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

[cahn]

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

Comments

Re: The Great Northern War: Teaser post

[selenak]

Mongols: How come no one ever mentions us when it comes to stories about invading Russia? We pulled it off successfully! Granted, our empire collapsed within a few generations and broke into separate empires, but the point is, the original invaders did pull it off!

More seriously, A plus teaser, and one could add: Charles XII and Peter are also whom Fritz and Voltaire are discussing in their early letters when they FINALLY stop writing solely about how wonderful the other one is. Also, the preface of Voltaire‘s Histoire de Charles XII makes for an entertaining and witty defense of why source scepticism is a good thing, where he brings up several ancient historians as examples, which makes mincemeat of the preface to the Montesquieu Roman history editor‘s argument that of course Montesquieu believed the Roman historians were the real deal always and he could trust them implicitly, no 18th century guy with love of history and writings would have thought differently.

I only skipped the book about a year ago - Voltaire‘s, that is - but I really need to read it properly because I do think his characterisations of Charles and Peter, both written pre Fritz, so to speak, should make an interesting point about what Voltaire thought re: warrior kings and reform czars autocrats before getting into a relationship with one.

Another point of connection: Why there was a French and a Russian party in Swedish parliament - which affected Ulrike, if you‘ll recall - and why Heinrich offering to mediate between Ulrike and Catherine at the start of his Russian adventure was a thing.

Lastly, here‘s an imagined Charles and Peter encounter from the 1980s Massie based „Peter the Great“ tv series:

https://youtu.be/2XNmGa3h974

Some months ago, I rewatched the series for the first time since the 80s, and had thoughts here:

https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1455984.html

The Romanovs take over

[mildred_of_midgard]

Mongols: How come no one ever mentions us when it comes to stories about invading Russia?

Haha! Maybe the moral of the story is you should attack from the other side? :P Or that Kievan Rus' wasn't as centralized as later Russia and able to mount a successful defense?

More seriously, the Poles had also managed to occupy Russia successfully for a while at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and seized a bunch of territory, and they did it from the west. At the same time, Sweden also invaded and conquered quite a bit of territory. This is why Charles XII can be forgiven for thinking he could also pull it off. But a lot had changed in Russia since the last successful Swedish conquest, and most of that changing had happened in the last 5-10 years, thanks to Peter the Great single-handedly trying to turn Russia around.

cahn, this early seventeenth century occupation and conquest was during the Time of Troubles, which was about what it sounds. :P There was no clear Russian leadership as one dynasty died out, and everyone fought over the throne for twenty years, until finally the Romanovs were elected. Yes, elected, and it went like this:

Nobles: *vote in a 16-year-old named Michael Romanov*

Nobles: *spend several weeks trying to find him to inform him, because he's in exile and hiding*

Michael: *is informed*

Michael: "Please, please, don't make me deal with Russia in a state of anarchy! Everybody's getting their heads chopped off left and right! Why would I sign up for this?"

Michael's mom: "My son is too young for this! What are you thinking!"

Nobles: "Look, it's the only way! The times, they are troubled, and you're the one ruler we can all agree on."

Michael: "Okay. I guess. I'll be your figurehead. But my advisors are going to have to make all the decisions. I don't know what makes you think I'm qualified to fix this mess of a country."

Michael's dad: *gets out of prison, finds out later*

Michael's dad: "WTF! How can you make my son tsar while I'm alive?!"

Nobles: "Because you were an important political prisoner in Poland at the time, and it wasn't like we could ask the Poles nicely if they would let you out so we could give you a crown, YOU IDIOT."

Michael's dad: "Okay, fine. But I'm doing most of the ruling!"

Michael: "Oh thank god."

Re: The Romanovs take over

[cahn]

ahahahaha, that's hilarious! So how did it work out for Michael Romanov?

Re: The Romanovs take over

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hmm. Middling? On the plus side, his advisors did the ruling, they kept him on the throne and the country in one piece, and his job was to perform the ceremonial duties of tsar and father an heir, which he did successfully. His arranged marriage wasn't a disaster. He was described as good-natured, docile, pious, and not too bright.

On the minus side, he didn't have great health, he didn't get to marry the woman he wanted, he lost two sons, and he may have become depressed. But considering that his childhood started out like this:

The patriots defeated the Poles, cut off their supply lines and then besieged the Kremlin, where the Poles and boyars started to starve. Bodies lay around the fortress; a merchant found a sack of human heads and limbs near the walls. Michael Romanov remained within this charnel-house with his mother.

and his procession to Moscow to assume the crown went like this:

There has never been a more miserable, whining and melancholic procession to a throne. But the plight of Russia early in 1613 was dire, its trauma dystopian. The territory between Kostroma and Moscow was dangerous; Michael would pass through villages where dead bodies lay strewn in the streets.

it could have ended much worse!

I would say the same thing about Michael's life as Hille said about teenage Fritz's poetry: "for a prince, [it is] good, but for an ordinary man, nothing special."

ETA: Quotes from Montefiore, The Romanovs.

