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:

selenak

By God, Holmes, that's amazing!

I think there were very few people FW didn't have quarrels with regarding the last one.))

Ha, yes. In the AU where William adopts FW and FW thus becomes King of GB, I foresee a sudden dearth of all Irish and Scottish tall men in addition to the English and Welsh ones...

It's fascinating that on the one hand we have a rumor that Fritz reacted badly to Peter's return this early, even though it is mixed with the demonstrably false reason that he came back without being asked to, and on the other hand he's supposed to have gotten a personal confidential audience. I'm with Mildred that maybe both are true, and Peter did get a personal audience but it didn't go as well as he expected (no wonder, after ten years and Fritz set on making it clear he wouldn't be the favorites-depending replica of Grandpa-as-perceived-by-him his father had predicted). Presumably the lingering fever didn't help.

Re: Eversmann - you know, I had not wondered what happened to FW's personal staff, but yes, makes sense they'd retire or be dismissed. (As opposed to the ministers and secretaries like Eichel, who were very much kept employed.) And I'm amused at the title "Bettmeister" for Fredersdorf, which I hadn't heard before. Now there's a neat double entendre!

yes, we are going to Silesia, but not to invade but to protect MT against Bavaria and Saxony!

Someone clearly has read Fritz' letter to FS. :)

LOTS of mentions that Fritz had revues for all the regiments and pulled all the prettiest people for his new guard regiment.

:) A good reminder to people arguing no one ever suspected Fritz of m/m inclinations before evil Voltaire slandered him. (By which I don't mean just 19th century historians but also annoying 20th century ones of the no homo! inclination.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Presumably the lingering fever didn't help.

Exactly what I was thinking.

I was kind of glad you stopped my RMSE fic before the unsatisfying reunion, and now I'm reminded again to be glad. :/

A good reminder to people arguing no one ever suspected Fritz of m/m inclinations before evil Voltaire slandered him.

Didn't Manteuffel produce the "he prefers good-looking soldiers, not tall ones" line in ~September 1730, nearly verbatim the same line Voltaire would later use in his memoirs?

From:

felis

You know what I'm stuck on? Peter's presence at the parade the next day. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell from the phrasing how and why he was there - did he show up on his own, maybe in hopes of seeing Fritz again and Fritz got annoyed? (If so, it can't have been visibly or Schultzer would have said so IMO.) Or did he show up as part of Fritz' entourage, invited, which would actually speak against a conflict at that point, on the contrary? It's a bit of a mystery, not least because he's singled out here - it's the only time parade attendance is mentioned at all I think - and I have no idea why. If Schultzer was someone who suspected he'd become important because of backstory (which isn't mentioned either), he doesn't say so.

"Bettmeister" for Fredersdorf, which I hadn't heard before. Now there's a neat double entendre!

Ha. That reminds me - Fredersdorf is involved in the "picking the prettiest people" for the King's service part! On October 25th, the report says that "die Zahl derer Königl. Laquais auf 70 in allen vermehret werden solte, wozu der Herr Frederstorff die hübscheste Gesichter zu choisiren, und deren Mundirung gegen den 1. Dec. fertig zu halten, Commißion habe." So he and Fritz seem to have had an understanding there. :P

From:

selenak

Clearly so, if Frederdorf is supposed to pick the prettiest faces for him. :)

Giuliano Dami: How come I got the bad press for the same job?

You know what I'm stuck on? Peter's presence at the parade the next day.

It could also be that Fritz invited him/told him to come to the parade right at the start, before the actual encounter. Moreover, I don't expect the whole thing to have gone badly in the sense that they quarelled. Not least because you don't argue with newly crowned Kings. Even Wilhelmine took the care to address Fritz as "Sire" in her first post ascension letter until he told her she could continue addressing him as her brother. (Heinrich: Mom told us to treat him as the future king in the previous year already, but I still kicked him under the table!)

No, what I think happened was something perfectly polite, but given that when last they met, in January 1730, it was presumably all youthful passion and intensity, and now, ten years and a lot more trauma later, it's polite sovereign and subject looking for cues of how to behave, it's almost bound to have left both parties somewhat dissatisfied. I don't think Peter, from what we know of him, would have been the type to take the initiative, do something like offer a hug. He may have been more informal than your avarage Prussian courtier as Lehndorff noted later - with other courtiers. But with the new King, whom he hasn't seen in ten years? I don't think so. Though of course in his dreams Fritz would have dismissed everyone and hugged him. And if his looking for cues of how to behave with this new version of Fritz came across as poentially calculating to Fritz the paranoid, it would have made him even more formal.

I mean, yes, Fritz wrote to Algarotti (and Duhan!) a passionate "come now to me!" type of letter, but he'd seen Algarotti only the previous year and Algarotti had never known Fritz the abused, while Duhan was his old teacher and not a likely candidate to a power grabbing favorite. Given how Fritz reacted when Peter was suggested by the Brits as a potential envoy a few years later, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd wondered whether Peter was now working for England, so to speak. Which, btw, would have made sense from Team Hannover Cousins' pov! (To use him as a spy, that is. After all, Caroline had shown him considerable favor, he owed them.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Giuliano Dami: How come I got the bad press for the same job?

Exactly what I was thinking when I read

felis's finding!

I don't think Peter, from what we know of him, would have been the type to take the initiative, do something like offer a hug.

100% agree. This is the kind of thing Katte and Keyserlingk would have been more likely to do. (Though after 10 years in exile, I doubt Katte offers the hug up straightaway--but I think he's more overt in displaying his enthusiasm and affection, which maybe gives Fritz some warm and fuzzies, which gets them into a positive feedback loop. Where I think Fritz and Peter got into a negative feedback loop, where the less enthusiasm they see from the other person, the more likely they are to assume the worst and to dial down their own enthusiasm accordingly. :()

But as we've seen, there may have been some friction from the beginning. Especially since these are the same two that will lead to Fritz saying, just a year and a bit later, "Okay, give him a raise and then maybe he'll give me some peace."

