cahn | Frederick the Great and Other 18th-C Characters, Discussion Post 31

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frederick the great

Frederick the Great and Other 18th-C Characters, Discussion Post 31

And in this post:

-

luzula is going to tell us about the Jacobites and the '45!

-I'm going to finish reading Nancy Goldstone's book about Maria Theresia and (some of) her children Maria Christina, Maria Carolina, and Marie Antoinette, In the Shadow of the Empress, and

selenak is going to tell us all the things wrong with the last four chapters (spoiler: in the first twenty chapters there have been many, MANY things wrong)!

-

mildred_of_midgard is going to tell us about Charles XII of Sweden and the Great Northern War

(seriously, how did I get so lucky to have all these people Telling Me Things, this is AWESOME)

-oh, and also there will be Yuletide signups :D

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https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2556#comic

It's funny because it's true!

(Though I'd say younger physicists think so too. They just are too busy ~~trying to get tenure~~ doing other stuff to actually do anything about it.)

BTW, if you need any help with Swedish while reading up on Charles XII, let me know.

Oh, neat! Thanks, I will. (You don't happen to know any Russian, do you? Because while I might have a prayer at making heads or tails of Swedish, Russian is way out of my league.)

my main association is that unfortunately he has been adopted as a mascot by Nazis over here.

Ugh. This is what in the Fritz fandom we call "The Worst Fanboys."

He might well have been! I have this habit, though, where some author will do something that reminds me of some historical figure, and then I think, "Author must have based this on X!", when in reality, plenty of other historical figures (or none) could have inspired this. Because history may not repeat itself but it *does* rhyme.

See also KJ Parker, Duke Valens, and Fritz. ;)

Btw, I made a typo at the end of that quote: "They never have" should be "They never are," i.e. left in peace.

Well, I am delighted that people keep wanting to answer me and don't care so much about my not knowing anything :D

You not knowing things is a feature, not a bug! (For salon, I mean.) There is no way this would have happened without your unique combination of ignorance and broad curiosity. :)

although I guess now I know more about Fritz's boyfriends than most people

YOU DO.

Sorry that you're not doing Yuletide! But then again it is probably best for you (if not for us :P ) not to get sucked into some sort of 30k thing again...

Well, it's going to save you a lot of time, dear beta/co-author! ;)

OK, that's good that Goldstone wasn't making stuff up about Louis XVI.

Lol, I still haven't gotten past chapter 9. But I read 30 pages of German this morning and am hoping to do more after work. If my German gets any better, I'll be able to finish SR! I guess it'll be a toss-up to see what happens first, my German improving or the English translation being released in time for a readalong with you.

BTW, the whole basic idea of these posts is that I know basically zero about history (it's really rather embarrassing)

But super useful, because

cahn asks questions and waxes enthusiastic about the answers, and so we keep telling her stuff!

It's also worth pointing out that Selena and I went from "telling Cahn things we already knew" to "telling Cahn and each other about things we had just learned" to "original research that might be publishable if I have the self-discipline to write it all up along with the citations." :D

We started with Frederick the Great, who is still kind of the centerpiece (hence the titles of the post having his name), but I've been asking for other things too as they come up

At this point, my goal is "learn about the major political, military, and diplomatic developments of each decade in 18th century Europe."

So, um, if you would like (or anyone else who is reading this :D ) I would love to hear about De Saxe!

I would love to hear about De Saxe too! I know *of* him, but very little *about* him. I remember reading (a possibly excerpted version of) his military treatise 20 years ago, but it's not his life story.

Edited 2021-10-11 18:54 (UTC)

Sorry, no Russian! I have a number of Russian colleagues, but I don't know them well enough to ask such a thing...

I have not read/watched Game of Thrones, but I remember reading at some point that Martin was inspired by the massacre of Glencoe, among other things!

Which I can tell

cahn about: it was part of the 1690's Jacobite history. After the failure of "Bonnie Dundee"/"Bluidy Clavers" rising in 1689 (choose name according to politics), William of Orange's government in Scotland was still very weak. Not that he actually cared about Scotland, he wanted to make war on the continent. So in order to pull troops from Scotland, he needed to pacify the Jacobite chiefs in the Highlands. They were bribed with cash and offered an indemnity in return for swearing loyalty to William, and most of them agreed (not that they necessarily took that oath very seriously).

