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
Goldstone is wrong, chapters 2 and 3
Date: 2021-09-25 09:15 pm (UTC)Repeatedly in chapter 2 she says that Charles was considering marrying MT to the son of Philip and Isabella of Spain. According to all my sources, including some pretty scholarly ones by experts on the period, he never seriously considered it, because it would have been really bad politics. What he did was use the offer as bait to get what he wanted out of Spain. So his contemporaries believed it, but whenever Goldstone has Charles doing something (like sending FS on the Grand Tour, which was invented just for him, apparently) because he's motivated by the possibility that MT is going to be married to the Spanish guy, you should side-eye this.
Charles...even went so far as to offer to Maria Theresa to the crown prince.
Discussed!
This offer was reluctantly declined on the basis of religion (Prussia was Calvinist, Austria Catholic)
at sixteen Frederick grew his hair long
Is this the 1960s? Prussian military men wore their hair long and pulled back into a pigtail. (As opposed to the luxuriant baroque wigs under F1, which FW hated.) If they couldn't grow their hair long enough, they could pin on a fake pigtail to meet requirements. You can read all about 18th century European military hairstyles here, of which I can't vouch for every detail but which has citations and fits my understanding much better than "teenage rebel = long hair".
What teenage rebel Fritz did was wear his long hair in the French style, including, as we learned from Nicolai, in a hair pouch.
His departure was reported instantly to the authorities, and both he and Katte were shadowed, apprehended, and thrown into prison.
This would make a great dramatic movie, but is not how it happened. :P Fritz never even made it onto horseback. He and page Keith were sent back to bed, more than once I think, and FW just said to keep an eye on him. Later that morning Fritz delayed his departure so long that FW left without him, but he still couldn't get away.
After not!Robert Keith fessed up, FW tightened up the watch a bit, Fritz fessed up to Seckendorff in hopes of leniency, and he was still not arrested. Then they're about to arrive in Wesel, FW gets a message saying Peter Keith is gone, and all hell breaks loose because FW now sees a big desertion conspiracy. *Now* Fritz is arrested and interrogated. The order goes out to Berlin to arrest Katte. Katte delays his departure because of reasons, one of which may have been a girl who may have been Wilhelmine, and is arrested at home. He is not shadowed, omg. :P
Se my chronology and map in https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/14217.html. (Goldstone should really come to salon!)
What follows is one of the most terrible acts of vengeance ever perpetrated on a child by a parent.
Tsarevich Alexei, son of Peter the Great: *clears throat*
On November 1, a court-martial was held at which both Frederick and Katte were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death.
The court-martial returned its first verdict on October 27/28 (I've seen both dates) and October 31. November 1 is when FW overrides it.
The court-martial declared itself incompetent to try Fritz and said to FW, in effect, "Gambit declined."
The court-martial voted for life imprisonment for Katte. This is important! Twice FW tried to get the verdicts he wanted, and twice they said "Incompetent to try the one, life for the other." To a very angry monarch. Give them some credit.
On November 6, eighteen-year-old Frederick was informed that one of the executions had been scheduled. He was removed from his cell believing his life to be over.
I'll give her this, because it's the Wilhelmine account, but as we of salon know, he was informed at 5 am that Katte was going to be executed, spent 2 hours begging for Katte's life and asking to see him, while Katte was asking to see him (<3) and messengers were running back and forth. It's also extremely doubtful that he left the room (cell) he was in; our more reliable sources say no.
Now, given Wilhelmine's account, I do believe Fritz feared at the start of the conversation, even for a split second, that it was going to be him, and that that was traumatic. (Even if most of the time he was pretty confident that Dad would never.) But they didn't torture him gratuitously by telling him "one of the executions" had been scheduled and leading him from his cell.
Katte...was dragged to the block
What block? Also, dragged only in the political sense, in that he had no chance of escape and was made to go against his will. Physically speaking, he walked upright bravely to meet his death. Get it right! :P
The axe fell
Fine, fine, this goes with the non-existent block. (Blanning, you're a better scholar than this. I blame you for Goldstone *and* that AO3 fic.)
His father was adamant that the sentence of execution imposed by the court-martial be carried out against his eldest son.
While I'm sure part of FW would have loved it if the court-martial had justified him by finding Fritz guilty and sentencing him to death, he was not *adamant* about Fritz being executed at this point. At this point, he'd already decided he was going to pardon him (though I forget what our primary source on this is).
