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cahnAnd including Emperor Joseph II!
from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:
Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.
(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)
from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:
Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.
(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)
Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-19 04:23 pm (UTC)Main book: solid biogrophy with some double standard tendencies, but not many, and nothing in a big 19th century Fritz stan or Nancy Goldstone category. It does its job of presenting Leopold as very competent indeed, though I'm afraid I'm still not a fan, and I do have a suspicion as to why there are way more Joseph and MT biographies than there are Leopold ones, and no, it's not that he only got to rule the Empire for two years. (There are more Italian books about thim as Grand Duke of Tuscany than there are German ones, though.) But in order.
Leopold: born as the ninth kid of MT and FS in 1747. MT worked till shortly before labor, as was her want. This was when Austria was trying to get buddies with Russia, so Leopold was named Peter Leopold, Peter after Elizaveta's Dad, and Elizaveta herself was made his godmother. In Italy, he's still called Pietro Leopoldo for that reason, but the family only used "Leopold" when referring or addressing him. Like all his siblings, he got a tight teaching schedule and started out close with his next oldest brother, Karl. Karl alas died as a teen, and since Joseph was six years older and the next brother, Ferdinand, seven years or so younger, Leopold was never really close to a brother again. (Joseph thought he was close to Leopold. Leopold did not return the feeling.) He also had massive middle child syndrome. While most of his secret writings are about how Joseph sucks, there is some page time devoted to how everyone else sucks as well, including the sister he was closest to as an adult, Maria Christina (Mimi), and he's constantly frustrated that his mother doesn't appreciate him enough. Much as our author stans his competence, she does say with laudable openness in her opinion Leopold has a big case of sibling jealousy.
Now MT is to blame for some of her kids' jealousies in that she had clear favourites, and Leopold wasn't wrong about being the most competent ruler among her children. Certainly some, though not all, of his criticism of Joseph in particular was well founded. But when trying to decide why I feel very different about Leopold's "Joseph sucks, Mom sucks, Mimi sucks, everyone sucks but me!" than I do about Heinrich's life long "Fritz sucks!" complex, which he wasn't shy of voicing, either, I think the difference is that with Heinrich, a) Fritz gave him good cause for resentment over the decades, starting with the Marwitz affair and building up to the AW heartbreak, with a steady accompagnment of Fritz condemning him to a life on the leash and unable to use the gifts he had except in the 7 Years War and in the negotiations with Russia, whereas Leopold's big reasons for Joseph resentment were insistence of using FS' money for the war debts and the tactless criticism of his children late in Joseph's life, whlie Leopold had a rich fulfillled life as Grand Duke of Tuscany, able to do all those things Joseph could only dream of doing while Mom lived, and b) we have plenty of examples of Heinrich feeling positive about non-Fritz siblings (and, well, other people) . With Leopold, we have two letters to one of his mistresses as an example of his having a positive relationship with someone outside the family. While according to outsiders, his marriage was a good one, too, the biography doesn't quote any letters between him and wife (probably because they usually lived together) to make me warm up to that relationship. And while there are quotes from his letters to Maria Christina from the time they were allies (i.e. the decade of Joseph's rule and later), these are mostly either Joseph critique or policy matters, they don't give me the impression of Leopold caring about Mimi as a person, especially keeping in mind the quote about her from one of his "everyone sucks but me" writings. There's nothing comparable to Heinrich's relationships with AW and Ferdinand, is what I'm saying, over even his up and down stormy relationship wiht Amalie. Now I could have warmed up to Leopold the devoted Dad, because this biographer and, come to that, Beales the Joseph biographer, assume he was, but I'm told so in a tell, not show manner, without stories to illustrate him as a father.
