Now that I'm finishing up the Leopold bio, here are my notes.
* My favorite Leopold reform so far was how he treated Hungary. Joseph had managed to bring Hungary to the brink of a rebellion by removing all the privileges of the nobility, trying to assimilate it fully by centralizing administration and introducing German as the official language, and disrespecting all the native Hungarian traditions. Since the Hungarians had always been loosely associated with the rest of the Habsburg territory, not part of the Holy Roman Empire, and pretty resentful of the Habsburgs, they had a hate-on for Joseph like you wouldn't believe.
Leopold managed to salvage the situation by revoking Joseph's reforms, which involved giving the nobles back the right to run roughshod over the peasants and middle classes. But! Leopold believes in a limited, representational government of the American Revolution and early, pre-insanity, French Revolution type. So his heart is with the peasants and other unprivileged classes, not with the nobles. And he wants to make life better for them.
But if he's seen talking to these lower classes, the nobles will (correctly) deduce that he's trying to start a revolution at their expense. So Leopold has to be sneaky. His laws support the nobles, but he starts secretly fomenting discontent among the unprivileged classes. He gets his secret agents to go out among the people and talk about how they really should be able to send representatives to the government, and how their complaints are justified, and how they should really band together and try to bring these complaints to the attention of Emperor Leopold.
Leopold drafts revolutionary pamphlets and has them printed and distributed under false names in Hungary...only his censor (Joseph had to revoke freedom of speech already, and Leopold even more so) suppresses them, not knowing that his boss Leopold actually wrote them!
Truly a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing.
So Leopold has to get around his censor, which he manages, and he secretly urges on the Hungarians to rise up and reform their government in collaboration with him, Leopold, who officially knows nothing about this and is totally on the side of the nobles.
Leopold: My favorite Holy Roman Emperor so far. Unlike Selena, I don't need a human interest angle--this *is* my human interest angle. ;)
* One of the things Leopold gets flak for is not supporting Marie Antoinette more, saying cold-bloodedly that he had a sister, but Austria did not.
Knowing that quote, I was surprised to find evidence that his thinking was not just "This will not make things better for Austria" but also "This will not make things better for my sister, either." He apparently really was concerned that sending military aid might make the situation worse for MA and Louis XVI (as the first coalition will later, in fact, prove).
The proof? During the failed flight to Varennes, fake news got out to the rest of Europe that MA and Louis had successfully crossed the French border and were now in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). Leopold got this news and promptly issued an order to MC and Albert (the stattholders of the Austrian Netherlands) saying that, now that their sister and Louis were safely out of the hands of the French, it was safe to act, and he authorized them to invade France and march on Paris. In other words, Leopold had previously been seeing the situation as one where his hands were tied because his sister was a hostage.
Then he got word that, in fact, she and Louis hadn't made it to safety, and were in fact prisoners. That was when he did an about-face in his foreign policy and decided that it was time to take a more active role and try to salvage the situation in France, since there was no chance of her getting out on her own.
And, as we know, the escalating conflicts between Austria+allies and France did eventually culminate in the executions of MA and Louis. So while he was definitely cold-blooded and MA and Leopold were basically strangers with no emotional stranger relationship...he does seem to have been basing at least some of his decisions on her well-being.
* I was surprised to see Lucchesini showing up so often, but Wikipedia confirms that after Fritz died, FW2 decided his uncle's reader had great diplomatic potential and started sending him on important missions. He got to be the Prussian envoy to Saxony, Austria, and France, including under Napoleon.
Trying to decide if this is an exception to the "figure out what Uncle Fritz would do, then do the opposite" rule, because he's favoring one of Fritz's favorites, or if it's a more subtle case of adhering to the usual rule, along the lines of "Fritz kept you out of politics and didn't make use of your obvious talents, but I will!" ("Sorry, Uncle Heinrich, Big Bro Fritz was your last chance to make use of your obvious talents.")
* Another thing I found interesting about Leopold is that every so often he announces he needs a few mental health days, and that these are really important. I mean, some of them are also physical health days, but he writes this great quote:
Man was created to think and ponder, and one is so busy with business and necessary distractions in which one must participate because for the sake of the public, that we spend most of our lives thinking only of others and almost never have time to to think about ourselves, and it is only in this way that one learns to think well about others .
At one point, while touring his domains, he made a quick detour outside of Tuscany to nearby (20km away) Lucca, which MT, no believer in vacations, got annoyed at. He had to write a self-justifying letter explaining how it had been a business trip and not just a pleasure trip! Honest!
