Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30
Sep. 8th, 2021 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnIn which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 05:54 am (UTC)Guys, I spent the whole part of this chapter going "...gosh, I know kind of a lot about Fritz now..."
-Fritz "is perhaps best known for his friendship (for a while, anyway) with the immortal Voltaire" -- well, first, lol, but second, ...no, not really? I mean, I also think this is one of the very cool things I've learned and one of the things I'm most likely to tell someone else about the fandom, but... best known, no.
-...I know FW really, REALLY liked his beer, but alcoholic?? Really?? (Horrifically abusive, yeah, no issue with that one.)
-Wilhelmina spelled her name with an a?
-"...did not keep a mistress. This was not out of love for his wife," okay, um, we can say a LOT of bad things about FW, and of course the Tall Soldiers thing and the mistreating SD thing is super true, buuuuut. Also I am suuuuuper side-eyeing the "he felt hte need to distance himself from Frederick's homosexuality for fear it would reflect on him and that others would then discern his secret." That also seems very very modern to me.
-Passing by the axe and the head rolling towards Fritz and Fritz fainting, just be aware that I am aware of the non-historicity :P
-Did Fritz really write "Thank God that's over!' after his wedding night?
-"This Frederick had learned to despise... love, honor, truth, and loyalty." Wow. She really is going all-out on him, isn't she.
-"It is a great irony that Charles... left her a ruined army and no money, while Frederick's father... left him the largest military force in Europe." Heh. Yeah, that's a good point.
-Mollwitz! OKAY, something is seriously whacked out here. I know quite well, thanks to you guys, that Mollwitz is the one where Fritz's general convinced him to leave and Fritz felt really dumb about it afterwards, which doesn't seem to square with this 'Farewell friends, I am better mounted than you are' -- is that an apocryphal story, or is there more context than Goldstone chooses to give?
-I like the bit about MT going to great length to win over the Hungarian people, that's cool. And the bit where she charges and waves the sword is one of the things that made me fall in love with her in the first place when you guys told me about it, so. Also, please tell me that "Long live our Lady the King!" was what they actually yelled, that's AWESOME.
-...her councilors seem SUPER useless.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 07:52 am (UTC)-Wilhelmina spelled her name with an a?
she did not. We can look up the scans of her letters at the Wilhelmine's travel website if you want to check for yourself, but I distinctly recall an e at the end of Wihelmine. I see two possibilities here: either Nancy Goldstone wanted to use the usual anglisized spelling to differentiate her from the earlier sister-in-law to the Emperor and didn't want to admit it, or she read Wilhelmine's memoirs in an English where the name is given the anglisized form ending with an -a, and for some reason assumed this was literally true. In which case one wonders wehther she believes Maria Theres(i)a to have called herself THeresa the English fashioned way, too, or Friedrich Wilhelm Frederick William, etc.
Anyway: the FW and Fritz intel sounds so far as if they're all from either Wilhemine's memoirs or Voltaire's memoirs plus the earlier anonymous pamphlet which SOME GUY wrote. Especially this:
'Farewell friends, I am better mounted than you are'
Pure Voltaire, either from the pamphlet or the memoirs, I can't recall right now which one. He really, really did not. Even dedicated Fritz deconstructionists like Jürgen Luh never took that to be true and knew it was satiric slander of the ex. True Hohenzollern believers of course were fuming, but seriously, the whole Mollwitz situation is pretty well documented, especially Schwerin sending him from the field, and Fritz' reactions, both short term and long term.
-Did Fritz really write "Thank God that's over!' after his wedding night?
Sounds familiar, though more from the engagement night letter to Wilhelmine, yes.
Also I am suuuuuper side-eyeing the "he felt hte need to distance himself from Frederick's homosexuality for fear it would reflect on him and that others would then discern his secret." That also seems very very modern to me.