Peter Keith: Reserved, maybe, but not your doormat.

(Also, this is part of what I'm working into my account of how Katte and Peter in AU!exile hit it off: Peter, like Fritz, craves affection and warmth from the other party, and is too reserved/insecure enough to be the initiate radiating warmth without knowing how it's going to be received. But he responds well once it's given, and Katte gives it.)

And if his looking for cues of how to behave with this new version of Fritz came across as poentially calculating to Fritz the paranoid, it would have made him even more formal.

Also very true, and in keeping with the bad feedback loop.

From:

cahn

Awwww :( This sounds extremely plausible to me, very much in keeping with both Peter's and Fritz's personalities ~~as I understand them from all the salon fics over the last couple of years~~

(Heinrich: Mom told us to treat him as the future king in the previous year already, but I still kicked him under the table!)

Ha!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

It's fascinating that on the one hand we have a rumor that Fritz reacted badly to Peter's return this early, even though it is mixed with the demonstrably false reason that he came back without being asked to, and on the other hand he's supposed to have gotten a personal confidential audience. I'm with Mildred that maybe both are true, and Peter did get a personal audience but it didn't go as well as he expected

Well, the thing is, that's exactly what later sources claim. I'm blanking on whether there's a reliable one that says the had an unhappy first meeeting in person, as opposed to that one by nineteenth century editor of Thiebault's memoirs, in a passage particularly rife with mistakes, but I have seen this claim before.

Peter Keith's son, writing in 1820, has them exchanging letters in which they get more and more frustrated with each other, before Peter's return:

Mein Vater legte dem König vor Augen eine schriftliche Versprechung, die der König als Kronprinz ihm gegeben hatte, und die in starken Ausdrücken ausgefertigt war. Der König nahm dieses besonders übel, und das Resultat war, das mein Vater als Oberstleutnant und Stallmeister mit 1.200 RTl Pension nach Berlin zurückkam.

My father made the king aware of a written promise which the king as crown prince had given him and which was made out in strong terms. The king took this particularly badly, and the result was that my father came back to Berlin as a lieutenant colonel and stable master with 1,200 RTl pension.

I was never quite sure how much credence to give this, since 1820!son also thinks his father left Wesel because he was warned that Fritz had been arrested, when as we know, Fritz was arrested because Peter had left Wesel several days earlier.

But now that we have an extremely contemporary account of both an in-person meeting and a lack of favor on Fritz's part, I'm kind of inclined to think Peter *did* keep a letter from Fritz all those years, remind him of it (maybe even in person), and make a defensive Fritz double down on "I am not ruled by my favorites! I'll show everyone!"

If the first part of Keith son's account is correct, that they had argued by letter, that would be consistent with people realizing Peter wasn't in favor already by Oct 14, before the supposed in-person meeting. But then there's the question of why the meeting, if he's already out of favor?

Since right at this time, Wilhelmine comes to visit Rheinsberg and hardly gets to see him, and afterward Fritz writes a letter apologizing that he wasn't a very good host because he was sick, Fritz might have been both a) not in his best mood that week or two because sick, b) super defensive about his past Crown Prince self having been so influenced by the people around him, without it necessarily meaning he was displeased with the people in question. Just not giving them the kind of favor they expected. And then, of course, he was super busy with the invasion shortly thereafter.

From:

cahn

Aw Peter :(

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ha, yes. In the AU where William adopts FW and FW thus becomes King of GB, I foresee a sudden dearth of all Irish and Scottish tall men in addition to the English and Welsh ones...

Let's not forget that one of the tallest kidnapped tall guys, James Kirkland, was Irish even in our universe! As Felis told us, "Which cost FW 8862 thaler! Even Förster called that wasteful spending."

:D

Per Wikipedia:

It is claimed that he was accompanied in the regiment by other tall soldiers from Ireland.

I believe it!

As for people he *didn't* have conflicts with over recruiting, I don't remember any with Peter the Great, but there may have been some. (I still love our never-written AU where Peter's incognito trip across Europe overlaps chronologically with FW's kidnapping of tall soldiers--in reality,

cahn, FW became king some 15 years too late--and nobody believes Potsdam Giant Peter when he claims to be the tsar of Russia!)

Edited Date: 2021-11-20 08:02 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

I still love that AU idea as well, and hey, it's fine Shakespearean tradition, what with him making Hal and Percy Hotspur the same age instead of a generation apart, and letting future Richard III first show up and plot in Henry VI, Part 2 when historical Richard was all of three years old.

Now that you've read more about Peter, what's your opinion on which option out of a mix of "kill FW, have an affair with SD, have an affair with Fritz" he's likely to take? Or will he keep his temper and convince FW of the truth?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Hmmm. Realistically, "kll FW" seems most in-character, the man's temper was stronger than his sex drive. OTOH, the prospect of killing a fellow monarch might stay his hand.

"Have an affair with Fritz": with the caveat that the grand old tradition of "no homo" may apply to Peter too, this seems least likely. Even pedophilic author who wants everyone to be gay (and if he can't make them gay, they are "scum" and "slime") only cited one extreeemely dubious primary source for Peter the Great fucking his buddy Menshikov.

"Have an affair with SD": unlikely on SD's part, but since we're going full-out crack in this AU, why not! He doesn't seem to have a major womanizer, but he had several known affairs with women, and if you're going to kill the husband anyway...

(Realistically realistically, I think there are enough people who can ID Peter that the truth comes out without FW being killed, but for crack, I'm game for all three outcomes!)