It was only through the intervation of his godfather, Charles, who took pity on the teenager, that Frederick's life was spared.
This is a common mistake that I'll forgive her; it's actually probably the predominant account. I remember that the editor of the monarch letters to FW on the occasion of "Today is 'Don't Execute Your Son' Day" says that Seckendorff actually wrote the letter in Charles's name, and only handed it over October 31, after it was clear FW was going to pardon Fritz, but I don't know what the editor's sources on that are.
Charles even kindly sent Frederick some money to live on, as his father was denying him sustenance.
I think we're confusing the later 1730s bribes with Küstrin. Fritz got gifts from the townspeople, but we know exactly how much money FW allotted for what purpose during the imprisonment and rehabilitation stages, and while it wasn't exactly comfortable, especially during the former stages, it wasn't denying him sustenance either. And I don't recall Fritz getting Austrian bribes during this phase, although Selena or Felis can correct me if I'm wrong.
August 15, 1731...Frederick...pledged, if the king of Prussia would but free him from his cell
Very metaphorical cell, as he was living in an apartment under house arrest. That said, a gilded cage is still a cage, a rose by any other name, etc., etc. But still.
The Frederick who never again donned colorful French finery...
...is a longstanding myth refuted by the documentary evidence that he very much did, he just wanted to present a public persona of Spartan military guy to the world at large. At home, in his palace? "Fredersdorf, order me two suits, one blue velvet, gold threaded, with silver vest and gold threaded buttons, the second soft blue without velvet but gold threaded, a vest in citrus yellow with silver buttons." :P
Frederick had never experienced actual combat before [Mollwitz]
Discussed. Granted that Phillipsburg wasn't a pitched battle, but he was fired at and could have been killed.
"Farewell friends, I am better mounted than you are!"
Discussed. :P
Hungary and Bohemia were the realms she inherited outright from her father...Until tihs ballot [for HRE] took place, Maria Thersea could officially claim only the title of queen of Hungary and Bohemia.
Discussed.
FW's homosexuality
Discussed. Though I notice on rereading that she attributes his alcoholism to it. I think his gout, probable porphyry, and general bad health are much more likely factors. I'm sure there was psychological stress. I doubt the repressed attraction to his tall guys was the main cause.
Anyone wondering where Adolf Hitler came up with the notion of a German super-race need look no further [than FW trying to breed tall women to his Tall Guys].
I feel like that's already looking way too far. Racism was alive and well in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not My Period (TM), but what I as an American was taught was that the Nazis got a whole lot of the pseudoscience as well as how to embed your racism deeper into your social and political strutures from American scientists (or "scientist"), the KKK, Jim Crow laws and whatnot. Not that they got the *idea* of racism from us, but when they wanted to see how to do it even more effectively, we were giving A+ examples. *facepalm* And there's the whole misappropriating Nietzsche thing, which is much closer to home than FW. And ALL THE OTHER RACISM (and nationalism) that was floating around, which we could spend all day on.
FW, in addition to being 200 years in the past, was doing a completely different thing from developing a super-race, much less one tied to Germanness. In fact, he kidnapped his tall guys from wherever he could find them!
"Hey, look, I've heard of this one thing and also this other thing that's vaguely similar, the first one must have caused the second one!"
Re: Goldstone is wrong, chapters 2 and 3
Date: 2021-09-26 07:08 pm (UTC)Earliest I know of is April 1732, so exactly when he left Küstrin. I'm not a hundred percent sure that it was the first one, but since Seckendorff's letter includes a detailed "this is how the money delivery is going to happen and also, this is how you should behave if you don't want to arouse suspicion" instruction, I'd say it's very likely. (Given that one of the instructions was to destroy the letter, Fritz clearly followed them diligently.)
"Farewell friends, I am better mounted than you are!"
Discussed. :P
At unexpected length. :P
Anyone wondering where Adolf Hitler came up with the notion of a German super-race need look no further [than FW trying to breed tall women to his Tall Guys].
What the ... WHAT??? Man. I can't even simply call that shoddy reasoning anymore.
(But also, I didn't know that about the Tall Women. Was that an actual thing or just a stray thought?)
Re: Goldstone is wrong, chapters 2 and 3
Date: 2021-09-26 09:38 pm (UTC)Aha, thank you!
(Given that one of the instructions was to destroy the letter, Fritz clearly followed them diligently.)
Ahahaha, oh, Fritz. Always the risk taker.