Well, quite. Do I think FW may have had repressed gay tendencies and that added extra bile to how he treated Fritz? Sure. But Not for this particular reason (of feeling outed via his son, so to speak.) Let's not forget he's living in a century of licentiousness where everyone considers him a freak already for not having favourites (of either persuasion). Also, if we're doing far distance diagnosis of sexuality, it should be remembered that while he most likely ("is a bad smelling vagina normal?") really only had sex with SD, he was attracted to at least two other women - Caroline as a teenager, and much later Fräulein von Pannewitz.
I do appreciate Nancy Goldstone is unambigous about his treatment of FRitz being abuse, though!
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 04:19 pm (UTC)Voltaire's memoirs plus the earlier anonymous pamphlet which SOME GUY wrote.
I gotta say I laughed a lot at this one :D
'Farewell friends, I am better mounted than you are'
Pure Voltaire, either from the pamphlet or the memoirs, I can't recall right now which one. He really, really did not.
I'm pretty sure it's the pamphlet -- I read the Memoirs for RMSE, didn't think to look up this particular pamphlet (clearly I should have, LOL FOREVER), and I'm betting "I am better mounted" would have jumped out to me. I do remember Maupertuis showing up in the memoirs though! Lolololol Voltaire, though.
he was attracted to at least two other women
Oh RIGHT! (I knew that of course! Just wasn't thinking. Which is why I'm so glad you guys do that thinking :P )
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 07:50 pm (UTC)She totally misses out his Sorceress Alcina quality, though. :) Voltaire would be disappointed.
More seriously, she does grant him becoming a great general in his second (and onwards) battle, and sharing MT's hardcore work dedication and discipline. And she's not wrong in drawing a connection between his childhood and youth abuse and his need for constant aggrandizement (also far from the only one to do so). But going from there to "he learned to despise honor, loyalty etc." belongs in a novel, not in a book of non-fiction.
Though Lavisse might have said something similar - Mildred, did he? Still haven't read him.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 08:04 pm (UTC)Right? That part is true. But it's not only that there were other factors at work (the quest for glory was kind of in the cultural air, FW or now FW). He was also far from the only one to flamboyantly lie to your face while preparing to invade your country (let me tell you about Peter the Great, it was amazing, I will have to share this story at some point). It doesn't make it right, it's just that I think Fritz's geopolitics go back less to his childhood than the way he treated the people around him.
But going from there to "he learned to despise honor, loyalty etc." belongs in a novel, not in a book of non-fiction.
Agreed.
Though Lavisse might have said something similar - Mildred, did he? Still haven't read him.
Ehhh, sort of? Not like this, though. (Or at least not that I remember.) It's more like, "Fritz was more machine than man, ready to do great things on the European stage," (great from the perspective of a Frenchman writing after the Franco-Prussian War, so not in a "Prussian destiny" way, in more of a "Watch me side-eye him" way), not "Fritz was THE WORST because he was psychologically abused."
What I'm reminded of is Bisset's snark that honor and Fritz were at best nodding aquaintances, if not altogether strangers. :P
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 05:36 pm (UTC)Exactly what I thought.
Also, if we're doing far distance diagnosis of sexuality, it should be remembered that while he most likely ("is a bad smelling vagina normal?") really only had sex with SD, he was attracted to at least two other women - Caroline as a teenager, and much later Fräulein von Pannewitz.
Oh, good reminder, thank you! Yeah, he might have been repressing attraction to
very tallmenin uniform, but homosexual as opposed to bi leanings I doubt.I do appreciate Nancy Goldstone is unambigous about his treatment of FRitz being abuse, though!
Yes, this. We've definitely had the reverse experience of authors with better facts and worse opinions.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 04:42 pm (UTC)Right? Also, the "for a while" shows that she doesn't know them at *all*.
-...I know FW really, REALLY liked his beer, but alcoholic?? Really?? (Horrifically abusive, yeah, no issue with that one.)
What Selena said. It depends on how you define it. I've seen other biographers refer to him thus, and the first time I was taken aback, and then thought, "Well, maybe. High-functioning alcoholic." I suspect the alcohol was not the cause of the problems so much as he was self-medicating with alcohol, and the outbursts and the drinking both got worse whenever he had a flare-up.
