll see -- and then I'm baaaaack!)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

User	Words	Comments
selenak	1,058,596	2,599
mildred	985,557	3,878
cahn	225,773	2,154
felis	71,823	294
gambitten	13,116	36
prinzsorgenfrei	12,223	67
Everyone else	21,039	102
Total	2,388,127	9,130

(Who knows how the html formatting is going to turn out; I get annoyed that the preview looks nothing like the actual comment. ETA: Hey, it turned out fine (at least in my browser), although absolutely nothing like the preview.)

(another two weeks for me -- maybe one, depending; we'll see -- and then I'm baaaaack!)

Awesome!

Edited (Now with more accurate totals!) Date: 2021-06-13 02:29 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

The SD the older/Königsmarck love letters book turned out to be only a registry of their love letters, published by Schnath in 1952, at which time he doesn't show double standards about male and female adultery anymore in his introduction. He provides a short summary of what the letter in question is about for each letter, and whether or not the letter in question has been mentioned or printed in one of the earlier publications. Not without smugness, he notes that this registry is the most complete ever, especially since the edition by Wilkins solely features the letters archived at Lund and completely ignores the letters Ulrike stole and sent Fritz which were kept at Sanssouci within his life time and then at the Prussian State archive. Schnath says that since this was already a well known fact when Wilkins published, he can't explain why Wilkins didn't make the additional trip to read them in Germany.

The letters themselves prove that Königsmarck and poor SD of Celle, whatever other risks they took, were way more careful in their coding than the Imperial secret service two generations later with such code names like "Olympia", "Junior" and "Le Diable". Königsmarck/SD use about 50 code names, thirty of which have only been decyphred as of 1952, and sometimes several code names for the same person. They also used secret ink, and numbers for additional secrecy. In his letter summaries, Schnath provides mostly the clear names or numbers with footnotes if he has guesses that aren't yet proven, and otherwise the numbers or code names. Future G1 is mostly "Don Diego", SD the older herself "Leonissa" but also "Isabella" and some other names taken from popular novels at the time.

Since summaries of love letters tend to be pretty dull ("K swears eternal love" "Pr. is sad about getting no letters the last two days" etc.), except if such details are mentioned as the bit that also made it into Horowski's book, Königsmarck amusing little 6 years old SD and the future Mrs. Grumbkow (same age) by building card houses for them, I mostly leafed through them. Meanwhile, I found out there's a 1946 British movie - produced by the Ealing Studios - about the affair, "Sarabande for Dead Lovers" (great title!), starring Stewart Granger as Königsmarck and Joan Greenwood as Sophia Dorotha of Celle. (Co-starring Flora Robson as Countess Platen, about whom more in a moment, and a young Christopher Lee - THAT Christopher Lee - in a cameo as Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel.) The movie was filmed mostly at Blenheim Palace (of Marlborough fame, remember), which makes sense considering that in 1946 Hannover was in ruins due to all the bombing and it would take a while to rebuild. This movie in turn is based on a 1935 novel of the same name by Australian writer Helen Simpson, which is online in its enterity courtesy of Gutenberg Australia. It turned out to be a solid historical novel. You can nitpick about some of the choices (for example, no argument that future G1 was a brute, but he actually wasn't the kind of brute who doesn't care how many of his soldiers he gets killed; on the contrary, he had during his service in the Imperial wars against Turkey and the Palatine succession war gained the reputation of a sensible, cautious but not too cautious commander, and at one point when his superior wanted to punish for a bad battle by decimation (literally - every tenth man was supposed to get shot) had outright refused to do so. (He also wasn't a baroque party boy but while Prince Elector of Hanover and not yet English King on the contrary famous for keeping an eye on the money and avoiding the money consuming trips to Italy for debauchery both his uncle and his father had made an annual event; Schnath, who doesn't like him and calls him "cold and unsympathetic" also says he was a very able administrator. ("A jerk, but not that kind of a jerk" sums up G1 well in general.) Also, while Sophie undoubtedly once the English succession became a plausible option inwardly was rooting for that and was thrilled when it became a certainty, neither her memoirs nor her letters gave me the impression she saw England and the English as superior, wiser beings. The novel also completely misses out her sense of humor and the warmth she was capable of, though given that she mostly interacts with people she doesn't like, including her daughter-in-law, fair enough.

But such nitpicks don't change the fact the novel does a good job conjuring up the era and provides pretty layered characters. For a plot in theory sounds like a precipe for an historical AU of the pop culture depiction of Princess Diana (young girl marries into cold dysfunctional royal family where no one likes or supports her, her husband already has a mistress he loves anyway, and when she takes a lover, that's treated completely differently), only more so, it amazingly spends most of its narrative exploration not on the two tragic lovers - though they are treated with great sympathy - but on two of the antagonists/villains, by which I don't mean future G1, who only shows up briefly to make it clear what a jerk he is. No, I mean Sophie and the Countess Platen. The Countess, long time mistress of Sophie's husband Ernst August, is basically the main villain of the novel. In this version, Königsmarck was her lover first, and she made the mistake of actually falling in love with him just when he was falling in love with SDC, to whom he then became faithful. It's a woman scorned plot, but one written from her pov. (Re: the film version, Stewart Granger said he wanted Marlene Dietrich for the part and wasn't content with Flora Robson, because Flora Robson, while a great actress, had never been beautiful, "and I had to be cruel to her, and I find it hard to be cruel to a woman who has never been beautiful". Okay, Stewart.) The historical basis for this are rumors about a previous Countess/Königsmarck affair, but they weren't proven; her main beef with him according to wiki seems to have been that he refused to marry her daughter, whereupon she outed him and SCDC to future G1. Said daughter doesn't show up in the novel at all, but she's the later Gräfin Kielsmannsegg and Lady Darlington whom G1 took with him to Britain along with his mistress, Katte's aunt Melusine von Schulenburg, and whom the Brits took to be his mistress as well.

Anyway, the Countess in the book is presented as smart and able - the only smarter character is Sophie - , and falling in love with Königsmarck is the first uncalculated thing she does in her life, which (from her pov) promptly backfires on her as he ditches her for the next pretty (and socially higher) thing. And not only does she out him, she actually organizes his murder herself. (When reading, I wondered whether this was the author's wway of blaming the ancestors of the current Royal family for it, but then again, G1 is presented as getting his soldiers killed for the heck of it and shooting a huntsman as a joke, so probably not.)

Less of a villain but definitely an antagonist is the novel's version of Sophie, who in addition of having the historical Sophie's objection to SDC and what she represents (reminder: SDC's Dad Georg Wilhelm was the Hannover who originally was supposed to marry Sophie, got syphilis, thought this was it and suggested Sophie marry his younger brother Ernst August instead, promising he would never, ever marry and procreate if she did and gave her that in writing, only for him to then fall in love with his mistress Eleonore d'Olbreuse, morganatically marry her and legitimize their daughter SDC) is written in general as a cold (but not evil) intellectual, loving only her books, seeing her son for the jerk he is but seeing the family's ascension to the English throne as the main goal which no one must endanger. It's not that she hates on young SDC once the marriage is done, she's just not sympathetic. (Typical scene: SDC, wanting to bond with her mother-in-law, vents about the fact that they're both openly cheated on by their respective husbands with very prominent mistresses. Sophie's response is a cool "Oh, grow up".) She gets probably the most scenes in the novel, including the last scene, and there is the vibe that while the author feels sorry for the two young lovers, these two ladies are the characters who actually interest her, and not so coincidentally the last scene is between them. (Sophie signals to the Countess she knows what Platen did and why, and banishes her from Hannover, no ifs, no buts.)

