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

In fact, this is part of the Duke of Bedford's argument: we want the nobility to feel that they can revolt if they feel that it's necessary (such as, from his POV, in 1688)

Yes, I read his speech last night and was going to say today that this is fascinating! It was way more interesting than Chesterfield's speech.

His argument, for those of you who haven't read it, is that the current bill to strip traitors of titles and estates before killing them, meaning their descendants won't inherit either, means that you're giving the landed nobility more to lose when they revolt. This means brave men who are willing to risk their own lives to fight an unjust gov't will think twice before risking their children's inheritance, and stay home. This means we're more likely to end up with tyrannical gov'ts. "Look at my grandfather!" he says.

Looking at his grandfather, Grandpa Russell was executed for treason for participation in the Rye House Plot, a conspiracy to assassinate Charles II and future James II.

This is why Bedford's able to open his speech by saying, "Look, I think I can safely say that you all know that I'm not a Jacobite sympathizer despite the fact that I'm opposing the bill for added penalties for supporting the Stuarts. My personal record and my family's record speaks for itself."

The single most fascinating line in the speech to me:

We should rather run the risk of frequent civil wars, than continue those punishments, which are much more severe upon men of family and fortune, than upon the lowest class of people.

It's a speech rife with classism, as

luzula pointed out, but it's a speech for weakening the government so that it can be successfully kept in line, with violence if necessary. Reading that just 30 years before the American Revolution is *really* interesting. The AR did not happen in a vacuum!

(Though I'm generally bored to death by American history, possibly out of resistance to having it shoved down my throat year after year, the one thing that I do intend to do one day is study the intellectual background to the *ideas* of the AR: Polybius and the Achaean League, Machiavelli, federalism in the Holy Roman Empire, Blackstone, all the philosophers, etc.)

Oh, interesting. But that was a time when the British government was really worried about treason.

Yeah, and there was a new treason act in 1800! Triggered by an assassination attempt on G3, apparently. But an isolated crazy guy, not a movement, so, yeah, I think you're onto something about the threat coming from a different level of society.

For

cahn, Blackstone's summary of the penalties for high treason:

The punishment of high treason in general is very solemn and terrible. 1. That the offender be drawn to the gallows, and not be carried or walk; though usually a fledge or hurdle is allowed, to preserve the offender from the extreme torment of being dragged on the ground or pavement 2. That he be hanged by the neck, and then cut down alive. 3. That his entrails be taken out, and burned, while he is yet alive. 4. That his head be cut off. 5. That his body be divided into four parts. 6. That his head and quarters be at the king’s disposal.

The king may, and often does, discharge all the punishment, except beheading, especially where any of noble blood are attainted. For, beheading being part of the judgment, that may be executed, though all the rest be omitted by the king’s command.

Which is why I think BPC would have been left hoping for a competent executioner. (Katte, who's having the 291st anniversary of his execution today, got lucky with his single stroke.)

Incidentally, so far I haven't seen a single argument against attainting the Stuarts, and I doubt I will. The debate so far is solely about the other two clauses, and mostly the forfeiture of titles and estates by the innocent children.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Well, my question here was maybe too vague, as of course that sort of thing (attitudes towards religion and politics) varies over time and between places, and "religion" and "politics" are huge and varied things in themselves! But yeah, I get the point: asking questions is good. : )

I'll just say that religion was more of a big deal in the 18th century than it is today, less than in previous centuries, and maybe less than you think. And it's worth noting that we may not care (much) about whether Biden is a Catholic or Protestant (there were concerns about Kennedy, as I recall from history class, but it turned out not to be a big deal), but when was the last time the US had an atheist, Muslim, or Jewish president, and are you holding your breath for us to get one?

I mean, it wasn't obvious that the answer would be in a bill at all, it all could just have been contained in informal discussions between the main Hanoverian actors so that we would never know, or was contained in archived letters. But nope, actually debated in Parliament.

When in doubt about a legal fine point of 18th century Great Britain, try Blackstone first! I wasn't hoping for anything this explicit, but I hoped he'd have something applicable. And he delivered.

Meanwhile, I am getting nowhere on your question about the primary sources for BPC:s conversion to Anglicanism.

Huh. Thanks for checking, though!

It seems unreasonable to me that reputable historians would keep claiming it if the evidence wasn't there

I wish this were true! But after two years of source criticism on Frederick the Great historiography, the one thing we've learned in salon is that reputable historians draw on other reputable historians, who were drawing on less reputable historians, who were probably drawing on Voltaire, who was probably intentionally trolling you. :P

The number of reputable historians publishing books up through 2021 who claim Fritz was behind the First Polish Partition is, like, all of them except one, but that one has the evidence to prove he wasn't.

Almost every historian will cite multiple eyewitness reports to say that Fritz could see Katte's execution from where he was imprisoned--and yet there's good reason to believe he couldn't.

Ditto the eyewitness reports that baby Joseph II was at Maria Theresia's appeal to the Hungarian estates in 1741. Everyone I've read repeats this claim, except one historian citing a study that presents documentary evidence that Joseph wasn't even in the city at the time.

For two hundred years, everyone believed Voltaire's letters to Madame Denis in 1750-1753 were genuine, up until someone proved they were doctored after the fact in the 1990s, and only gradually is awareness of this catching on. Reputable historians are still treating them as valuable sources to this day.

The former head of the Prussian secret state archives, one of the most meticulous historians I've encountered, who's working solely with archival sources, makes 4 chronological mistakes in a 100-page monograph that I've caught him in. One is a typo, one is outside his specialty, two are in his specialty. Of the two in his specialty, one had been pointed out by a previous historian but is nonetheless repeated over and over again in the literature.

