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 Recent Diplomacy: 1725 Treaty of Vienna

[mildred_of_midgard]

Context

Spain and Austria/the HRE shock everyone by allying. This is triggered by two events:

1) The Duc de Bourbon sent Philip V's daughter, who was living at the French court and supposed to marry Louis XV, back to Spain, because she's too young to produce heirs asap. This move results in a diplomatic breach between France and Spain and causes a very offended Spain to start looking for allies elsewhere.

2) Britain, Hanover, France, and Prussia have joined forces in an alliance of their own, thus pushing Spain and Austria closer together.

Terms

Spain renounces claims in the Italian peninsula.

Spain signs the Pragmatic Sanction.

Spain allows the Austrian Ostend Company to trade with the Spanish empire.

Austria accepts Don Carlos claims to inherit in Tuscany and Parma.

Austria agrees that one of the Emperor’s daughters will marry one of the King of Spain’s sons (sometimes presented as MT + Don Carlos, but while that was definitely Spain's preferred interpretation, some of my sources say that Austria deliberately left it more vague than that.)

Austria agrees that the Emperor will provide at least moral support to Spain for getting Gibraltar and Minorca back.

Sending back princesses

[mildred_of_midgard]

More context on this, from my reading last night.

First a reminder: in 1721 ten-year-old Louis XV was engaged to a three-year-old Spanish princess, daughter of Philip V, because Regent Philippe d'Orleans and Philip V were the two candidates next in line to the throne if Louis died, and they had a vested interest in keeping it that way as long as possible. So a French queen who couldn't give Louis an heir for another 11 years at the earliest was an excellent choice if you were Philippe or Philip V (who would then have started a civil war over the throne as soon as Louis died). Reminder that Philip V was more closely related, but he had renounced the throne because there was so much resistance to having him on the throne of both France and Spain. But in the 1720s, he had an army and could easily have invaded.

Then regent Philippe dies in late 1723, and the Duc de Bourbon comes to power. He has a vested interest in *not* having a d'Orleans inherit (or a civil war break out), so he sends the Spanish princess back to Spain and engages Louis to Marie Leszczynska, who is able to give him an heir in 1729.

Now, the normal account by historians is that the Spanish get offended and therefore send the French princess who had been married to Philip V's son (now dead, leaving her a widow) back to France in high dudgeon.

But the Philip V biographer I had read, Henry Kamen, said that the Spanish were already planning to send her back, and that they initiated the exchange. Selena and I were a bit confused by this, since pretty much everyone else has the French initiating it.

But I wanted to believe Kamen, not because he's such a great scholar (he thinks the Pragmatic Sanction is about leaving the imperial throne to MT), but because he's by definition focused on the Spanish side of things. So if there was documentary evidence that the Spanish were already planning this, he would be more likely to pick up on it, compared to the France/England/Germany-focused authors we had read.

Well, I've been rereading Horowski for German practice, and his account matches Kamen's almost line-by-line. This led me to suspect Kamen was his source, and lo, Kamen is cited in his sources for this episode.

Close reading of both texts I think clarifies the issue for me. So here's what they say:

In 1724, Philip V abdicated in favor of his son Luis. Luis was married to the French princess (daughter of Regent Philippe). He became Luis I (because it wasn't the usual practice for non-Bourbon kings to name their firstborn sons Louis, lol).

Seven months later, still in 1724, Luis I dies. Philip reluctantly allows himself to be pressured into resuming the throne, because his next son is only 11 and would need a regent anyway.

French princess Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, now Dowager Queen of Spain, is entitled to a large amount of money for the rest of her life, is spending money like crazy, and is unpopular because her behavior is out of control. I have no idea how much of the following is true vs. gossip, but Wikipedia says:

She would walk around naked, belch and fart in public, run around the palace corridors, or jump off her horse to climb on trees. Modern diagnosis deem many of her behavioural traits compatible with an out-of-hand borderline personality disorder.

She would appear in public dirty and smelly, refusing to use underwear, and would try to provoke courtiers by showing her intimate parts in public. She would refuse to touch the food on her table, but would then hide away and compulsively gobble down anything that she could put her hands on, whether it was edible or not. Her behaviour seemingly got worse over time. At some point, she developed the custom of cleaning the windows and tiles of the palace using her own clothes: she would leave her courtiers astonished by suddenly undressing in public to clean the windows in the room with her dress.

Anyway, Philip V wants to send her back. He writes a letter to France going, "Is there any chance you want her?"

In Horowski's words, Philip could never have guessed what would happen next. Which was...

"Sure! You can have yours back too. She's too young for childbearing, and I'm not the next in line for the throne if Louis dies without a son."

At which point Philip and Isabella, who had absolutely not been trying to initiate an exchange for their daughter who had done nothing wrong (she's the one Selena describes as the "adorable moppet"), are highly offended. Furthermore, they're already upset with France over the way it recently (1719-1720) invaded Spain to keep Spain from reconquering territory (Gibraltar, Sicily, etc.) lost in the War of the Spanish Succession. So they break off relations with France and conclude a hasty alliance with their old enemy Austria, recognizing the Pragmatic Sanction and trying to get MT married to their son Don Carlos. This is the 1725 Treaty of Vienna, which you can read about in one of my millions of posts on 1720s diplomacy.