Discussed. :P
At unexpected length. :P
Oh, I would say the length was completely expected given the topic. You come into MY HOUSE, Goldstone, and talk unjustified shit about MY Fritz... :PP (I greatly appreciate your assistance in providing me with ammunition, felis. :))
What the ... WHAT??? Man. I can't even simply call that shoddy reasoning anymore.
Yeah, I don't even know what to do with that.
(But also, I didn't know that about the Tall Women. Was that an actual thing or just a stray thought?)
I've been running into mentions of this over and over again for twenty years (even incorporated it into unwritten fic), but never in a source that provided reliable evidence.
Wikipedia says:
Frederick tried to pair these men with tall women, in order to breed giants. In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin mentions this attempt as the only case of intentional human interbreeding: "Nor have certain male and female individuals been intentionally picked out and matched, except in the well-known case of the Prussian grenadiers; and in this case man obeyed, as might have been expected, the law of methodical selection; for it is asserted that many tall men were reared in the villages inhabited by the grenadiers with their tall wives."
I think I speak on behalf of
Re: Goldstone is wrong, chapters 2 and 3
Date: 2021-09-27 05:16 am (UTC)Well, fair, but I don't think any of us were expecting Maupertuis to show up as the source of that (rather telephone-game-twisted by the time it got to Goldstone) particular unjustified comment!
What the ... WHAT??? Man. I can't even simply call that shoddy reasoning anymore.
Yeah, I don't even know what to do with that.
Yeah, I saw that, was ??!?, and didn't even mention it in my comment because... what do you even DO with that. Also I feel like there must be some clause of Godwin's Law that applies here :P
I think I speak on behalf of [personal profile] cahn when I say that if you wanted to research the historicity of this claim, we would be very grateful!
You do! Gossipy sensationalism at its finest!
Re: Goldstone is wrong, chapters 2 and 3
Date: 2021-09-27 01:18 pm (UTC)I realized last night that I *do* know what to do with this kind of reasoning: I've seen it before.
One component of the grad school program I attended was comparative mythology, and I can tell you that this kind of reasoning is endemic in that field. For example: Homer has his heroes being cremated. Second-millenium Mycenaeans did not cremate their dead. Proto-Indo-Europeans in the steppes of Kazakhstan at some point in the third or fourth millennium did. Therefore Homer is revealing that the tradition of a super archaic practice was preserved through millennia of oral poetry!
Except that many Greeks of Homer's time practiced cremation. Why don't we assume that Homer was describing a practice familiar to him and his listeners from their own time and place?
This is the Wishful Thinking Aetiology Fallacy, according to the name that I just made up, and Goldstone isn't the only one guilty of it. (But with a dose of Godwin's Law that makes it extra special, in this case.)
Re: Goldstone is wrong, chapters 2 and 3
Date: 2021-09-29 02:43 pm (UTC)But speaking of Förster, he has one sentence on it in his section on Grenadier recruiting - Für einen großen Nachwuchs suchte der König durch Verheirathung der Grenadiere mit ebenbürtigen Landestöchtern zu sorgen und forderte auch aus den Provinzen Bericht über große Kinder ein. - but he doesn't tell me where he got it from. He also includes what seems to be a rather widespread Giants anecdote, which sounds very much like a legend to me: Allegedly, FW went for a ride near Potsdam, saw a tall peasant girl and told his adjutant to sent her to town with the order to immediately marry one of the Grenadiers. The girl got suspicious, gave the letter with the order to an old woman to deliver, who was then married to said Grenadier despite all protests. When FW noticed later, he annulled the marriage.
One other thing I found, in a 2007 book about the Giants: "considerations of his regimental medic prompted Friedrich Wilhelm to attempt to marry grenadiers to tall women". That detail seems oddly specific, but it doesn't give a name or even a year, let alone a citation. (That said, one of the book's sources is Kloosterhuis' Lange Kerls tome, which is mostly a publication of primary sources related to them, including social life and marriages. If there's any actual evidence to be found beyond anecdotes, it's probably in there.)
Re: Goldstone is wrong, chapters 2 and 3
Date: 2021-09-29 04:11 pm (UTC)That said, one of the book's sources is Kloosterhuis' Lange Kerls tome, which is mostly a publication of primary sources related to them, including social life and marriages. If there's any actual evidence to be found beyond anecdotes, it's probably in there.
Oh, wonderful! If I understand correctly,