-Wilhelmina spelled her name with an a?
No, but plenty of English language biographers do. MacDonogh does. Like most 18th century people, how their name gets spelled depends on the author.
-"...did not keep a mistress. This was not out of love for his wife," okay, um, we can say a LOT of bad things about FW, and of course the Tall Soldiers thing and the mistreating SD thing is super true, buuuuut. Also I am suuuuuper side-eyeing the "he felt hte need to distance himself from Frederick's homosexuality for fear it would reflect on him and that others would then discern his secret." That also seems very very modern to me.
Right? I mean, given his piety, he presumably wouldn't have kept a mistress regardless of his feelings about his wife, but he did love her. Also, what Selena said about his homosexuality.
-Passing by the axe and the head rolling towards Fritz and Fritz fainting, just be aware that I am aware of the non-historicity :P
That I'll actually give her; the axe is wrong, but it's a common enough mistake that even Blanning makes it, in his Fritz bio, and she does cite Blanning as one of her sources. And the head rolling toward Fritz and him fainting is in the original sources, and you have to have done some seriously in-depth research and obsessed over it for a few months *cough* to have come to the conclusion that that's not what happened. So congratulations,
BUT. Goldstone is the FIRST person I have seen claim that Katte was WITH Fritz on the midnight mad dash on horseback toward the border on August 5, 1730, and was shadowed with him and caught. That is some appallingly bad scholarship. As I recall, Nicolai in the 1790s was refuting stories that Fritz, Katte, and Keith were all in Wesel when it went down. Which is what you'd expect in the 1700s, when the quality of the available sources was abysmal, but not what I expect on September 21, 2021!
-Did Fritz really write "Thank God that's over!' after his wedding night?
What Selena said. Sounds vaguely familiar.
-"This Frederick had learned to despise... love, honor, truth, and loyalty." Wow. She really is going all-out on him, isn't she.
Yep.
-Mollwitz! OKAY, something is seriously whacked out here. I know quite well, thanks to you guys, that Mollwitz is the one where Fritz's general convinced him to leave and Fritz felt really dumb about it afterwards, which doesn't seem to square with this 'Farewell friends, I am better mounted than you are' -- is that an apocryphal story, or is there more context than Goldstone chooses to give?
What Selena said. My reaction to this was, "Someone's been reading propaganda."
Also, the "never seen combat before"; she's forgetting (has likely never learned) about the War of the Polish Succession, where Fritz saw combat, was shot at, and apparently was noted for keeping his cool while bullets were flying around his head. And, as you know, put himself in personal physical danger in Mollwitz before being talked into leaving, because while the courage was there, the levelheaded thinking about how to win the battle wasn't.
'Farewell friends, I am better mounted than you are' --
Isn't even ringing a bell for me, not even from Voltaire. Maybe it's in the pamphlet, I would have thought I'd remember it from the memoirs. Definitely doesn't get quoted, though, because everybody knows NOT TO BELIEVE IT, omg.
Also, please tell me that "Long live our Lady the King!" was what they actually yelled, that's AWESOME.
Yes! Blanning actually gets this wrong in his Pursuit of Glory; I almost posted here last week when I ran into it. In addition to having Joseph present (taking Voltaire literally, lol), he reports, "They [the Hungarians] responded in Latin with the cry vitam et sanguinem pro Rege nostro Maria Theresia (our lives and our blood for our queen Maria Theresa)." And I was like, "Blanning, your Latin is faulty here. 'Pro Rege nostro' is 'for our King.'" And I recall SR going into some detail about how it was VERY politically important that she was elected as King, not Queen. I would recount more but would have to 1) find the section in German, 2) reread in German, both of which are why you didn't get this when I ran into it in Blanning. But if my memory is correct, yes, it was "king", and Selena hopefully remembers more detail.
