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cahnLast post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-11-27 05:29 pm (UTC)I would hope the later are more expensive than the former.
Glancing at his memoirs, he was writing in his blood to smuggle illicit messages out of the prison, and I feel like not being allowed ink is not a terribly uncommon thing for prisoners. Fouquet, for example, was writing in his books in invisible ink because he wasn't allowed real ink, and he had a chemistry background that allowed him to construct it out of the materials at hand.
Trenck: Who needs a chemistry background when you have BLOOD??
Fouquet: I said invisible. I was only caught because of the extraordinarily unlikely coincidence of a bolt of lightning striking an arsenal of gunpowder, exploding the tower, and starting a fire that warmed up the air in my room enough that the ink showed on the paper! That's an act of god that I could not have been expected to account for.
I also wonder why Fritz was ready to release him to the French in 1755 (which only fell through because the ship to the colonies had already taken off, and then the next year there was war) and still would not provide ink.
Well, that is a mystery indeed. Perhaps he was afraid Trenck would use the ink to organize another prison escape? Being allowed out under custody of the French is not the same as being allowed to break out on your own terms.
Here I have to add the phrasing in the German review "legendär gewesen sein sollen" - the conditionalis - makes it sound a bit sceptical.
Yep, my intention was to convey that with "was supposed to," but thank you for making it explicit.
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-11-28 01:20 pm (UTC)BTW, I still want to know what exactly Trenck did for the Austrians in the first place to make them use considerable efforts on his behalf. (Only for him to blame them for things they actually weren't guilty of in the memoirs.) Also, I think I changed my mind again re: did Trenck at least flirt a bit with Fritz, never mind Amalie, not least due to all the Glasow stuff that's come up since, and while Volz proves Trenck was lying about being with Fritz at Soor and about when he joined the Prussian army, the conditions Fritz made to the Austrians for his ultimate release - not just that Trenck never puts his foot on Prussian soil again but, more importantly that he is forbidden by the Austrians to say anything about Fritz in either written or oral form ever - is at the very least suggestive of Trenck actually having something to say. Now, I'm with Volz that "I was Fritz' absolute fave until he found out about me and Amalie!" was Trenck making things up, not least because all those gossipy envoys and spies never mention him, whereas they report on other Fritzian faves, even short lived ones like Grigori the suicidal (?) hussar who got Fredersdorf temporarily kicked out of the royal tent. BUT since Trenck was actually at Hohenfriedberg, and certainly fits the swashbuckling, extrovert profile, maybe there was a one night stand, followed by this business with the he-swears-he-didn't spying for the Austrians?
(The tv show based on Trenck's memoirs from the 70s which I think I mentioned to you before had Fritz being reminded of Katte by Trenck and then being extra insulted (by implication, we're in the 1970s) that Trenck went for Amalie instead. Which is something Trenck himself does not suggest - not least because he has too much ego, I think, to imagine a scenario where Fritz likes him for something other than Trenck's own charms - but which works in fiction.)
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-11-29 04:45 pm (UTC)Maaaaybe! We've established Fritz had a thing for cheerful extraverts.
The tv show based on Trenck's memoirs from the 70s which I think I mentioned to you before had Fritz being reminded of Katte by Trenck
Oh, right, I remember this now! Huh. Well, now that we've seen one thing he and Katte had in common...I accept this as historical fiction!
In other news on Trenck's blood Bible, I found a journalist for a Magdeburg paper interviewing the editor of the book (who died just two years later, which may be why I haven't found a special edition of the book with illustrations). The parts I found most interesting:
Q: Did he really write in his blood?
Me: The question we all have, lol.
A: It was definitely human blood. We couldn't do a DNA test in 1975 to tell if it was *his* blood.
Q: What was the deal with him and Amalie and the alleged affair?
A: Nothing about that can be read in his writings. He admired (verehrte) her very much.
Me: But--but! You mean in this particular blood Bible? I guess that makes sense of why she didn't come up in the book review.
Q: What surprised you the most?
A: His beautiful handwriting. This was not written chained to a wall.
Me: Ha! And yes, the beautiful handwriting surprised me as well!
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-11-30 01:38 am (UTC)Way back when, Selena read us an article by Christopher Frey about a new letter that had turned up in the twenty-first century that brought new evidence to light on the alleged Amalie/Trenck affair.
