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

Reminder for

cahn, SD of Celle is

- SD's mother
- G1's wife
- Grandmother of Fritz
- Locked up for life after the discovery of her adultery with her lover.
- Lover Philipp von Königsmarck, "disappeared," probably killed and thrown into the river.
- Their letters were coded.
- Some of which were stolen by Ulrike and sent to Fritz!

The Debate
Historians: Philipp von Königsmarck and SDC were totally about to run away when they were caught!

Hatton: They definitely wanted to and wrote about it in their letters, but we now know they had no concrete plans.

Mildred: How do we "know" this?

Hatton: One, Königsmarck had to join his regiment.

Mildred: But the whole point of running away is not fulfilling your responsibilities?

Hatton: But he had given orders for everything to be ready for his arrival!

Mildred: Yes? If you don't behave like everything is normal, then you get caught even sooner? *cough* Fritz.

Hatton: But they didn't have the money to support SDC in a style that she would accept. *adduces evidence for this*

Mildred: Okay, maybe, but this isn't the strongest case I've ever seen. Moving on!

Historians: G1 was totally at fault for the events of the night of K's disappearance!

Hatton: He was in Berlin at the time!

Author of the G2 bio in the English Monarchs Series that comes right after Hatton's G1 bio: How convenient! He probably planned to be away at the time in order to have an alibi.

Hatton: No, his parents, Ernst August and Sophia, may have arranged for him to be away while they plotted the murder, but G1 himself only found out several weeks later.

Mildred: Evidence?

Hatton: Innocent until proven guilty. Moving on! But the legend that he caught SDC in flagrante and ran her lover through with a sword is right out.

Mildred: With you there.

Historians: G1 wanted to divorce SDC.

Hatton: Not so! She pushed for divorce. He tried really hard to reconcile with her, with the help of the jurists on the divorce court. Everyone was invested in a reconciliation except SDC, who thought that divorce was the key to her freedom.

Historians: G1 kept her locked up forever!

Hatton: Her daughter, SD of Prussia, tried to negotiate for an amnesty in 1725, but SDC refused! She would only agree to leave her house arrest if her name was cleared, it was stated that she had never done anything wrong, and she received compensation for wrongs suffered. Forgiveness would mean acknowledging that she had done anything wrong.

Mildred: Well, she kind of didn't, or at least not the kind that gets men like her husband locked up when they do it.

Hatton: Besides, she didn't think she needed her daughter's help with getting free, because she was counting on the Jacobites to save her. The Jacobites were the main reason she was kept locked up so long, btw.

SD: Well, that's fine, Mom, since I can't afford to negotiate on your behalf anyway until after my raison d'etre is settled, i.e. the double marriage of my two oldest kids to their cousins. But I'm sure that'll happen any day now! (1725)

Mildred: :'-(

Conclusion
I'm not convinced G1 is much less at fault than I was before (I guess the well-documented lengthy and apparently sincere attempts to reconcile were new), but it *was* interesting to see all of SDC's agency in this.

Misc
1. The divorce suit papers were destroyed, historians suspect by G2, and reconstructed in the 19th century based on the detailed notes of one of the judges.

2. When G1 read SDC's letters, he got to read about such things as

his wife's intense desire for his death in battle, and her poor opinion of him as a lover when compared to Philipp Christoph.

I mean, I believe he was a better lover! And this is why society needs no-fault divorces, then you don't have to wish for your spouse's death!

3. The details we have on what happened to Königsmarck are from Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick (cousin of our Anton Ulrich), who apparently had remarkably good sources. Hatton says she would be inclined to disbelieve what he wrote, if not for

Professor Schnath's discovery that Don Nicolò Montalbano (usually called Montalban), the Italian who had endeared himself to the family during the work on the new Osnabrück palace, had settled on him shortly after 1/11 July the sum of 150,000 Taler from Ernst August's coffers. A princely reward, indeed, if it is taken into account that Montalban's salary was 200 Taler a year and that of the highest-paid electoral minister 1,500. Reward for what? It seems inescapable that this was payment for his services on 1/11 July and, at the same time, silence-money: the sum was to be paid by regular quarterly instalments. The other courtiers mentioned in Mencken's despatch were also devoted to the house: von Stubenvol was a Palatinate-born Kammerjunker who had married a natural daughter of Ernst August's; von Klencke was Oberkammerjunker to Ernst August; and Freiherr von Eltz was Hofmeister to young Georg August. All were men who could be expected to take firm action lest the newly-won dignity be besmirched by the scandal of an elopement. The identification of Nicolò Montalban (for there were several of that family name at the Hanoverian court) made by Schnath lends strong credence to the correctness of the rest of Anton Ulrich's information: the names of the other courtiers involved and the method of disposing of Königsmarck's body, sunk in the Leine river in a sack weighted with stones.