Also, I really need to reread Kamen, as I have a ton more context now. :)

Re: Sending back princesses

[cahn]

...wow! I don't have anything interesting to say about this, but it was hilarious and gossipy, which is what I ask of salon :D

Re: Sending back princesses

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hee! :D

Here to deliver more gossip: in the volume that felis linked to is a short essay by Weber on the events of 1724, specifically when Louise Elisabeth got placed under house arrest.

Weber starts by saying that the rumors that went around concerning the incident were very similar to the Königsmarck affair. But whereas the Hanoverian affair is still talked about, the Spanish one has been totally forgotten. Possibly the Spanish court was better at coverups!

Weber then says that our sources about this episode are all unreliable, third-hand, and full of holes. So he only very tentatively draws conclusions, and makes it clear we have no idea what happened. Here's his account of what we know.

In 1723, just before his father Philip V abdicates and makes him king, soon-to-be Luis of Spain marries Louise Elisabeth, daughter of Regent Philippe d'Orleans. The groom is sixteen, the bride fourteen. Being used to France, young Louise Elisabeth rebels like you'd expect a teen to rebel when she encounters the strict etiquette of the Spanish court. Nothing in this 19th century essay about taking off her clothes to scrub the windows and tiles, but she likes running around the palace all day and buying drums and kids' toys and playing with them. This is not considered commensurate with the dignity of a queen.

One hot summer evening, she's wearing light clothes and romping around in the park with her ladies and some cavaliers of the court. Her husband looks out a window and sends someone to her to stop and come back inside immediately. She obeys, but in a big huff with body language so annoyed and protesting that he can see it from the window. Teenager alert! So he places her under house arrest and takes away the members of her retinue that have been supporting her in this behavior. (My sympathies are 100% with her from this description. Not sure how its accuracy compares to the one in Wikipedia; one could be bowdlerized and the other could be wildly exaggerated rumors.)

She protests by refusing to eat and drink, but after a few days is eventually allowed to go for supervised walks.

So now all of Europe is buzzing with rumors. One such rumor is that Luis locked her up out of jealousy. Which naturally leads to rumors that she was caught with a lover.

Some rumors point to the Marquis d'Aiseau, an obscure nobleman who has recently traveled to Spain, as this hypothetical lover. His initial letters said he'd been received well at court, but then--! He disappears! No more word from him.

Rumors abound that he started flirting with the Queen, Luis gave him 24 hours to leave Spain, he refused and behaved more outrageously, and so he was killed. There are various rumors about his manner of death: he was caught at night while climbing a ladder to the Queen's room, he was stabbed in a corridor leading to her room, or even killed in her room!

Weber: So what really happened? We don't know, because our sources suck. All we know is that he disappeared. But it seems unlikely that it was connected to Louise Elisabeth, because Luis let her go after only a few days, apparently convinced that she hadn't really meant any harm. (OTOH, maybe he was just better at coverups than the Hanovers!)

But where it gets gossipy and fun is when these rumors make an appearance in Brussels. Now, in 1724, Eugene is governor of the now Austrian Netherlands, but since who would want to live in the Netherlands when you could live in Vienna, has a deputy there. The deputy's wife and daughter are exchanging letters with their contacts in Spain. One such letter contains this passage:

You won't be surprised that the Marquis d'Aiseau would dare to aspire to a queen, but what's really surprising is that such a well-formed young man would fall in love with such a little monster.

Enter the Comte de Bonneval. This Comte de Bonneval guy had an interesting career, to say the least. I'll supplement Weber with Wikipedia here.

First Bonneval joins the French army, pisses off his superiors, is court martialed, gets a death sentence, and flees to Germany. There he pisses off Eugene, who sends him to the Austrian Netherlands. There he pisses off Eugene's deputy, gets court martialed, and is condemned to death again. But Charles VI commutes his sentence to imprisonment and banishment. Banished, Bonneval goes to join the Turks, converts to Islam, and changes his name to Ahmed. While working for the Ottomans, Bonneval helps them defeat the Austrians in the late 1730s. This is FS's first war, where he *really* doesn't distinguish himself with his martial prowess like he was expected to, and the Austrians lose a bunch of territory that Eugene (d. 1736) had conquered. Then Bonneval--stop me if you saw this coming--pisses off his Ottoman superiors and gets banished to the Black Sea. Eventually, he dies in Constantinople.

So 1724 is the episode where he pisses off Eugene's deputy in the Netherlands. See, Bonneval claims to be related to the Bourbons! And when he hears what was said about the "little monster" he's allegedly related to, he has to defend her honor. Playing Don Quixote (as a contemporary described it), he gives the wife of the deputy such a chewing out that she "fears the sharpness of Bonneval's tongue more than the sharpness of his sword," and shuts up.

But then her husband, Eugene's deputy, has Bonneval locked up. Nothing daunted, Bonneval writes to Eugene that he's ready to risk his neck on the scaffold for this. Fortunately for him, that's when Charles VI comes through with the commutation of the sentence. And then Bonneval goes to Turkey and begins the next chapter of his life.

So what happened to the disappearing Marquis? At least in 1861, that was a mystery.

But more fun from Wikipedia:

The Memoirs published under his name are spurious. See

Prince de Ligne, Mémoire sur le comte de Bonneval (Paris, 1817);

It's our RPF writer again! (Weber has a footnote citing Bonneval's memoirs, but warning the reader that their authenticity is doubted.)