As a reminder, it's by Trenck to his wife, and the relevant excerpt goes like this.
dated April 5th 1787, to his wife (who was in Austria; Trenck was visiting relations in post-Fritz Berlin): "Nothing but bad news. On the evening before my departure, I dine with Princess Amalie alone, in close friendship. She holds my hand and presses it for half an hour without letting go, talks of nothing but the joy to contribute to my happiness. She orders me to bring you with your daughters to Berlin, she promises me to include Caroline in her will. She forces me to accept 100 Louisdor from her for my journey. I leave her in tears. I arrive in Köningsberg and find the news of her sudden death two days after my departure. I am struck by this in an indescribable way, and recognize the strangeness of my doomed destiny, and I doubt, she had time to even think of herself."
Now that I can read this German, I've had a look, and I have to say, I'm not very impressed by the author! Frey's key argument is that while other letters where Trenck exaggerated his relationship to royalty were written for publication, this one was written privately, to his wife, and only two weeks after the alleged meeting happened, and he would have no reason to lie to his wife.
Now, I'm all for the idea that private letters that happen close to events are more reliable than memoirs written years later. This is why we like Mitchell's papers so much.
But Selena had already pointed out, Trenck is the only witness, and he had plenty of reason to lie to his wife: "If he has promised his wife that the Princess would help before, he has to explain why she didn't if that encounter never happened. The problem with habitual liars: you can't take anything they say for granted without a second independent source."
And even leaving aside practical reasons to lie, habitual liars absolutely lie to their family about their relations with famous figures! You can't conclude from that that Trenck lied to his wife on this occasion, but you absolutely can't say that people who known for exaggerating to make themselves look good never do this one-on-one, only publicly. I have known a habitual liar with delusions of grandeur at close range (my sister), and she would 100% lie about something like this in exactly this way.
So it's evidence, but it's very weak evidence.
Frey then gets so deep in wishful thinking that he produces this gem. To paraphrase, in the nineteenth century, the publisher of Thiebault's memoirs*, when he got to the passage where Trenck says, "I was totally locked up because of my love affair with Amalie!" added a footnote quoting from Frederick's order that Trenck should be locked up before he can desert to his cousin on the Austrian side. Because the translator doesn't add commentary, says Frey, he clearly considers the two explanations (affair vs. desertion) not contradictory and thinks it could be both of them!
Dude. If I ever leave a footnote citing documentary evidence that isn't the same as the claim in a memoir, and I don't add commentary, I am saying the contradiction speaks for itself.
Now, Frey is correct that the two explanations aren't mutually exclusive. But he's way overstretching the evidence if he thinks a footnote supplying documentary evidence is necessarily supplementing and not correcting a claim. The whole essay just reeks of wanting to believe. (He also gets the year of Amalie becoming abbess of Quedlinburg wrong by five years, but okay, I'm sure my own publications have equally bad typos.) I do agree with Selena and Frey that the Amalie letter accepting godparent-ship is warmer than the Joseph one, contra Volz.
* Remember that Thiebault buys into the Amalie/Trenck affair, but isn't an independent source, since he wasn't around, he's read Trenck's memoirs, he's talked to Trenck personally, and he's not reliable in general.
Meanwhile, having deciphered a bit more of the table of contents, I found that the second reference to Amalie is to one of the cups that Trenck made in which he called on Amalie for help (and he did the same for EC). I wonder if the letter without a page number was a loose sheet of paper that was tucked into the book.
Remember when we talked about Cunegonde's kidnapping and the religious mini-war in and around Aachen? And how Amalie helped calm things down during her stay by demanding a safe escort to the Protestant church? I hadn't realized she stayed more than a year, nor that Trenck was there between 1765 and 1780, meaning he caught at least the tail end of said war. Strong religious feelings weren't his forte, but he also felt strongly about *not* being a Deist, so I wonder if there were any interesting intersections betewen him and those events in Aachen.