Professor Schnath, remember, is this guy, whom

selenak has told us about before.

4. The official story was that Königsmarck Never Happened, and the divorce was officially because of SDC's refusal to cohabit with her husband, apropos of nothing at all and certainly no better alternatives that she did want to live with.

5. Sister Aurora von Königsmarck, mistress of August the Strong, was "indefatigable" in her quest to try to find out what happened to her brother. :(

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, wait, he was an assistant

Lol, unfinished sentence is totally because I went, "Wait, was he?", wandered off to Kloosterhuis to check dates, got side-tracked, and forgot to come back.

So he was the Brandenburg-Schwedt cousin's "Begleiter" in the second half of 1726 and again at Zeithain in June 1730, but I'm not sure whether that means Schwedt cousin could have been a possible reason for Katte's spring 1730 missions abroad.

(I still wonder what business Hans Heinrich had sent Hans Hermann to Paris on in 1728. Perhaps

prinzsorgenfrei's Wust connections will one day turn up the answer!)

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

Hi! Sure, I can put a digital version together once I'm done. I'd probably make one for the people from Wust anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a hassle to share it ^^ Don't know when it will be done though.

From what I've seen, learning how to write Kurrent is a solid first step to learning how to read it (worked for me and some of my friends, also looks fancy on greeting cards), so if you have the time for it, that could be a fun project. Most alphabet samples I've seen online were for Kurrent around 1900, but the changes in the 400 years before that weren't too significant, so it's still a good point to start. This one's nice because it also has some ligatures, like the st:

images

The annoying parts are usually:
1. that people just write the capital letters however they want (see: The B in the Keith transcript, "Oriane", any K ever...)
2. es, ns, rs, vs... that really weird u from the Keith transcript that looked like a swirly S...
3. random Latin script instead of German script (mostly for names and words in other languages) that could be an entirely different word in the same hand's Kurrent (is it an s? is it an h? maybe a t? fuck if I know! Especially annoying if you don't actually know which name the word is supposed to be)

But it's fun. So far I know that Hans Heinrich von Katte had four dozen plates and 16 bowls polished in 1726 and possibly bought a box. And a lot of lemons and mussels.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Awesome, thanks!

Don't know when it will be done though.

Not to worry, it's not like my writing-system-challenged self is in a particular hurry to learn it! I just realized I had an opportunity here to approach it the way my brain learns things and not the way I would almost certainly be forced to approach it if I tried to formally study paleography.

From what I've seen, learning how to write Kurrent is a solid first step to learning how to read it (worked for me and some of my friends, also looks fancy on greeting cards), so if you have the time for it, that could be a fun project.

See, this is the exact thing that does not work for my brain, not even a little bit, and will guarantee that I never learn it at all. *g* What I need are reams of samples of "problem" (Kurrent) and "solution" (transcription), so that I can unleash my passive pattern recognition skills at it.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Namely, FW and Whitworth.

Intro
So Blanning, in his G1 bio, says that the Great Northern War, complex as it is, is responsible for some of the least coherent scholarship of the period (not disagreeing), but that the Whitworth bio is a particularly clear account. That was what led me to the Whitworth bio.

Where I promptly went, "What one earth are you talking about, Blanning?" I got other useful info out of the book, but as far as the GNW was concerned, I couldn't even keep up with what was going on.

Later on, I discovered that while the Whitworth bio is a terrible introduction to the GNW, once you already understand the general outline of the GNW and the side-switching, it's very valuable for the parts it covers, which is: "Excruciatingly detailed account of the negotiations involving Hanover and Prussia in the last few years of the war." (Which should tell you why it's a terrible introduction.)

So now I'm here to tell you (some of) what Whitworth, Rottembourg, and FW were up to in the late 1710s. I'll do my best to simplify, as it is confusing.

The War
Our story starts in 1714. As a reminder:

- C12 has just returned from the Ottoman Empire up to Stralsund, which is besieged.
- G1 has just become King of Great Britain.
- The War of the Spanish Succession is ending.
- FW has just become King of Prussia (1713).

The entire war can be summarized under two points:

Point 1. It starts because Sweden's neighbors want or want back territory that Sweden conquered in its 17th century glory days.
Point 2. Most of its complexities (side-switching, etc.) are due to European powers caring about the balance of power.

The balance of power is key here. In the mid 1710s, Sweden has de facto lost most of its overseas territory and is only hanging on because C12 doesn't know when he's beat. Russia is on the rise as a great power and is about to be the big winner of the war.

