cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 32

:) Still talking about Charles XII of Sweden / the Great Northern War and the Stuarts and the Jacobites, among other things!

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

also I spent way too long reading about evidence for and against consciousness after guillotining

I have also read these debates, especially the ones focusing on Lavoisier!

About Dr. Guillotin, though, Wikipedia has always told me that he didn't invent the guillotine, that that was a popular myth. (French wiki agrees.)

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a French physician, politician, and freemason who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a device to carry out death penalties in France, as a less painful method of execution than existing methods. Although he did not invent the guillotine and opposed the death penalty, his name became an eponym for it.

Lolsob at this, though:

In Paris, Guillotin became a well-known physician. By 1775, he was concerned with issues of torture and death. That year, he wrote a memo proposing that criminals be used as subjects in medical experiments. Although he recognised that as cruel, he considered it preferable to being put to death.

The physician thinks medical experiments are less cruel than the death penalty. No conflict of interest here! I mean, it depends on the medical experiment, but I'm thinking of Maupertuis and his interest in vivisection.

Also interesting, Wikipedia says it wasn't just the feelings of the executed criminal Dr. Guillotin was thinking of, but the social effects as well:

Guillotin was opposed to the death penalty, and hoped that a more humane and less painful method of execution would be the first step towards total abolition. He also hoped that, as the decapitation machine would kill quickly without prolonged suffering, this would reduce the size and enthusiasm of crowds that often witnessed executions.

Well, it didn't stop the Reign of Terror, but there were also other social factors at work there.

From:

luzula

I've chopped a fair amount of wood in my day, but I sure wouldn't like to try chopping off someone's head with an axe! Uh, for the obvious reason, of course, but also I feel that with wood, you are working with a natural direction of cleavage which a neck doesn't have. I wonder if the axes were heavier than normal wood-chopping axes, to get through better.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

but I sure wouldn't like to try chopping off someone's head with an axe! Uh, for the obvious reason, of course

LOLOL, no, I was totally assuming it was only the technique that was deterring you. *g*

I wonder if the axes were heavier than normal wood-chopping axes, to get through better.

Maybe! Also, notice that with wood-chopping axes you have to distinguish between felling axes, which are meant to be swung horizontally, at a vertical tree, and are lighter (like swords), and splitting axes, which are meant to be swung vertically at a horizontal log, and can be a bit heavier.

Random googling concurs that beheading axes are indeed a significant step up in weight even from splitting axes! Which yes, means a major failure mode is going to be landing the axe in the wrong place and/or at the wrong angle, and hitting bone (that isn't a vertebra).

(Guys, I'm not an axe murderer, I promise. :D)

Edited Date: 2021-11-11 04:24 pm (UTC)

From:

regshoe

Hmm, possibly! Forbes is usually pretty scrupulous about his sources (he'll compare different accounts of the same event, note contradictions and gaps and try to figure out the truth, and so on), and all the Really Truly stuff could come from that attitude of wanting to be very clear about accuracy—but I agree it's slightly doubtful.

From:

luzula

beheading axes are indeed a significant step up in weight even from splitting axes!

Oh, that makes sense.

(Guys, I'm not an axe murderer, I promise. :D)

It's okay, you have convinced me that if you're going to murder someone you would prefer a sword over an axe! : P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I actually laughed out loud. :'D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Confirmed: the German translation of the diary is *only* the diary, and doesn't include the correspondence that the French volume has. (I went ahead and splurged on a copy that would ship to me from within the US, so it arrived yesterday, instead of 2 months from now. Have now spent a total of $200 on her diary. :P)

I will get the diary digitized asap, and at some point I or someone else can look into whether the letters are ones we already have access to or not. (The editor says they hadn't been published yet in 1891, so they're not in Preuss. But major candidates still include Volz and the Italy trip website.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I had forgotten or not learned that Katte was in Denmark in February/March 1730. Kloosterhuis says we don't know what took him there.