Catt's memoirs are treated like a goldmine of eyewitness reports by everyone, except the one ignored nineteenth-century scholar who proved Catt had plagiarized half the material from other sources and pretended he'd gotten it from Fritz's mouth, which makes the other half highly suspect.

Just a couple months ago, I traced the claim that Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer was found innocent of embezzlement, a claim that's found in the Neue Deutsche Biographie and used by reputable historians, back to an eighteenth-century source who admitted he had a hard time finding out material about Pfeiffer and was cobbling together hearsay; whereas an obscure self-published monograph by a local historian quotes from a cabinet order showing that he was found guilty and imprisoned for several years.

A few days ago, I pointed Selena to a letter by Sophia of Hanover that appears to contradict the claim in her memoirs that her fiance had an STD. The letter said that was just a lie to get Sophia's brother to agree to the fiance swap.

We could go on and on. You have to assume that reputable historians aren't doing source criticism unless you see them doing it. Almost no one will track down the evidence for or against every claim they make. By and large, they don't consider that their job. (Duffy certainly doesn't. Kloosterhuis does, but he's human and he makes mistakes.) Further, you have to assume that some percentage of eyewitness accounts are forged, lying, or mistaken, and you have to assess the reliability of the author of any eyewitness claims and look for counterevidence. (In a court setting, eyewitness testimony is considered by experts, but unfortunately not by jurors, to be one of the least reliable kinds of evidence.)

Now, maybe BPC converted to Anglicanism in 1750 and whoever I read who said that was an oft-repeated romantic legend was crazy. But nothing about it being repeated by numerous historians who by and large don't cite their sources makes it sound any different from any of the claims above.

(I once emailed an author, admittedly not a historian but a medical doctor who was interested in Fritz and had published two books on him, and asked him where he got the claim that Fredersdorf was found guilty of embezzlement. He'd gotten it from Wikipedia. Wikipedia didn't cite a source. I eventually traced the claim down to that local historian's self-published monograph mentioned above, in which she draws heavily on the archives for most of her claims, except the one about Fredersdorf being found guilty, which has no citations and is apparently pure speculation based on a coincidence of timing. This claim is now in 3 books I can name and getting propagated. I am seriously working on an article that combines "Fredersdorf wasn't found guilty" and the "Pfeiffer wasn't found innocent" claim above into a critique of other scholars' source criticism and hoping to publish it, if I can do the necessary archive work to back up my claims at some point.)

So much like the claim that Charles didn't take off his boots for a week, or that he prevented looting in Saxony, I'm treating this as possibly true, possibly untrue, until further evidence one way or the other emerges.

From:

selenak

Because reasons, I was rereading the letters Fritz wrote to Wilhelmine in November and December 1731, i.e. the ones both before and after seeing her again at her wedding. Now, in letters earlier this year, he had explicitly told her not to marry even if she's blackmailed with the prospect of his release. However, in the November letter before the wedding (which includes a poem he's written for the wedding, because of course it does), he explicitly calls her among other things "my liberator", and in the letter from early December where he sort of apologizes for having been distant, he uses the term again.

Most beloved sister! When the Erbprinz (i.e. her new husband) visited me on Tuesday (December 4th), I sadly could not write a goodbye letter to you. But, dearest liberator, I really did not have the time! I was deeply saddened at having to leave you after such a brief reunion already, without knowing when we will see each other again. I did notice that you were doubting my love for you, but I promise you it didn't lessen. Unfortunately, I am lacking any opportunity to prove it to you. But be assured that I don't feel any less than you do. For how shouldn't and couldn't I ignore how kind you were to me after I caused misfortune to my entire family through the foolishness I committed, and how I pushed you into misery! You should have hated me, fool that I was, as the cause of your sufferings, but instead you nobly sacrificed yourself to help me out of this labyrinth. NO, dearest sister, I will never be worthy of the benevolence you have shown. What should I sacrifice for you? What should I suffer for you? I'm ready to do anything. May God give me the opportunity to prove my friendship and devotion to you! Incomparable sister, please don't insult me by doubting me. Otherwise you would slander me by making me look someone who breaks his word, and is unnatural and ungrateful to boot. My heart is yours - yours and the Queen's entirely. (...)
Attached is a letter for the Queen and one for your husband with a thousand kisses. Please, rob him of his disbelief in my friendship. Tell him that it is enough that he now owns my heart and is thus as dear to me as my eyes are, and that consequently I have to love him. Moreover, his good qualities have won my entire respect.
I write this letter without compliments as a sincere brother to his beloved sister. This is what I hope to receive from you. In any case, I swear to you before God that I will not be blessed or ever see His Face if not every word is coming from my soul. I adore you and love you a thousand times more than I love myself, but never as much as you deserve, for no one can. Farewell! Until death, I am completely and entirely yours. P.S. I alreayd have enlightened many about your husband the Erbprinz and asure you I will do everything to convince everyone of the truth. Principessa (his flute, remember) is kneeling at your feet and kisses the hands of her Prince Belly (her lute).

Okay, aside from all the Rococo emo, and the fact that when he writes this letter, neither of them is yet free of supervision (since Wilhelmine is still in Berlin and hasn't yet left for Bayreuth), which means it could potentially be read and he knows it, it would argue he does make a connection between the better conditions of this late stage of his Küstrin time (plus the permission to travel to Berlin, and later as we know to Frankfurt an der Oder), possibly his eventual liberty, and her marriage, despite having said a few months earlier that any claim he'll do better/get released if she marries BayreuthFriedrich is untrue. Also, it fits of course with Wilhelmine's own description of their brief reunion at her wedding in the memoirs and Stratemann's several descriptions (the original one with "and there was much rejoicing", and the later ones where he mentions rumor has it the Crown Prince has been rude and distant to "people" at the wedding. Not to mention with Grumbkow's pointed advice from August 1731 to put up boundaries with Wilhelmine if he wants FW to like him again.