Motives
In the mid 1710s:
- Hanover cares about point 1 of the war: get Swedish territory!
- Prussia cares about point 1: get Swedish territory!
- Russia cares about point 1: get Swedish territory!
- Britain is starting to shift the focus of their caring to point 2: keep Russia from dominating the Baltic!
- France is with Britain.

When Whitworth is sent to Berlin in 1716 and 1719, he has to navigate these different concerns, two opposing ones being those of his boss, G1 of Hanover + Britain. (I don't envy these ambassadors, seriously.)

FW wants Swedish Pomerania, and most especially Stettin, which is a valuable port on the Oder. (EC2 will later be sent here by Fritz after her divorce from FW2.)

Motive Maps
Map 1: Pomerania before 1720 (from Wikipedia):

Notice Gartz, Fredersdorf's home town, also on the Oder in Swedish territory! Berlin is just on the very bottom of the map. To the east is Küstrin. Küstrin is on the Oder. If you follow the blue line up through Schwedt, Gartz, and Stettin to the Baltic, you'll see the territory FW wants, and why Stettin is such an important port.

Map 2: Pomerania through history (possibly copyrighted, so just linking). Focus on the second and third panels, showing what was lost in 1720.

The entire article contains lots of great maps.

G1 (as Elector of Hanover) wants Bremen and Verden, which will give Hanover some coastline along the North Sea.

Map 3: Hanover, Bremen, Verden (from Wikipedia):

Map 4: The Swedish Empire. Focus on the part that borders Russia, east and south of Finland.

This map does a pretty good job of showing why Russia was an early adopter of war on Sweden.

All the medium green stuff off to the east and south of the Baltic--Karelia, Ingria, Estland, Swedish Livonia--will be lost by Charles XII to Peter the Great. St. Petersburg will be built in Ingria. This is why Russia comes out the big winner: Peter can now build a big fleet and dominate the Baltic. What I wish this map did was show national borders, so you could explicitly see that Russia had no Baltic ports in 1700, because the Baltic was little more than a Swedish lake (as it was enviously called at the time).

So what happens in 1714 is Peter the Great has already conquered all that territory, and FW wants in on the divvying up of the Swedish empire! He makes an alliance with Peter in which he will help Peter with the war on Sweden in return for Russia's recognition of Prussian acquisition of as much of Swedish Pomerania as it can get.

But whereas Hanover is focused on map 3, territory Hanover can acquire from Sweden, in the late 1710s, Britain is focused on map 4, territory Russia has already acquired from Sweden. Britain is worried that the Baltic is going to turn into a Russian lake. This is where balance of power comes in.

Whitworth's Job
So the Brits send Whitworth to Berlin to try to get FW to leave his buddy Peter, make some territorial concessions to Sweden, and join the alliance in the north that the British are trying to form. That alliance is aimed at making sure Sweden remains a viable force that, with its allies, can keep Russian ambitions within limits.

But while Whitworth is in Berlin, back home there's a huge battle between the Hanoverian ministers ("We hate Prussia! We want territory! No alliance with Prussia, no territorial concessions to Sweden!") and the British ministers ("Win Prussia over! Support Sweden! Preserve the balance of power!"). This makes Whitworth's job extra difficult until the British ministers win out and he finally isn't getting conflicting messages.

You may remember that Whitworth was stationed in Russia in the early 1700s (and dismayed by all the drinking that meant he'd never be able to be influential there). That's where he destroyed the tobacco factory. Well, in those days, pre-Poltava (1709), England wasn't taking Russia seriously as a military or diplomatic power. Whitworth, on site and getting to know Peter, was all, "Serious threat here, people! Alarm, alarm! Do something before he gets too mighty to handle!"

And, of course, Whitworth called it. Ten years later, Britain is now getting on board, although still not as much as Whitworth would like.

So now Whitworth's job is to talk FW into abandoning Russia in favor of Hanover/Britain.

But FW is 1) eager to get all the territory he can out of Sweden, 2) not thrilled about breaking alliances, 3) reeeeally not convinced that Great Britain is in a position to protect him from his big scary powerful and soon to be angry neighbor Russia. His foreign minister Ilgen is more pro-Russia than pro-Hanover. (Ilgen is Ariane's maternal grandfather, father of the Baroness von Knyphausen who gets a cameo in "Lovers lying two and two".)

So FW goes back and forth and back and forth, trying to decide whether he's better off staying friendly with Russia, or abandoning them for the British-Hanoverian alliance and making the best deal with Sweden the British will support. This constant vacillation drives Whitworth and Rottembourg crazy. (More on Rottembourg below.)

British: Maybe we could just let FW have Stettin, but not the surrounding territory, and only for a certain number of years, like 25. Would that be okay, Charles?