Of note to fanfic writers: the family spent winters in Pisa, because the climate was milder there. That's the same reason Algarotti died in Pisa and is buried there: he moved from Bologna to Pisa at the end of his life, in hopes the milder climate would help his tuberculosis. :(
* When planning to make war on France right before he died, apparently one of the things Leopold wants is Lorraine back (acquired when FS had to give it up), and if possible, Alsace (acquired by Louis XIV in the Thirty Years' War almost 150 years ago).
This normally wouldn't be worth mentioning, except this is Leopold, who was always emphasizing that he had no territorial ambitions, that wars of aggression are bad, and even got rid of Tuscany's army and navy in favor of a self-defense only citizen militia.
Expansionism is bad but revanchism is okay, I guess.
* Two great quotes.
Leopold's son Johann will later say, after Leopold's death, that in Leopold were united the noble heart of his mother and the bright understanding of his brother Joseph II.
FS is the Ferdinand of the Habsburgs, I see.
Second great quote, Joseph is snarking about some Austrian committee that he wants to reform because all it deals with is trivial matters, so trivial that "it's as if a heathen were to ask if it would be better for the salvation of his soul to pray to Jupiter, Juno, or Fitzliputzli."
Lol, Joseph!
* A Fritz quote about Joseph: "He always takes the second step before the first." (Something no one could accuse Leopold of, says Peham.)
* cahn, if you weren't already convinced you didn't want to be born in the 18th century...
- Leopold, with what is probably upper lobe pneumonia and pleuritis, is bled 4 times in 4 days and dies unexpectedly at the age of 44. Peham thinks the bleeding may have contributed to his death.
- Leopold's wife has 16 kids and 3 miscarriages that we know of in 21 years.
- Leopold's mistress Livia had her 4-year-old son taken away from her to be raised by the state, after Leopold died. The 4-year-old, Luigi, only found out when he was 21 that his mother was still alive. !!!
As Selena told us, mother and son exchanged letters and locks of hair, and tried to reunite, but Luigi died of a fever, age 26, before they could.
UGH.
* After Livia and Luigi are separated, and Livia's basically kicked out of the country by the police at Emperor Franz's command, because she's been bothering him with a bunch of letters (presumably about being allowed to say goodbye to her son before she goes), Peham writes, "In den nächsten Jahren kümmerte Livia nicht mehr um ihren Sohn."
selenak, I want to give the author the benefit of the doubt and take "kümmerte" to mean "cared for" as in "took care of", not as in "gave a damn about", but...tell me we're not actually claiming the woman stopped caring about her son, after being forcibly separated and kicked out by an emperor with an army at his command, just because she moved on with her life?
* Finally, what is this about Peham saying there were only 7 electors in the 18th century? What about Bavaria and Hanover, the new additions since the Golden Bull of 1356?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-04 03:41 am (UTC)* My favorite Leopold reform so far was how he treated Hungary. Joseph had managed to bring Hungary to the brink of a rebellion by removing all the privileges of the nobility, trying to assimilate it fully by centralizing administration and introducing German as the official language, and disrespecting all the native Hungarian traditions. Since the Hungarians had always been loosely associated with the rest of the Habsburg territory, not part of the Holy Roman Empire, and pretty resentful of the Habsburgs, they had a hate-on for Joseph like you wouldn't believe.
Leopold managed to salvage the situation by revoking Joseph's reforms, which involved giving the nobles back the right to run roughshod over the peasants and middle classes. But! Leopold believes in a limited, representational government of the American Revolution and early, pre-insanity, French Revolution type. So his heart is with the peasants and other unprivileged classes, not with the nobles. And he wants to make life better for them.
But if he's seen talking to these lower classes, the nobles will (correctly) deduce that he's trying to start a revolution at their expense. So Leopold has to be sneaky. His laws support the nobles, but he starts secretly fomenting discontent among the unprivileged classes. He gets his secret agents to go out among the people and talk about how they really should be able to send representatives to the government, and how their complaints are justified, and how they should really band together and try to bring these complaints to the attention of Emperor Leopold.
Leopold drafts revolutionary pamphlets and has them printed and distributed under false names in Hungary...only his censor (Joseph had to revoke freedom of speech already, and Leopold even more so) suppresses them, not knowing that his boss Leopold actually wrote them!
Truly a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing.
So Leopold has to get around his censor, which he manages, and he secretly urges on the Hungarians to rise up and reform their government in collaboration with him, Leopold, who officially knows nothing about this and is totally on the side of the nobles.
Leopold: My favorite Holy Roman Emperor so far. Unlike Selena, I don't need a human interest angle--this *is* my human interest angle. ;)
* One of the things Leopold gets flak for is not supporting Marie Antoinette more, saying cold-bloodedly that he had a sister, but Austria did not.
Knowing that quote, I was surprised to find evidence that his thinking was not just "This will not make things better for Austria" but also "This will not make things better for my sister, either." He apparently really was concerned that sending military aid might make the situation worse for MA and Louis XVI (as the first coalition will later, in fact, prove).