What's intriguing to me is that Lövenörn was sent to Berlin in April 1730, " this time with the task of mediating between Prussia and England-Hanover." That means he must have been in Denmark in February-March. Lövenörn, as you may remember, is the Danish ambassador who allegedly warned Katte about his impending arrest and may have been told by Katte that he had to say goodbye to ~~Wilhelmine~~ a girl. He also got in hot water with FW because he knew about the escape plans and didn't say anything. Fortunately, his king died a few weeks later and he got recalled. Fritz was still asking after his health in 1739, and Wilhelmine speaks favorably of him in her memoirs.

So I wonder if Katte's trip to Denmark in February-March either had something to do directly with Lövenörn, or if they at least met up. Lövenörn is on my list of people to learn more about, but I need a little more sleep to read the English sources and a lot more sleep and some more time before I'm up to the German sources.

Kloosterhuis also said that Katte made a trip to "the Danube" [where on the Danube? The Danube is really big! and I'd think if you meant Vienna, you'd say Vienna] in the same spring. And we also don't know what he was doing there.

But what this does is add to my increasing awareness that Fritz and Katte did not have very long to get to know each other. They only started becoming friends in mid 1729 (though they had had a few, mostly not positive, encounters before that). Fritz presumably spends some (much? all?) of the autumn stuck in That Hellhole^TM, aka Wusterhausen. In spring, Katte's traveling abroad for one to two months. Then they get April? May? through mid-July together (June is Zeithain). Then Fritz leaves on the ill-fated trip through southern Germany, and they never see each other again except for one minute on the morning of November 6. We'll always have Zeithain, I guess?

But as someone who likes to travel, I've always been glad Katte got to travel in the short time he had. That's one reason I'm disappointed that I suspect he didn't make it to Madrid after all! (Still researching that one, though.) And I'm still :( that Fritz's issues kept him from going to Italy.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Hey, awesome person! I was wondering if it would be possible for you to scan some of the stuff the local Wust historians have given you and your transcriptions thereof? It occurs to me that having these examples side by side to practice on might help me pick up a bit of 18C German paleography, since that would suit my learning style very well. If you don't feel comfortable uploading them online, I can give you my email address.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Charles XII's brother-in-law, Frederick IV the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, was Peter III's paternal grandfather. Not to be confused with his contemporary, Frederik IV the King of Denmark, who waged war on Charles XII and Frederick IV! (I am spelling the Danish guy "Frederik" in a futile attempt to reduce confusion.)

Refresher:

Not too long after Charles became king, when he was still living in Sweden and not waging war everywhere but Sweden, Duke Frederick came to visit.

Frat parties ensued.

Apparently of the rowdy, hard-drinking, breaking shit, "I'm trying to get myself killed, someday everyone will realize the Kalabalik was totally in character" rather than the "have sex with anything that moves" kind...with the caveat that there may well have been sex that contemporary sources and/or modern historians have left out.

The Swedes were all "blame the advisor!" already and spreading rumors that the Duke, nicknamed the Gottorp fury, was trying to get Charles killed to give his family a shot at the throne, but if you ask me, you have two young men, one in his teens and one in his twenties, with no constraints on their behavior, and I don't think you have to add a conspiracy in there to make sense of why they would run wild.

The stories that were told about their antics even Massie, Mr. "I never met an anecdote I didn't like," says are 100% exaggerated--there was not actually blood flowing down the palace steps--but there clearly were a lot of antics. My favorite is the time they had a drinking party, and got a bear so drunk it fell out the window and died.

Dowager Queen Grandma, who was a tough woman known for being strong-willed and politically active, stormed into the room and glared at her grandson, who was disheveled and slurring and totally embarrassed.

He then swore off alcohol, or strong alcohol, or getting drunk, something along those lines, forever, and stuck to it. He became known throughout Europe for his Spartan lifestyle, not just in terms of alcohol (watery beer at best, mostly just water), and sex (none that my sources report), but also clothing (plain uniform, no wig), money-spending (no), workaholism (all the time), sleeping conditions (outside on a plank of wood with no blanket, just like his soldiers). In fact, when he was planning the incognito ride back to Swedish territory in 1714:

As his ascetic personal habits were known across Europe, one member of his party joked that the King could establish an impenetrable disguise if he wore a curled court wig, stayed in the most luxurious inns, drank heavily, flirted with every girl, wore slippers most of the day and slept until noon.

