Me: Noooo. Why are all you guys so easily embarrassed, but then start wars that destroy the primary sources? SIGH.
Well, quite, though thankfully Seckendorff the nephew and his secret diary preserved some of Manteuffel’s more explicit comments on this subject, to wit, reminder and quote from my Seckendorff write-up. Seckendorff says Le Diable does advise Fritz to put more of an effort into the marital relationship:
(...)because it would make your state now happier, and would save you from many future worries, because when we see that You have no lineage, we will marry your brother Wilhelm, and then the scheming and plotting will be inevitable" .
Junior agreed to all this; "But", he said, "I can't embrace my wife with passion, and when I sleep with her, I do it rather out of duty than by inclination."
Mantteuffel points out that the earth would be barren if the only children born were born to couples who loved each other, and hey, gird your loins, she's got at least a nice exterior?
Junior: ,, This is true, her form is very pretty; but I have never been in love with her. However, I should be the last man, in the world if I didn't esteem her: because she has a very sweet nature, a more docile woman one cannot imagine, she's excessively compliant, and hastens to do everything she believes can please me. Also, she can't complain that I'm not sleeping with her. I truly don't know why there isn't a child there already."
In case Seckendorff Jr. is slow on the uptake, Manteuffel has a literary hint for him:
The Devil makes me read the Roman History of Des Echarts and points out the character of Junior, who is the same as that of Emperor Hadrian.
Seckendorff has a non-Diable source as well for FW thinking Fritz needs more encouragement re: marital sex: Biberius tells me about the secrets, that Junior confided in Pöllnitz. The King encourages him to produce children, had him made a marital bed out of velvet. Biberius does not believe, that Junior will survive the father, but that pessimus Wilhelmus will succeed one day.
So maybe it’ll all FW’s paranoia, but while I don’t think EC made a deliberate “he’s not having much sex with me!” Complaint, I can see her having accidentally let something slip when FW in his crude way asks her when he can expect his grandkid, or something like that. It would have been enough for her to react embarassed/shy and start to stutter for him to assume the worst.
it can be used to show a part of the character of the author, which is to have a lot of spirit and reading, to flatter himself by showing it [se piquer a faire parade], enjoying himself in making people feel he has some, and to be extraordinarily polite in his letters in order to attract reciprocal incense."
That’s actually a pretty good description of Fritzian letters, especially from the Crown Prince phase. And I do love the phrase “reciprocal incense”, which immediately brings to mind the early “you’re the greatest”/“no, you’re the greatest!” Exchanges with Voltaire. And not just Voltaire. Laying it on thick is pretty much standard for Algarotti or indeed Suhm in the later 30s when writing to Fritz, isn’t it?
Manteuffel getting his impact on Fritz wrong: obviously, though Bronisch points out that even the Wolff question totally aside, he’s actually reading at this point what Manteuffel recs, and includes in his very first letter to Voltaire a Manteuffel edited book as a gift to reccomend himself to Voltaire. Meaning that Manteuffel isn’t completely wrong about having made an impression at this point in time. And let’s not forget, he does seem to have had a knack for mentoring people and leaving life long fond impressions (see also Formey and Des Champs singing his praises decades after the man is dead, when not many other than they would still know who he’d been and there is no one to impress by mentioning him), and unlike with many nobles, his intellectual cedits weren’t just superficial. He didn’t just have the complete university education instead which Prussian princes wouldn’t get until much much later, he kept up contact with his alma mater in Leipzig and the scholars there, provided funds for students there (which speaks of a genuine interest in the future beyond “how will I and my backers profit?”), and does things like translating Horace from Latin to French in his spare time for fun.
Of course, he’s also exactly the kind of smooth, wily and bribery spreading envoy showing up in the Anti Machiavell under the “not to be trusted, though definitely to be employed against others” headline, and while I doubt Fritz knew the full extent of how many people around him Manteuffel had bribed (see also: Manteuffel getting reports from the Straßburg trip, most likely from young Wartensleben who makes it on the list of six people Fritz says he loves and recommends to AW in the event of his death in the first Silesian War) , he probably had a good idea about some. (Including “I was framed by Seckendorff Jr.!” Protester Des Champs.) (BTW, looking up old write ups has reminded me that Manteuffel was able to take over Grumbkow’s network in 1739 after his death.) And of course Fritz would resent any attempt at manipulation he noticed.
Given that Manteuffel didn’t have a high opinion of princes in general - In a letter to Christian Wolff himself from June 16th 1738, Manteuffel wrote that two thirds of the princes in the HRE had shown themselves to be worse than useless plagues of humanity and called them "prètendus Dieux terrestres“ - and given those he personally knew in Saxony, Denmark, Hannover and Prussia, I think he did truly see Fritz as the one with the most potential, but as Louise Gottsched correctly points out to him in a letter before Silesia 1 even starts, the whole roi philosophe idea is questionable. Otoh, the Fritzian reasoning of why kings came into being and are necessary in The Anti-Machiavell actually does not sound unlike what Manteuffel according to Bronish wrote just a bit earlier. Quoting from the Bronisch write up: In an unpublished treatise on how to educate a prince, written in the later 1730s, he wrote that absolute monarchical power was subject to the "Loix de la Nature et de la raison", and the monarchs needed to respect the laws of nature and reason all the more because they were carrying the responsibility for "le bien de la societé"; only this provides in Manteuffel's unpublished opinion a legitimization to the institution of kings at all, "l'unique fin de leur institution". Otherwise there is no point to kings.
=> He probably did say something like this to Fritz, or wrote it in one of the many letters not surviving.