But MacDonald of Glencoe was late meeting the deadline because of something that wasn't his own fault, and the secretary of state for Scotland decided to make an example of him, with William's knowledge. He sent Campbell troops to Glencoe (the Campbells were a rival clan, but this wasn't a clan conflict), and when the soldiers were enjoying the (perhaps forced) hospitality of the Glencoe MacDonalds, they began killing them, though a lot of them got away into the snow. This was in February 1693, and you can hear about it in this song. I have never heard anyone pronounce the word "rape" with such relish--I guess it's the Scottish "r".

Anyway, this backfired. The massacre was a gift to Jacobite propaganda, and destroyed the credibility of the government in the Highlands.

Sincere apologies for just dropping in and randomly asking questions, especially as the thread more generally has moved away from this specific moment in history! (And of course feel free to ignore this since it's not at all a military question!)

We covered the Civil Wars and Restoration pretty intensely at school but then skipped right through to Victoria, so my knowledge of this era is very patchy. I've always been curious about the relationship between Mary and James 'III'. Mary and Anne were James II's daughters from his first marriage so they would have been half-siblings, though separated by 20 years or more in age. Did they ever actually meet? Or have any kind of relationship prior to the various Jacobite uprisings?

In Scotland, the "of Placename" naming system was used for gentry (even if you just owned a small farm), not just for the peerage. And you were generally adressed as Placename. For example, if your name is Ewen Cameron, then there are probably hundreds more with the same name, so using either first or last name doesn't help much. But if you are also laird of Ardroy, then it makes sense to adress you by that as your name. (Ewen of course also has a hereditary Gaelic chieftain title "Mac 'ic Ailein" = "son of Allan", and a Gaelic form of his name, Eoghan, and also a Gaelic nickname to distinguish himself from other Eoghans, "Eoghan Mor", or "Tall Ewen".)

If someone doesn't have that sort of name (such as BPC's military officer Lord George Murray) you can tell that he's not a landowner and thus a younger son.

ETA: Actually you will not see Ewen adressed as "Eoghan Mor", but "Eoghain Mhoir", which is in the vocative. Guess how glad I am to have an Irish person who knows Gaelic in the fandom! Very happy, that's what. Oops, this somewhat sidetracked into Flight of the Heron stuff...

Edited 2021-10-11 22:13 (UTC)

Thank-you for the welcome! And I will continue to read the posts here, if that's OK. The 18th century is often overlooked, but it's when the modern world really got started, after all, politically, scientifically and in terms of industry.

Alas, I know not much more about De Saxe than that he did a very good job against Cumberland at Fontenoy. I read up on that for a particular story, and the book I used is packed up in a box somewhere. But yes, he would have been a formidable leader of an invasion force - if he had had the bad luck to be put in charge of one. France really was a Continental Power at that point, and Britain was barely worth the effort!

Oh, right, I *have* read that the Red Wedding was inspired by the Massacre of Glencoe!

The other suspicion I have for a possible historical Scottish inspiration for a GoT character is Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat for Walder Frey. Admittedly, much of my sense of Lovat's personality comes from Diana Gabaldon. *But*, Dragonfly in Amber was published in 1992 and GoT only in 1996, so even if some of her depiction is fictional, GRRM may have been inspired by her too. (Alternatively, maybe the Lovat traits that I haven't come across in nonfictional sources are in fact historical and it's just that Gabaldon and GRRM found them and I didn't.)

It was a long shot! (There's a Russian Peter III fan on DW/A03 I keep trying to get to join salon, or at least recommend me some books about Russian history, but she hasn't been inclined to do either.)

Sincere apologies for just dropping in and randomly asking questions, especially as the thread more generally has moved away from this specific moment in history! (And of course feel free to ignore this since it's not at all a military question!)

No, not to worry! That's how we operate here! Everybody asks questions about everything, nothing is off topic, and we have half a dozen simultaneous discussions going at any given time.

And we're definitely not military focused, far from it. I'm the only one here with a semi-serious interest in military history, and most of our discussions are focused on interpersonal relationships. So exactly your type of question!

Mary and Anne were James II's daughters from his first marriage so they would have been half-siblings, though separated by 20 years or more in age. Did they ever actually meet? Or have any kind of relationship prior to the various Jacobite uprisings?