I was impressed with Goldstone for getting this right, but then deeply concerned by her statement that the only hereditary Habsburg domains MT inherited via the Pragmatic Sanction were Bohemia and Hungary. I mean, points for not saying that it made her Holy Roman Empress, which is a common mistake to make, but wasn't there this unimportant, obscure little principality called Austria that was also included? My impression was that the reason MT was called Queen of Hungary was that Queen was the highest-ranked title she possessed at that time, not that she wasn't also ruler of Austria.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 07:47 pm (UTC)Isn't even ringing a bell for me, not even from Voltaire. Maybe it's in the pamphlet, I would have thought I'd remember it from the memoirs. Definitely doesn't get quoted, though, because everybody knows NOT TO BELIEVE IT, omg.
It's definitely not in the memoirs, I went back and checked Mollwitz this morning :)
Okay, because this was bugging me, I did a google search, which turned up exactly ONE hit: some guy J. Alexander Mahan's bio of MT (ha, I caught myself this time -- google's date is 2011, so I suppose it was republished then, but original publishing date seems to be 1932). It's marked with a citation but unfortunately Google books isn't showing me the page where the citation is shown :P
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=%22farewell+friends+I+am+better+mounted+than+you+are%22
...this is annoying me in a way that her taking Voltaire too literally doesn't annoy me (as much, anyway -- okay, yeah, I do find it kind of hilarious that Voltaire's trolling on the subject of his ex is still bearing fruit hundreds of years later)
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 09:17 pm (UTC)Carlyle and Arneth talk about Mollwitz on the cited pages but don't have the quote, but William Coxe, History of the House of Austria (published 1807), does, though of course he doesn't say where from.
ETA: Wait, second, corrected edition, page 409, quotes a letter from the English envoy in Vienna, who had the story from Mauptertuis, who had been taken prisoner on this occasion and taken to Vienna! Huh. Well.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 09:29 pm (UTC)I just remembered we have the pamphlet in English now, so I skimmed and it does *not* mention Mollwitz. It's all a description of Fritz's court in the year the pamphlet was written, no life story. I definitely don't remember this quote, and when I first saw it, I immediately thought "Austrian propaganda, makes sense in a book about MT" because I've seen (the less biased) Fritz historians say the Austrians made it look like he fled the field out of cowardice. Voltaire did not come to mind for this one. So if he did write it, it wasn't the memoirs or the pamphlet. But my money's on the Austrians, circa 1741-1745. :P
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 09:54 pm (UTC)Oh, wow! Okay, then. That is some really good detectiving! I wonder if Fritz ever found out about this.
So on the one hand, Maupertuis was there, but on the other, he had also fled and been captured and was somewhat holding a grudge against Fritz, and also, didn't he later say some things we side-eyed about his stay in Vienna?
I'll say this, whether or not Fritz said that, the part about many contradictory accounts is extremely true! And both sides are definitely biased. (Note also that England and Fritz are or are about to be on opposite sides in this war.)
I'm not aware that the communis opinio is anything but Schwerin talking a reluctant Fritz into leaving, but, I admit that I don't have a primary source on that.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 11:41 pm (UTC)Koser lists a whole bunch of primary sources for the battle here, both Prussian and Austrian, and two main accounts for the Schwerin part are Schwerin himself (Volz has him as the actual author of an account in the Spiegel, whereas Koser makes it sound like Schwerin's words were recorded by people in his circle, but either way, it goes back to him) and Möllendorf, the later field marshall, who was a Fritz page at the time and wrote about it to Nicolai later.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 12:20 am (UTC)Not plot-wise, but character-wise it's a bit difficult to reconcile the two.
I'm also not entirely sure if Envoy Robinson was actually there when Maupertuis told it, or if he got a second hand account from Liechtenstein.
It sooounds like a secondhand account, but it's hard to tell.
And I totally forgot that Austria and England were allied at that point, which does colour things indeed.
I couldn't remember exactly when they became formally allied, which is why I wrote "or about to be." Asprey would have me believe they became formally allied 2 months later, after they attempted, unsuccessfully, to mediate between Austria and Prussia.
