also read in the last week while waiting for RMSE: Montesquieu, both the German travels and the Roman history with Fritzian commentary, which was possible since both were short.
The German travels were something of a let down, mostly due to the preface which hypes Montesquieu as super insightful and foreshadowing, and sorry, but no. Even leaving aside that his anti FW rant, as Mildred noted, might have an amusing one liner but completely misses FW is building up the most modern and dangerous army of Europe and strengthening his country's economy (instead, we get the wishful thinking description of Prussia as North Korea, essentially, with everyone in dire poverty and leaving the country by droves - immigrants like the huguenots from France or the Protestants from Salzburg, who were just resettling in Brandenburg, remain unmentioned because Montesquieu has an incredible Catholic bias, more about this in a minute) - even leaving all this aside: he's an amazingly easy sell for propaganda by rulers who receive him. So G2 is a ruler loved by his German and English subjects alike....
Hervey and Walpole the younger, not to mention lots of Scots, well, to be fair, they aren't English: *gigantic coughing fit*
...who easily got the better of FW in their big clash.
(Meanwhile, Hervey in his memoirs: From first to last, they both managed to be equally in the wrong, and no one won.)
The Duke of Brunswick and his family live with their subjects as equals. Which tells you all about Montesquieu the French aristocrat, I suppose, and what he thinks is modesty. Now given all of SD's and Charlotte's disses of EC when EC was engaged to Fritz might lead one to think the Brunswicks were indeed modest, but then again, young AnhaltSophie, aka Catherine the Great, thought that court was the most splendid she saw in her youth, and she did see Berlin in her youth, not to mention that when she's writing her memoirs, she's lived in Russian style and riches for decades.
Also, there's a lot of "ethonographic" stuff, i.e. Germans in general are slower than quick witted French people, and Bavarians are the most stupid, slowest Germans of all. (That would be me.) (More seriously, remember that I mentioned elsewhere Bavaria had the bad luck of suffering for Max Emmanuel's teaming up with the French in the Spanish war of succession (= battlefield country) and still spending money like wild, so I have no doubt it was a more backward principality in general than some of the others. As for Montesquieu's general "slowness" and "thickness" complaints, I'm assuming he spoke French to everyone, meaning most people he talked to were talking in a foreign language, since he didn't talk to Prussian Huguenots or their descendants....
Seriously, though: something downright chilling is Montesquieu thinking the Westphalian Peace which concluded the 30 Years War (again, the bloodiest, most devastating Europe would see until the 20th century), which had depopulated the German realms in some cases by half, in some by a third was a big mistake because "it ruined Catholicism in Germany". He also thinks the Emperor should only promote Catholics and only allow Catholics to serve him, that would get young Protestant nobles to convert quick enough, that the Habsburgs have lost their claim of leading Catholicism in Europe because this isn't the case, and that if you're just tougher on those Protestants again the Catholic religion will triumph after all. It's a constant theme in his letters and notes (due to a lot of German Protestants) which the occasional aphorism, a fascination for federalism and for a good (aristocratic) legislative don't make up for, imo. As aristocratic travellers of the era (first half of the 18th century) go, give me Lady Mary instead any time. Or the Duc de Croy. They also have their likes and dislikes, but they strike me as way more observant and insightful than Montesquieu.
Montesquieu I: How not to travel through Germany in the first half of the 18th Century
The German travels were something of a let down, mostly due to the preface which hypes Montesquieu as super insightful and foreshadowing, and sorry, but no. Even leaving aside that his anti FW rant, as Mildred noted, might have an amusing one liner but completely misses FW is building up the most modern and dangerous army of Europe and strengthening his country's economy (instead, we get the wishful thinking description of Prussia as North Korea, essentially, with everyone in dire poverty and leaving the country by droves - immigrants like the huguenots from France or the Protestants from Salzburg, who were just resettling in Brandenburg, remain unmentioned because Montesquieu has an incredible Catholic bias, more about this in a minute) - even leaving all this aside: he's an amazingly easy sell for propaganda by rulers who receive him. So G2 is a ruler loved by his German and English subjects alike....
Hervey and Walpole the younger, not to mention lots of Scots, well, to be fair, they aren't English: *gigantic coughing fit*
...who easily got the better of FW in their big clash.
(Meanwhile, Hervey in his memoirs: From first to last, they both managed to be equally in the wrong, and no one won.)
The Duke of Brunswick and his family live with their subjects as equals. Which tells you all about Montesquieu the French aristocrat, I suppose, and what he thinks is modesty. Now given all of SD's and Charlotte's disses of EC when EC was engaged to Fritz might lead one to think the Brunswicks were indeed modest, but then again, young AnhaltSophie, aka Catherine the Great, thought that court was the most splendid she saw in her youth, and she did see Berlin in her youth, not to mention that when she's writing her memoirs, she's lived in Russian style and riches for decades.
Also, there's a lot of "ethonographic" stuff, i.e. Germans in general are slower than quick witted French people, and Bavarians are the most stupid, slowest Germans of all. (That would be me.) (More seriously, remember that I mentioned elsewhere Bavaria had the bad luck of suffering for Max Emmanuel's teaming up with the French in the Spanish war of succession (= battlefield country) and still spending money like wild, so I have no doubt it was a more backward principality in general than some of the others. As for Montesquieu's general "slowness" and "thickness" complaints, I'm assuming he spoke French to everyone, meaning most people he talked to were talking in a foreign language, since he didn't talk to Prussian Huguenots or their descendants....
Seriously, though: something downright chilling is Montesquieu thinking the Westphalian Peace which concluded the 30 Years War (again, the bloodiest, most devastating Europe would see until the 20th century), which had depopulated the German realms in some cases by half, in some by a third was a big mistake because "it ruined Catholicism in Germany". He also thinks the Emperor should only promote Catholics and only allow Catholics to serve him, that would get young Protestant nobles to convert quick enough, that the Habsburgs have lost their claim of leading Catholicism in Europe because this isn't the case, and that if you're just tougher on those Protestants again the Catholic religion will triumph after all. It's a constant theme in his letters and notes (due to a lot of German Protestants) which the occasional aphorism, a fascination for federalism and for a good (aristocratic) legislative don't make up for, imo. As aristocratic travellers of the era (first half of the 18th century) go, give me Lady Mary instead any time. Or the Duc de Croy. They also have their likes and dislikes, but they strike me as way more observant and insightful than Montesquieu.