Now, we know from Wilhelmine that the same Grumbkow told her that FW was shocked, just shocked, that Fritz was all of a sudden so distant to her. And of course due to the inherent possiblity of censorship in this situation, see above, Fritz can't evidently tell her about this earlier demand. My questions are these:

a) Does Fritz sincerely believe Wilhelmine's agreement to the marriage is responsible for his improving situation, or is he just aware she thinks so and wants to keep her in this belief, since the situation is still bad enough? (He probably noticed at the wedding of how unhappy Mom now is with her.)

b) Conversely, is there some hidden (subconscious or conscious) resentment on his part (because she can't see he had to fake it, because she married which he didn't want, possibly because she was against his escape plan, and thus he puts it on extra strong?

c) Since Fritz even in this late stage isn't presumably surrounded by "many" people hating on BayreuthFriedrich who have to be enlightened about him, he's presumably talking in code about Mom, right?

Edited Date: 2021-11-06 05:36 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

Ivan the Terrible: So if Wikipedia is to be believed, Ivan a) beat his son's wife until she had a miscarriage because he didn't like it that she was "dressing immodestly" and b) when his son had the temerity to object, beat him with his scepter and killed him, which meant his younger son inherited who kinda sucked? (Oh, and huh, Feodor's minister was apparently Boris Godunov, whom I recognize from the opera, though I've only managed to watch the first... half an hour?? I should... maybe watch it so you guys can tell me how divorced from real life it is :) )

Charles XII and base 8: OMG. I mean, yeah, he's not wrong. But can you imagine a world in which part of it ran on base 10 and part on base 8... it would be orders of magnitude worse than metric/imperial. Oh Charles.

Blackstone: heh, Blackstone was in my passive memory -- I would not have been able to tell you with any precision, and I definitely didn't know that about the "best of all possible worlds" thing, but I knew it had something to do with the law, presumably from all that random 18th-19th-century English fiction I read a bunch of :P

Kalabalik: okay this is freaking AMAZING and Charles is BOTH awesome and crazy :P Also I am super tickled that it is still a word in Swedish!

Supercharles, and stories about same: ALSO both awesome and crazy :P I really really appreciate knowing when you are skeptical about stories, but... I also really like hearing the stories :D (ALso, totally agree,

luzula, about invading Russia in the winter without enough hats! Or at all!

Pope Max: heh, that's a good story, and omg that French, it is too late at night for me to be able to follow it at all, although I am amused that he signs it "vostre bon père MAXIMILIANUS, futur pape." Lol! And ooooh cool I didn't know that about Elisabeth's daughter!

From:

cahn

Whoa, that description of the Bloody Assizes is... something else. Especially Alice Lisle :(((( but really all of them. Kind of... cheering for the downfall of Jeffreys here, and I confess it is very satisfying that karma did indeed catch up to him.

(in addition to the gruesomeness which underlines that if you have to be executed, you better pray that your executioner is at least competent at it, and that Henry VIII actually did do Anne Boleyn a favour with that swordsman from France, macabre as it sounds)

Uggggh. I suppose glad for Anne Boleyn it was fast. Here's to hoping that Monmouth passed out from shock at least :(((((((

Convention in such cases demanded that the about to be executed person proclaimed their loyalty to the monarch and asked the attending crowd to pray for the monarch, displaying their loyalty to said monarch. If you check out the pre-execution speeches of Thomas More, Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell, this happens in every case... This doesn't mean these people really were rooting for the King who had them executed as they died, but were aware that they still had living family who might suffer if they did not follow convention.

Oh wow, yeah, that makes Monmouth's reaction really... telling. And heh to the bishops trying to get him to follow the script. Good job Monmouth :((

Did he have living family at the time?

From:

cahn

From the last post:

He treated both his sister and his nephew with affection, and didn't want politics breaking up the family.

ARGH. This is like, for ordinary families, not making a will! (MAKE A WILL.) It seems all "I don't want people thinking I don't love them equally" but it is always a Bad Idea!

Also, the warfare differences between the Jacobites and the balance-of-power wars were fascinating thank you!

The situational identity shift of the CEOs reminds me of when I had jury duty a few years ago. The lawyers definitely came across as pretty hostile to one another in the courtroom, but they came to the jury room after we'd got a verdict, and they were completely friendly to one another. (Which I already knew was likely from To Kill a Mockingbird, but it was interesting to see it in person.)

I read a book years ago about the PR surrounding war in the 20th century, all the propaganda required to sell your enemies as evil, and how they threatened you first (even if they didn't) and therefore it was okay to make war on them. I do wonder about the connections with the growth of democracy and of the public sphere to include basically all of the population. Like, if a lot of the population can't read, and there's no democracy anyway, why bother to have lots of propaganda convincing the population that your enemies are evil in order to motivate the war?

IDK, I could imagine that once you see that the other side is just regular guys like you, maybe you do need to be convinced they're evil. So, I have this book at the top of the queue to read (sorry mildred, it IS at the top once yuletide is over!) about trench warfare at WWI which

philomytha reviewed, and one of the things she talked about was how the WWI rank-and-file soldiers didn't really feel negative emotions towards each other. My understanding is that the book is, in fact, about how they navigated co-existing in the trenches -- they didn't want to kill each other, and evolved elaborate communication strategies not to kill each other.

From:

selenak

Pope Max: I thought you'd like it. If you want to try Maximilian's Renaissance German as well, here's what he wrote after meeting his wife Mary of Burgundy (remember, they married under dramatic circumstances involving her being under siege from both the French and some of her own subjects (because she's a A WOMAN who inherited the richest duchy on the continent from Charles the Bold and clearly can't make her own decisions): Sie ist von leib klein viel kleiner denn die Rosina und schneeweis; ein prauns haar, ein kleins nasl, ein kleins häuptl und antlitz, praun und grabe augen gemischt, schön und lauter. Der Mund ist etwas hoch doch rein und rot. Sonst viel schöne jungfrowen alls ich all mein taag be einer gesehen hab und frölich.