I could easily imagine that maybe it wasn't a direct quote but a Fritzian attitude Mauptertuis perceived and phrased somewhat pithily. As in: "I was stuck on this shitty horse and got captured while he got away on his much better one."
Now that could *easily* have happened! Maupertuis was, as I recall, *very* upset with Fritz over the capture (following several months of neglect after he'd been promised an Academy presidency), and refused to return to Berlin for years.
Koser: Thank you!
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 04:25 am (UTC)However, we did indeed side-eye his account of his own Austrian adventures before, or rather I did, when writing up Terrell‘s Maupertuis biography. Reminder, Maupertuis got captured,languished a few days as an unidentified POW until Count Neippberg recognized him, at which point according to Maupertuis he was apologized to, and brought to the court in Vienna where he was personally received by MT and FS and made much of. (Are you listening, Fritz?) To quote from the write up:
I have to say, his story about his reception at Vienna, which is partly in the main text and partly in a footnote, would have deserved some authorial scepticism from Terrall. I can buy FS gave him a golden watch to compensate him from the one stolen from him in the scuffle of him getting taken prisoner, but the supposed dialogue with MT about who's the most beautiful Queen of them all really defies belief.)
Without looking up the Terrell biography again, as far as I recall Maupertuis said MT asked him whether Elisabeth Christine was more beautiful than her, and Maupertuis reassured her gallantly on that front.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 08:27 am (UTC)I had a look at google and I think she got it from Mahan indeed, which is the book Cahn found, and which would make sense to read as a source on MT. Because Mahan actually has a typo in the quote and she copied it: he says "better mounted than you are" instead "you all", which is what is in Mahan's source Coxe, i.e. the Robinson letter.
Also, I'm unclear on who the quote was supposed to be directed at in Goldstone's version. Because I found a couple of German sources and those all take it as him allegedly talking to the Austrian Hussars who had occupied Oppeln and were trying to chase him, not his own companions.
Speaking of Robinson, he was one of the people sent to negotiate a peace with Fritz a couple months later, and Fritz really really did not like him. In a letter to Podewils from September, he calls him a scoundrel and tells Podewils to chase him away: If he stays another 24 hours in Breslau, I'll have a stroke. [...] If I meet him on the way, I'll scratch out his eyes [devisager].
And from the Histoire:
The English minister, Robinson, who resided in Vienna, argued that the King of Prussia deserved to be excommunicated in politics. [...]
This Robinson, taking the tone of haughtiness, told the King that the Queen was kind enough to forget the past; that she offered him Limburg, Spanish Gelderland, and two million crowns, as compensation for his claims on Silesia, on condition that he made peace, and that his troops evacuate this duchy without delay. This minister was a sort of madman, enthusiastic about the Queen of Hungary; he negotiated with the emphasis he would have for harangues in the lower house. The King, rather inclined to grasp the ridiculous, adopted the same tone, and replied [... with a rousing speech about honor and his Protestant citizens in Silesia :P]. Robinson was stunned by this speech, which he did not expect. He left to take it to Vienna.
I am so amused. Also, Jordan reports on Robinson's arrival in Breslau and all the diplomatic shenanigans - and calls Fritz a coquette:
Robinson arrived yesterday. He surprised both adults and children of the city by his arrival; the ideas of peace are awakening. What charms me is that all this contributes to the glory of V. M.
This dreaded Prussian king
Acts as a coquette;
All aspire to his conquest,
And he does not restrict himself on anything.
The Frenchman looks a bit cowardly, but biting; the mylord is jolly; the Dutchman is enraged, and says that this trip is made in vain, that the happy negotiator has nothing but poverty to offer. Pöllnitz was struggling with the Hanoverian yesterday. The latter said: The King my master will soon appear in all his glory. The other, with a caustic air, retorts: It will probably be when he goes to the next world to judge the dead.
:D
MT asked him whether Elisabeth Christine was more beautiful than her, and Maupertuis reassured her gallantly on that front
Ooookay then. I can see why the side-eye!
