cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 35

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In the previous post Charles II found AITA:

Look, I, m, believe in live and let live. (And in not going on my travels again. Had enough of that to last a life time.) Why can't everyone else around me be more chill? Instead, my wife refuses to employ my girlfriend, my girlfriend won't budge and accept another office, my brother is set on a course to piss off everyone (he WILL go on his travels again), and my oldest kid shows signs of wanting my job which is just not on, sorry to say. And don't get me started about Mom (thank God she's living abroad). What am I doing wrong? AITA?

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Me, every single time:
-"Philip": Oh no, there are so many Philips! Which one is this one?
-"'the frog' V": Oh, THAT one.
That is to say, thanks! :) One day I'll figure it out :)

Lol! I wasn't sure if I still needed to clarify, but I figured it was funny enough that I might as well anyway. Good to know I should keep doing it! :D

althoguh I thought someone in salon found it wasn't actually in Fritz's bedroom?

Oh, maybe! It's been three years and nearly 3 million words and I have forgotten much.

I also am dying at the rhyming of "pompadour" and "amour" and "tambour."

Me too, especially because of the drummer bit. It reminded me that this happened:

selenak: Unexpectedly, Mr. Büsching has delivered a suicidal hussar... from 1775. When Fredersdorf was long dead. Büsching writes thusly:

He had intentionally ignorant people who couldn't read or write as his servants, and not for the usual use, believing that nothing disadvantagegous or dangerous was to fear from them; he was however wrong about this. A case in point was the Chamber Hussar Deesen, for whom he had much favour and grace, but whom he, I don't know why, eventually put in such a great disgrace that the man grew desperate over it. If I'm not mistaken, both (disgrace and desperation) reached their peak in the July of 1775. The King was back then visited by family members, and during this visit he'd ordered that the man shouldn't appear in front of him. When the visited had ended, and the King was back at Sanssouci, he'd ordered the man to him one morning and gave him to the aide who'd read the rapport with the command that he'd be used as a drummer at the corps. The man fell to his feet, but he kicked him away, and when the man clung to his knees again, (the King) had him pulled away by force. Deesen asked the aide who went with him whether he was allowed to pick up his hat; and when he'd gone to his room, he shot himself with a prepared and loaded pistol he'd kept for such a case. When this was reported to the King, he first said "but where did he get the loaded gun from?" and then "I wouldn't have expected such courage from him". But one noticed much disturbance of the temper from the King about this event, and from the questions he put to his people afterwards, one could see this event had been very disagreeable to him. This man had not known how to read or write, but he had someone else read to him something which had been lying on the King's table.

1.) One suicidal hussar might be regarded as a misfortune. Two looks like carelessness, misquote Oscar Wilde.

2.) Yep, that's FW's son, alright.

3.) So clearly this had nothing to do with Fredersdorf, what with him being dead, and Old Fritz in 1775 isn't necessarily like young Fritz in 1741, but presumably this is the kind of thing Georgii might have been afraid would happen, quite independent from what Frederdorf did or did not do?

So not that he was having sex with a drummer here, but he was threatening to demote his favored chamber hussar into a drummer, almost 20 years after this poem.

From:

selenak

Ah yes, the unfortunate Dessen and the threat by the loss of amour to become a tambour. Didn't we also find this story referenced by the SECOND Chamber Hussar's memoirs? (Who was a source for Büsching and Nicolai, of course.)