Imagine the opposite of that, and you've got Charles XII.

For comparison, keep in mind August the Strong and FW will be founding their anti-drinking society in just a couple decades (drunken bear episode is 1699), and this is contemporary Peter the Great's idea of a society, the "Most Drunken Council of Fools and Jesters":

In October 1691 Peter produced its "rules of order." On 1 January 1692 he placed at its head his former tutor, Nikita Zotov, awarding him the titles "Most holy lord Ianikita, archbishop of Press-burg and patriarch of all the Iauza region and Kukui" and "prince-pope" (Pressburg was the fortress on the Iauza River that Peter’s army had stormed, and Kukui a stream that ran through the German Quarter, which was thus also called "Kukui"); the "Council" likewise had a conclave of twelve cardinals. Peter himself performed a deacon’s duties. The first commandment for members of the "Council" was daily drunkenness. Upon initiation, new members were asked, not "do you believe?" but "do you drink?" Some of its rituals cannot be described, because of their indecency.

If that last sentence makes you wonder when the book was written, the answer is 1996 (!), but by a Russian (and helpfully translated into English for the Mildreds of the world). Robert Massie, 16 years earlier, had no trouble describing the rituals for his audience. Oh, Russia.

So Charles XII goes overnight from drunken bear falling out window to...I'm genuinely trying to think of a comparison here. FW founded the anti-sobriety society, the Spartans had gay sex, uptight Victorian gentlemen were in prostitutes up to their ears (or such is my impression of the "not my period" century)...anyway, some extreme of abstemiousness.

The thing that makes me hesitate is that there are dozens of biographies that describe Fritz exactly like this. Including the total lack of sex, or interest in women. And the whole glorified military hero thing is going to have very similar influences on the historiography of C12 and Fritz.

Anyway, like literally everything else I say about C12, take that with a grain of salt, but this is what all my sources are telling me so far.

Incidentally, I've mentioned that C12's dad was like a sane FW. One of the historians I read, I forget which one, says that C11 was such a workaholic he even made monarchs like Fritz and Joseph II look like slouches. I instinctively bristled :P, but then I remembered that Fritz had actual hobbies and a life, so while he was constantly busy and productive, if you're only counting state business, then yeah, the music, poetry, art collecting, Classics and French literature studying, round table conversations, talking to Voltaire, talking about Voltaire, reading Voltaire, writing to Voltaire, reading Voltaire's letters aloud, and petting his dogs, would count against him. So fine. :P

Anyway, sane C11 might have played a role in how C12 turned out. He was chill! Not, I hasten to add, when it came to fighting wars or performing feats. But when it came to interacting with people one-on-one. C12 was the anti-scapegoater. In fact, he bent over backwards so much to find out the good about everyone that contemporary Swedes joked that the best way to have your merits brought to the King's attention was to have someone accuse you of wrongdoing. When his generals lost a battle, he would make excuses about how the oral orders he'd given them probably weren't totally clear, and anyway shit happens.

AW: !!!

Also in Opposite Fritz Land:

1. No interest in the fine arts, although he did enjoy attending French plays.
2. Loved math, was apparently very good at math, would visit universities to chat about it with the professors, felt up to a whole new system of arithmetic notation. :P
3. Big on personal hygiene.
4. Preferred German to all other languages, inc. Swedish. Understood French but refused to speak it.
5. Did get to learn Latin and became fluent enough to have conversations with university professors in it.

When he was told that he should learn French so that he could show French ambassadors appropriate honor by being able to speak to them without an interpreter, he said that an ambassador coming to Sweden should honor the country they were in by speaking Swedish. Point for Charles!