("Of her body, she's much smaller than Rosina and has skin white as snow; brown hair, a small nose, a small head and face, eyes brown and grey mixed, beautiful and clear. The mouth is a bit high but clear and red. She's just the most beautiful noble maiden I've ever seen in my life, and cheerful to boot." Note that the forms Maximilian uses for "nose" and "head" with the "l" attached - "nasl" instead of "Nase" and "Häuptl" instead of "Haupt" - are actually Austrian dialect. Rosina was a former mistress of his. He's writing a friend, and continues about Mary's stepmother Margaret of York (sister to Edward IV and Richard III), whom all subsequent Margarets owe their first name to: "Die alt fraw unser mutter ist eine feine schöne fraw zu ihr maß und listig viel."

("The old lady our Mother is a fine beautiful lady, well shaped, and devilishly smart.")

"The old Lady": Margaret of York was born 1446, Mary and Maximilian married in 1477, so Margaret was just 31. She had more of a big sister relationship with her stepdaughter, whom she was very close to and an important supporter of, as she'd been to Maximilian after Mary's all too early death. Hence the pair naming their daughter after her.

Back to Maximilian's enthusiastic letter back home to Vienna: "Mein gemahl ist eine gantze Waidtmännin mit valckhen und hundten. Sie hat ein weiß windtspil, daz laufft fast bald. Daz liegt zu meisten theil alle nacht bey uns."

("My wife is a terrific huntress with falcons and dogs. She has a white greyhound which runs very fast. It usually lies with us all through the night.")

Maximilian, Mary and all their children and grandchildren loved to hunt. It has to be said, though, that their methods of hunting were different from the way it was practiced in the 18th century when Fritz loathed it. For one thing, gunfire was only just starting to be used, and Maximilian was very much against it, considering it unsportsmanlike and giving the hunter way too much of an advantage. His favourite animals to hunt were the boar and the ibex, the later not least because you could pursue it high into the mountains and had to be a stealth climber to manage, and his weapons of choice for these two animals crossbow and pike (to throw). Mary of Burgundy - like all the Margarets and Mary of Hungary - had loved to hunt with falcons, but because she died during such a hunt, Maximilian, who until that death had loved it as well, came off it. (Remember, he never got over her death and being a Habsburg had willed his heart after his own death decades later brought to her tomb in the Netherlands so it could be with her.)

From:

selenak

Jeffreys was nicknamed "the Hanging Judge" for a reason. re: Alice Lisle: One of the first acts of parliament of William and Mary after the Glorious Revolution was to reverse her attainder on the grounds that the prosecution was irregular and the verdict injuriously extorted by "the menaces and violences and other illegal practices" of Judge Jeffreys.

Speaking of William and Mary,have a few quotes about their closeness to cousin Jemmy, aka Monmouth. Now, for the first one, you have to know that after a long time as Charles' favourite kid, Monmouth did rebel against him, which led to his first exile in the Netherlands. (Charles didn't stop loving him, and they reconciled shortly before Charles' death during a quick over the channel visit by Jemmy for this very purpose, which is one of the things I thought the novel had made up before reading the biography; it did, actually, happen.) Part of the reason for that first rebellion was that Jemmy had joined the Whig Lords opposing the succession of James (because Catholic and, well, James), positioning Monmouth himself as an alternate (Protestant) candidate. Hence you might say James (referred to in the text as "York" since he's still the Duke of York at this point of the story) was somewhat entitled to be, shall we say, surprised, when he hears how his oldest daughter and son-in-law responded to the latest arrival in the Netherlands:

If York was irritated by Grana's treatment of Monmouth, it was nothing compared to his rage when he heard that his son-in-law, William of Orange, had received his disgraced nephew. A stream of letters to the stadtholder was carried from St. James' Palace admonishing him for seeing one who 'had been engaged in so horrid a conspiracy for the lateration of the government and ruin of the king and our family'. The only possible explanation for Monmouth's behaviour, sneered York, was 'his vain pretension to the crown'. Receiving no reply from William, he wrote repeatedly to his daughter Mary instead, instructing her to forgo the obedience of a wife and impress upon her husband how scandalous it was that William was behaving so warmly towards one of his'mortal enemies' who was intent on taking the crown for himself. Unflustered, Wiliam gave out instructions to his officers that Monmouth should be treated by them with the same honnours as the Marquis de Grana.

Of course, one reason why William could afford this was that James wasn't King yet, Charles was, and Charles despite going through the routine of an official protest via an ambassador simultanously wrote privately to tell William and Mary Monmouth was still his favourite kid:

Charles had already established a code by which William would know if a letter represented his true feelings, or those he affected to have for political reaosns. (...) Even (envoy) Chudleigh, whose job it was to hold the official line that Charles II was unhappy with William, because: 'His Maty is not so much offended with ye Prince of Orange as people are made to believe', and that 'there is a private intelligence' between them. William and Mary were left in no doubt that Charles did not consider Monmouth a traitor and that his love was undiminished. Writing to England from Dieren in Juily, William explained his conduct, argueing that Monmouth 'is his (Charles) son, whom he had parodoned for the faults which he may have committed, and though he has removed him from his presence, I know that in the bottom of his heart he has always some friendship for him and that the King cannot be angry with him.'
William and Mary's treatment of the Duke was more than a piece of political reasoning. Mary had grown up with Monmouth, and had lived alongside him from her birth to her wedding day. Both Charles II. and the Duke of York recognised that since William and Monmouth had fought together side by side in 1678, they had become 'so good friends and agree so well together'. The 'fondness' Mary and William showed for Monmouth in 1684, and the 'caresses' he received that were 'the common discourse of all sorts of people' in The Hague, were the product of personal as well as political dynamics. With Monmouth as guest the atmosphere in the Orange court started to grow noticeably brighter. Onlookers were surprised to see Mary - who never walked out - taking daily constitutionals in the mall with her cousin, while they were frankly amazed when William - who used his asthma as an excuse to avoid dancing - was to be found learning contredanses with Monmouth and Mary most evenings. When the English Ambassador in The Hague reported that Monmouth was being treated by William and Mary 'as one of the family', it was not just a calibration of the formal honours allowed to him, but also an expression of the closeness between them all.