Which leaves me with Leopold as something of a cold fish, and nothing to truly offset all the negativity. Again, it's not that he's not right when, say, responding to Joseph's offer to make him fellow regent in Joseph's last year of life by telling Maria Christina no way is he going to do that, because then he'll be held co-responsible for the mess the Empire is in and Joseph's failed reforms. Whereas when he swoops in after Joseph's death, he has a fresh start and a clean slate and can do a proper salvage operation. This is the right, the smart thing to do from a ruler pov. But at the same time, there is something chillling here when you read it with not an ounze of compassion for dying Joseph voiced (and of course Leopold carefully doesn't arrive in Vienna until Joseph is already dead, pretending sickness in order not to get there earlier). Or: he's correct in dragging his feet with Marie Antoinette, and "I may have a sister but Austria does not" is true, plus as his son Franz will find out when Austrian and Prussian armies do team up to invade France, everyone is in for a nasty surprise when it comes to revolutionary French armies. Plus Leopold and Marie Antoinette hadn't seen each other after her early childhood since he left Austria to rule Tuscany in the later 1760s. As opposed to Joseph, he never saw her as an adult. Of course there's no real human relationship there. But then you imagine the increasingly isolated woman in France who has only a short time to live and desperately needs help, and well, it's chilling. Leopold in general had no time for all the French emigrés who thought that hey, their Queen's brother's territory surely was an ideal sanctuary and regrouping and reconquering spot. They were anathema to him politically in their backwardsness; he still was a constitutionalist, after all, and the last thing he thought was desirable was bringing back the French monarch as it has been. So he was as distant and as unkind to them as he could be.
Again, here we have a difference to Heinrich who also remained a constitutionalist and was more in sympathy politically with the French Revolution than with the French emigrés - but who was personally kind and generous and offered his help to all the emigrés he came across, not just those who were hot counts, despite having far less money and power than Leopold did.
Now, as a ruler, Leopold undoubtedly kicked ass. He took over a backwards duchy which, as a reminder, had been run down by Cosimo the ultra bigot for fifty plus years, and Gian Gastone had changed the worst laws but had done notihng constructive to rebuild Tuscany while spending his rule in bed. And FS had only spent three months in Tuscany when taking it over and had mainly seen it as a personal revenue. Whereas Leopold moved there with his wife, and four visits to Vienna in the subsequent years not withstanding, remained there, being a model Duke. He got the economy going again, started a modern education program which also ended the church monopoly but not as radically (and church-infuriating) as Joseph did it back home, and had a modern constitution written for Tuscany, though he never implemented it. For this, our biographer blames Joseph, saying that since Joseph intended for Tuscany to join the Empire once either he or Leopold died, there was no point, and that as soon as Joseph was dead, Leopold immediately reestablished secundogeniture for Tuscany, makng his oldest son, future Emperor Franz, swear off his rights to Tuscany and appointing his second son, Ferdinand, as the next Duke... but he still didn't introduce the consitution into practice then. Also, while Leopold had abolished the death penalty in Tuscany early on, he reintroduced it as Emperor because there was a Tuscany uprising during his two years of Imperial rule, which he could not understand - hadn't he been a model Duke? And now they were turning against him?
Both Hungary and Belgium had been on the brink of revolt when Joseph died, and Leopold managed to calm everyone down, though that entailed handing privileges back to the Hungarian and Belgian nobility at the expense of the farmers, who were less than happy. Still, as the biographer said, it probably saved the monarchy at this point, and if he'd lived, he'd gotten around to improving the lives of the peasants, too. In Tuscany, he had made a gigantic improvement compared to most of the rest of Italy when making it law that mental illnesses are to be treated as illnesses, not demonic possessions, and by dismantling what had remained of the Inquisition since the Cosimo days for good. In the Empire, he steered a good middle way between soothing ruffled clerical feathers by reinstating school prayer and some church privileges but keeping such Josephinian reforms as the fact priests who taught at schools and universities had to qualify on an academic (non clerical level) first. He generally seems to have been on a good way to keep as much progress as was possible at the time and win over some of the forces of reaction (nobility, parts of the church) so they weren't such staunch obstacles anymore but more willing to work with him. But alas, death was waiting.
And now we're getting to a bit of double standard, which goes thusly:
Leopold, in his big anti Joseph rant: Joseph is into prostitutes and other lowly women, I just know it. Ugh.
Biographer: This big rant is as interesting in what it says about Leopold in what it says about Joseph, but he probably was mostly right.
Later:
Biographer: re: Leopold's private life: All his life, there was much gossip and people claimed he shagged everything that moved. That was clearly slander! One should not rely on hostile sources when it comes to people's sex lives.
Also:
Biographer: Leopold hated Joseph's despotism. He himself believed in the limitation of royal power and in a firm constitution, instead of one guy dictating from above what's good for everyone.