ETA: Deep and apparently sincere personal piety, obviously, a big one in Opposite Fritz Land. The interesting thing is that he apparently replaced "Providence" with "Fate/Chance" in his writing in his later years (after Poltava, maybe? I'm going from memory) and historians debate whether that was just a linguistic habit or whether he actually stopped being quite so committed to his religion. To all appearances, though, he did remain a believer until the end. He used to tell his men that God decided when you died, and no bullet would hit you until God had decreed it. But when that moment came, it didn't matter whether you were on a battlefield or in your bed, you were doomed. The point here being that you should charge fearlessly into battle, trusting God, and never hesitate or think that you would be safer off the battlefield. And like Fritz, he put himself in an amount of danger that freaked his immediate circle out but made his soldiers willing to keep fighting to the bitter end.

Edited Date: 2021-11-16 11:30 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

C11 as the sane FW. They both were big into enriching the crown by acquiring lands from the nobility. I'm not entirely sure, but my impression is that FW paid for his when they became vacant, whereas C11 was more like, "The Crown giveth and the Crown taketh away."

This ended up casting a long shadow. In the short-term, he made Sweden into a financially solvent state after his predecessor's ruinous wars. In the long-term...Well, it's a bit of a long story, settle in.

Sweden conquered Livonia, modern-day Latvia, in the seventeenth century. The local nobles had been promised that they would be exempt from the taking away of their estates, called reduction. And then C11 kept reducing their estates!

One Livonian noble, Johann Patkul, protested. Vehemently. In person to the king. C11 was like, "You seem upright and honest, and I like the way you spoke frankly. But I'm not changing my mind." So Patkul went off and wrote an inflammatory pamphlet, which resulted in C11 having him placed under the death penalty.

So Patkul decides to take Livonia back from the Swedes. He goes in person and (according to the books I've been reading, single-handedly, although that might be a little too neat to be true), convinced Frederik IV of Denmark, Peter the Great, and August the Strong that making war on Sweden when C12 was just a teenager was just the thing to do! One of my sources says he convinced August that the northern Baltic territories would support the campaign to make Poland a hereditary monarchy. August was all over that!

Now Charles is in a three-front war. He's not happy with Patkul.

Energetic and active, Patkul keeps moving around the courts of the major players in the war, advising them on how to conduct the war.

Eventually, he pisses off August/the Saxons enough that they have him arrested for treason and locked up. Peter the Great keeps trying to intercede for him, pleading for mercy and to have Patkul handed over to the Russians (who are much less pissed off at him) instead. August wavers.

He waits too long. After Charles has conquered Sweden, he demands the extradition of certain prisoners, ESPECIALLY Patkul. August, knowing that of all the people pissed off at Patkul, Charles is the MOST pissed off, is like, "Wait, no, can I get out of this?"

Charles: NOW, buddy.

Patkul: *ends up in Swedish captivity*

European monarchs: Have mercy on him!

Charles: You are confusing my chill toward my generals with my total lack of chill toward my enemies. This guy single-handedly started a three-front war against my country, which was minding its own business, to take advantage of my youth!

Patkul is broken on the wheel and decapitated. To quote Wikipedia:

Differing slightly, the accounts agree that Patkul, after a prolonged process of breaking his bones with the wheel, begged for his decapitation (crying "Kopf ab!") and rolled to the block on his own; the following decapitation did however not succeed until after several strikes.

See how we have a block here, meaning an axe was used, and several strikes were needed. Which is why I, if I were a murderer, would prefer to use a sword, in the hilarious words of

luzula.

Btw, 19th century historian Bain says that while history has generally been kind to Patkul (Massie certainly has), treating him as a fearless patriot, he was actually quite awful to his peasants and just wanted the freedom to continue oppressing them.

Me, raised on stories of the slave-owning Founding Fathers: I don't know if it's true in this particular case, but the logic checks out!

Edited Date: 2021-11-17 12:18 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

For

cahn.

FW: I will put a bear in Gundling's room!