Now remember: William would end up as William III. (and Mary as Mary II.) of England. He also is one of those monarchs whose sexuality is still debated (Liselotte heard in Versailles from visiting Brits he was gay, and he did have two male favourites, but this was after Mary's death). So what this passage conjurs irresistably up in my mind is the fannish question "threesome, anyone?", and the more cold blooded question whether William was playing the long game and hoping James and Jemmy would finish each other off. (Given that he, William, and Mary were at this point undoubtedly James' heirs - this was before James had a male (Catholic son).)

Did he have living family at the time?

A wife and two children. The children are mentioned in what he says (as in, he asks the King to spare them). The wife was Anna, and it had been a marriage between children (as in, both Anna and Jemmy were children - this was before he was Monmouth, even) that had not worked out when they'd grown up. (It had been one of the first things Charles did post restoration, for the simple reason that Anna was an heiress and it was a good way to ensure his illegitimate oldest son would have an income independent from the crown. (Though he later heaped a lot of other income and estate on Jemmy, too.) Anna - who hadn't gone into exile with him, as at this point, the marriage had been effectually over already - and the kids saw him twice during his time in the Tower. Once when he was still optimistic about being pardoned, and that meeting was a disaster, for:

Anna's anger with her husband was understandable. (....)Dismissing his words as 'digressions and imaginary expectations of life', she insisted that he confirm that she and their children had nothing to do with his uprsings or his association with the Whig opposition. This he did, and there they parted.

The second meeting, immediately before Monmouth was collected from his room in the Tower to be executed, went better. In between, the bishops had already tried to get him to admit repentance both for the rebelling and the adultery. This led to Monmouth retorting thusly:

'It was too true,' he said, 'that he had for a long time lived a very dissolute & irregular life & being guilty of frequent breaches of the conjugal vow.' When it came to his affair with Lady Henrietta Wentworth, however, he refused point-blank to offer any sort of apology or remorse. Though 'the world had much aspersed her' for their relationship, he said, she was 'a virtuous Godly lady & far from deserving the unkind censures he lys under on his accompt'. When the bishops responded that, as Henrietta was not his legal wife, she was therefore his whore and their relationship a sin, he was unyielding. Yes, Anna was technically his wife, but they had been married when they were children and were too young to understand what it meant. As a consequence he had never developed 'that perfect love & affection for (Anna) that either she deserved or he wished himself to have had towards her'. This was the reason for his 'going so frequently astray from her & running after other women'. But 'The ladie Henrietta Wentworth was the persone in this world that cured him of that wandring appetite' and in her love he had found complete fulfilment.

The bishops then refuse communion, but Monmouth sticks to his statement. Then he gets to see Anna and the kids one final time.

Anna arrived with the children and was surprised to see Monmouth calm and steady. The composed dignity of his resolve was far harder for her to take than the frenzied optimism of two days before. Their meeting was 'the mourningest scene in the world'. To all those present Monmouth stated his wife's complete innocence in respect of his actions and shortcomings. Her attempts to reconcile him with his father were acknowledged, and he gave her 'the kindest character that could be' When finally he asked her forgiveness for his failngs and expressed his hope that she would be kind to their 'poor children', she could bear it no more. Her imperious expression cracked, and tears streamed down her crumpled features. Sinking to the floor, she clung to her husband's knees and, rocking with sobs, asked for his forgiveness in return. (The footnote the author gives for this provides four different contempoary sources, including State Trials, if you're wondering.)

Anna would live well into her 80s (as opposed to Lady Henrietta, who died soon after Monmouth). As an old lady, she shows up in Caroline's biography since Caroline as Princess of Wales invited her to become part of her household, and Anna fascinated the young Hannovers with scandalous stories from Charles II's court. She'd tretrieved Monmouth's effects from the Rotterdam pawn merchants and kept them (they were found among her belongings after her death), as she did his portraits.

From:

selenak

From our very own

prinzsorgenfrei, if someone needs a shorthand for Fritz & Siblings:

Edited Date: 2021-11-07 12:41 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Not having watched Boris Bogdunov at all yet, you're still ahead of me there. :) However, let me remind you of Mildred's favourite rap battle re: Ivan the Terrible. Alas, the one trivia I know of him is that he proposed to Elizabeth I. (Tudor) via letter. Let's just say he was not a serious contender.

From:

luzula

The reason my eyes caught on Bedford's speech is that he has a cameo in one of my fics, but that was just about the regiment he raised in the '45. I see now that he's more interesting than I thought! I wondered at first how he could be a Duke if grandpa Russell was executed for treason, but it seems William III reversed the attainder. Hee, I also love this bit from Wikipedia: Several people were tried and convicted of seditious libel for publishing works about his ghost. Grandpa Russell, that is.

So this is a Whig arguing to weaken the central government so that it can be successfully kept in line, but it's interesting that the Tories were also making a similar argument, from another angle. There was a whole debate going on in the first half of the 18th century in England about a standing professional army vs militias. The Tories argued that a standing professional army was 1) too expensive, and also the government should keep out of wars on the continent for that reason, and 2) gave the central government too much power. (Of course the militias were mostly useless in the '45, but by that time the standing army argument, which the Whigs favored, had pretty much won.) I don't know enough about the US to tell whether this argument has any resonance there.