Charles: You missed the part where I do not negotiate with ~~terrorists~~ invaders. Stettin is mine. Also, you idiots, if you let Prussian troops garrison a city for years at time, they will not leave it at the end of the agreed-upon time period!

[Mildred: 100% hard agree. Can you imagine telling Fritz in 1745 that he has to give up Stettin?]

After a lot of back and forth like this, suddenly everything happens all at once. Hanover signs a treaty with Sweden, getting Bremen and Verden, right as FW is prepared to sign his own treaty with Sweden, taking a good chunk (but not all) of Swedish Pomerania.

This is good news for British-Hanoverian diplomacy...Except! Except that it's going to be a lot harder to sell the Swedes on accepting their losses to Hanover if they're simultaneously losing territory to Prussia precisely because the British got involved.

So what Whitworth does (we're not sure whose idea it was, but could have been his), is backdate the signing of the treaty in Berlin to the day before the Hanover-Sweden treaty was signed. That way, the British could tell the Swedes, "Sorry, it all happened too fast! The Berlin treaty was signed by the time we made you sign the Hanover treaty." This is a lie, because Whitworth knew damn well the Swedes had already been forced to concede a lot of territory by the time he got the signatures on his own treaty forcing them to concede more territory.

The handwavy explanation was, "Well, FW had already verbally *agreed* to the treaty by that date, it's just that he then got sick with what seems to have been a stress-induced illness caused by his inability to make up his mind over whether it was okay to betray your allies or not."

(Fritz: I will have a lot of stress-related illnesses during my reign, but not that particular one!)

Conclusion
So in the end, Sweden lost almost everything but less than it could have, if not for British intervention; Hanover got what it wanted; Prussia got some of what it wanted; Russia got all the things. The alliance directed against Russia petered out because France and Britain were far away, busy with other things, and both hit by economic crashes in 1719/1720, while none of the other powers (like Prussia) were prepared to take on Russia militarily single-handedly just to preserve trade that would benefit the Brits.

Trade Addendum
Why does the trade benefit the Brits? As we learned in the Whitworth write-up, the Baltic is of key economic importance to the Brits, because that's where they get the raw materials for their navy: tar, hemp for ropes, wood for their ships... The whole tobacco conflict in the late 1690s and early 1700s was caused by the English, being mercantilists like the rest of Europe, wanting to increase their exports to Russia to balance out the imports, because the imports were so critical they simply couldn't do without them.

The whole part where England/Great Britain imports its raw materials for its navy from Baltic regions drives pretty much all of their foreign policy in the 1710s. Which I have not reported on the details of, but it's worth knowing that was their main concern and why they got involved. Because if there's one thing we know about the Brits during this period, it's that they are a naval power.

France Addendum
Toward the end of the Great Northern War, France had closed out the War of the Spanish Succession and had some free time on its hands. One thing they wanted to do was make sure everyone (read: Philip V) agreed to the terms of the peace treaties (read: Spain lost a lot of territory). The easiest way to do this, they felt, was twofold. First, ally with Britain and Prussia. Two, restore peace in the north so that Britain and Prussia would be free to focus their energies on the south (Italy, the Mediterranean, Spain), when Philip V went to war to try to get back the lost territory.

So Rottembourg was sent to Berlin with a twofold mission accordingly. One, try to get Prussia out of the Austrian camp and into the French-British camp. Two, help negotiate the Prussia-Sweden treaty so that there could be peace in the north. France would act as guarantors of the treaty. This meant his job was to help Whitworth with FW.

Whitworth, on his side, had received instructions to work with Rottembourg. One of the reasons G1 had allied with France was to get French guarantees of Bremen-Verden. As we've seen, it was weird to have England/Britain and France allied during the Second Hundred Years' War (1689-1815)! But 1716-1731 was a weird time period, diplomatically, for Europe.

[Blanning is not actually a fan of the 1720s. This passage made me laugh, especially remembering him in a different book complaining about the quality of the scholarship on the Great Northern War. Apparently the whole 1700-1730 period is Just That Complicated (TM).

Even the most gifted narrator would find it difficult to construct an account of the 1720s both coherent and interesting, or indeed either of those things. Only intense concentration and repeated reference to the chronology can reveal which abortive congress was which, which short-lived league brought which powers together, who was allied to whom, who was double-crossing whom, or whatever.]