As for the titular lovers, SDC is a young naive who because her parents had married for love has no idea what she's getting into and for whom the love affair is the only escape of a terrible situation, and Königsmarck is at first something of a dashing opportunist (Platen is still an attractive woman, but his motivation for the affair is definitely mercenary) who however then truly loves SDC, and dies for it. Neither of them has much common sense or smarts. I do regret that other than one remark, there is no mention of his sister, Aurora von Königsmarck, who was August the Strong's first maitresse en titre (and the ancestress of French writer George Sand through her son Maurice de Saxe), since she's the one who wanted to find out what happened to him and used her royal lover's influence to investigate, thus ensuring the mysterious disappearance couldn't just be covered over and forgotten. But branching out to include her would have gone against the atmosphere of increasing claustrophobia in Hannover, so I guess I understand why Simpson didn't.

Not having seen the movie, I don't know how close or different to the novel it is, but going by the opening scene, they've changed the narrative emphasis, if it's all in first person as a letter written by dying SDC to future G2 in order to explain to him about her life.

From:

selenak

Question: are Salon members other than me familiar with Sandman? Because going back to it has made me wonder about the Endless and our antihero(es), and how encounters would go.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Not this one, alas.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The letters themselves prove that Königsmarck and poor SD of Celle, whatever other risks they took, were way more careful in their coding than the Imperial secret service two generations later with such code names like "Olympia", "Junior" and "Le Diable". Königsmarck/SD use about 50 code names, thirty of which have only been decyphred as of 1952, and sometimes several code names for the same person. They also used secret ink, and numbers for additional secrecy.

Good for them! Bad for us, but good for them. Sorry it still didn't work out. :/

Since summaries of love letters tend to be pretty dull ("K swears eternal love" "Pr. is sad about getting no letters the last two days" etc.), except if such details are mentioned as the bit that also made it into Horowski's book, Königsmarck amusing little 6 years old SD and the future Mrs. Grumbkow (same age) by building card houses for them, I mostly leafed through them.

Yeah, that makes sense. Too bad, but glad it led you to the novel. The review was great as your reviews always are, thank you!

From:

cahn

I am not! Though it is one of those things that I feel like makes me a not-very-well-rounded-fandom-denizen-of-my-approximate-age, so I'd be interested in picking it up. Hm, looks like the library has at least some of it.

From:

selenak

It‘s so very much worth checking out, though as I observed in my recent post, the earliest stories contain far more horror than the later series would, as it took Gaiman, like many a series writer, a bit to find the definite „voice“ for the saga. (There is still so much important stuff being set up in those earliest chapters.) There are also the equivalent of short stories in later collections that might ease you into it.

One of the great things about Sandman is that a crossover with just about evrything is possible due to its basic premises and the fact it tells stories from just about any point in history and present. What I was specifically going at was that you have these seven anthromorphic personifications called the Endless - Death, Destiny, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium (who used to be Delight) - who are simultanously a squabbling family. Many years ago, I wrote a Babylon 5/Sandman crossover where my favourite B5 character, Londo Mollari, meets each of the Endless in then course of his life, and when coming across it again recently thought, well, obviously, Fritz met them, too, and good lord, would they recognize family dynamics if they met some of his siblings as well.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

While reading Orieux, I made a few notes on minor points to bring up.

1. Classics reference alert: I don't know if this made it into your abridged copy,

cahn, but the Philippiques attributed to Voltaire, that were an attack on Philippe II d'Orleans, Regent, son of gay Philippe (have you got that connection in your head now, or should we keep repeating it?), are an allusion to the attacks by Demosthenes on Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. Demosthenes kept warning the Athenians to resist the temptation to cozy up to the increasingly threatening Philip, and instead to unite with the other city-states of Greece to fight Macedon before it became too powerful. He claimed that Philip, whatever alliances or promises he made now, would turn on Athens as soon as it was in his best interests to do so.

The original Philippics became so well-known that Cicero's polemics against Marc Antony were also called the Philippics, even though Antony's name wasn't Philip. ;) Educated contemporaries would have absolutely made the connection between Philippe the Regent and Philip of Macedon when they read the Philippiques.

2. Orieux says that Voltaire's remains were stolen, as was proven when his grave was dug up in the 19th century. Every semi-reliable source I could find when googling this says that there was a rumor going around to this effect, until his grave was dug up in the 19th century and his remains were found to still be there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3. So I talked about the whole war chariot thing in one of my posts. At the start of the Seven Years' War, before Fritz gets his butt kicked at Kolin and starts talking suicide, and Voltaire is still not speaking to him, he designs a whole war chariot (Kriegswagen), based on his reading of ancient history, that he wants the French to use to try to defeat the Prussians!

To tell the truth, he would have liked to see Friedrich's defeat and hoist the flag for it. At this time Voltaire was doing an astonishing occupation: he invented a war chariot to destroy the Prussian army. It is not a matter of poetic reverie: the plans are drawn up, the machine exists on paper. Of course, it's of literary origin: from a description of the war chariots of Assuerus [Xerxes], he was inspired with the idea of his modern war machine. He presents his plan to Monsieur de Florian, a talented officer who studies it and presents it to the minister. Richelieu is interested in it for a moment - or pretends to be. Briefly, while the offices leaf through the plan and it changes files, the Austrian infantry annihilates the Prussian army near Kolin. And the paper car is returned to Voltaire-Assuerus. Which does not prevent Monsieur de Florian's and other officers' reports from being serious. They even built a small model that Voltaire was enthusiastic about.

Then Fritz starts talking suicide, Wilhelmine sends out a cry for help, Voltaire "wiped away [Fritz's] tears from afar that [he] no longer want[ed] to wipe up close" (thanks for this awesome quote,

felis), Fritz kicks French butt at Rossbach, there's no more talk of war chariots...

Until Catherine! Once his new fan is on the throne and waging wars of conquest against the Ottomans, Voltaire is all gung ho:

When she went to war against the Turks, there was no torture that Voltaire did not wish the Sultan to undergo. Everything should belong to "his Käthe", and above all the Balkan countries! She should just grab them! "Semiramis" as liberator from Sophocles' fatherland, what an intoxicating plan! Let her take Istanbul, bring Constantinople back to life and make it her capital! Nothing was too big or too beautiful for his Käthe. He regretted being seventy, otherwise ... he indicates that he would fight for her.

One remembers his war machines, his Assyrian war chariots, which the artillery colonel Monsieur de Florian replicated at his suggestion, but were then rejected after closer examination by the war minister. This rejection of Versailles had hurt him. He did not hide the fact that the French defeats in the Seven Years' War stemmed from the lack of his chariots/wagons in the French army. Now he offered his war machines to Catherine II. He did so with a passion and tenacity to which Her Imperial Majesty finally ... gave a very evasive answer. He didn't want to see that she was politely rejecting him. He pretended that her letter opened negotiations. In his answer to Katharina, he promised her all possible victories over the Great Turk and let his comedic imagination run wild. He already saw himself as the stimulus and tool of the victory of his tsarina. He, who was so adept at reading and interpreting the language of the court, let himself be blinded by the limelight because he played in front of an incomparable spectator: Catherine II, Empress of all the Russias. Everyone has their own whimsy, even the sensible François Arouet. And so his chariots, which had been defeated in Versailles, were defeated for the second time in Saint Petersburg. But this defeat remained a secret.

Lol, Voltaire. I found a whole scholarly article on Voltaire and his attitudes toward war, which basically concludes, "Yeah, it's complicated."

4. So remember how Fritz was convinced Voltaire was going to refute everything on his deathbed? While we can see in hindsight how it really turned out, Fritz wishes you to know that he wasn't totally making this up, either:

During a trip to Saxony a few years before, he had been seized with such severe colic that he thought he was dying, and this time he wasn't lying. He immediately called a priest, confessed, received the sacraments, but recovered; that is the rule. When he regained his senses, he said to his secretary, Monsieur Dièze, who was as confused by the agony as by the sacraments and the resurrection: "My friend, you have seen man's weakness."

