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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It's so weird how all these monarchs and nobility are so closely interrelated between countries, and yet they're constantly at war! I mean, I get that it's because of the rivalry of the countries, and they're not actually personally declaring war on their cousin, or whatever. Still weird that the nobility is intermarrying so freely across borders when there's so much war--but maybe this 'bro code' that you're talking about is operating here...

Horowski talks about this at some length. A major difference between 18th century European warfare and twentieth-century warfare is that one was fought primarily for gain and the other for ideological reasons. We're used to thinking of war as "The enemy is evil incarnate, with whom you cannot compromise, and certainly not fight on the same side the year later, and the enmity can only end with the extermination of one side or the other."

In the 18th century, you wanted to preserve the balance of power, while aggrandizing your own country as much as you could. So alliances were constantly shifting. Your enemy today was your friend tomorrow. It was rarely nearly as personal. Any nobleman could go serve in any army to get experience, and this was the done thing. The only restriction was that it wasn't cool to make them fight against their liege lord. (They could choose to join a different court and fight against their former lord, though; see Eugene.)

This is totally related to why so many people were switching sides at the end of the Great Northern War; preserving the balance of power suddenly went from "Fight against Swedish hegemony in the Baltic" to "Fight against Russian hegemony in the Baltic."

This is also related to why so many combatants were polite and even friendly with their enemies even while the war was going on. There was a good chance they had either been on the same side before or they would be soon. There was also a good chance that they were related. And they were willing to intermarry precisely because there was a good chance they'd either been on the same side, or were trying to get on the same side.

All this was notably *not* the case for the Jacobite rebellions. (They had shared ancestry, but they did not continue intermarrying.) Notice that that wasn't a case of two countries fighting against each other for territory, but a more ideological battle that *couldn't* end in compromise and future friendship: either there's a Hanover on the throne or a Stuart. And the way you treated your own rebellious subjects was very different from the way you treated your neighbor's subjects in war. All these things are connected.

That's also why it's not *that* surprising that Fritz said he was never MT's enemy and that he said he regretted her death. It really wasn't personal for him. (The surprising part is that she managed to overcome his misogyny enough to get a positive remark out of him, not that he said something nice about his enemy.) It *was* personal for her! But that was due to an unusual combination of him being the aggressor, her personality, and some ideological differences.

Even Charles XII, Mister "I do not end wars except by defeating my enemies," did not see his opponents as we would see Hitler or Stalin. They were more like rival CEOs than enemies-to-the-death: they can go golfing together after one of them loses market share to the other.

Actually, that reminds me of something I was reading recently. Biologist Sapolsky gave an interesting description of a case study done on dominance interactions among CEOs: during the negotiation, they pointedly didn't look at each other, communicated only through their minions, and kept their body language as stiff and unengaged as possible. Then once everyone was in the parking lot, the CEOs walked over to their fancy cars, tried out each other's tennis racquets, and started bonding. Sapolsky described this along the lines of (paraphrase) "At this point, their rival minion's face probably wouldn't even have registered in the facial recognition center of the CEO's brain. What was far more important now was to have someone who could commiserate about the hassle of paying alimony to a third ex-wife." In other words, their identity could shift situationally from "I am a member of this company" [country] to "I am a member of this class."

And class affiliation was far more permanent and ideologically significant in the 18th century than national affiliation. Nationalism took off later. (This is why later writers, both German and French, were/are so frustrated with the intensely passionate and lifelong Fritz/Voltaire relationship, when Voltaire should have been at Louis' court (French writers) and Fritz should have been way more German-aligned than he was (German writers)! And one reason that cosmopolitan Algarotti, who helped foreigners like Fritz acquire art treasures from Italy, fell way out of favor in the nineteenth century and is forgotten today. Nationalism.)

Thanks, interesting! Yeah, I've definitely read about the way enemy officers treated each other in wartime and how they served in other countries' armies, because of fic research, but not as much about the monarchs/nobility. And yes, I also realize how the Jacobite conflicts were different.

I read a book years ago about the PR surrounding war in the 20th century, all the propaganda required to sell your enemies as evil, and how they threatened you first (even if they didn't) and therefore it was okay to make war on them. I do wonder about the connections with the growth of democracy and of the public sphere to include basically all of the population. Like, if a lot of the population can't read, and there's no democracy anyway, why bother to have lots of propaganda convincing the population that your enemies are evil in order to motivate the war? Not committing to this theory, it was just something that occurred to me. OTOH, you get nationalism in the 19th century before you have democracy, but there's still a larger public sphere then than in the 18th century...hmm.

Well, the Jacobite conflict wasn‘t the only one in the 18th Century bearing traces of what‘s to come. The 7 Years War was also a propaganda war, with Prussia very much styling itself as a) defender of Protestants against evil oppressive Catholics (never mind that of the four opposing monarchies, one was Sweden and one was Russia), and b) defender of Germans against invading foreigners whereas the Austrians were teaming up with them. This, btw, makes for a crossover of the preceding century where the 30 Years War of course started as a gigantic war of religion and the upcoming one with its rise of nationalism. It also was pretty successful with the majority of German speaking writers at least, who are the ones leaving behind pamphlets, articles and poetry.

(Not to mention, of course, that in the 19th Century once Prussia had completed its rise to the top the Prussian pov became the official German pov of history, and it took eons until this changed again.)