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 12:17 pm (UTC)Aaahhh, good catch!
Also, I'm unclear on who the quote was supposed to be directed at in Goldstone's version. Because I found a couple of German sources and those all take it as him allegedly talking to the Austrian Hussars who had occupied Oppeln and were trying to chase him, not his own companions.
Goldstone:
No sooner did he witness the violent charge of the Austrian cavalry than he turned tail and fled. As his horse was acknowledged to be the fastest in the Prussian cavalry, he shouted back over his shoulder at the men for whom he was responsible, and whom he was deserting in their hour of need, "Farewell, friends, I am better mounted than you are!"
So that is how I was primed to read the letter you found (especially since the lead-in was Maupertuis talking about his less fast horse). And that's why I said the characterization was strange: if the guy who reluctantly had to be talked into leaving the field because he was putting himself in danger (without doing the right things to win the battle) started mocking his companions that he was better at escaping than they were...that struck me as "Well, does he feel bad about leaivng his men to danger or not?"
BUT. If he was actually mocking the hussars, then that is 100% a thing I could see Fritz doing. This is the guy who showed up at the Austrian headquarters after Leuthen and went, "Hello, gentlemen. I know you weren't expecting to see me today."
Also, Fritz taunting the person he's trying to escape from was a thing; he was taunting FW circa August 5, 1730 about how he could totally be in France now if he wanted to. I think his fight-or-flight instinct was geared hard toward fight, not flight, and so running away, even when he did it, went so much against the grain that he had to do at least some verbal fighting.
Aaand, I can also totally see how if Fritz was taunting the hussars, and Maupertuis, who was captured because of his slower horse, overheard this remark, would resent it hard, even if he knew it was aimed at the hussars. Though rereading that letter, I still can't tell whether Maupertuis thought it was aimed at him or at the hussars. I could see either interpretation. And I could totally see Maupertuis taking it as aimed at him even if it wasn't. Especially if right at that moment he was worried for his safety and cursing his slow horse.
Anyway, you are awesome, thank you.
Unrelated topic, since we're here, one thing I've been wondering about for a long time is where the name Robert Keith for Peter's younger brother, page who confessed to FW, came from. It's in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is getting it from MacDonogh, but I can't trace it further back than MacDonogh. MacDonogh may have made the mistake himself, I don't know, but if you run into it in a pre-1999 source, I would be super interested.
(I have a particular interest in this one because I told raven_aorla (author of the Fritz-as-mob-boss AU) that the brother was named Robert, and while it's fine that she put that in her fic (gotta call him something), her author's notes say that Mildred said the historical person was named Robert!)
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
From:Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
From:Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
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From:Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
From:Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 08:40 am (UTC)How do you mean? It's not like this happened when he left the battle field, it was when he arrived at Oppeln, found it occupied by Hussars, and turned back. Am I missing/misunderstanding something? (Also, Fritz narrowly escaping capture by Hussars seems to have been a rather common thing, given that his "I'm only King if I'm free" letter to Podewils was written only a month earlier and also starts with "by the way, since I've narrowly escaped the Hussars' clutches twice now, here are my instructions".)
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 05:38 am (UTC)Obviously Voltaire is not at all a reliable source, especially for details (and especially where Maupertuis is concerned, I imagine!), but it does seem to dovetail with Maupertuis at least not having a good horse, and I really like your idea of Maupertuis making a crack about it.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-25 08:10 am (UTC)Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-27 05:06 am (UTC)(This is why I think something like the orange peel story actually happened, even if we don't have any other source but the Memoirs and Pamela for it -- but I'd also be completely unsurprised to find out that the details were different and potentially didn't make Voltaire look as good!)
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 08:15 pm (UTC)In non-fiction, same here, but the trashily entertaining tv series Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria makes Katte, Peter and Not!Robert Keith into one character and lets that person be with Fritz etc. Though I doubt Nancy Goldstone watched East German tv series from the 1980s.
And I recall SR going into some detail about how it was VERY politically important that she was elected as King, not Queen.