Self: With you so far.
Leopold, in one of the rants: And another thing, Joseph wants applause for all his "reforms" and that's why he's being "progressive" . He just wants to be told how wonderful he is!
Biographer, somewhat later: Leopold also believed in a good secret service. Within the country, that is, not abroad, i.e. spies telling him what people thought of him and his reforms. There was that time Marchese C. made fun of Leopold's many girlfriends, and before he knew it, he got orders not to stay in Florence but remain on his countryside estates, because Leopold's spies were that efficient. But that doesn't mean he was against criticism, per se!
You get the idea. But as I said, in general, it's mild case, and the biographer does not try to sell Leopold as flawless anyway.
Habsburg facts I hadn't known or had forgotten before:
On August 6th, 1753, one Chevalier Balde tries to assassinate MT. He slightly wounds the chamberlain in charge his sword and proceeds to the cabinet where MT is working with her cabinet secretary since early morning. At the noise of swords, she notices and withdraws to the cabinet of the Emperor. The chamberlain of Archduke Joseph, Marchese Poul, who has been chatting with some other nobles at a window in the Antichambre is alerted, hurries inside and overwhelms the wannabere assassin; with the help of some guards, he gets disarmed. He's declared to have acted in a bout of insanity, brought to a hospital and from there to the monastary Rein in Styria where he's nursed for his remaining life. This makes newspaper headlines, which is how we know about it, and I can't help but think it would have had a very different ending if that knd of thing had happened in FW's Berlin...
During the War of the Bavarian Succession, MT for the first time has Leopold (this is one of his four visits back home) read into some government business; she also keeps him updated to what's going on in the war. Presumably this is because despite the fact there was, in effect, no real battle in that war, there could have been, Leopold was Joseph's successor, and a scenario where he would have to take over in the event of Joseph dying was quite possible.
MT about 14 years old Leopold to his governor Franz Thurn who takes over from the previous guy:
There must not be (...) petty arguments, nor tauntings, neither physically nor in words. If one allows tauntings, all politeness disappears and one gets ashamed to say something endearing. You need to pay attention at this point. He's quite receptive for prejudice and he has a hard time giving it up, since he has a very high opinion of himself and doesn't like to ask for advice or to follow it. Leopold does have a generous , good and compassionate heart by nature. He is eager for knowledge and wants to learn more about abstract matters. He's quite adroit at doing his tasks, but he also has a false embarassment which damages him a lot. He seeks to accomplish his goals via tricks and short cuts you must not permit him to. I wish that he should come across more liberally, more open and more secure in his expression and attitude, less rough in his voice and pronnounciation, more winning in his behavior and vocabularily.
Leopold in his "everyone sucks but me!" rant, titled "stato della familiglia", about Joseph and youngest brother Max(imilian):
He loves Maximilian a lot and keeps distinguishing him, he does like him, because (Max) is completely at his disposal and does what he wants, with no expression and without ever talking back, and because (Joseph) sees that (Max) will always be a secondary human being and will never be as brilliant as to overshadow him or give him cause for jealousy, which is a vice (Joseph) keeps suffering from since he alone wants to be the one doing everything and who has all the honor.
(Our biographer points out this is massively unfair towards Max, who very much was his own man and talked back re: Joseph a lot later as Prince Elector of Cologne, and Leopold is probably doing a lot of projecting here.)
Leopold about Maria Christina in the same rant (and again, Mimi was actually the sister he was closest alligned to against Joseph): She chides everyone with great haughtiness aind indeed, despite the fact she's done some people favors, she's universally hated and feared, because she badmouths everyone and keeps telling on people to the Empress; and often she has caused injustice and disadvantages for many people. She's full of ambition and avarice, she always wants to be better served and distinguished than the rest of the family, she spends money in the name of the Empress and uses the Empress' servants as if they were her own, and she makes a big deal of how important her patronage could be to people. Outisde of the family, she interferes with state business and schemes (...) If she hates someone or distrusts him, she's capable of anything!
Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-19 04:40 pm (UTC)Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-20 01:58 am (UTC)Our Leopold! :D <3
But when trying to decide why I feel very different about Leopold's "Joseph sucks, Mom sucks, Mimi sucks, everyone sucks but me!" than I do about Heinrich's life long "Fritz sucks!" complex, which he wasn't shy of voicing, either
Everything that you have said is absolutely true, of course! But because I am a person with simple needs, I mean, if Leopold had had visceral emotional scenes where he put back together an emotionally-shattered Joseph, and times when Leopold and Joseph perhaps-grudgingly but extremely competently worked together, and also an awesome memoirist who said of Leopold that he was like a god, then I'd probably like Leopold a lot more too ;) (I mean, what's really true is that if he had had those kinds of times, he probably also wouldn't be so unrelentingly negative about everyone -- he'd be more like Heinrich :) )
Biographer: re: Leopold's private life: All his life, there was much gossip and people claimed he shagged everything that moved. That was clearly slander! One should not rely on hostile sources when it comes to people's sex lives.
I laughed! (And also am grateful that you are reading and summarizing, because this kind of double standard I can now occasionally catch but definitely often don't!)
He's quite adroit at doing his tasks, but he also has a false embarassment which damages him a lot. He seeks to accomplish his goals via tricks and short cuts you must not permit him to.
This is so interesting, I think it's neat that MT has these kinds of thoughts about her kids.
She's full of ambition and avarice, she always wants to be better served and distinguished than the rest of the family, she spends money in the name of the Empress and uses the Empress' servants as if they were her own, and she makes a big deal of how important her patronage could be to people.
Yeeeeah, I see what you mean. I mean, maybe he wrote letters that aren't full of dogged negativity? But this just makes me sad and not inclined to like him.
Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-20 11:15 am (UTC)Thinking of contemporaries who were mostly negative about others and whom I still feel differently about: well, Hervey‘s memoirs are also a hilarious „everyone sucks!“ bitchfest (I mean, they suck in different degrees, Caroline and one of her daughters less than others, and he has some impressive things to report about her, but „she lived for power“ wasn‘t meant as a compliment). But only is Hervey a far better writer than Leopold (judging by the excerpts quoted in biographies), able to be witty in his badmouthing which Leopold is not, Hervey also has his share of positive emotions, for love-of-his-life Stephen and for Algarotti, among others.
MT and her children: Leopold‘s biographer goes with the general characterisation that FS was the fun, easy-going parent (up to a point: see FS pushing Joseph just as much to remarry as MT did), and MT was the aweinspiring disciplinary one whom they also were somewhat afraid of. This is probably partly caused by their gender atypical social roles, but also the expression of their respective natures. Now corresponding with your kid‘s teachers about your kid and instructing them were what many a royal parent did - hence us knowing all about FW wanting to be the fun parent, with SD as the disciplinary parent, and utterly failing at achieving this, for example - , but because of who she was, her various assessments are better preserved than most.
Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-20 06:46 pm (UTC)Me: *thinking about my blog posts about my coworkers*
I have good relationships with a number of my coworkers, I swear! I just don't feel the need to
ventblog about them. :PRe: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-21 08:17 am (UTC)Again: he's rarely completely off base in his complaints (for example, accusing Joseph of laziness was demonstrably wrong, but Joseph sure as hell was autocratic and more ready to piss everyone off instead of devoting time and patience to build alliances and convince people), and of course he's doing the emotionally healthy thing when not liking your siblings and parents - stay as much away from them as possible. One can't even blame him for pretending closeness with Joseph (via letters), because Joseph was the Emperor in an absolute monarchy, and while Leopold ruled Tuscany as independently as he could under the circumstances, there is still no way he could have afforded having the Emperor as an enemy. Pelham couldn't tell me whether Leopold really did feel warmer towards Maria Christina in their later years or whether he simply needed her as an ally because the Mimi-critical outburst hails from years before they teamed up, and apparantly there are no usuable quotes from him about her to third parties or in a secret diary which would tell us. Either way, she was an useful ally to have, and again, his original complaints about her weren't completely wrong, either - she sure as hell had a "the one who tells on us to Mom" reputation with her siblings, and she did feel entitled. But "does everything right from his pov" helps rather than hinders the "emotional fridge except for the part where he's seething with jealousy and resentment and pettiness" impression.
Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-20 06:28 pm (UTC)LOLOLOL. Tell us how you really feel, Wandruszka!
Leopold was named Peter Leopold, Peter after Elizaveta's Dad
That's Peter the Great,
Now, as a ruler, Leopold undoubtedly kicked ass.