And then, near the end of 18th century, you get the French Revolution, and subsequently Napoleon, at which point it‘s both ideology and rising nationalism time everywhere. The war against revolutionary France after the executions of their royals was very much the antithesis to all those succession wars that dominated the first half of said century, and if you look at the text of the Marsaillaise, written during this time, you get the wish for the blood of the invaders to drench the acres of France and la patrie and what not. Which fits - here, you had to motivate and mobilize a great number of underequipped people, and then they actually won, to the great surprise of the monarchies allied against them. And then, of course, once Napoleon makes it to the top, he explicitly frames his territorial go getting in terms of France „liberating“ other countries via exporting the revolution‘s gains to them, while the fight against him gets increasingly framed in modern national and ideological terms in Spain, Russia and Germany, and the connection of having to motivate an ever greater number of less and less illiterate people is most definitely there!

. And then, of course, once Napoleon makes it to the top, he explicitly frames his territorial go getting in terms of France „liberating“ other countries via exporting the revolution‘s gains to them

Which predates Napoleon: the revolutionaries were already "liberating" other countries in the first half of the 1790s. It started with local protests in Alsace and Avignon to join with revolutionary France, and the leaders of the revolution decided that the "will of the people" trumped any treaties made decades ago by old regime monarchs with old regime monarchs. Then it quickly evolved to "If the people of other countries are too stupid to know they want freedom, we will have to 'liberate' them! Invade!"

Thanks for elaborating! Interesting.

I have got the impression that in most of the 18th century, religion and not politics was the great divider. Like, politics was something most people were pragmatic about, and you could associate with someone of a different political party socially. But for a Protestant to socialize with a Catholic could be shocking, or for someone from a more radical Protestant movement to socialize with a more conservative one.

Whereas today, who really cares that Joe Biden is a Catholic and not a Protestant; what people care about is whether he's a Democrat or a Republican.

But on the third hand, weren't there also a fair number among the 18th century elite who weren't actually particularly religious? Enlightenment, and cynicism about religion...

(Er, sorry about all my general questions and musings!)

omg luzula, don't apologize at all! I am SO GLAD you are here to comment and ask questions which is part of the alchemy that makes all of this work while I am off having my usual aaaaaaaaah late-oct/nov Halloween/American-Thanksgiving/Christmas-planning woes :D And the questions you ask are not necessarily questions I would ask (Me: Can I have more gossip on X, Y, and Z? lol, I am a simple woman) so this is even better, I am loving this :D <3

Agreed! The alchemy requires question asking, because the one thing I really suck at is asking questions.

That said, the reason I haven't replied to this wonderful question is that I've been waiting for

selenak. She's much better at putting her knowledge into a big-picture summary than I am. It's not that I don't have the knowledge, it's that organizing it into a big picture take is like pulling teeth for me, always has been. So part of the alchemy is that Selena and I make a good team with our different focuses. (I suspect many of the things I do would be like pulling teeth for her, that's why salon is so great.

I have the same alchemy at work with my new boss, where he's prioritizing what projects get done when based on business needs, while I'm busy making sure all the boxes get checked and t's get crossed when we work on whatever we work on.)

Question-asking is also like pulling teeth for me, that's why it's so great to have people who I admire for just doing it!

My strength is "So where exactly was the Brüner Tor located in Wesel?" i.e. what we call detective work, which you saw in action when I tracked down the text of the bill that told us exactly what legal stance a captured BPC would have had in 1746. :)

And the questions you ask are not necessarily questions I would ask (Me: Can I have more gossip on X, Y, and Z? lol, I am a simple woman)

LOL! If not for your dedicated pursuit of the gossip, would the three of us have sustained a 2.7 million word interest over the last 2+ years? I beg leave to doubt it. :D

Well, my question here was maybe too vague, as of course that sort of thing (attitudes towards religion and politics) varies over time and between places, and "religion" and "politics" are huge and varied things in themselves! But yeah, I get the point: asking questions is good. : )

My strength is "So where exactly was the Brüner Tor located in Wesel?" i.e. what we call detective work, which you saw in action when I tracked down the text of the bill that told us exactly what legal stance a captured BPC would have had in 1746. :)

I was quite impressed by that! : ) I mean, it wasn't obvious that the answer would be in a bill at all, it all could just have been contained in informal discussions between the main Hanoverian actors so that we would never know, or was contained in archived letters. But nope, actually debated in Parliament.

Meanwhile, I am getting nowhere on your question about the primary sources for BPC:s conversion to Anglicanism. : ( Searching Google books and Google scholar for keywords gets me nothing, but what I can say is that pretty much every book about BPC contains this claim, including lots of books from after the 90's, which is when you heard doubts of it. Most often there are no references for the claim. When there are, it's to some older book which I can't get hold of. The closest I've come to primary sources is Duffy, who quotes a letter from William King, who is one of the people who met BPC on his visit to England in 1750. But the letter doesn't directly mention his conversion, it's just about King's opinion on BPC in that meeting in general.

At this point I think I'd have to email one of the historians involved to ask what the primary sources are. I myself am inclined not to doubt it--it seems quite reasonable that if several people met BPC in London in 1750 and one of them was an Anglican priest who witnessed his conversion, that they would leave letters or other writings behind which confirm it, especially as I've seen quotes from a letter from one of these people. It seems unreasonable to me that reputable historians would keep claiming it if the evidence wasn't there, if it was questioned in the '90:s--but maybe I'm too trusting that historians will do their job. : )

I have also now read that BPC re-converted back to Catholicism around 1760 when he wanted the papacy to pay his bills.

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

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