It was. I don't remember more than that, though, and am on holidays with the APs in Southern Tyrolia, so can't look up anything.
I was impressed with Goldstone for getting this right, but then deeply concerned by her statement that the only hereditary Habsburg domains MT inherited via the Pragmatic Sanction were Bohemia and Hungary. I mean, points for not saying that it made her Holy Roman Empress, which is a common mistake to make, but wasn't there this unimportant, obscure little principality called Austria that was also included? My impression was that the reason MT was called Queen of Hungary was that Queen was the highest-ranked title she possessed at that time, not that she wasn't also ruler of Austria.
All true - i.e. both what Goldstone gets right which a lot of books don't, and about Austria being the heart of her heriditary lands, the "Erblande" as they were called. She was Archduchess of Austria before she was anything else. (You couldn't be King of Austria. Archduke/Duchess was as high as it went in MT's time; before the Habsburgs got their hands on Austria, there were actual Dukes of Austria without the "Arch".) It's not as high a title as "Queen", obviously, but it was a defining one for any Habsburg.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 08:22 pm (UTC)Oh, sure, I was thinking this kind of conflation is totally understandable in fiction and happens! Shall we pretend we're reading a novel, for the sake of my blood pressure? ;) It would be a great novel!
You couldn't be King of Austria. Archduke/Duchess was as high as it went in MT's time; before the Habsburgs got their hands on Austria, there were actual Dukes of Austria without the "Arch".) It's not as high a title as "Queen", obviously, but it was a defining one for any Habsburg.
See, Massie getting Fritz's spouse wrong when writing a book about the Romanovs: totally forgivable, even if I make gentle fun. Goldstone not understanding that Maria Theresia is the Archduchess of Austria in a book about Maria Theresia is when I start questioning whether I should continue a book.
(I'm also imagining
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 08:39 pm (UTC)Wait, what? I am pretty sure Goldstone called her Archduchess in at least one place.
*blinks* I just did a search and Goldstone calls her Archduchess of Austria starting when she's born? Can that be right?
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 08:51 pm (UTC)So if you're ruling an archduchy, you're Archduke, and your kids are all Archdukes and Archduchesses from the moment they're born. The title is the same as the parents' title. Which is *not* what you're familiar with from, say, English titles.
This is how you can have like five brothers be dukes of Brunswick at the same time, and only one be the ruling duke (who would be called like Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, to indicate he's the duke of the principality and not just a member of the ducal family). Of course, the kids also get called princes and princesses, and I'm not sure the daughters always get the family title, since I usually see them referred to as "princess" if they're not Archduchess, and there are courtesy titles, and there's the whole "hereditary prince" thing which is like "my dad's Margrave but I'm gonna be Margrave after he dies"...Eh, Selena can flesh this out. :P
But yes, I can confirm the part about being an Archduchess from birth is correct. So it's not that Goldstone literally never refers to MT as Archduchess of Austria, it's that she doesn't seem to understand how that works in terms of inheritance. She seems to think it's like being a princess in England--you get the title because your parent is the ruler, but once they die, being a princess doesn't mean you inherited the country. I mean, I'm interpreting here, but that's the only sense I can make of her statement that Bohemia and Hungary were the only lands MT inherited, which was why she was called Queen of Hungary until FS's election (and afterwards by snarky evil men in Potsdam).
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3
Date: 2021-09-24 06:43 pm (UTC)Oh, dear, I just saw the footnote. I thought you were reacting to the way Goldstone spells it. Many English language biographers spell it this way (I just checked, and of the ones I own, MacDonogh, Asprey, Dupuy, and Showalter do), but this should in no way be confused with what Wilhelmine did. Like Selena, I'm now wondering what Goldstone thinks of all the *other* Anglicized spellings out there.
Oh, dear.
(I've missed several footnotes, because the Sapolsky book I'm reading has trained me that * is for footnotes with authorial commentary, numbers for mere citations, and I'm now skipping numbered footnotes out of habit even in other books. Bad self!)