Coda
This will probably be my last post on the GNW, at least for a while. There's one more topic that I'm interested in, and I've started reading the relevant book, George I and the Northern War. It has more side-changing! (Which I spared you guys in this post.) It has lots of references to Lövenörn and Whitworth and Rottembourg! But even in English, it's a long and dense book for someone as sleep-deprived as I am, the lack of e-book format is a definite hassle for me, and when I do have the brainpower to wrestle with something that requires concentration, I keep getting side-tracked by things like "Kloosterhuis' footnotes" and "batshit Medici" and "that August the Strong bio," all of which are in German or Italian (lol). But if I manage to work my way through it, I will report back.

Meanwhile,

cahn, I don't expect you to follow the diplomatic maneuverings and lack of gossipy sensationalism in this post without a lot more repetition, but I tried to use it to repeat some things we've already covered.

selenak, I hope it's a little more useful for you. Mostly, I'm going to forget all this shortly, so it's good to have it written down so I can put it in Rheinsberg. Big GNW write-up coming up.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Tangentially related to your Algarotti comic...

Okay, so, I'm just starting to dig into the batshit Medici, but in the interests of sharing the gossipy sensationalism bit by bit so I don't get overwhelmed by having to write everything up when I'm done with a bunch of books, I feel the need to share this bit of hilarity that doesn't require much context.

Context is modern biographer of Giuliano Dami talking about how almost everything we know about Giuliano is probably a lie since it comes from a tabloid equivalent and not the archives. And even archives are iffy. But the one thing we can be sure we know, is this guy was HOT.

Why?

Non è dettato da retorica nazionalistica o campanilistica affermare che l'Italia intera, la Toscana in particolare e Firenze soprattutto, non sono soltanto culla di bellezze artistiche ma anche patria di un incantevole popolo dalle armoniose forme, senza pari al mondo.

It is not dictated by nationalistic or parochial rhetoric to affirm that the whole of Italy, Tuscany in particular and Florence above all, are not only the cradle of artistic beauty but also the home of an enchanting people with harmonious shapes, unparalleled in the world.

Says the Florentine. :D

Fritz: Venetians. Definitely Venetians.

Algarotti: Venetian or Florentine, either way, we're more passionate than you northerners!

Nel tardo Seicento, a Firenze come nel contado, quale che fosse allora il concetto di bellezza fisica, la presenza di un bel giovane non era certamente una rarità degna di essere tramandata ai posteri.

In the late seventeenth century, in Florence as in the countryside, whatever the concept of physical beauty was then, the presence of a handsome young man was certainly not a rarity worthy of being handed down to posterity.

So if contemporaries keep pointing out that Giuliano Dami was so hot that he rose from obscurity to the top of the pecking order in Tuscany, by seducing Grand Duke Gian Gastone de' Medici, the guy who had upward of 300 male prostitutes, we know Giuliano must have been REALLY SOMETHING.

Several things in this preface have made me ROFL and also think, "This might not be the most objective historian ever." But at least he prints hundreds of pages of primary sources, so I'll take what I can get. There aren't exactly a ton of Giuliano Dami bios out there.

Other ways in which the author (Alberto Bruschi) caused my eyebrows to go up:

1. Acknowledge that he's a novelist at heart trying to write history. Fine, so far. Many people are good at both! Some of us in salon, even, to differing degrees. But then he produces pages of what is apparently self-therapy trying to convince himself to stick to the facts. The entire passage reads as though he's inventing the genre of history, and trying to convince a readership that has never read anything but novels that it's okay and possibly even advantageous to write history, and not elaborate it with made up details and dialogues.

As someone who picked up this book expecting history, this felt a little unnecessary. Or like something you write for yourself as self-therapy but then don't print. :P But okay. You do you, Bruschi.

(Horowski gives us the best of both worlds, and that's why I love him.)

2. Open and close the book by interpreting Giuliano's life through the lens of the author's personal devout Catholicism. Well, I guess it doesn't hurt for the reader to know the author feels *that* strongly on the subject before setting out?

I'm only a few pages into the book because I took the opportunity of my interlinear translation to try to beef up my Italian a little. I saw the final sentence only because I was preparing the digitized file. At some point I'll probably start just reading the English.

At any rate, will report back when I have more info!

The tabloid translated into English by Harold Acton, devout believer of tabloids, btw, was hilarious and also OMGWTF D:. Both the tabloid proper and the two prefaces. I'm only holding off on fully reporting on it because I want to have read the 1990s archive-oriented history first, so I can critique it properly.

But for now I'll just report, from the 1930 prefaces, that not only was GG's wife super ugly, anyone who knows how ugly a German widow can be will sympathize with GG and his alcoholism, gambling, and over-the-top sexual profligacy. Just FYI,

selenak.

*facepalm*

(See also: why I haven't finished the book on G1 and the GNW. Things like this are super distracting!)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

to what extent Fritz has moved on from Keith to Katte and Keith is <3

Too late to edit, but that was supposed to be </3.