See, I want to read more about this! But I can't get Peham's book for less than $68, or Wandruszka for less than $100, and I don't want them *that* much, grumble gripe. I have gone from asking you to read German books because I can't read them, to asking you to read them because I can't (easily) *get* them. I.e. you continue to be the best thing that ever happened to salon. <33
Also, while Leopold had abolished the death penalty in Tuscany early on, he reintroduced it as Emperor because there was a Tuscany uprising during his two years of Imperial rule, which he could not understand - hadn't he been a model Duke? And now they were turning against him?
Thus joining Fritz, Catherine, and Joseph in the list of enlightened monarchs going, "What do you *mean* people are abusing the privileges my idealistic younger self wanted to give them?? They should be grateful and not force me to partially revoke these privileges!" I didn't know Leopold had revoked his revoking of the death penalty, but I feel like this was kind of a normal trajectory. Alas.
There was that time Marchese C. made fun of Leopold's many girlfriends, and before he knew it, he got orders not to stay in Florence but remain on his countryside estates, because Leopold's spies were that efficient. But that doesn't mean he was against criticism, per se!
*chokes*
Okay, somebody's inner stan is showing here. :P
On August 6th, 1753, one Chevalier Balde tries to assassinate MT.
Did not know that either! Wow.
I can't help but think it would have had a very different ending if that knd of thing had happened in FW's Berlin...
I feel like maybe it would have!
Leopold in his "everyone sucks but me!" rant, titled "stato della familiglia", about Joseph and youngest brother Max(imilian):
Yeah, Amalie's "Everyone sucks but Luise, probably including me" rant was much more interesting! I can see why you haven't latched onto him fannishly.
Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-21 08:38 am (UTC)At least he's open about. Gotta respect that.:)
Thus joining Fritz, Catherine, and Joseph in the list of enlightened monarchs going, "What do you *mean* people are abusing the privileges my idealistic younger self wanted to give them?? They should be grateful and not force me to partially revoke these privileges!" I didn't know Leopold had revoked his revoking of the death penalty, but I feel like this was kind of a normal trajectory. Alas.
Alas. I think the most tragic case has to be Struensee who initialized a super modernation and enlightenment program in Sweden, freedom of the press included, and promptly got vilified as the most evil schemer ever by said free press, which certainly contributed to his downfall, tragic ending and the complete restoration of a backwards regime.
Chevalier Balde: I checked Stollberg-Rillinger, and she does have the story, which I thus must have forgotten. Additional information. The Chevalier de Balde was the illegitimate son of the last Count of Mömpelgard and a dressmaker. Because the Mömpelgards were dying out, the Count had adopted his bastard son, which his relations did not want to recognize. So the Chevalier was involved in series of law suits and was fighting to be recognized as the new Count Mömpelgard, and trying to get an audience with MT. The serving Chamberlain told him to come back at one of the days where MT gave public audiences, right now she was working. And that's when he turned violent. The servant whose job it would have been to guard the door to her cabinet was unfortunately elsewhere to fulfill a natural need ("zur Verrichtung der Notdurft"), and when the Chamberlain tried to put himself in the way of Balde, Balde drew his sword and attacked him. The Chamberlain, who is a small and fragile man, slips on the floor and hurts his hand at the sword. MT hears the noise, calls for the guards and withdraws to the Emperor's cabinet, Joseph's Chamberlain comes to the rescue. S-R also after reporting he was brought first to the hospital and then to the monastery says there was actually a hot debate at court whether he was insane or had acted simply in a bad temper. But if the later, he still would have been due for the gruesome punishment that came with any physical attack on royalty, so MT deciding to treat him as a madman instead was definitely saving the guy's life and limbs.
Yeah, Amalie's "Everyone sucks but Luise, probably including me" rant was much more interesting!
Good comparison, and it was. Amalie thus showed both more self knowledge and the capacity for attachment and admiration for at least one other person.
Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-24 05:43 am (UTC)The Chevalier Balde is also interesting, thank you! Especially her treating him as a madman as an act of mercy, in a way.
Re: Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987) - I
Date: 2022-02-22 06:17 am (UTC)Aww, yeah, I'd forgotten about this! <3 That was a really sweet rant, really.