Roman Emperor Elagabalus, many centuries earlier: I will put bears in everyone's room!¹

Ivan the Terrible: I will set bears on people just to see what happens!²

Charles XII: I will get the bear so drunk it falls out the window to its death!

Gian Gastone: Ooh, you have bears? I want to see the bears! Bring me the bears.

*shortly thereafter*

GG: I'm so turned on rn. I want to have sex with--

Mildred: Please don't say the bear.

GG: The bear-handler. He's such a big brawny guy, yum.

Mildred: Oh, thank god.

GG: Also his two young assistants, also hot stuff.

Mildred: Still could be worse.

GG: The bear-handler and his boys³ will be added to my collection of male prostitutes.

Mildred: I already know about the collection of male prostitutes and so am not batting an eye!

GG: One night, the bear-handler will be drunk in his room when I get a hankering for him. I'm drunk also, it goes without saying. I will have him brought to me. But he's so drunk he doesn't want to get out of bed. But I'm the Grand Duke, and my pimp/boyfriend/life partner Giuliano will force him to come to my room. For more drinking, of course!

Mildred: Yep, sounds about right.

GG: We're having a great time, right up until I unleash a "prodigious vomit" all over his face and chest. I'm still having a great time, because I totally have a vomit fetish!

Mildred: ...Okay, you got me. I figured out you had an alcoholism fetish, but this one I didn't see coming.

GG: But he's furious and starts beating me black and blue to within an inch of my life. I bleat a little but am not really up for defending myself. Giuliano and other servants overhear the commotion and come running to save me from imminent death.

Mildred: Well, I don't blame him...

GG: Neither do I! In fact, he doesn't get punished at all and continues to draw his salary and live peaceably in Florence, probably because elsewhere in this narrative it's been recounted that I'm totally into getting beaten up and make the Ruspanti do it to me all the time!

Mildred: This narrative isn't very reliable, is it?

GG and Giuliano Dami, in unison: God no. Please treat this anonymous manuscript like the National Enquirer of the 18th century and don't believe anything you read about us in it. Unlike Harold Acton, who took it as gospel in his book.⁴

FW: My bears are the best attested!

Mildred and Gundling: ...That's not exactly a point in your favor.

Notes:

1. This is from a source that's so dubious that it's questionable how much it was even ever meant as history, so you shouldn't believe this happened so much as be aware that this is a story that was told and some people have believed it.

2. According to Massie in his Peter the Great bio. Not from any reliable source on Ivan the Terrible, which I have yet to read (but am starting to look into).

3. Called "boys", but the ages of the other "boys" that are given in the text as GG's prostitutes are around twenty, so not necessarily pedophilia here.

4. About which more when I've done some more research in the Italian books that draw on actual archival material that I recently bought and have started reading.

Edited Date: 2021-11-20 06:25 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I'm genuinely trying to think of a comparison here. FW founded the anti-sobriety society, the Spartans had gay sex, uptight Victorian gentlemen were in prostitutes up to their ears (or such is my impression of the "not my period" century)...anyway, some extreme of abstemiousness.

ETA: Obviously many individuals throughout history have been famously hardcore! I'm just trying to think of either a big name from the Fritzian fandom, or groups of people whose name became a byword for self-denial. Monks, I suppose, although as an analogy that's narrowed to sexual self-denial from the original many forms of self-denial they practiced.

Btw, Charles was apparently not a prude, unlike FW, and did find sex talk and sex jokes compatible with his form of piety. It was actual sex, including in marriage, that either held no charms for him or else he was worried that it would hold way, way too many charms. (After the drunken bear, I can see why he might not want to take the risk!)

From:

cahn

Okay, this is AWESOME. This is better than tragic Fredersdorf because different -- I mean, not that I wouldn't have appreciated tragic!Fredersdorf too, that is definitely one of my tropes (see also opera!Rodrigo, lol), but between your and

selenak's info this is a hilarious combo of a) real-life heist/con-artist/trolling-everyone (and yes, these are also the buttons that Voltaire pushes, only, like, if he and Fritz had planned together to troll the entire world they would really be my OTP) and b) comeuppance, and I am here for this :D

His head fell at the first blow, and his body was buried on the spot.

