cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

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Last 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.)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Wonderful, thank you! Since I focused on the '45 back in the day, this contained some information I didn't already know mixed in with the parts I did.

The Tories had been ousted from office by George I, and when they failed in the elections (partly because the king threw his weight behind the Whigs)

His mid-century biographer Ragnhild Hatton thinks his Whig-favoring and Tory-undermining has been overstated and he actually supported a bipartisan coalition, but then Jeremy Black, in his foreword to the new edition of her biography, thinks she's wrong, so...who knows. Just calling attention to the controversy here.

battle at Sheriffmuir where one side of the Jacobite army puts the Whig army to flight, and vice versa on the other side

There was a hilarious song in Scots written about the battle, and the first verse goes like this:

There's some say that we wan [won],
⁠And some say that they wan,
And some say that nane wan at a', man;
⁠But ae thing I'm sure,
⁠That at Sheriff-muir
A battle there was, that I saw, man;
⁠And we ran, and they ran; and they ran, and we ran;
⁠And we ran, and they ran awa', man.

There were thousands of men in the field, and Inverness was taken and retaken several times, but only two men are recorded to have died!

That part I didn't know! Definitely charming.

Of course, this did have a cost for them: that the Jacobites came under an obligation not to rebel again--but it also helped heal the social fabric of Scotland.

That's always nice when people manage that, doesn't happen often enough.

describing his dreary existence in a small provincial French town: one day being as like the other as two eggs and these eaten without either pepper or salt.

That is indeed a wonderful phrase.

Thanks for sharing this!

(I still haven't made it very far into Szechi's book on the Jacobites, but 2022 was not much of a year for reading English for me. But my German is noticeably faster than it was!)

Edited Date: 2022-12-03 03:21 am (UTC)

From:

luzula

Ha ha, wow, I LOVE that song. *g*

Re: George I and whether he favored the Whigs or not, Szechi seems well positioned to know, since he wrote a book called Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710-14? This is how he describes it: the future George I had been careful to maintain a friendly demeanor towards the both the Whigs and the Tories until 1712. But after that time, the influential Tory the Earl of Oxford sold out the interests of Britain's continental allies, as the price of a favorable separate peace for Britain with France. Obviously the future George I was not happy about that and took a stand, but he did so in a temperate fashion and tried to maintain lines of communication with both parties. But the political climate in Britain was very polarized and this antagonized the Tories, while the Whigs worked hard to ingratiate themselves. When George I succeeded to the throne, he did not wholeheartedly accept the Whigs' claim to be the only friends he had and he tried to bring into office Tories who had overtly maintain their commitment to the Hanoverian succession. But these Tories didn't want to be separated from the rest of their party. So he turned to the Whigs, who then purged every level of government and installed their own people (as the Tories had done in 1710). After that the Tories hoped to secure a majority in the Commons in the next election, but at that point the king did throw his support behind the Whigs. This led many Tories to look to Jacobitism.

ETA: Er, I see my phrasing in the original comment does not really do justice to what the book said...

Edited Date: 2022-12-03 01:23 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ah, thank you for the details! That seems more or less in line with what Black said, but I can see where a complex and nuanced situation like that would lead Hatton to place more emphasis on his willingness to work with both Tories and Whigs, not just Whigs.