5. Remember when Voltaire in 1766 was trying to get Diderot and the other philosophes to go to Cleves, where everything would be awesome because it was Fritzian territory (and yet, as Peter Keith proved, close enough to the Netherlands to escape if you needed to)? Apparently, he actually wrote to Fritz, and Fritz said yes (of course):

He then asked Friedrich to grant him asylum in his principality of Kleve. The king, though surprised, agreed. "This asylum will always be open to you. How could I refuse it to a man who has done so much honor to literature, his fatherland, humanity, in a word, his century?"

THOSE TWO.

6. Speaking of THOSE TWO, Voltaire wants to be allowed to return to Paris, but Versailles is looking askance at him defecting to Prussia, then coming back to France and wanting his old job back. Orieux:

Listen to this; it's really astonishing what [Voltaire] writes:

"If I dared to speak of myself for a moment, then I would say that I've never understood why people are mad at me for my flirtation (Koketterien) with the King of Prussia. If they knew that one day he kissed my hand, as thin as it is, in order to keep me with him, then everyone would forgive me for letting it happen."

We admit, there's nothing anyone can say against this argument. Who in this base world could resist a king who kissed one's hand?

NOT VOLTAIRE, that's for sure. :PPP

7. So this part confused me. When he's introducing the correspondence between Voltaire and Crown Prince Fritz in 1736, Orieux writes, "Friedrich had offered him his house in London to escape to." What house in London? It's 1736, he's just barely acquired Rheinsberg. He could maybe put in a good word with the Prussian resident there, but doesn't that depend on FW?

I'm confused. Can one of you who've read Pleschinski (*cough* it's on my list!) maybe clear this up?

8. Orieux is really a fan of the Arouet ancestors, isn't he? I found it charming, albeit unconvincing.

Thanks for the rec,

selenak! This was really worth the ~~struggle with German~~ read. If I ever make it to French, I'm planning on tackling this in the original.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Rottembourg, like Peter Keith, is someone you have to accidentally run across references to in books about other people. In this case, Charles Whitworth, British envoy in the first quarter of the 18th century, whose biography I've just finished reading.

Whitworth and Rottembourg overlapped in Berlin: a couple months in 1716, and then mid 1719 to late 1720. The latter was, if you know your dates, right as the Great Northern War was ending and the peace was being negotiated, so they were not idle. Britain was trying to push a treaty with Sweden and Prussia, and, if I'm recalling correctly, France was acting as guarantor. And FW was dragging his feet on signing it. (This is the treaty where Prussia got most of Swedish Pomerania, but FW was trying to hold out for more stuff and the exact terms of Stettin he wanted.)

Turns out, Whitworth and Rottembourg were, if not BFFs, at least good working buddies:

He was also able to establish cordial relations with Count Conrad Rottembourg, the French ambassador, which lasted for the rest of his diplomatic career.

When FW was dragging his feet:

Whitworth was aware that everything could be lost at this moment. He decided to approach Frederick William personally, with Rottembourg at his side.

The treaty did eventually get signed, with some pushing and backdating by Whitworth.

But not before this happened:

A further complication arose through an almost comic incident in September when Whitworth became aware of a secret negotiation between the Prussian and Russian ministers concerning Poland. Ilgen [Prussian Foreign minister] had sent a servant with two packets to be delivered, one for Rottembourg, the French minister, and the other for Golovkin. The servant, however, delivered the wrong packages with the result that Rottembourg discovered the draft of a proposed Russian-Prussian treaty, intended for Golovkin, which he duly revealed to Whitworth. The proposed Russian-Prussian treaty thus came to nothing and poor Ilgen was left ‘in the agony of his mistake’.

So Rottembourg is totally passing on secrets to his buddy Whitworth, the English diplomat.

Ilgen, btw, is Ariane's mother's (the Baroness who gets a cameo at the beginning of "Lovers lying two and two") father. Remember, Ariane's father Knyphausen is a diplomat and Minister of War, and he marries the daughter of the foreign minister Ilgen. (Peter totally married up.)

And then, a few years later, in 1723-1725, Whitworth and Rottembourg are posted to the Congress of Cambrai together!

On a personal level, Whitworth had excellent relations with Count Rottembourg, the French Plenipotentiary, whom he had known from his mission to Berlin and liked as ‘a man of very great Judgment, and Experience … one of the best heads they have now left in France’. But he also suspected that Rottembourg was kept in the dark as to the true intentions and policies of the French court now there had been a change in leadership. [The Regent died in late 1723 and was replaced by the Duc de Bourbon.]

Unfortunately, nothing happens at Cambrai, because the real negotiation is happening in Paris. Whitworth is extremely frustrated.

But, what this quote about Rottembourg suggests to me ~~that is of interest to my hypothetical fic~~ is that Rottembourg may not have been a stickler/hypersensitive about etiquette by the standards of the time, because there was very little Whitworth could stand less on his missions than unnecessary ceremony. Those informal Brits! Or possibly Rottembourg just had other qualities that made up for it (he was French, after all).

But we'll just say Rottembourg got along with the guy whose letters are constantly like, "Oh my gooooood, I had to enter Cambrai as part of a formal procession, just like I did in Moscow, there is no neeeeed for this. Fucking hell. Now I'm trying to do real work, but nothing is getting done, because everyone's just arguing about precedence. Whyyyyyy." Only more politely. :P

(Also, man after my own heart, clearly. :P)

Whitworth died in 1725, thus ending his chances to work together with Rottembourg.

I'll try to say more about Whitworth on another occasion, but I must sign off now.

From:

selenak

This is the treaty where Prussia got most of Swedish Pomerania

And Fredersdorf becomes a Prussian citizen. Otherwise, he and Fritz would never have met, so this is an important historical date!

So Rottembourg is totally passing on secrets to his buddy Whitworth, the English diplomat.

Given that French/English relations were no warmer in this century than they were in most centuries, I find this extra remarkable. Was Withworth financially sound, or could his sympathy for Rottembourg have come with some financial encouragement?

From:

selenak

Orieux about Voltaire's remains: Well, remember his version of Voltaire's death is also way behind the one I linked

cahn to. Checking out what other biographies of his are available in Germany, I came across this withering critique of his Catherine de' Medici biography, the highlights of which (of the critique, not the book, which I Haven't read) are:

Protestant "Heresy" wtf, Orieux? Pray use a more neutral term. Ditto for Henri III's "unnatural practices", by which you mean gay sex. Also, you're way over the top about the Grande Nation. It needs some chuzpe to present France as being "under siege for the entire 16th century by the HRE". Yeah, no, especially if one looks as to who started most of the wars. Also, writing that Metz, Verdun and Toul may have belonged to the HRE back then but that they were totally French in spirit is just the kind of 19th century nationalist mentality that led to dire things. Why is Eleanor of Austria, sister to Charles V. and second wife of Francis I., presented as a poor dumb goose, when Charles trusted her with several political missions, proving he hardly considered her dumb? And while we're talking Habsburgs, I question your claim that Margaret of Austria had a hate-on for the French ever since Charles VIII ditched her. Given the rest of Margaret's ultra competent life, I don't think so. And your Huguenot numbers are either too little explored or way off!"

Well, my French pal who originally recced Orieux to me did say he was "opinionated" and so he is in the Voltaire biography, too. And yes, one can tell the French perspective there a mile away, too. (And not just because he gets the name of Fritz' wife wrong and seems to have known zilch about Fritz' brothers, just assuming they'd have been like most younger brothers to French monarchs, hence the idea that acting in Voltaire's plays kept them from "scheming" against Fritz.) But most biographers are biased, not always intentionally but as a matter of which sources are available to them; Orieux is just open about his opinions. (And has humor and style.)

Lol, Voltaire. I found a whole scholarly article on Voltaire and his attitudes toward war, which basically concludes, "Yeah, it's complicated."

Indeed. :)

When he regained his senses, he said to his secretary, Monsieur Dièze, who was as confused by the agony as by the sacraments and the resurrection: "My friend, you have seen man's weakness.