Heh, I also thought like you did, at least it only took one blow :P

Also, I would read the hell out of fic about these two and their crazy partnership. :D I don't care if they had sex, that's the least important part here.

SECONDED.

Yay, I'm so glad I asked about this guy :D

From:

cahn

in Görtz' case, they even had to invent a law (against giving "bad advice") to justify it!

...wow!

Yep, Weddenkop definitely thought in 1719: "There is a God! Thank you, Lord. If ever someone had it coming..."

Heh. I'm glad for Weddenkop that at least he got his karma moment in the middle of all that, ugh. Though I must say this makes me more fascinated with Görtz rather than otherwise; it's kind of the cherry on the cake that he gets what he had coming to him!

From:

cahn

ahahahaha! :D :P

From:

selenak

Btw, 19th century historian Bain says that while history has generally been kind to Patkul (Massie certainly has), treating him as a fearless patriot, he was actually quite awful to his peasants and just wanted the freedom to continue oppressing them.

Me, raised on stories of the slave-owning Founding Fathers: I don't know if it's true in this particular case, but the logic checks out!

Well, quite. Tim Blanning wrote a review of the latest G3 biography for the London Review of Books, which seems looks like it‘s general tone is „G3: Slandered by Americans from Thomas Jefferson to Lin Manuel Miranda“ , „G3: A Much Better Man Than Most Of Your Founding Fathers Put Together“ and, to quote a contemporary (Samuel Johnson), „Taxation No Tyranny (Damn Yankee Tax Dodgers)“. Ever since reading the mighty rethoric welded against G3 in the American Revolution it always amused me that of all the Hannover Kings, Farmer George, arguably really the nicest, most virtuous of the bunch (and not just because he was the only one to not cheat on his wife), got to stand in for British Tyranny (tm), presumably because „Damn the British Parliament and British PM!“ doesn‘t have the same ring to it, but I‘m baffled this is treated as something new (either by the book or Blanning as the reviewer). (And it’s absolutely hysterically funny that Miranda writes him as the embodiment of Britpop, given that G3 didn’t have a flamboyant bone in his body. That’s what his son the Regent, aka Prinny, is there for.) I mean, maybe it‘s relatively new in the US? Despite Alan Bennett having an international stage and film hit with „The Madness of George III“ decades ago? Literary efforts aside, I don‘t recall G3 being presented as evil in my school days.

Otoh, it‘s a bit rich if the biography argues the slave owning Founding Fathers (plural, because it‘s cheap to pretend Jefferson was the only one - he so was not!) are worse than G3 because of the slave owning; the man did head an Empire which wasn‘t founded on paid labor, to put it mildly. On the third hand, Blanning‘s review claims the book argues that the first legal successes of the anti-slavery movement in Britain directly (notably the case that forms the heart of the movie Dido) contributed to the Colonials wanting their independence.

Aaaanyway: wanting independence for yourself while oppressing someone else really is a fine international tradition. To choose some non-British, non-US example that hits closer to home, the German states sold the war against Napoleon as the „Freiheitskriege“, with „liberty from the French Yoke“ being a big catch word. Except, of course, that a lot of the German freedom fighters also wanted the freedom to take back the granting of all civil rights to Jews, which they promptly did once the French were gone.

C11 and FW: another bit of difference might be that FW managed to actually sell most of his nobility on this whole service to the state (as many sons in the army as possible)/Prussia austerity idea by basically inventing the whole „Prussian mentality“ concept? Not single-handedly; like I noted in my write ups of the two F1 biographies, F1‘s teacher Danckelmann comes across as a proto FW style Prussian two generations early. But still. It‘s undeniable that if you compare Prussia pre FW‘s reign to Prussia ever after, FW managed a large scale mentality change - did C11 anything comparable?