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Re: Reports from the Dresden State Archive - Fritz and Manteuffel
Date: 2022-01-09 11:16 pm (UTC)Me: Noooo. Why are all you guys so easily embarrassed, but then start wars that destroy the primary sources? SIGH.
Well, quite, though thankfully Seckendorff the nephew and his secret diary preserved some of Manteuffel’s more explicit comments on this subject, to wit, reminder and quote from my Seckendorff write-up. Seckendorff says Le Diable does advise Fritz to put more of an effort into the marital relationship:
(...)because it would make your state now happier, and would save you from many future worries, because when we see that You have no lineage, we will marry your brother Wilhelm, and then the scheming and plotting will be inevitable" .
Junior agreed to all this; "But", he said, "I can't embrace my wife with passion, and when I sleep with her, I do it rather out of duty than by inclination."
Mantteuffel points out that the earth would be barren if the only children born were born to couples who loved each other, and hey, gird your loins, she's got at least a nice exterior?
Junior: ,, This is true, her form is very pretty; but I have never been in love with her. However, I should be the last man, in the world if I didn't esteem her: because she has a very sweet nature, a more docile woman one cannot imagine, she's excessively compliant, and hastens to do everything she believes can please me. Also, she can't complain that I'm not sleeping with her. I truly don't know why there isn't a child there already."
In case Seckendorff Jr. is slow on the uptake, Manteuffel has a literary hint for him:
The Devil makes me read the Roman History of Des Echarts and points out the character of Junior, who is the same as that of Emperor Hadrian.
Seckendorff has a non-Diable source as well for FW thinking Fritz needs more encouragement re: marital sex: Biberius tells me about the secrets, that Junior confided in Pöllnitz. The King encourages him to produce children, had him made a marital bed out of velvet. Biberius does not believe, that Junior will survive the father, but that pessimus Wilhelmus will succeed one day.
So maybe it’ll all FW’s paranoia, but while I don’t think EC made a deliberate “he’s not having much sex with me!” Complaint, I can see her having accidentally let something slip when FW in his crude way asks her when he can expect his grandkid, or something like that. It would have been enough for her to react embarassed/shy and start to stutter for him to assume the worst.
it can be used to show a part of the character of the author, which is to have a lot of spirit and reading, to flatter himself by showing it [se piquer a faire parade], enjoying himself in making people feel he has some, and to be extraordinarily polite in his letters in order to attract reciprocal incense."
That’s actually a pretty good description of Fritzian letters, especially from the Crown Prince phase. And I do love the phrase “reciprocal incense”, which immediately brings to mind the early “you’re the greatest”/“no, you’re the greatest!” Exchanges with Voltaire. And not just Voltaire. Laying it on thick is pretty much standard for Algarotti or indeed Suhm in the later 30s when writing to Fritz, isn’t it?
Manteuffel getting his impact on Fritz wrong: obviously, though Bronisch points out that even the Wolff question totally aside, he’s actually reading at this point what Manteuffel recs, and includes in his very first letter to Voltaire a Manteuffel edited book as a gift to reccomend himself to Voltaire. Meaning that Manteuffel isn’t completely wrong about having made an impression at this point in time. And let’s not forget, he does seem to have had a knack for mentoring people and leaving life long fond impressions (see also Formey and Des Champs singing his praises decades after the man is dead, when not many other than they would still know who he’d been and there is no one to impress by mentioning him), and unlike with many nobles, his intellectual cedits weren’t just superficial. He didn’t just have the complete university education instead which Prussian princes wouldn’t get until much much later, he kept up contact with his alma mater in Leipzig and the scholars there, provided funds for students there (which speaks of a genuine interest in the future beyond “how will I and my backers profit?”), and does things like translating Horace from Latin to French in his spare time for fun.
Of course, he’s also exactly the kind of smooth, wily and bribery spreading envoy showing up in the Anti Machiavell under the “not to be trusted, though definitely to be employed against others” headline, and while I doubt Fritz knew the full extent of how many people around him Manteuffel had bribed (see also: Manteuffel getting reports from the Straßburg trip, most likely from young Wartensleben who makes it on the list of six people Fritz says he loves and recommends to AW in the event of his death in the first Silesian War) , he probably had a good idea about some. (Including “I was framed by Seckendorff Jr.!” Protester Des Champs.) (BTW, looking up old write ups has reminded me that Manteuffel was able to take over Grumbkow’s network in 1739 after his death.) And of course Fritz would resent any attempt at manipulation he noticed.
Given that Manteuffel didn’t have a high opinion of princes in general - In a letter to Christian Wolff himself from June 16th 1738, Manteuffel wrote that two thirds of the princes in the HRE had shown themselves to be worse than useless plagues of humanity and called them "prètendus Dieux terrestres“ - and given those he personally knew in Saxony, Denmark, Hannover and Prussia, I think he did truly see Fritz as the one with the most potential, but as Louise Gottsched correctly points out to him in a letter before Silesia 1 even starts, the whole roi philosophe idea is questionable. Otoh, the Fritzian reasoning of why kings came into being and are necessary in The Anti-Machiavell actually does not sound unlike what Manteuffel according to Bronish wrote just a bit earlier. Quoting from the Bronisch write up: In an unpublished treatise on how to educate a prince, written in the later 1730s, he wrote that absolute monarchical power was subject to the "Loix de la Nature et de la raison", and the monarchs needed to respect the laws of nature and reason all the more because they were carrying the responsibility for "le bien de la societé"; only this provides in Manteuffel's unpublished opinion a legitimization to the institution of kings at all, "l'unique fin de leur institution". Otherwise there is no point to kings.
=> He probably did say something like this to Fritz, or wrote it in one of the many letters not surviving.