:) Mind you, the priests in Saxony, a largely Protestant country where most Catholics were probably Poles because of August III, son of the Strong, was also King of Poland, wouldn't have tried to blackmail him into a giving them a written "hereby I renounce all my works" letter before absolving him anyway, nor would the question of burial have been such an issue as it would be in Paris. Given that many a Saxon was still disgruntled August the Strong and his son had converted to get the Polish crown, coming over high handedly was not something a Catholic priest in Saxonyn could have afforded. (Look, it was the original hotbed of the Lutheran Reformation.)

Who in this base world could resist a king who kissed one's hand?

NOT VOLTAIRE, that's for sure. :PPP

Most def. :) To be fair, Maupertuis, who didn't get his hand kissed, also didn't resist, along with several other French literati and scientists. (And Maupertuis also got cries of "traitor" in 1756.) Did Fritz kiss anyone else's hand once he was King? Well, his mother excepted, and perhaps also Maman Camas. But, you know. Another man's. In public.

House in London: I bet Orieux is confusing something here. As far as I know, he had no house in London, didn't have the money for one, and sure as well would not have been in a position to offer it to anyone as public a person as Voltaire if he did (i.e. Dad would have inevitably found out). As I told you, the bibliography doesn't include any solo Fritz biographies, just "Fritz and..." works. In French. So the mistake might not even have been Orieux'. Maybe one of his sources misread the name of a place in one of Fritz' letters as "London". Between Fritz' handwriting, and Rokoko spelling, that would be entirely possible. It's more likely he could have offered Voltaire a place in a Prussian territory near the French border like Cleves, or in the principalities of one of his married sisters.

From:

selenak

Overall: very well written, very much biographie romancee in style - Stefan Zweig would have been delighted, and who knows, maybe was -, and also very opinionated. I looked up the author. He was Harold Acton, one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, best man to Evelyn Waugh during the later's first marriage, supposedly partly the model for Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited. Scion of an Anglo-Italian family. Gay. Not a fan of Mussolini, thank God. Served in the RAF during WWII.

On to the narrative. Acton covers roughly a century, between the 1640s, when future Cosimo III. is born, to the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici, whereupon Franz Stephan gets the Duchy. He's focused on the family members and their wives - and btw, the end of the line came to be if this book is anything to go by because a couple of in varying degrees awful men married a couple of strong willed women, degree of awfulness debate worthy, several of whom did not behave as expected, and had catastrophic marriages with them - and blithely assumes you know at least a bit history if you've purchased this book and he doesn't have to explain everything from ground scratch. For example, when saying in the introduction the reader may be surprised that he didn't pick the more famous Medici and their time to focus on instead of this bunch, he says:

The Renaissance is admittedly the most interesting period of Italian history, Florence the most typical state, Lorenzo de' Medici its most typical citizen.

Okay? I mean, I'm not exactly disagreeing, the Italian Renassaisance is fascinating - but "the most interesting of Italian history? whatever did he think of all those Roman Republic and Roman Empire centuries? Or how about the late 11th, early 12th century, starring the other Frederico Secondo, the medieval HRE Emperor born in Sicily, a Renaissance mind in the middle ages, and in the same era St. Francis and the dastardly yet very efficient Pope Innocent III and Salerno as a place where women could study medicine as well as men and Italians, Germans, Normans and Moors all living in Italy? And how is Florence more typical of the Renaissance than, say, Venice? Or Rome? Lorenzo de'Medici as the epitome of the Renaissance man I can go with. Note that Acton expects you to know something about Lorenzo, aka Il Magnifico, here, and like I said, doesn't bother explaining why you should.

Here's another bit from the preface illustrating neatly Acton's style, when he talks about the portraits of the last Medici:

And it is strange to compare the portraits of these Medici with those of the earlier branch, with the Renaissance -faces of Lorenzo and Giuliano, and the grandsons and great - grandsons of Cosimo Pater Patriae. For the Bourbon has intruded . There is no longer the same austerity : instead, a ponderous sensuality becomes more and more apparent, rigid in the beginning of the seventeenth century and kept under firm control, as in the faces of Austrian and Spanish nobility, but later loosening into a thicker voluptuousness, curdling into flaccid folds until, finally, a terrible senile lust asserts itself. Decay sets in . The muscles that were taut have let themselves go. The heavy eyelids droop more than ever now, the loose and flabby lips completely drop, like some pulpy fruit, bursting and over-ripe : only the nose retains its mighty prominence. But for this indomitable bulwark all the features sag, and no amount of pride will succeed in pulling them together. The over -emphasis of each weakness:the triumph of matter over mind, of exultant fleshiness (never has the
spirit surrendered to such an extent as this, one exclaims) accumulates so as to form the most gruesome of caricatures.

Louis XIV: Excuse you, Acton. What do you mean, "The Bourbon has intruded"? Leaving aside that I am the grandson of a Medici, are you accusing my family of being sex fiends?

Henri IV: Well, I will admit I did might qualify. I certainly pounced whenever I had the chance. On the other hand, I am still everyone's candidate for Best French King ever, and not just because Voltaire wrote an epic about me. So it evidently was not to my detriment.

Louis XIV: With all dlue respect, Granddad, I might not be everyone's choice for "best" but for "most influential" and "the one everyone else is thinking of when saying "French King"? Le Roi, c'est moi. And I did have mistresses, of course I did, but only rarely two at a time, unlike you. Certainly compared with such imitators of myself like that Saxon boasting about this strength, I showed both taste and restraint.

Louis XIII: And I was repressedly gay and therefore had only one mistress. I probably never had sex with my male favourites at all. As for my wife, Anne and I needed 23 years to produce Louis and Philippe. No one, but no one, can accuse me of having had too much sex!

Louis XV: Well. Err. What can I say? When your niickname is "the Well beloved".... and we can't all do ballet for physical exercise. We really can't, great-grandfather. I hated it.

Louis XVI: The only woman I ever had sex with in my entire life was my wife. After seven years of trying in vain. And no, I did not have sex with a man, either. You have to go back to the middle ages to find a French King with my fidelity among earlier dynasties.

All pre revolutionary Bourbon Kings: Back at ya, Acton. If the Medici ran themselves down, our heritage wasn't at fault!

Back to the story. For

cahn, some more orientation, as to how these Medici relate to other Medici you might have heard of, to wit, two Queens of France:

Catherine de' Medici: last of the older line of the Medici, descended from the famous Lorenzo. Married Henri II of France, a Valois. More in my story which you've read. Three of her four sons became Kings of France and died; the fourth had already died when the third still reigned. That was the end of the Valois, and then came Henri de Navarre, the first Bourbon on the throne, who had married Catherine's daughter Margot in the famous St. Bortholomew's Night . When their marriage was annulled years later, he married:

Marie de' Medici: second wife of Henri IV. Marie came from another branch of the Medici line, descending from Lorenzo the Elder,younger brother to Cosimo Pater Patriae, whereas Catherine had descended from that Cosimo. Marie de' Medici was the mother of Louis XIII., and various smart and energetic daughters, including Henrietta Maria, married to Charles I. of England (he would get beheaded), mother of Charles II and James II. However, Marie de' Medici's favourite kid was her second son Gaston, which is important for this story. Gaston was the in fact THE archetypical scheming younger brother, and his mother schemed right with him. Since Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche did not produce living kids for 23 years, Gaston joined every plot against his brother ever in the security that as the sole male heir, he would never suffer serious consequences when caught. Then came future Louis XIV, and shortly after him Philippe the Gay. With now two living boys between him and the throne, Gaston was very frustrated indeed, but also more cautious. He transferred his ambition to his children. One of his daughters will be a main character of this book, so remember: Gaston = wannabe King. Also, thanks to his second marriage, loaded in cash. His idea for his daughters - he didn't have any sons - was that they should either marry their royal cousins or other royalty. That's how he raised them.