From:

luzula

when was the last time the US had an atheist, Muslim, or Jewish president, and are you holding your breath for us to get one?

Sure, I get it! I guess what I meant, but didn't say carefully enough, was that differences within Christianity were more important in the 18th century. (Heh, in Sweden the prime minister is basically presumed to be non-religious, unless they demonstrate otherwise, and in any case it would be in pretty bad taste for them to start talking about God in speeches...)

Well, I guess I thought historians were more careful, and it's sad that they aren't. : ( Good luck with your article, it sounds like a cool project.

I think I'll try to email someone about BPC and religious conversion and see what happens! Maybe a retired historian so I don't feel like I'm taking time from their grading of student papers, and whatever.

From:

luzula

Selena: thanks for writing up the stuff about the Bloody Assizes! Ugh, those are some harrowing details. : (

I guess James II and his regime takes the prize for personal cruelty and vindictiveness, while George II and his regime takes the prize for persecution of a whole geographical area, and not just executing/transporting the ones who'd actually been in arms. But interesting that the soldiers in the New Model Army were never punished--and it makes a lot of sense, too, from the winner's POV, to try to win over the ordinary people and punish the leaders...

Convention in such cases demanded that the about to be executed person proclaimed their loyalty to the monarch and asked the attending crowd to pray for the monarch, displaying their loyalty to said monarch.

How interesting! A lot of the speeches of the executed Jacobites after the '45 are in The Lyon in Mourning, and all of them that I've read stick to their convictions and assert that they did the right thing. They certainly don't proclaim their loyalty to George II. Maybe this was a general change that occurred? Maybe Monmouth started a trend...

From:

regshoe

I hope you don't mind me suddenly butting in here, but I noticed this conversation and I've just found a primary source for this!

Archibald Cameron, writing in 1753 and quoted by Robert Forbes in The Lyon in Mourning, says:

I likewise declare on the word of a dying man that the last time I had the honour to see his Royal Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales, he told me from his own mouth, and bid me assure his friends from him that he was a member of the Church of England.

Archibald could have been mistaken, of course, and he doesn't say anything about the circumstances of Charles's conversion. But at least it was something that people were saying in the 1750s!

From:

luzula

Oh, how interesting! That certainly is evidence that it's not something made up much later, anyway. No, of course we don't mind it. : )

I've never plowed the whole of The Lyon in Mourning, just parts of it. Maybe I should go back to it...and by the way, check out the footnote on the page just previous to that! Broster used those exact words about the prospects of appealing to the Duke of Argyll. : ) Interesting that it was in actual history another Campbell pleading with him for Archie's life, and taking the role that Ewen takes in GitN.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, awesome! That's great, thanks for turning that up.

And we absolutely want people to butt in and teach us things, that's what these discussion posts are all about. :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Every line of that is amaaaazing!

"Not to talk shit about anyone, but..."

LOL Wilhelmine, this is why we love you.

What do you mean people feel insulted when you insult them?

The number of biographers who go "THIS" when talking about Fritz driving his friends/intellectuals away by expecting them to not get offended, banter back, but without insulting him, and without forgetting that he's king...Oh, Fritz. You never did understand the difference between abused teenager punching up and absolute monarch punching down. *hugs*

Another girl, what can you do

Drown them like puppies? *lolsob*

You honestly kind of look like your older brother in a dress

Well, the tricorn isn't helping, but as we've discussed, Amalie was the one who looked most like him, intense blue eyes and all!

One eye on your career and one eye on some pretty boy's ass

OH HEINRICH.

Your family had other problems around the time of your birth

OH BOY DID THEY

and you being overlooked never quite stopped

That explains so much! From Wilhelmine's "my youngest sibling was four and hiding under the table" on! :PP

Heee! Everyone needs this shorthand for Fritz & siblings!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

(sorry mildred, it IS at the top once yuletide is over!)

Lol, you mean I've been pushing a different book? Haha, no worries, I want you to read this one too! Especially since it's *not* anywhere near the top of my list. You must report back!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

maybe watch it so you guys can tell me how divorced from real life it is :) )

Well, like Selena, I know very little about Ivan, but he is on my someday list! (Like Selena, the Elizabeth I proposal is one of the only things I remembered from my long-ago history days. That and him having more wives than Henry VIII: he had eight.)

Charles XII and base 8: OMG. I mean, yeah, he's not wrong. But can you imagine a world in which part of it ran on base 10 and part on base 8... it would be orders of magnitude worse than metric/imperial. Oh Charles.

Maybe he figured that out and that's why he kept it to discussions with professors and didn't try to make it into a law!

presumably from all that random 18th-19th-century English fiction I read a bunch of :P

Huh. I would not have guessed that!

Kalabalik: okay this is freaking AMAZING and Charles is BOTH awesome and crazy :P Also I am super tickled that it is still a word in Swedish!

Same and same!

I also really like hearing the stories

I will tell you ALL the stories, because you have to learn about a thing before you can do rigorous source criticism on it. :)

although I am amused that he signs it "vostre bon père MAXIMILIANUS, futur pape."

I admit to being amused by "entre eos," like dude, your Latin is showing. :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Right, this is ringing a bell. I remember us talking about this letter, but I don't know if we ever talked about the "liberator" choice of words.

I mean, given the state of things in May 1731, it's quite possible he was extremely pessimistic and cynical about the prospect of her being able to do anything about his situation. (Those were the days when his escape plan was "marry MT," for those of you who will benefit from the chronology reminder.) And even if he thought there was a chance, I'm touched that he cared enough to insist that she not do it.