From:

luzula

OMG. I don't know how this has passed me by, but I did not know this stuff. My opinion of G1 is, uh, rather considerably lowered.

The Jacobites were the main reason she was kept locked up so long, btw.

What? Why?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ooh, I see I was presupposing a backstory that never made it into Rheinsberg. Yeah, so first G1 cheated on his wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle with Melusine, then she cheated on him, then because of double standards, her lover got "disappeared" one night while she got locked up and forbidden to see her children for the rest of her life (some 30 years).

We used to think that SD (Fritz's mother) never communicated with her mother, but then

felis turned up some letters that prove otherwise, see https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/183223.html?thread=3199159#cmt3199159 and https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/184453.html?thread=3205509#cmt3205509.

The Jacobites were the main reason she was kept locked up so long, btw.

What? Why?

Because when your husband locks you up for decades because you cheated on him, and your lover was murdered in connection with this, you might be highly motivated to help overthrow him! SDC would have been a very powerful piece in the chess game of Hanovers vs. Jacobites, and G1 knew this.

So first, he wanted to prevent any scandal that would block the gambit to have Hanover made into an electorate (something that didn't happen until about 1708). By then, he knew he was in line to be King of England, and he didn't want anything messing with that. And there were enough Jacobite uprisings and conspiracies (the Jacobites tried to drag C12 into the mess too, but he was having none of it) in the 1708-1725 period that G1, whatever personal animus he may or may not have still felt in the 1720s, just really had an incentive to keep her under guard, far away from any Jacobites. While she was apparently (per Hatton) corresponding and conspiring to get out on her terms, which definitely did not include any admission of wrongdoing on her part.

From:

luzula

Yeah, so first G1 cheated on his wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle with Melusine, then she cheated on him, then because of double standards, her lover got "disappeared" one night while she got locked up and forbidden to see her children for the rest of her life (some 30 years).

That is some spectacular double standards.

Because when your husband locks you up for decades because you cheated on him, and your lover was murdered in connection with this, you might be highly motivated to help overthrow him! SDC would have been a very powerful piece in the chess game of Hanovers vs. Jacobites, and G1 knew this.

Ah, okay, that makes sense.

the Jacobites tried to drag C12 into the mess too, but he was having none of it

I just read about that, actually! According to my source (Daniel Szechi) Sweden was actively flirting with the Jacobites because of being at war with Hanover. Maybe they never actually meant to commit, but still, it was probably a good way of getting concessions from Britain/Hanover just to make them stop considering it. Quoting from Szechi's book:

In February 1715, a syndicate of forty Tory financiers secretly offered to provide Sweden with a much needed loan of £200,000 (a huge sum in contemporary terms) on the understanding that Charles XII would invade Britain as soon as he could.¹⁰ The Swedes were definitely interested, but nothing was concluded before the ’15 intervened. When the dust settled on that affair, however, it was likely that the two sides would re-engage, and this indeed proved to be the case in August 1716 when the overtures of the Swedish ambassador to Paris, Count Erik Sparre, drew a prompt, positive response from the Jacobites. Within a short time the Swedish ambassador to Britain, Count Karl Gyllenborg, and his superior, Charles XII’s éminence grise, Baron Georg Heinrich von Görtz, were deeply involved in talks with prominent Jacobites, such as Atterbury and Mar, in Britain and France. As in 1715, what the Jacobites were offering was a substantial loan to be raised by the Jacobite movement in Britain and the diaspora in return for a Swedish invasion of northern England by an army of about 10,000 men.¹¹ The Swedish diplomats, while sympathetic to the Jacobites’ objectives, refused definitively to commit their master to waging war directly on Britain, but the negotiations nonetheless proceeded.¹²

In 1717, Charles was given a "loan" of £90,000 pounds, but then G1 got wind of it and arrested Gyllenborg. Charles had never made a real commitment but I'm sure he appreciated the money. Then later negotiations started up again, Spain also got into the deal, but then Charles was shot.

Maybe you had read all this already! I see that a few of the references are to Hatton but not all of them.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yep, have read about this in multiple places! My sources agree that while Gyllenborg and Görtz got involved in talks with the Jacobites and borrowed money, as soon as Charles found out, he was like, "Nope, nope, nope, I don't overthrow hereditary monarchs, and you have to pay that money back to the Jacobites pronto." (Elective monarchs were fine to overthrow, which was why he was all about forcing an election to put his own puppet on the throne of Poland. Election just didn't carry as much sacred legitimacy with him.)

But some points my sources differ on.

Hatton says that when Görtz got arrested in connection with his Jacobite conspiring, it wasn't because G1 thought there was a serious threat from Sweden, but because G1 wanted to use the threat of a conspiracy to rally his supporters around him.

