18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 33

[cahn]

And, I mean, it doesn't have to be just 18th century characters, either!

(also, waiting for Yuletide!)

Comments

1730 Trending Topics: Wittelsbach subsidies

[mildred_of_midgard]

Bavaria: So I hear you're interested in allying with us, GB? Subsidies, please.

Great Britain: Not that interested.

France: Et tu, Britain? Your stinginess is the only thing standing between us and the downfall of the House of Habsburg!

Great Britain: Look, it's not that I, Walpole, or I, Townshend, or I, some other minister, are not interested in an alliance with Bavaria. It's that we, Parliament, have to justify our spending to a voting public. We're already spending too much on the weird alliance system we're in, with relatively little to show for it. Our constituents are getting antsy.

France: I think you're just being difficult on purpose because you're secretly pro-Austrian.

Great Britain: Well, the point here isn't to crush the House of Habsburg. The point is to teach Charles VI a lesson about getting too big for his breeches, and then we can go back to being friends. England and Austria have a long history of being friends.

France: You are clearly missing the point of my being in an alliance with you in the first place, which is CRUSH the House of Habsburg!

Great Britain: I thought the point of us being in an alliance was about our respective succession crises and territorial guarantees--

France: That's how we got pulled into this alliance, 14 years ago, by a bunch of people who are mostly now dead. If you don't shape up, we're going to start looking for other allies. We're already working on kissing and making up with our buddy Spain. If Queen Isabella would just calm the fuck down for 5 minutes...

Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Wittelsbach subsidies

[selenak]

Bavaria: So I hear you're interested in allying with us, GB? Subsidies, please.

Which Bavaria direly needs because of the earlier France/Bavaria "Down with the Habsburgs!" team up. cahn, remember Max Emanuel, enterprising Prince Elector of Bavaria, who was gunning for the Imperial throne already when Leopold (grandpa of MT) had it? He buddied up with Louis XIV to get it, thus providing the opportunity for Marlborough & Eugene to defeat him at Höchstädt/Blenheim and make future descendant Winston Churchill proud. This meant lots of armies in Bavaria, Bavaria losing, Bavaria impoverished. Also, Max Emanuel, much like his descendant Ludwig II, loved building beautiful palaces, never mind the economy. I regularly visit the park and palace he built in Munich, which is called Nymphenburg and is drop dead gorgeous. Also expensive. Conclusion: Bavaria really wants and needs cash! (And will continue to team up with the French a lot, including a century later with Napoleon, who'll change it from a dukedom to a kingdom and add Franconia as a territory.) Vive la France was a semi-Bavarian motto for eons. L'Angleterre, not so much.

Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Wittelsbach subsidies

[mildred_of_midgard]

Conclusion: Bavaria really wants and needs cash!

But that does not mean they'll make it easy on you! Simms:

Rulers were highly offended if Britain offered them too little, and sometimes if it offered anything at all. The Bavarian envoy to Paris, for example, complained in the summer of 1729 that British envoys were trying to hire his master the Elector of Bavaria like a hackney cab.

I regularly visit the park and palace he built in Munich, which is called Nymphenburg and is drop dead gorgeous.

I do not regularly visit it, but I have been there once! And it is! :)

Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Wittelsbach subsidies

[cahn]

lololol this is great, thank you!