Our story starts in 1642, in the year Galileo Gaililei dies, Tuscany's greatest scientist. His boss was Ferdinando II de' Medici , Grand Duke of Tuscany and basically the last Medici managing to show the old Medici virtues - patronage of the arts and sciences - united to basic government efficiency. Ferdinando is married to Vittoria della Rovere, a first cousin, and the same year Galileo dies, his son Cosimo (future Cosimo III) is born.

(If Friedrich and Wilhelm and any mixing thereof a fave Hohenzollern names and the Hannovers go for "George" and "Ernst August" and combinations thereof, the Medici go for: Cosimo, Lorenzo, Giuliano, Ferdinando, Francesco. Most are called variations of these names.)

Ferdinando comes across as a sympathetic guy in general. At age 20 he didn't lieave Florence when the plague struck again but remained and helped as much as he could. People didn't forget that. He also, which was increasingly rare in his age of religious strife, was not a bigot. Quote from the book:

An anecdote of his youth already denoted certain symptoms of the Grand Duke's easy , tolerant nature. On a cold winter's evening he was warming himself by a fire in his apartment, when his mother, the Archduchess Maria-Maddalena, paid him an impromptu visit. She told him with dismay that she had suddenly discovered the existence of a particular carnal abuse in Florence ; among people, more over, of distinct parts, power and social standing. In spite of whatsoever virtues they might possess, she was determined to have them all severely punished, and submitted a long list of offenders to his scrutiny.
When the Grand Duke had read it, he remarked that this information did not suffice. There were others of similar tendencies he could append to her list. And taking a quill, he added his name in capitals.
The Archduchess said he had done this merely to save the guilty, but that she would have them chastised all the same. The Grand Duke in quired to what punishment she chose to condemn them , and she replied with some vehemence: ‘They must be burned. ' So the Grand Duke, flinging the list into the fire, said : “ There they are, Madame, punished just as you have condemned them .'

Ferdinando wasn't kidding. One of the reasons why his marriage to his cousin Vittoria was miserable was that she caught him with a hot page, one Count Bruto della Molara. (Acton: "The Grand Duchess was naturally indignant when she surprised her husband and his page in the midst of forbidden dalliance, and promptly left the room without a word.")

Vittoria first tried to take her revenge by calling in Jesuits to denounce these specific sins from the pulpit. Whereupon the hot page, with Ferdinando's knowledge, managed to "compromise" at least one of the Jesuits. Exit Jesuits from Florence. Vittoria next ensured that her new baby, Cosimo, was raised exactly as the opposite of his father. Ferdinando loved art and sciences; Vittoria ensured Cosimo would only love religion and be as little taught in the sciences as she could get away with. And the religion was of the most fundamentalist type available at the time. Despite having a deeply miserable marriage, she and Ferdinando, eighteen years after Cosimo, managed to produce another living male child, Francesco Maria. Now Cosimo would turn into an ultra pious bigot. Francesco Maria would be a partying playboy who ate, drank and fucked his way to an early death. Give you three guesses which was was made a Cardinal of the Church. (Because second sons, hey.)

Cosimo was such a serious ultra pious kid and youth that he ceased to smile in public. He was with priests all the time. Ferdinando correctly concluded that this did not bode well for the future and that the boy had to get married quickly so he could procreate and maybe live a little. Also, of course, a shiny wife would bring useful connections and money. To that end, he procured for his son the younger daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, eternal biusy schemer. Uncle to Louis XIV. Said daughter, Marguerite-Louise, absolutely did NOT want to go and marry a future Medici Duke, but cousin Louis insisted. And young Cosimo quickly found out that his parents' marriage was paradise compared to his own. Marguerite Louise had one goal: she'd return to France. Never mind that noble Catholic marriages were supposed to be forever. She wanted to return to France with the same singlemindedness and fervor SD wanted to marry Fritz and Wilhelmine to their Hannover cousins. To that end, she proceded to insult and humiliate both Cosimo and the Medici in general as much as she could from the get go. She demanded the Tuscan crown jewels (used for her marriage and coronation as Duchess) for her personal use, and when Cosimo pointed out they didn't belong to him as a private person but to the state of Florence, she attempted to steal them and smuggle them out of Tuscany to sell them. (She was caught.) (BTW, the man Marguerite Louise had wanted to marry instead was, wait for it, Charles de Lorraine, Grandfather of Franz Stephan. He was her lover for a while, too.) She threatened to break a bottle on Cosimo's head if he didn't leave her alone. According to our Sophie of Hanover, who made her one and only long Italian trip with husband Ernst August around that time, she slept with her husband once a week to duty's sake, but that was that, neither of them couldl force themselves to do more. Louis XIV. sent a marriage counsellor in the form of a Poitevin lady, Madame Deffand, to whose reports we owe the knowledge that Marguerite Louise was also a passionate walker who exhausted both her Florentine and French attendants by long hiking tours.

Cosimo responded to this at first by reducing Marguerite Louise's French staff in the hope of forcing her to adjust, but fat chance. She came up with a new insult instead. Since Italians in general and the Medici in particular were all poisoners, clearly, she insisted on only eatiing what a French cook would prepare for her. Marguerite Louise then hit on a really good (for her) idea, which was telling Cosimo, by then the Duke, that since she hadn't wanted to marry him and had been forced to, clearly their marriage was null and void, which meant they were living in shameless unholy concubinage. Cue much self flagelation on Cosimo's part and ponderings whether she was right.

She did swear she was ready and willing to retire to a nunnery, as long as it was FRENCH nunnery. By then, he'd basically been reduced to keeping her in a genteel prison with guards prepared to stop her if she made a run for it. She pretended to have breast cancer, so she'd be sent back to France, but the (French) doctor sent by Cousin Louis said she was fine. Then she started public pillow fights with her cook and tickled him on her bed. Since somehow, in this years of hell, three children, two boys and one daughter, had been produced, Cosimo at last caved and allowed to return to France. (Without her children, of course.)

From:

selenak

Now, independent from this once his father had died Cosimo had started the longest reign any Duke of Tuscany would ever have (52 years, all in all). And it was a terrible one on every level. Scientists and artists were either banished or so poorly paid they went on their own initiative. The economy became so poor that there was bartering on the streets instead of paying with coins. And bigotry ruled. Complete with old school religious antisemitism. Cosimo started to persecute Jews. He forbade Christian/Jewish marriages, forgave Christians and Jews to live in the same house together, forbade Jews to serve in Christian households and Christians to serve Jews. Any type of sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews was forbidden. Etc. And even the Christians were supposed to denounce each other for not being Christian enough if needed.

(There are, however, two examples of laws Cosimo created which our author does approve of. I quote from the book:

Youthful sinners were punished with corresponding severity: in some cases, however, one must applaud the method. Settimanni writes, in October, 1690 : 'A peasant boy between five and six years old, from the district of Pistoia, was castrated in the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, for killing a little girl of three with a stone. He had wanted to remove a medal that she wore about her neck, whence she began to scream , and he stoned her to the ground, striking her head in such wise that it killed her. Seeing that she was dead, he dragged her to a ditch , and covered her face with his clothes . For so much craftiness (malizia ) it was well judged that he should not be allowed offspring in this world, and therefore he was castrated .' Cruelty to animals was also punished in a manner we might emulate : a scoundrel was put in the pillory by the column in the market-place, with a collar and placard , ‘ for being a murderer of cats ' , and two of his dead victims were
appended on his neck .)

Meanwhile, Cosimo also kept up on news about his ex in France, via the Tuscan emissary, who sent regular reports on Marguerite Louise. Having achieved her life goal, Marguerite Louise was a bit at a loss at what do with herself. Technically, she did stay in a nunnery. De facto, she was at Versailles most often, gambling huge sums away (which lead to regular arguments for her pension via letter with Tuscany). She had an affair with her groom. (She also hit her servants when the mood struck her. Sex or beatings, it could be either.) She bathed in the nude. (When Cosimo complained about this to Louis via envoy, Louis basically reacted with a shrug.) When the Abbess of the convent where she was living, Montmartre, had died and a new Abbess was appointed, the new Abbess tried to lay down the law. Fat chance. Marguerite Louise threatened to kill her with a hatchet and a pistol. In the end, an agreement with Cosimo and Louis was reached that Marguerite Louise would move to a new convent (Sainte Mande).