Whereas another source (I forget, but probably Henrik Lunde), says that while Charles would never overthrow a hereditary monarch, he wasn't above keeping G1 guessing about whether he would use the Swedish invasion of Norway (the campaign that C12 died in) to invade Scotland from across the North Sea. That threat would force the Brits to divert ships to patrolling the North Sea, which would mean less naval force in the main theater of operations, the Baltic Sea, which was what Charles really cared about.

What is true, I do not know.

(I've also read that Charles hedged in other cases that if there was an *internal* resurrection and a king got overthrown, he might decide to support the new king on the grounds "will of the people" and all that. But here we're getting into the part where I've read several secondary sources on Charles but haven't done a deep dive into reliability.)

From:

luzula

Did he pay the money back, though? And yeah, I also got the bit where diverting RN from the Baltic is what C12 really cared about here.

Oh, and you might appreciate this hilarious bit from the same book:

The last encounter between the Jacobites and Sweden, in 1784, was motivated, however, not by any desire to restore Charles Edward (by then Charles ‘III’) to his putative thrones, but by Gustav III’s obsession with the notion of gaining control of Europe’s network of Freemasons. Swedish Masonic mythology ascribed to Charles Edward the secret headship of the ‘Templar’ Masonic order. Gustav correspondingly believed Charles could supply him with the authority to command the allegiance of these lodges from one end of the Continent to the other. Charles Edward, who knew of the legend and that it was bogus but was running short of drinking money, duly milked him of some ready cash and required Gustav to arrange a financial separation with Charles Edward’s estranged wife, Louise von Stolberg. Gustav successfully accomplished this, then persuaded Charles to transfer his ‘authority’ and promptly decamped, leaving Charles Edward waiting in vain for the lucrative payments he had been led to expect.²²

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, right, I remember this! I think it's in Horowski. Or someone else, but I remember reading it in German, and he's our hilarious tidbits guy.

(I may well have learned it in my Jacobite days*, but if so I forgot and had to relearn it in the last 2 years.)

* I did actually read a lot about the Jacobite+various weird societies/legends/occult connections, so it's quite likely I got this anecdote but forgot, since at the time I had no idea who Gustav III was.

Did he pay the money back, though?

According to Hatton, yes! The sum given to Sparre was promptly repaid at Charles' order as soon as he found out about it, and the money Görtz acquired privately was gradually paid back by the Swedish crown, with interest, until it was fully paid back in 1755.

From:

luzula

Well, good for C12, then!

And sorry for yet again skewing the subject towards Jacobites, ha ha. I really did appreciate learning about G1 and his wife!

(Btw, just read a further book on Jacobites, are you interested in me summing up the bits of it that were new to me and posting here? Might not be new to you, of course.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Jacobites are just as on-topic as G1, no apologies! It's difficult to go off-topic in salon. Jacobites are even in

cahn's description of what this post is all about! (I've been chuckling about how we had 30 consecutive Frederick the Great posts for over two years, then one "Frederick the Great and Other 18th-C Characters", and have quickly progressed to "18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great.")

Yes, share all your Jacobite findings! Some might be new to me, but all will be new to

cahn!

From:

luzula

You missed the part where I do not negotiate with ~~terrorists~~ invaders. Stettin is mine.

Really, I don't see the logic here, C12. Did not Sweden itself capture Stettin by invasion?

The whole part where England/Great Britain imports its raw materials for its navy from Baltic regions drives pretty much all of their foreign policy in the 1710s. Which I have not reported on the details of, but it's worth knowing that was their main concern and why they got involved. Because if there's one thing we know about the Brits during this period, it's that they are a naval power.

Unrelatedly I happen to know a lot about Swedish forests and forestry, so yeah, I did know that exports from that industry were big in the 18th and 19th centuries (also iron). But I hadn't considered it from Britain's perspective.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Really, I don't see the logic here, C12. Did not Sweden itself capture Stettin by invasion?

You're not the first to point this out. :) It's the age-old story where most countries got most things using a greater or lesser amount of violence, and then possession was legitimated by some treaty, and then the possessing country cried foul when someone tried to repossess them. *cough* Silesia. Or as I like to say, invoking the Princess Bride quote, "You're trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen!"

From:

cahn

Oh man, Alice Lisle :(((((( Heh, I like her declaring that she'd been "instructed in the belief, that if Popery should return to this nation, it would be a great judgement." :( At least Ketch seems to have done his job with her with one blow :( (Man, I hope that all those people that took multiple blows fainted immediately, because omg.) Macaulay, you are right and you should say it :P

he three even went iceskating together, which only happened when he was with them. (Neither of them was able to, but he taught them.)