As to whether in December he thought she had improved his situation...I don't know. If he didn't know yet that he was going to have to get married himself, he found out by early January, I believe. Maybe he was trying to make her feel better, or maybe he thought that her marriage, on top of his kissing Dad's boots and forswearing predestination, helped improve his situation in August.

Conversely, is there some hidden (subconscious or conscious) resentment on his part (because she can't see he had to fake it, because she married which he didn't want, possibly because she was against his escape plan, and thus he puts it on extra strong?

Could be this too! I'm sure Fritz's head was a very complicated place in 1731. :/ </3

c) Since Fritz even in this late stage isn't presumably surrounded by "many" people hating on BayreuthFriedrich who have to be enlightened about him, he's presumably talking in code about Mom, right?

Presumably, although given how Sonsine was supposed (according to Wilhelmine's memoirs) to have reacted to the idea of Wilhelmine offering to give up on the Fritz of Wales marriage, and this right after FW had just locked up Fritz and beaten Wilhelmine up...maybe there were numerous people Fritz met when he came home for the wedding that he needed to enlighten! If Sonsine, who loved Wilhelmine, had such strong feelings, other people might have too.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Kalabalik: I realized I had a typo in write-up. The wine that Charles drank during the long siege, when the building was on fire, was supposed to have been the first alcohol of any kind, not just the first brandy, that he had drunk in many years. He was famous for not touching alcohol, or at best watery beer. (But at least one historian, as noted, says that this may not be something to take literally.) At any rate, he wasn't in the Anti-Sobriety society with FW and Augustus! And Peter the Great, who effectively had his own. (There were written rules for his society. They involved mandatory drinking. Lots of it.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Because reasons, I've been slowly working my way through Kloosterhuis. (Reasons mostly being "my German is just barely good enough now" and "I have a tablet to ameloriate the small font problem now", but also reading it on November 6 was </3.)

One thing I found that I don't remember you reporting was that Hans Heinrich, when he was in East Prussia, was apparently lining his pockets?

zähneknirschend hatten Bürgermeister und Rat ständige Einmischungen des Gehorsam gewohnten Generalleutnants in ihr Stadtregiment zu ertragen, der dabei durchaus auch tüchtig in die eigene Tasche (etwa zugunsten seiner Brau- und Hökergerechtigkeit oder bei der Verbesserung seines Gutes Reussen) zu wirtschaften verstand.

Grudgingly, the Burgermeisters and council had to endure the constant interference of the lieutenant general in their town regiment, the lieutenant general who was accustomed to obedience and who knew how to do business economically in his own pocket (like in favor of his brewing- or hawking-?? or in the improvement of his estate Reussen).

"Gerechtigeit" I only know as "justice", but "interests" or "businesses" makes more sense in context here. Anyway, it does sound like he's using his position for his financial benefit, especially with this footnote:

Entschädigung von Bürgern durch die Erben des verstorbenen Generalfeldmarschalls von Katte für ihre von diesem zu unbilligen Kaufpreisen abgekauften und seinem Gut Reussen zugeschlagenen Ländereien, 1743 – 1748)

Compensation of the townspeople by the heirs of the late Field Marshal von Katte for their lands purchased by this man at unreasonable prices and added to his estate Reussen, 1743-1748.

The 1743-1748 date is fascinating. It sounds like a long, drawn-out lawsuit, and it must have ended either with or just before the deaths of the two brothers in the duel over the inheritance. I wonder if the lawsuit was something else they clashed over. Or was it just the ginormous amount of money (lol, I'm seeing how HH got so rich :P) they stood to inherit?

And speaking of Hans Hermann's possibly corrupt immediate ancestors, Kloosterhuis talks about FW's decision not to dismiss Grandpa Wartensleben with his fellow "Wehs". Whereas Göse says, per your summary, "that the army was FW's beloved and holy grail, so if he'd been under the impression that Wartensleben, once in command, had fucked with the army, he would never have let it go as opposed to keeping the guy around and treating him like a man of honor. And FW did investigate the three Ws rather thoroughly," Kloosterhuis says FW probably didn't want to let the gruff ("schroffen") Old Dessauer take his place.

That seems like very odd speculation; Göse's line of reasoning is more convincing to me. Kloosterhuis cites Hinrich's bio of FW (which we talked about but never read), but I can't tell if the speculation is Kloosterhuis' or Hinrich's.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Kalabalik: okay this is freaking AMAZING and Charles is BOTH awesome and crazy :P

So I'm reading another book on the Great Northern War, and this quote is too good not to share. When the Allies are trying to make peace,

It was not likely, [a minister] banteringly remarked, that Charles would admit Peter to a peace on any terms, "since in that case he would have no Enemy left at all; and to have always one seems to be an article very essential to his happiness."

LOL forever. If the shoe fits, Charles...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I may not have time to reply to all your comments, or reply in full, but please don't imagine that I'm not reading and benefiting! Reading what you write makes it much easier to follow along when I'm reading various books, and then I read those books and come back with things to share. :)

For example, I know I didn't reply in full to your Alessandro de' Medici post, considering I asked you read the book, but I'm now reading a book on the Medici, and I have learned at least one thing relevant to salon!

Anna Maria Luisa, the dowager Palatine Electress who is Gian Gastone's sister, the one that Cosimo tried to make it so she could inherit but everyone said no, and who was the last of the grand ducal line of the Medici (GG died in 1737, she died in 1743), is this author's favorite Medici and gets a whole chapter. And Selena had told us that one of the few things Gian Gastone actually bothered to get involved with when he became Grand Duke, aside from revoking Dad's crazy laws, was to separate Medici property from state property, so he'd have something to leave her.