For a while, Marguerite Louise had kept up correspondence with her oldest son, Ferdinando when he'd become a rebellious teen writing her letters, and once when Cosimo became ill she told everyone at Versailles it wasn't Tuscany she'd hated, only her husband, and immediately after his death she would "she would fly to Florence to banish all hypocrites and hypocrisy and establish a new government". In the end, Cosimo outlived her, but Marguerite Louise never stopped surprising people till her end. Having moved to Sainte-Mande, she declared it a "spiritual brothel" in need of reform, and she had a point; there were five or six nuns with illegitimate kids and several lovers, and the Abess was present only some months in the year and with her lover otherwise. Marguerite Louise threw herself into her last transformation into a sincere reformer, overhauled the convent, kicked out the Abess and the wayward nuns and next threw herself into charity. She had two strokes which partially incapacitated her, and by then, Louis was dead and Philippe d'Orleans Regent. In another surprising turn of events, the aging Marguerite Louise had become pals with his mother, Liselotte, and so Philippe allowed her to buy a house in Paris and live out her live there, which she did.

As for her children. The oldest, Ferdinando, had some of the good Medici gifts of old - he was a musician and composer, and openly bisexual (this included an affair with a castrato and with a hot musician, but he also had female lovers). Cosimo, despite all evidence to the contrary thinking marriage was just the thing, and argueing with this rebellious son all the time, much like FW insisted him marrying. A very nice girl, as it happened, Violante of Bavaria, who was devoted him. Alas, Ferdinando found her dull and didn't requite her feelings. (Stop me if this sounds familiar.) During his regular trips to Venice, he managed to get infected with syphilis, and not the type to stop at stage 2. He died of it, eventually.

This made brother Gian Gastone the heir, though Dad Cosimo also tried to heighten his chances by making his own younger brother, the frolicking playboy Cardinal (remember him) leave the clergy and marry. His brother did that, and promptly died. Gian Gastone (named after his scheming French grandfather Gaston d'Orleans) had been married at Dad Cosimo's orders in Ferdinando's life time already since it was evidence that tertiary syphilis suffering Ferdinando would never rule. (And had no children by Violante.) With an unerring instinct, Cosimo's wife of choice for Gian Gastone was.... Anna Maria Franziska of Saxe-Lauenburg, in Bohemia. She'd already been married and widowed. This may have given her the self confidence to do absolutely NOT what either her husband or his father wanted. Gian Gastone had travelled to Osnabrück to marry her there and had expected to return with her to Tuscany forthwith. Instead, she insisted they'd go to her estate in Bohemia. He hated it there and found it deadly borin. She was a passionate horsewoman and into agriculture, and they shared absolutely nothing. He attempted to flee to Paris; Dad ordered him back. He also ordered Franziska to come to Tuscany, but fat chance. She stayed where she was, and where she made the rules and had the power. Gian Gastone started to drink, massively, and became an alcoholic who was rarely seen sober for the rest of his life. He also gambled away huge sums of money in Prague. Cosimo enlisted the help of the Pope to order his daughter in law to come to Tuscany with her husband, but she only said there was no point, since Gian Gastone was impotent in addition to being a useless gambling drunk. At which point Cosimo III. caved and allowd Gian Gastone to come home alone.

By now, it was glaringly obvious to Cosimo that he had a succession problem. One son dying of syphilis, the other impotent according to his wife, drinking himself to death and staring up to the stars (he did that, it was a thing). He tried to petition that his daughter, who'd been married to the Elector Palatine, would be allowed to succeed. But alas.

Charles VI, HRE: Cosimo, my friend, let me point out two things for you. Firstly, the Palatinate is a principality within the HRE, which means I'm your daughter's husband's boss, and I decide about any additional title any of my Electors get. Secondly, and as importantaly, do you remember why Tuscany is a duchy now? Which it sure as hell was not in the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent? Because my ancestor Charles V. took the quondam Republic of Florence and made it into the Duchy of Tuscany, appointing your ancestor its Duke. You know, when his troops were in Italy and Rome got sacked and the Florentines debated either letting child!Catherine de' Medici be raped by the troops or put her out in a cage in front of the city walls so Charles' canons would hit her. Those days. Anyway, since your ancestor from the younger Medici line accepted Tuscany as a Duchy from the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor, it means any Duke of Tuscany is the vassal of the HRE and if your dynasty is about to die out, well, I've got an idea...

Cosimo: I hate you. How about I pick Don Carlos, son of Elisabetta Farnese, Queen of Spain and of Philip V. instead?
Charles VI (having spent years of his life fighting Philip V.) : I don't think so.

Cosimo dies. Gian Gastone ascends, the literal last of the Medici, save for his sister. He's so drunk all the time that he throws up out of his chaise when carried through Florence, so he rarely is. At meals he's not better - vomiting into his napkin, wiping his mouth with his periwig. But: he immediately gets rid of the anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant laws his father had made, threw out corrupt churchmen from the government, and revoked the banishment of "new" (i.e. Galilelean) ideas from the university of Pisa. He also separated Medici property from state property, being aware that despite his efforts, neither his sister nor Don Carlos would succeed him, and this way his sister could at least inherit the family posessions. Amazingly given thie condition he already was in by the time he took over, he managed a reign of 13 years before his alcoholilsm at last killed him. Because of his reforms, he was sincerely mourned. But the story of the Medici was over for good.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

ZOMG. This turnaround time is nothing short of amazing! Now I feel like I should send you a book every day. :P

Looks like this book was a good find, then!

Not a fan of Mussolini, thank God.

Makes a nice change from some of our 1930s authors and their opinions.

"the most interesting of Italian history? whatever did he think of all those Roman Republic and Roman Empire centuries?

Okay, so this is maybe where Germans do things differently than Anglophones. Because I, as an American who's studied history, would raise both eyebrows if you referred to the Roman Republic and Empire as part of "Italian history." And after reading the sentence a couple times, I'd say to myself, "Well, I guess you could call it that...technically..." and move on but be lowkey bothered for probably the rest of the chapter.

So I can almost guarantee you he's excluding Roman history, which precedes Italian history in my worldview and probably his. Without being a specialist and without claiming to speak for Italian historians, my sense of when "Italian" history begins is that Theodoric is fuzzy but probably Roman, and the Lombard invasion is about when I start thinking of the peninsula as "Italian".

As for the rest of it, well. Yes, you have excellent points. When did historians start to really push back on the "Dark Ages" vs. "Renaissance" model? He might be operating inside that framework.

And how is Florence more typical of the Renaissance than, say, Venice? Or Rome?

If by typical he means "most average", then I got nothing. If he means "stored in my, the author's, head as best embodying Renaissance principles," then I can see where he got that, speaking not so much historicaly as historiographically. Because when my high school class covered the Italian Renaissance very very superficially, the model we got was "Venice = trade, Florence = art/architecture/literature/humanism, Rome = Counter-Reformation." And that model probably came out of some school of thought that predated the 1990s.

(I'm currently biased by having studied the Florentine Renaissance due to absolutely falling in love with the city during a visit, and not having studied the others more than in passing. So most of the things I know are about Florence, which may or may not reflect its actual importance.)

Louis XVI: The only woman I ever had sex with in my entire life was my wife. After seven years of trying in vain. And no, I did not have sex with a man, either. You have to go back to the middle ages to find a French King with my fidelity among earlier dynasties.