I will have to leave detailed 17th century history to

selenak, but what I can say is that James III's birth was what triggered the Glorious Revolution, which means he was only a few months old when William and Mary booted his father off the throne and forced both him and his father into Continental exile.

The first Jacobite rebellion was in 1689, when future James III was about 1 year old, so there wasn't really a "prior to the Jacobite uprisings" in which he could have had a relationship with his siblings. From the moment he was kicked out, James II never stopped trying to get the throne back via Louis XIV's help, and James III picked up where his father left off.

Furthermore, Mary died when the future James III was only six. That leaves Anne. They were on opposite sides of the War of the Spanish Succession from the time he was 13 up until her death. (James II died right as it started, Louis XIV publicly recognized his son as King of England, and that was just more fuel on the the fire for the war that was breaking out.) During that war, he staged the 1708 rebellion, and one of the terms of the peace that ended the war was France having to kick James III out of France, stop calling him James III, and recognize Anne instead.

Selena can tell me if they somehow met or struck up a correspondence that I don't know about, but due to the political circumstances, I can't imagine a relationship other than "each accusing the other of treason and trying to have him/her locked up and possibly executed."

What Selena will probably have is way more detail on what the siblings said about each other to third parties.

Good question, thank you for asking! We love when people ask questions; that's how we've had a 2-year discussion group! :D

The Jacobite Clans of the Great Glen 1650-1784 by Bruce Lenman (1984) has a lot of info about Simon Fraser.

the Lovat traits that I haven't come across in nonfictional sources

What are those?

By the way, I haven't actually read/watched Outlander--in fact, I've sort of avoided it. Do you think it's good? And (I suppose a partly separate question) did the author do good research?

:D

Oh man, yeah, that sounds rough for her (and interesting for me :P )

(And I started Game of Queens today, and was just reading about Isabella and Ferdinand, so presumably I'll get to Germaine soon... :) )

Well, it's going to save you a lot of time, dear beta/co-author! ;)

Ha, true! Though I'm rather proud of that fic :D

Heh, I'm not really holding my breath for SR to be released in January or whenever the latest date is. It has met my expectations of a leisurely rollout, given that when we first looked at it it was supposed to come out in 2019...

Oooooh thank you!

but wow that is something else. Ouch. Yeah, I can see why no one trusted the government anymore.

Also that song is really compelling, I mean, it would be compelling anyway, but even on top of that -- I think it's a combo of the Scottish accent and the instrumentals.

Noooooo apologies at all! I have been trying to get people to drop in and randomly ask questions for two years now! :D

For example, if your name is Ewen Cameron

just as a TOTALLY RANDOM EXAMPLE :D

...I am glad you said that because I was confused as to why sometimes he was called Cameron and sometimes Ardroy!

Of course! Please do read and hang out! <3

You might also be interested in

rheinsberg, where we (by which I mean mostly

mildred_of_midgard and

selenak) have been collating some of the stuff that's been talked about. Now, that community is definitely Fritz-centric, there are of course also a lot of other people who overlap with him who are covered -- e.g. Voltaire, Maria Theresia, the Hanovers, Catherine the Great.

(

selenak, I am amused that I have adopted your spelling for MT, but not yet for the Hannovers :P )

Ha ha, yes, a completely random example! *g*

Ha, true! Though I'm rather proud of that fic :D

Which one? You helped with a lot of them. :P (I know which one you mean, I'm just calling attention to your co-authoring in Yuletide 2019, your beta-ing of 30k in RMSE 2020, and your borderline co-authoring of Yuletide 2020!)

SR: All I want is to not have regional restrictions on the Kindle version of the German edition! Since I don't want to read my pdf scan any more (yay for improved German), it's looking like I'm going to have to buy the Kobo version since Kindle won't let me. Meh.

:D I'd actually forgotten about the 30k in RMSE 2020!

Ugh for regional restrictions :(

Thank-you for the welcome! I have subscribed (I think. I'm pretty rusty on DW!)

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Frederick the Great and Other 18th-C Characters, Discussion Post 31

Re: Nature articles

Re: Nature articles

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: Misc.

Re: The Backstory for the '45

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: The Backstory for the '45

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

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Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: The Backstory for the '45

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: Yuletide tag set is out!

Re: Misc.

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: The Backstory for the '45

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: The Backstory for the '45

Re: First Part of the '45 (up to Derby)

Re: Misc.

Re: Misc.

Re: The Backstory for the '45