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

[cahn]

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

Comments

Re: Prussian/Danish Relations according to Stephan Hartmann: The FW Era (and some spoilers for Frit

[mildred_of_midgard]

The last experience of that type I had when reading how Georg Schnath didn't want his 1927 readers to be shocked by Sophie's occasional baroque coarseness. :)

Oh, I had an author saying the same thing in 1996, but he was Russian. ;)

It's worth in general to keep in mind that if letter writing noble Europe is shocked at FW, the shock only partially hails from the brutality and for a possibly far greater part is due to him violating all the social norms, doing away with princely magnificence, wanting to live like a burgher, etc. , i.e. all the parts about FW posterity thought were good, not bad.

No wonder Rottembourg wanted to have him declared insane! :P

More seriously, as a bio of Victor Amadeus II, which I read last week and which I am planning to summarize as soon as I can reread and take notes, points out that while there was the Versailles model of how to be a prince, there was also a competing model of "austere court, military ethos, the prince is the first servant of the state" alive and well at the turn of the 18th century: in Sweden, Russia, and Savoy at least, and FW's Prussia was following a well-trodden path by 1713.

See also: his son's whole "we're all equals here in the republic of letters, I'm just one of you, now do exactly as I say!" to the Academy members.

Augustus, Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, early Napoleon: *nod*

Louis XIV: Never had that problem. No one was ever my equal and I made that very clear to everyone, and everything worked out fine that way.

French Revolution's seeds: are growing.

Later Napoleon: Dammit.