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-11-30 08:49 am (UTC)Yes, exactly. Seriously, that was a bad argument. Otoh I still think the tone of Amalie's godparent-accepting letter at the very least indicates she knew who Trenck was and had some positive feelings about him, which if she only knew of him reportingly and through his petitions for mercy (i.e. some guy who got locked up at Magdeburg for desertion) is a bit harder to explain. It's also not evidence of a full blown love affair, but she might have met him a couple of times in the short time when he was in the army, being dashing, and she was hitting the Berlin social scene and assembling gambling debts in the mid 1740s. It would be like Trenck to blow up two or three friendly encounters into a passionate forbidden love affair!
re: beautiful handwriting, and that this wasn't written chained to a wall (Trenck: Tombstone! Tombstone!) - true both! And to be fair to Trenck: if nothing else, he really must have had tremendous energy and determination which carried him through bad circumstances. Even Volz admits he did break out of his first imprisonment and did repeateadly try at Magdeburg. Now I don't want to say he was a better planner than young Fritz, because we're talking about the guy who got himself captured in Danzig through his own fault and despite earnest Austrian (and other people's) efforts to provent it, and promptly turned and blamed the Austrians, and of course who crowned his life by going to Revolutionary France and getting himself beheaded. But if I had to put an 18th Century Team of Rogues and Con Men together, I'd certainly enlist him together with Klement and Casanova!
I wonder if there were any interesting intersections betewen him and those events in Aachen.
Huh, possibly? Alas I don't have the time right now to check the later end of the memoirs. (Which as I dimly recall were mostly concerned with Joseph being ungrateful and refusing to help him AGAIN etc.)
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-11-30 10:51 pm (UTC)It would! It would be entirely in character.
And to be fair to Trenck: if nothing else, he really must have had tremendous energy and determination which carried him through bad circumstances.
Oh, definitely. Very much a larger-than-life character.
But if I had to put an 18th Century Team of Rogues and Con Men together, I'd certainly enlist him together with Klement and Casanova!
Heee! That would make an amazing super(anti)hero team! Someone should make a movie.
Huh, possibly? Alas I don't have the time right now to check the later end of the memoirs.
From the person who's not working (much), or celebrating the holidays, or doing Yuletide, and has plenty of time :D, interesting findings!
He says nothing happens in the first year, 1765, but then several years later, in the early 1770s, he is subject to religious persecution, and he has this WHOLE ADVENTURE in vintage Trenck style:
It is astonishing how I preserved my life so long in such a country, and in a town totally governed by monks, and where they are revered as gods.
I was suddenly preached against upon a Sunday by the archpriest and nine others, who named me, and avowed that I was a conjurer and free-thinker, whom every one that honored God and the church, might murder with impunity. A Jesuit, named Pater Zunder, declared me an outlaw; and the day was fixed, on which my writings were to be burnt in front of my house, which was to be demolished, and all the inhabitants of it destroyed.
Letters were sent to my wife, desiring her to fly with her children, and seek a place of safety. This she did, with fear and trembling; but I remained at home, with two jagers and eighty-four loaded muskets, which I placed in the gallery below the window, that there might arise no doubts of my serious defence.
The day of battle arrived, and Pater Zunder, with my works in his hands, and accompanied by all the students of the town, were ready to commence an attack. I stood prepared for them in my gallery, which was crowded with arms, and there was not a single man who had courage enough to approach me:—thus passed the day and night.
The next morning accidentally a fire broke out in the town. Instead of being terrified, or staying away, I hastened with my two jagers to the good people's assistance; but not without being secretly armed. I formed an espalier with water pails; and every one was perfectly obedient. Pater Zunder, and his students, on the other side, did the same thing. By degrees I got near him, and struck him with a leathern water bucket upon his holy ears, as if by accident: nobody offered to attack me; I went through the crowd without evincing the smallest fear; they all took off their hats, smiled, and bid me good morning. Thus the mob always think and act, where they see they are not feared. The people of Aix-la Chapelle are ignorant fanatics, but too cowardly to murder any one who has his hands to defend himself. After this adventure every thing was quiet. Not far from Heerlen, on the road to Mastrich, a ball whistled past my ear in a hollow way: no doubt it came from a priest, or some body urged on by them.