From:

selenak

I do suspect the letters are at the Italy Trip Website, which after all wants to document Wilhelmine‘s Italian (and French) journey as detailed as possible, but what mystifies me is why they didn‘t put the diary up while they were at it - presumably copyright again, like with Lehndorff‘s diary (first volume) cunningly republished just when the copyright for Schmidt-Lötzen‘s translation runs out.

Anyway, I very much look forward to reading the Italian diary!

From:

selenak

Lövenörn is an intriguing man of mystery! Maybe Katte was trying to sound out the Danes as a possible alternate escape destination but had to learn they‘d most likely hand Fritz back to his Dad. (Whereas they could be reasonably sure G2 wouldn‘t, due to FW dislike trumping dislike of uppity sons named Fritz?)

Danube: you can say that again. My first thought, btw, wasn‘t „Vienna“ but „Regensburg“, presumably due to having recently been there. But also because of the Perpetual Diet. (Maybe Katte went with someone on semi-official business?). Other German Danube towns are Passau and Ingolstadt (the later has a university where Victor Frankenstein studies in Mary Shelley‘s novel), and Kelheim (didn‘t FW stop there at the trip of doom?).

But what this does is add to my increasing awareness that Fritz and Katte did not have very long to get to know each other.

That is very true, and perhaps a reason why my mind insists on refusing to come up with scenarios where they are a happy long term couple. It‘s too much like a Romeo and Juliet thing - brief, intense as hell, but by its very nature tragic and short. Though I like your idea that Katte was a milder Keyslerlingk and maybe a living Katte would have been treated by Fritz the same way (much favored, but kept far from politics). BTW, what would then have become of Keyserlingk Actual? Not to mention all the other boyfriends, with or without (depending on the AU) Fredersdorf included….

From:

mildred_of_midgard

On the third hand, Blanning‘s review claims the book argues that the first legal successes of the anti-slavery movement in Britain directly (notably the case that forms the heart of the movie Dido) contributed to the Colonials wanting their independence.

I never learned this in school (perhaps for obvious reasons!), but I have run into it recently, forget where (might have been Blanning), and I made a mental note to look into it at some point. Would not surprise me!

FW managed a large scale mentality change - did C11 anything comparable?

Not sure, would need to reread the C11 section. It's worth noting that another monarch who wanted to create the same mentality change, with eerily similar rhetoric, was Peter the Great. He had more success than you might imagine, but much, much less than FW.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Maybe Katte was trying to sound out the Danes as a possible alternate escape destination but had to learn they‘d most likely hand Fritz back to his Dad.

Maybe! Kloosterhuis cites a whole book on Prussian-Danish relations 1688-1789, which I don't feel up to reading yet (as it's in German, naturally), but am keeping on my mental list for our Danish ambassador.

Ooh, hmm, this is interesting! I had always been convinced by biographical dictionaries plus Koser that Lövenörn was back in Denmark when Katte was executed, which was too bad because I wanted to read his take on the execution. But Kloosterhuis does cite a footnote, from same said book about Prussian-Danish relations, in which Lövenörn's Nov 5 report reads, Katte habe bei der Verlesung des Todesurteils alle ,Contenance‘ verloren und sei in Tränen ausgebrochen. "Katte lost all composure during the reading of the death sentence and broke into tears."

Which is interesting in two respects: 1. Was Lövenörn still in Prussia, or was he writing reports from Denmark using his sources? 2. This contradicts the Wilhelmine-Pöllnitz tradition that he heard his sentence without changing color. And anything the Danish ambassadors, with their good sources, say in November 5, 1730 has way more credibility than anything Wilhelmine says a decade later.

Hmm, this book suddenly seems more interesting.

33 euros and who knows how many months for US shipping. Sigh.

selenak, can I implore you to use one of your Stabi slots on this this book next month and tell me if it's any good, before I spend this money sight unseen?

Maybe Katte was trying to sound out the Danes as a possible alternate escape destination but had to learn they‘d most likely hand Fritz back to his Dad.