AW. This is too cute. I am a fan of the OT3!

Which is another example of James II. creating his own dangers,because it's at least questionable whether Monmouth, as long as he had a safe harbor with William and Mary, would have gone through with that final rebellion (especially considering that his two cousins weren't just Protestant but legitimate and had the better claim).

Oh, huh! Yeah, I am making my way through the Jude Morgan, and James (not-yet-II)... this seems entirely consistent with the picture Morgan is drawing :P

From:

cahn

Oh, either you hadn't linked it or I hadn't watched it :) That's lovely! It certainly is a grand story that ought to have full TV treatment :D Though I was bracing myself for the end :P :(

From:

cahn

Ah, excellent :D But boo that it was neve rheard from again ;)

From:

cahn

Oh whoops, yeah, apparently I forgot what you/I were replying to?

But yes, I know Blackstone's commentaries have made it into my fiction reading somewhere (I definitely didn't get it from nonfiction reading, lol), and I have been going nuts trying to figure out where! (I thought maybe mystery reading, like Sherlock Holmes or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case.) It's possible it wasn't actually 18th-19th-century reading but something written more recently but set in that time period, but I can't figure it out! I'll let you know if I do figure it out, though!

From:

cahn

My favorite is the time they had a drinking party, and got a bear so drunk it fell out the window and died.

Me: What is it about these guys and bears????
Mildred: Yep, I have anticipated you. Keep reading your comments.
:P

He then swore off alcohol, or strong alcohol, or getting drunk, something along those lines, forever, and stuck to it.

Ha, I kind of love this!

talking to Voltaire, talking about Voltaire, reading Voltaire, writing to Voltaire, reading Voltaire's letters aloud

I laughed! :D

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.

All right, that is rather sweet :D

From:

cahn

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."

haha, wow, a story in which FW isn't the biggest cheapskate

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.

...you know, my days of my being stupendously grateful I don't live in the past are certainly coming to a middle, to misquote Firefly :P

From:

cahn

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)“.

Ha! Yeah, I'm trying to remember -- I don't think George III was specifically presented as evil or whatever at school, but what I remember from school was what you say, where George kind of was the public face of British Tyranny vs. Our Heroes the Founding Fathers, and so small!me, along with presumably everyone else, drew conclusions from that. (The Britpop thing is all LMM, and I think (?) it's supposed to be hilarious, because that was definitely not in my mental picture before LMM.)

...Of course for my kids, they seem to be getting extremely little history in school at all, so a lot of it they would be getting from places like Hamilton, so, huh, yeah, maybe I need to do some damage control there.

Aaaanyway: wanting independence for yourself while oppressing someone else really is a fine international tradition.

Yeah, fair. Seems like a human condition sort of thing, not to see what's going on there.

From:

felis

"Well, FW had already verbally *agreed* to the treaty by that date, it's just that he then got sick with what seems to have been a stress-induced illness caused by his inability to make up his mind over whether it was okay to betray your allies or not."

Ha, I was reading one of the two Weber essays from the Dresden state archives this week (the ones which have some excerpts from Suhm's and Manteuffel's reports) and this topic came up!

FW, during a dinner in 1734: Manteuffel, you totally agree with me that treaties are only made to be broken these days, don't you? I don't know a single one that wasn't.

Manteuffel: But Your Majesty has made lots of treaties! Are you saying that Princes and Kings aren't honest people? Isn't it your intention to keep your promises, like an honest man?

FW: That's my intention, but I don't always do it. Let me tell you about that time my advisors wanted me to abandon Peter I. during the Great Northern War. I'd made Peter "a holy promise to never abandon him or make peace with Sweden without him and yet this promise did not keep me from signing a peace treaty without his involvement in the end. What that right? I don't think so, but it still happened. I didn't want to do it for a long time, I even got a hot fever over it, but what could I do, my guys plagued me for so long, Knyphausen even followed me to Wusterhausen and wouldn't leave me alone, so I had to sign it, like it or not. That was a real fraud.

Manteuffel: *reports this back to Dresden - "to show which extraordinary things get told here, things one would think of as fables otherwise" - but doesn't think they should be worried about any hidden FW plans to double-cross Saxony* 8-)

... by the way, my guess is that at least half of FW's regret is that he ended up on the same side as the Hanover cousins, even though he liked Peter a lot more. :P

Oh, and interesting that it's Knyphausen here, who a) got fired after the escape attempt in 1730 because he was scheming for the SD/Fritz/England side (and died in 1731, before he could become Peter's father-in-law), and b) seems to have been at odds with his own FIL Ilgen in this particular case.