Near the convent of Schwarzenbruck, where I was hunting, three Dominicans watched me from behind a hedge—the place was discovered to me by one of their colleagues, who often went with me to the chace. I had my double-barrel gun, and was upon my guard; drew near, perceived them, and called out—“Fire, villains, but if you “do not kill me, mark the consequence.” They all ran away in a fright; one of them fired, and carried off a piece of my hat; I returned the salute, and one dropped; he was taken away by his companions, dangerously wounded: however, he recovered, and soon disappeared with a milk maid.
They could not dispatch me by poison, for I ate only at home. But in the year 1774, I was attacked on my road to Spa, by eight robbers; it was rainy weather, my gun was in its case, and the cord was accidentally tied about the handle of my Turkish sabre, so that not being able to draw it in a hurry, I was obliged to defend myself with the sheath. I leaped from the coach, knocked those down who were near me; my faithful jager protected me from behind. I made way, sprung again into the coach, and drove off as fast as possible. Shortly after this one of these fellows was hanged, and declared before his death, that their confessor had promised them eternal absolution, if they would beat me to death, for nobody could shoot me, because the devil had rendered me musket-proof.
Now, that's all very interesting, because Catholic ambushes of Protestants trying to go to church (remember, they had to leave Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle to do this, because there was no church in that extremely Catholic city) were happening during this period. I checked, and after Father Bosten (the guy who was convicted and possibly framed for the Cunegonde kidnapping incident) was exiled in 1768, his brother took over, and what the author of this book says is, "Thus in return for their troubles, the Calvinist magistrates of Vaals got a more combative priest, a genuinely nasty man, to deal with as head of the local Catholic parish."
And this author reports Catholics setting their dogs on passing Protestants and beating them with pitchforks and clubs in 1769 and 1770, and this apparently happened often enough that it was seen as a regular thing.
When exactly such attacks ceased is unclear, but eventually they did. By some time in the 1780s, an anonymous chronicler could report of his fellow Protestants that “the molestation and abuse to which they had previously been exposed have ended; they can travel to church undisturbed.”
In the early 1770s, when Trenck is setting his adventures, definitely still a thing.
So given that Trenck is a lying liar who lies, his Aachen adventures may not have been quite as full of one-sided heroism as he tells them, but I'm willing to believe he was accosted by Catholics, and if he wasn't, he saw it happening to other Protestants and he really wanted everyone to believe it had happened to him!
Another one of those "Trenck's exaggerations have a kernel of truth" situations, probably.
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-12-04 05:05 am (UTC)Dude. If I ever leave a footnote citing documentary evidence that isn't the same as the claim in a memoir, and I don't add commentary, I am saying the contradiction speaks for itself.
Uhhhhh, yeah. Wow!
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-12-04 05:04 am (UTC)OMG.
And yes, I also noted the beautiful handwriting!
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-12-04 05:04 am (UTC)Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-12-04 05:03 am (UTC)Fouquet: I said invisible. I was only caught because of the extraordinarily unlikely coincidence of a bolt of lightning striking an arsenal of gunpowder, exploding the tower, and starting a fire that warmed up the air in my room enough that the ink showed on the paper! That's an act of god that I could not have been expected to account for.
I forgot about this and now having been reminded let me say again that this is a CRAZY story and I would not believe it if it had been in a work of fiction! (But it should totally also be in more works of fiction!)
Re: Trenck's "Blutbibel"
Date: 2022-12-04 07:53 am (UTC)He was forbidden pens too! But banning ink in addition actually makes sense to me, because it's easier to manufacture a pen than ink. Trenck used the teeth of a comb, and in the worst case, you could use the tip of your finger to smuggle out short messages arranging your escape. But creating ink out of materials at hand...you have to be more hardcore, either in chemistry or in willingness to self-mutilate. :P
I forgot about this and now having been reminded let me say again that this is a CRAZY story and I would not believe it if it had been in a work of fiction! (But it should totally also be in more works of fiction!)
Hee! Agreed.
ETA: Did I mention that Fouquet, when he was in prison in Pignerol near the Alps, once submitted a request for a telescope, on the grounds that he was bored and the only thing he could see from prison was a tiny patch of beautiful Alpine mountain, and he wanted to be able to spend his time appreciating the scenery more? Saint-Mars submitted the request with a note saying he thought it should be denied, Fouquet was clearly up to something, and the request was denied. I think I didn't mention that story. (There was TOO MUCH ELSE. :P)