Yeah, so my two questions are: What was Katte *officially* doing in Denmark (presumably not sounding out Danesa about escape routes), and what were he and Lövenörn *possibly* doing behind the scenes?

Also, it is still interesting to me that Aunt Melusine was probably also not going to be the escape supporter that we thought she was.

Poor Fritz.

My first thought, btw, wasn‘t „Vienna“ but „Regensburg“, presumably due to having recently been there. But also because of the Perpetual Diet.

Hmm, perhaps!

Oh, wait, he was an assistant

It‘s too much like a Romeo and Juliet thing - brief, intense as hell, but by its very nature tragic and short.

Yeah, I've made the exact same comparison. "I love you! I barely know you, but I will die for you! If I knew you longer, I'd probably be less enthusiastic about the dying, but right now LET'S DO IT!"

Does not make a whiff of difference to my brain's desire to FIX THIS, by coming up with long-term happiness scenarios. :P

BTW, what would then have become of Keyserlingk Actual?

Oh, I imagine he would have been unaffected. Fritz liked to have a collection of people he loved around him, and one more or less wouldn't make a difference.

Not to mention all the other boyfriends, with or without (depending on the AU) Fredersdorf included….

Now, this is more of a question mark for me. I think they both would have hit on Algarotti, let's be real. :P Suhm, no change. Voltaire...not sure what Katte would have made of that. :P Keith, well, it depends on the AU. If the three of them end up in exile together, I've always wondered to what extent Fritz has moved on from Keith to Katte and Keith is <3, vs. they make it work. (I'm making them make it work in the fix-it fic, obvs. :P)

Fredersdorf is the really, really big question. If Katte sees that Fritz means to rule alone and doesn't let anyone have influence, maybe he accepts that things are different than in his grandfather's day, and he's content with his artistic/intellectual role. But if he sees that the town musician's son gets more insight into affairs and treasury control than he does...maybe he doesn't like that. And so I'm with you on it being difficult to find a scenario in which they peacefully coexist.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Hee, I'm glad you liked! Yeah, the trickster figure aspects that appeal to me in Voltaire are definitely here, and the teamwork is what clinches it for me. :DDD

a) real-life heist/con-artist/trolling-everyone (and yes, these are also the buttons that Voltaire pushes, only, like, if he and Fritz had planned together to troll the entire world they would really be my OTP)

Yes this!!

and b) comeuppance, and I am here for this :D

See, for me it's less about the comeuppance and more about I just REALLY LIKE terrible people, what can I say? See,

prinzsorgenfrei's "if people can't handle you at your starting wars with your neighbours and being a dick about it, they don't deserve you at your composing sonatas with a tiny spoiled puppy on your lap" makes me laugh, because the things that made me fall instantly for Fritz back in the day were:

- Starting wars with his neighbors and being a dick about it.
- Winning (most of) his battles.
- Abandoning the French as soon as he had Silesia and leaving them to duke it out with Austria.
- SNARK.
- Writing the Anti-Machiavel right before invading his neighbors and being a dick about it. Younger me was convinced that I knew better than historians and this was totally a cunning plan to make everyone not see his reign coming. Older me is wiser and sadder, i.e. still with the love of trickster figures and still disappointed to have concluded that this wasn't actually the case. :P

In other words, it does nothing for me that this guy died because he deserved to die, what pushes my buttons is that one, he deserved to die, and two, he died as soon as his protector and collaborator was gone.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

We'll always have Zeithain, I guess?

If any of our German speakers are interested, thanks to Kloosterhuis' footnotes and my obsession therewith, the Frederician library now contains a 50-page overview of every depiction, written or visual, of the Zeithain camp that the 1906 article author could get his hands on. (Or such is my impression.) There might be some goodies in there, especially since yours truly starts her fix-it fic's AU divergence point with a successful escape from Zeithain, and is thus always on the lookout for more details about the camp.

From skimming, I see that Meissen porcelain was first used as a dinner service at Zeithain? That's cool. Fritz must have been impressed, when not busy being beaten up by Dad and trying to get his boyfriend to run away with him.