Philip V: But I, first Bourbon king of Spain, and contemporary of most of these Medici Acton is writing about, was totally faithful to both my wives, no known mistresses or male favorites! If I got a reputation for being sexually dependent on them, well, remember that it's a tough life thinking you're dead or possibly a frog, and I needed moral support. Wife = nurse! I too take umbrage at being blamed for Medici decadence.

Now Cosimo would turn into an ultra pious bigot. Francesco Maria would be a partying playboy who ate, drank and fucked his way to an early death. Give you three guesses which was was made a Cardinal of the Church. (Because second sons, hey.)

LOL forever. So typical.

She wanted to return to France with the same singlemindedness and fervor SD wanted to marry Fritz and Wilhelmine to their Hannover cousins.

As soon as I read this, I sat up straight and knew nothing good was coming.

Wooooow. That poor woman. And good for her for keeping up the fight, I guess? But bad that that involved making everyone else miserable. That really sucks all around. TAKE NOTE, FW.

Marguerite Louise then hit on a really good (for her) idea, which was telling Cosimo, by then the Duke, that since she hadn't wanted to marry him and had been forced to, clearly their marriage was null and void, which meant they were living in shameless unholy concubinage. Cue much self flagelation on Cosimo's part and ponderings whether she was right.

That is a good idea! I'm just surprised it didn't come sooner.

This write-up definitely had all the gossipy sensationalism I was hoping for! Another gem from our royal reader!

Edited Date: 2021-06-17 02:00 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

And Fredersdorf becomes a Prussian citizen. Otherwise, he and Fritz would never have met,

Probably would never have met. Let's remember the amount of conflict FW had with his neighbors over his recruiting practices re tall soldiers. ;)

But yes, was totally thinking of 12-yo Fredersdorf becoming Prussian on that fateful day!

Was Withworth financially sound, or could his sympathy for Rottembourg have come with some financial encouragement?

He was definitely always the opposite of financially sound, so we can't rule this out, but I'll try to do a write-up this weekend on why I don't think that's what we're seeing here.

From:

selenak

Makes a nice change from some of our 1930s authors and their opinions.

Indeed. I was relieved not having to work through a whole of that again.

Italian history: Well, remember Fritz bitching about how current day Italians are so unworthy successors to both the Romans and Renaissance Italy? While the ancient world is technically regarded as its own thing in histioriography, I think there is an emotional connection felt between Roman and Italian history even today. Mind you, it could be just the after effects of centuries of very efficient Lutheran propaganda. By which I mean that Brother Martin hit on an emotional gold mine when rediscovering Arminius of Teutoburg Forest Battle fame, naming him "Hermann" (no one had used this name for him pre Luther) and presenting the whole Cherusci vs Romans set up as exactly like him (and all Upstanding True Christian Germans) vs the Pope (Roman Tyranny: The Rerun). The idea that the Catholic Church was on a mission to accomplish what Roman Legions could not (never mind we actually have Roman-founded cities in a lot of places of modern Germany, all along the Rhine, of course, but also in the south) became so ingrained that I came across it even in the memoirs of a 20th century publisher, Klaus Piper. (Having become popular in Luther's life time, it gained another massive push in the 30 Years War. And then in the Napoleonic Wars the Catholic Church got a few years respite from being cast as modern day Romans because naturally, Napoleon and the French were, but once Napoleon was defeated, back was the equivalent of Rome = Rome. Seriously, even the very ironic and sceptical poet Heinrich Heine uses it in the 19th century.

When did historians start to really push back on the "Dark Ages" vs. "Renaissance" model? He might be operating inside that framework.

Not yet in the 1930s (or the 1950s, when he republished this), so he almost certainly does.

I love Florence, too, both the Renaissance one, and the current day one. (Well: current day. I was there the last time 20 years ago, sob.) And it has one big point not yet mentioned in favor of its cultural dominance, which is that the Tuscan version of Italian became the dominant, high Italian. (Whether or not Dante gets the credit.) Not the Sicililan, Venetian or Neapolitan Italian, the Tuscan one.

HOWEVER. Venice certainly stood for more than trade, between providing its own share of painters, musicians (not just in the Renaissance - Vivaldi says hello from the Baroque) and writers. (The Italian Epic may be Florentine. Italian comedy is Venetian.) And both a great many of the Florentine and Venetian artists ended up in Rome, spending much of their life there, because the nicest thing you can see about the Renaissance Popes is "patrons of the art" (there's not that much else to admire about them, but they certainly came through on this level!), and the mingling of various Italian city states and various international representatives was only possible on this level there. (Especially given all the feuding of various Italian city states!)

Wooooow. That poor woman. And good for her for keeping up the fight, I guess? But bad that that involved making everyone else miserable. That really sucks all around. TAKE NOTE, FW.

What I thought. It also makes me wonder what Marguerite Louise could have done if she'd been in a position to channel that enormous will power and endurance into something productive. I guess Cosimo lucked out that the one idea she didn't hit on was a variation of Catherine's, i.e. kill your husband, rule as regent Duchess? As much as she frustrated her environment, Cosimo had made himself so gigantically unpopular with his bigotted laws that it's not like many would have mourned him.

The good idea: given FW's inquiry to his Protestant Pastors about whether or not a father can force his daughter to marry, it occured to me that it's surprising this argument wasn't used more often when trying to get an annulment/divorce in either religion. I know at least one French King (Louis XII) used it to get out of a marriage (i.e. claim his father forced him into it), but Marguerite Louise is the first woman to (sort of successfully) use it that I've read of. (Henry VIII in England couldn't have used it in any of his marriages, since he married even his first wife AFTER his father's death, and very much had wanted to at the time.) Otoh, G1 and G4 in their own unhappy marriages instead went for the "she cheated! (never mind how much I did)" argument instead of saying "Dad made me, I didn't want to".

Bologna with its oldest university of Italy (and again, some of the painters) can't be ignored.

From:

cahn

It turns out I do have a small breather where all my available brainpower isn't going to work or church deadlines (or kidstuff) to do salon, yay! (In a couple of days, will have to go back underground for a week or so, but I'm hoping to get at least somewhat caught up before then :) )

On Tales from Hollywood: I will definitely check it out if I am ever able (Amazon Prime, just to taunt me, has it in its lineup but then tells me it's not available... maybe it's available to non-USians?), those excerpts were so great.

When she killed herself, Thomas and Katia were unmistakably relieved

*sigh*

but Thomas' son Klaus wrote Heinrich a truly touching condolence letter which I've held in my hands when I researched Heinrich at USC which has part of his papers.

That is a lovely condolence letter <3 :(

On Margaret of Austria: She is awesome!

Margaret: composes her epitath just in case: "Here lies Margaret, the willing bride,
Twice married - but a virgin when she died."

Heh, you go Margaret!

Margaret: *is so successful as governor of the Netherlands that Charles, once he's grown up, reappoints her indefinitely until her death*

Margaret: *also starts to become first her father's and then her nephew's chief representative in tricky negotiations; she ends up being called the greatest diplomat of her era*

This is AWESOME!

From:

cahn

Finally, on June 28, he sneaks some paper while Isabella's in another room for a minute, writes out his abdication, and has his most trusted servant smuggle it into the council. The council session is discussing it when Isabella's messenger arrives, confiscates the piece of paper, and destroys it.

Wow. Just wow.

* Urinating and defecating in bed.
* Believing he's a frog (July). (Rottembourg's replacement as ambassador arrived in June. Man, I don't envy him.)
* Believing that he's dead.

Holy cow. The frog thing is still just something else --

Nope, I'm staring at the page again, and it does say: "At one time in July he believed that he was a frog."

Right?? I'm like, did mildred actually say that? Yup, there it is on the page.

His only entertainment is fishing...in his garden...at night...from a bowl that his attendants have placed fish in.

I just...

Upon arriving, Rottembourg describes the situation as "incomprehensible"

I am with you, dude.

This is the kind of thing that could make you miss FW forcing you to get drunk!

...yeah.