Re: The Romanovs take over

[cahn]

Bodies lay around the fortress; a merchant found a sack of human heads and limbs near the walls. Michael Romanov remained within this charnel-house with his mother.

Holy cow, I can see why one might get depressed, with a childhood like that.

I would say the same thing about Michael's life as Hille said about teenage Fritz's poetry: "for a prince, [it is] good, but for an ordinary man, nothing special."

Ouch, heh.

Re: The Romanovs take over

[selenak]

Holy cow, I can see why one might get depressed, with a childhood like that.

That, or one developes a very different kind of temper. Michail's grandson Peter during his childhood saw an uncle of his and a close advisor of his mother's torn apart by the Strelitzki (not sure whether this is the right spelling in English - think Praetorians in Rome) during the struggle for the Regency between his mother and his older half sister (Sofia, who won). Spoiler: this did not work out well for the Strelitzki in the long term.

Re: The Romanovs take over

[mildred_of_midgard]

I would love it if someone read and reported on a biography of Sofia. I found her *fascinating* in my recent reading.

Re: The Romanovs take over

[selenak]

There's a reason why in the minisieres based on Massie's Peter biography Vanessa Redgrave when offered her choice of parts went for Sofia and promptly went an Emmy for it,deservedly, because she's that rarity (especiallyiin the 80s), a female Worthy Oppponent to the main character who is older, neither sexualized (i.e. evil vamp) nor asexual (we see Sofia with her beloved), ruthless, smart, and thoroughly enjoying herself in power. As I said in my rewatch review, her final scene when she and Peter meet before she's off to her last banishment, and she chides him for chickening out of killing her, he first tries to sound noble and says "I'm not shedding family blood", she says, amused, "You will before this is over" (true, see also, Alexei), and he then says "let's just say I see something of me in you and leave it at that" I remembered so well that when I rewatched after decades I still recalled almost every word.

Re: The Romanovs take over

[mildred_of_midgard]

I can imagine!

Voltaire and Charles XII

[mildred_of_midgard]

Also, the preface of Voltaire‘s Histoire de Charles XII makes for an entertaining and witty defense of why source scepticism is a good thing, where he brings up several ancient historians as examples, which makes mincemeat of the preface to the Montesquieu Roman history editor‘s argument that of course Montesquieu believed the Roman historians were the real deal always and he could trust them implicitly, no 18th century guy with love of history and writings would have thought differently.

Yes, this is true! Remember when we went over the exchange between Fritz and Voltaire on the reliability of the Romulus and Remus myth, and Voltaire was pooh-poohing it, and Fritz was all, "But I, as a Rheinsberg Remusberg local, can prove it!"? And felis pointed out the follow-up letter where Fritz goes, "Well, I was just sharing the anecdote for whatever it was worth, obviously we have to be skeptical," which the only possible way I can read that sequence is that Fritz changed his mind and didn't want to lose face, so he pretended like he meant that all along.

I only skipped the book about a year ago - Voltaire‘s, that is - but I really need to read it properly because I do think his characterisations of Charles and Peter, both written pre Fritz, so to speak, should make an interesting point about what Voltaire thought re: warrior kings and reform czars autocrats before getting into a relationship with one.

I haven't finished it, because reading in German, but I did hit "King Charles XII, perhaps the most extraordinary person who ever lived," and laughed so hard. You say that in 1731, Voltaire!

Incidentally, when Suhm is telling Fritz about a "life of Charles XII" that he's recently read, in Christmas 1732, in "With You, There's a Heaven," that was meant to be Voltaire's, which had just come out the year before.

Why there was a French and a Russian party in Swedish parliament - which affected Ulrike

And why the rule was parliamentary at all: that started right at the end of the Great Northern War, because everyone was fed up with the recently deceased Charles XII and his twenty-one-year war that ended disastrously for Sweden. They told his successors that they could be monarchs, but they had to give up absolute power. (There was precedent for this in Sweden, but Charles XII and his father had ruled absolutely for the last 40 or so years.)

Re: Voltaire and Charles XII

[cahn]

Incidentally, when Suhm is telling Fritz about a "life of Charles XII" that he's recently read, in Christmas 1732, in "With You, There's a Heaven," that was meant to be Voltaire's, which had just come out the year before.

Ha, excellent. I feel like you might have told me this in beta but since I had no idea who Charles XII was and knew a lot less about Voltaire than I do now, the information didn't really stick at all :P

ahhhhhh now I feel like I should take a stab at Voltaire's Charles XII, now that I'm going to be finding out who he is :D

And why the rule was parliamentary at all: that started right at the end of the Great Northern War, because everyone was fed up with the recently deceased Charles XII and his twenty-one-year war that ended disastrously for Sweden. They told his successors that they could be monarchs, but they had to give up absolute power. (There was precedent for this in Sweden, but Charles XII and his father had ruled absolutely for the last 40 or so years.)

Oh, okay, interesting, yeah, I can see why everyone was like "dude, Ulrike, don't mess with this."