So what I've learned from this book, which Wikipedia seconds, is that Anna Maria Luisa, was responsible for the Medici family pact. It ensured that all the Medicean art and treasures collected over nearly three centuries of political ascendancy remained in Florence. Cynthia Miller Lawrence, an American art-historian, argues that Anna Maria Luisa thus provisioned for Tuscany's future economy through tourism. Sixteen years after her death, the Uffizi Gallery, built by Cosimo the Great, the founder of the Grand Duchy, was made open to public viewing.

Quote from Wikipedia. The author of the book I'm reading claims that the Lorrainers (FS's agents) came in and promptly illegally took as much of the art as possible to Vienna.

However. I should point out that the author is Lorenzo de' Medici, a modern-day representative of a side branch of the Medici family that did not die out, and his Medici are the Best Family Ever, they do no wrong, and they are far superior to their contemporaries in every possible way.

Selena, do you have a counter perspective on this, or is the illegal seizing and exporting of treasures a thing that FS did the moment he got the chance?

Hilariously, while modern-day Lorenzo de Medici's favorite famous Medici family member is Anna Maria Luisa, he's not a fan of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and only devotes a couple pages to the most famous Medici. He made me laugh when he said, "Look, when you go your whole life hearing, 'Oh, Lorenzo de Medici, like the Magnificent!' you start to think, 'Yes, unfortunately.'"

Lol, you have my sympathy. But not my trust in your scholarship, sir. (I wouldn't have bothered with this book, but it was 1) short, 2) $8 on Kindle, 3) translated into German, and 4) very simple prose, so excellent for German practice while I wait for Horowski's next book to come out. Hopefully on Kindle in the US!!)

From:

selenak

And that's not surprising, given that Maximilian originally spoke no French when coming to Burgundy, just as Mary did not speak any German - they talked in Latin while he learned French as fast as he could. (She never learned German.) Now I don't know whether he learned it by hear or actually employed a teacher, but you can indeed tell that Latin was the language he had learned first.

To amuse you linguistically some more: remember, when Margaret of Austria went by ship to Spain (as the doomed Juana went to Flanders) in order to marry Juana's brother Juan, son and heir of Isabella and Ferdinand, who would die not a year later, there was so much terrible wheather that she thought she might die, and composed her own epitaph which she sowed into her dress so she could be identified if the ship got wrecked. It was a ditty going:

Cy-gist Margot, la gentil' demoiselle
Qu'ha deux marys et encore est pucelle.

(As biographer Ursula Traumatino noted, one thing Margaret and Dad Maximilian shared was the ability to laugh at themselves.)

Now, a century later, one Pére Hilarion de Coste, who in 1647 published a collection called "Éloge des Reines et Princesses illustres, thought this sounded too undignified, and also he disapproved of the word "pucelle". So he published a more dignified version:

Ci-git sous ce tombeau
La belle Marguerite
Qu, mariée dans l'eau
Mourut vierge d'élite.

*rolls eyes*

BTW, the vid about Margaret I linked many entries ago has in a comment an English translation without mentioning whom by which manages a good rhyme: "Here lies Margaret the willing bride. Twice married but a virgin when she died."

Margaret's personal self chosen motto is also a pun: Fortune Infortune Fort: Une. She wrote occasional poetry all her life,on a Fritzian level, i.e. it would not have been remembered if she hadn't been royalty but she evidently enjoyed it and it helped her vent. When Dad died, Margaret wrote a lament for him comme sa fille unicque et soul enfant in which she goes through her series of losses:

Les deux premiers si furent les coeurs marris
Prince d'Espagne et le duc de Savoye
Que plus bel homme au monde ne scavoye.
Et le troisiem: mon seul frère etoit
Roy des Espagnes et de Naples à bon droit.
La! tu 'las mis en semblable erroy
Car tu n'espragnes prince ne du ne roy.

Pour le quatriemme, o Mort trop oultrageuse!
Tu as estain la fleur chevalreuse
Et as vancu celui qui fust vaninqueur
Maximilian, ce très noble Empereur
Qui en bouté à nul ne se compère:
C'estoy César, mon seul seigneur et père.
Mais tu l'as en trop pitieux estat
SèpulturÈ au chasteau Neustadt.

Margaret and Maximilian had had their arguments, but they always reconciled, and starting with the time about her second widowhood, she'd become (in addition to being the Governor of the Netherlands) her father's closest advisor. Here is one example of him asking her for advice on a question sounding oddly familiar to Fredericians, for he wants to know whether she thinks it's a good idea to, well, see for yourself:

„...pour ce que par pluiseurs fois nous avez escript que voulsissions bailler l’investiture au jeune duc de Clèves des duchiez de Jülich et des Mons*, [...]. Et pour ce que ces matières sont de grande importance, nous vous requérons que semblablement y vueillez bien panser, et à ceste cause envoyer devers nous ung de voz conseilliers ou secrétaires privez, par lequel nous vueillez amplement advertir de vostre bon advis sur ce.“

*Mons = Mountain = Berg; you can see Maximilian is translating the name in his head directly into Latin.

cahn: Jülich & Berg = the territories FW wants to have from the Imperials. The Emperor never granting them to him is a more important reason than not getting notified in time of the MT/FS wedding as to why he's all "here stands one who will avenge me" in 1736. And why if Fritz had gone and invaded Jülich and Berg, no one would have been surprised.

We don't have Margaret's reply letter to this question, but one where she advises him on another question, re: Milan, and here Dad was so impressed that he wrote back, in another case where you can see his mixing in Latin into his French:

„Tant y a que noz sumus content de vous, outant que ung père se doyt contenter de sa bonne fylle, et voluns bien que tout le monde le sayche. En oultre désirant que continués en vostre
gouvernement comme avés faet jusques issy au présent et vous nous faerés très singulier plaisir
dont volentié vous assertissons, et adiu. Faet de la main, le IIIe jour de février, de vostre bon père MAXI.“