The proof? During the failed flight to Varennes, fake news got out to the rest of Europe that MA and Louis had successfully crossed the French border and were now in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). Leopold got this news and promptly issued an order to MC and Albert (the stattholders of the Austrian Netherlands) saying that, now that their sister and Louis were safely out of the hands of the French, it was safe to act, and he authorized them to invade France and march on Paris. In other words, Leopold had previously been seeing the situation as one where his hands were tied because his sister was a hostage.
Then he got word that, in fact, she and Louis hadn't made it to safety, and were in fact prisoners. That was when he did an about-face in his foreign policy and decided that it was time to take a more active role and try to salvage the situation in France, since there was no chance of her getting out on her own.
And, as we know, the escalating conflicts between Austria+allies and France did eventually culminate in the executions of MA and Louis. So while he was definitely cold-blooded and MA and Leopold were basically strangers with no emotional stranger relationship...he does seem to have been basing at least some of his decisions on her well-being.
* I was surprised to see Lucchesini showing up so often, but Wikipedia confirms that after Fritz died, FW2 decided his uncle's reader had great diplomatic potential and started sending him on important missions. He got to be the Prussian envoy to Saxony, Austria, and France, including under Napoleon.
Trying to decide if this is an exception to the "figure out what Uncle Fritz would do, then do the opposite" rule, because he's favoring one of Fritz's favorites, or if it's a more subtle case of adhering to the usual rule, along the lines of "Fritz kept you out of politics and didn't make use of your obvious talents, but I will!" ("Sorry, Uncle Heinrich, Big Bro Fritz was your last chance to make use of your obvious talents.")
* Another thing I found interesting about Leopold is that every so often he announces he needs a few mental health days, and that these are really important. I mean, some of them are also physical health days, but he writes this great quote:
Man was created to think and ponder, and one is so busy with business and necessary distractions in which one must participate because for the sake of the public, that we spend most of our lives thinking only of others and almost never have time to to think about ourselves, and it is only in this way that one learns to think well about others .
At one point, while touring his domains, he made a quick detour outside of Tuscany to nearby (20km away) Lucca, which MT, no believer in vacations, got annoyed at. He had to write a self-justifying letter explaining how it had been a business trip and not just a pleasure trip! Honest!
Of note to fanfic writers: the family spent winters in Pisa, because the climate was milder there. That's the same reason Algarotti died in Pisa and is buried there: he moved from Bologna to Pisa at the end of his life, in hopes the milder climate would help his tuberculosis. :(
* When planning to make war on France right before he died, apparently one of the things Leopold wants is Lorraine back (acquired when FS had to give it up), and if possible, Alsace (acquired by Louis XIV in the Thirty Years' War almost 150 years ago).
This normally wouldn't be worth mentioning, except this is Leopold, who was always emphasizing that he had no territorial ambitions, that wars of aggression are bad, and even got rid of Tuscany's army and navy in favor of a self-defense only citizen militia.
Expansionism is bad but revanchism is okay, I guess.
* Two great quotes.
Leopold's son Johann will later say, after Leopold's death, that in Leopold were united the noble heart of his mother and the bright understanding of his brother Joseph II.
FS is the Ferdinand of the Habsburgs, I see.
Second great quote, Joseph is snarking about some Austrian committee that he wants to reform because all it deals with is trivial matters, so trivial that "it's as if a heathen were to ask if it would be better for the salvation of his soul to pray to Jupiter, Juno, or Fitzliputzli."
Lol, Joseph!
* A Fritz quote about Joseph: "He always takes the second step before the first." (Something no one could accuse Leopold of, says Peham.)
*
- Leopold, with what is probably upper lobe pneumonia and pleuritis, is bled 4 times in 4 days and dies unexpectedly at the age of 44. Peham thinks the bleeding may have contributed to his death.
- Leopold's wife has 16 kids and 3 miscarriages that we know of in 21 years.
- Leopold's mistress Livia had her 4-year-old son taken away from her to be raised by the state, after Leopold died. The 4-year-old, Luigi, only found out when he was 21 that his mother was still alive. !!!
As Selena told us, mother and son exchanged letters and locks of hair, and tried to reunite, but Luigi died of a fever, age 26, before they could.
UGH.
* After Livia and Luigi are separated, and Livia's basically kicked out of the country by the police at Emperor Franz's command, because she's been bothering him with a bunch of letters (presumably about being allowed to say goodbye to her son before she goes), Peham writes, "In den nächsten Jahren kümmerte Livia nicht mehr um ihren Sohn."
* Finally, what is this about Peham saying there were only 7 electors in the 18th century? What about Bavaria and Hanover, the new additions since the Golden Bull of 1356?