He writes, 'my achievement is that I am considered not as mere Farinelli, but as ambassador Farinelli.'

This is quite cool! (Thank you for including Farinelli and thank you

selenak for asking for me!)

From:

cahn

On Des Champs and Fredersdorf: Okay, just to say that Des Champs is hilarious!

But also: Fredersdorf, since this is what I really care about :)

d) Fritz kept Des Champs in service because he was cheap, see above, but saw no reason why he should pay someone who was a proven spy good money, so told Fredersdorf not to pay him more than the mere minimum. Fredersdorf did so, leaving Des Champs to conclude that Fredersdorf kept the rest of the money to himself.

Obviously I am 1) super duper biased in Fredersdorf's favor, and 2) inclined in all cases to choose the hypothesis that amuses me the most, so I think you guys are not surprised that I have chosen (d) :D (But also it amuses me so much because that would be so in character for Fritz! And Fredersdorf, lol.)

Aw. Considering you and [personal profile] cahn wrote the ultimate first-meeting-in-Küstrin story for me, maybe I should write the first-meeting-in-Frankfurt story?

Um, YEAH. :D

I consider him an honorary salon member, though I carefully call it "reading group" when talking to him and definitely don't say it's on Dreamwidth. ;)

I gotta say this is super awesome, I love our honorary salon members :D

On Vienna Joe:

This book quotes not only the letter but the follow up letter one and a half months later where Joseph tells Leopold that yay, the talk helped, pregnancy achieved, they figured it out! It really was just laziness and lack of imagination and knowledge, not a physical impediment, told you.

Heh, nice! I think the only thing better than sensational gossip is finding out better-sourced sensational gossip :D

The two non-Joseph male members of the club, Lacy and Orsini-Rosenberg

ahahaha, I know about Orsini-Rosenberg from, of course, Amadeus

She handled it brilliantly... So she did go for "friendship yes, love no", and made sure she wasn't alone with him ever in this initial phase. From this, the circle of five - plus two of his male friends - developed. His infatuation passed, but the friendship didn't

This is really cool, and like you say brilliant.

and when one of the ladies (not Eleonore) had lost two children in short order he was a true comfort (remember, he had lost his only daughter and been heartbroken over it, so she knew he knew whereof he spoke).

:( <3

On Family Letters:

Sophie: Look. Eugene isn't a handsome man, but he's a wonderful example of how one can be a military hero AND a man of culture and of MANNERS. It might be INSTRUCTIVE to observe that close up. I'm just saying.

Heeeeee! ...sadly, this appears not to have worked as well as she was hoping...

On the more touching side again, in the letter where he announces his third marriage to Sophie, he swears it won't make a difference to FW and SD because he'll never, ever allow anyone no matter their standing to mistreat his children, he knows what a stepmother is and Sophie knows he knows, and the new wife won't be a stepmother, she'll be a mother.

Okay, that's really great <3

The King has now repeatedly talked to me about marrying me off, but most recently he has promised me that he would give me another year for this and would not force me to take a woman whom I don't love (...).

(Obvious irony in terms of events a few decades later is obvious.)

*blinks* That's just... wow.

As for me, I can only repeat that I do feel glad to possess her and with with all my heart that God may keep us this happy for all our life... SD, on the other had, reports to Grandma that she has the impression she ended up in fairy tale palaces, and loves every bit of it. This is so how she wanted her life to be! And everyone is lovely and kind. Bliss!

Argh. I suppose there's a reason why the honeymoon phase is a thing in the abuse cycle. But also... I guess it's sort of like FW being nice to AW, right? When everything's going right and everyone's happy and there aren't any disagreements, I imagine FW is probably... mostly... fine to be around. It's just that life (and other people) don't work in such a way that everything always goes right and there aren't any disagreements ~~and sometimes it turns out your kid actually likes to play the flute~~

I don't know through which misfortune I've become a topic of conversation in France

~~it's the tall guys, FW~~ (no, I know the further context of the letter makes that unlikely, but I couldn't resist)

From:

cahn

The local library had an omnibus that I checked out when the kids and I went (in person! :D ) this weekend! I haven't had time to touch it (and have been a little afraid to; I wasn't sure I wanted to read horror when I had a lot of work to get done, because it has the potential to keep me up at night) but I might now :) (Well, not right now, I have learned that reading horror before bed is Definitely not a good idea!)

From:

cahn

at one point when his superior wanted to punish for a bad battle by decimation (literally - every tenth man was supposed to get shot) had outright refused to do so.

Wow! I mean mostly about the decimation, but good for G1, in this case at least.

For a plot in theory sounds like a precipe for an historical AU of the pop culture depiction of Princess Diana (young girl marries into cold dysfunctional royal family where no one likes or supports her, her husband already has a mistress he loves anyway, and when she takes a lover, that's treated completely differently)

Heh, I wouldn't have made the Princess Diana connection necessarily, but it really is reminiscent, isn't it!

and there is the vibe that while the author feels sorry for the two young lovers, these two ladies are the characters who actually interest her, and not so coincidentally the last scene is between them. (Sophie signals to the Countess she knows what Platen did and why, and banishes her from Hannover, no ifs, no buts.)

Sophie and Countess Platen actually sound really fascinating in this novel. I really like that they're portrayed as interesting and not one-dimensional, and I agree with Simpson that they sound more interesting than the lovers :P

(Typical scene: SDC, wanting to bond with her mother-in-law, vents about the fact that they're both openly cheated on by their respective husbands with very prominent mistresses. Sophie's response is a cool "Oh, grow up".)

hee!

From:

cahn

The Philippiques were in my copy of Orieux, but I didn't get the allusion (and Orieux didn't mention it, in my copy at least).

(Eh, you can keep mentioning it. There are TOO MANY people with the SAME NAME in this fandom, it is always worth telling me how one of them is not the other one of them. Except for Richelieu, I've got them straight now (or at least the two of them most relevant) :P )

I didn't remember the war chariots and I thought I would have -- I checked and I'm pretty sure that passage has been excised in my copy. There's just a passing mention of war chariots when talking about his niece's marriage to Marquis de Florian (who was apparently pro-war-chariots).

Who in this base world could resist a king who kissed one's hand?

Not Voltaire for sure! Haha, yeah, this is an awesome quote -- I had totally made a note of it even before you mentioned it (someday I will post about Voltaire Stuff, but not today), because THESE TWO.

From:

selenak

Tales from Hollywood: well, I don't know about other parts of the world, but Amazon Prime Germany doesn't have it!

Margaret of Austria: have another vid about her! (Using, again, footage from four sources - "Maximilian" (child Margaret), "Isabel" and "La Corona Partida" (adult young Margaret) and "Carlos Rey Emperador" (Middleaged Regent Margaret - but it really works amazingly well). Once Isabella of Castile was dead, she was arguably the most powerful woman in Europe. Incidentally, in one of her negotiations, her opposite number was the other claimant of that title, Louises de Savoye, who was the mother of Francis I. and his representative and chief negotiator, as Margaret was that of her nephew Charles, which is why this particular treaty became known as the Paix des Dames.

While the odds were against women in general in the Renaissancce as well as in most other eras, there were really some great examples who were able to use their considerable abilities really well.

Incidentally, this is something to keep in mind when getting this argument:

Henry VIII: Dear first wife Catherine, I know we have a living daughter, but really, you have to admit that this is not enough. I need a male heir. Women can't do politics and rule kingdoms.

Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Isabella of Castile, sister-in-law to Margaret of Austria, aunt to Mary of Hungary (who ruled the Netherlands after Margaret): Say again?

From:

selenak

The movie "Farinelli", btw, is up at Amazon Prime Germany and available. Maybe also in the US?

This is the kind of thing that could make you miss FW forcing you to get drunk!

...yeah.

Morgenstern, all three of us are sorry for doubting you. Clearly, my next poll should be "where do you want to be stationed as an envoy in 18th century Europe?"