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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.)
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?
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-04 05:18 am (UTC)...this is fantastic!
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.
Wait, so, how did he get around the censor?? And also am I understanding this that he can't talk to the lower classes himself, but it's okay if they come to talk to him? Why is it okay for the the peasants to foment revolution and not him?
hen 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.
Okay, that makes me both feel better about him and seems like it makes a little more sense overall (given that even if he didn't have an overtly emotional relationship with her, I would have assumed that family ties were treated as important!)
FS is the Ferdinand of the Habsburgs, I see.
FS: *shrugs* I made money, I liked that more anyway. Though honestly you'd think that someone who actually made money would be more memorable...
- Leopold's wife has 16 kids and 3 miscarriages that we know of in 21 years.
SIXTEEN?
- 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. !!!
:(((((
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-04 07:33 am (UTC)I'm not sure, but in totalitarian states, getting around censors is a thing. Voltaire and the other French philosophes got around theirs by having their stuff printed in the Netherlands and Switzerland and then smuggled over the border into France. At one point, someone in Tuscany (the place I've been reading about) was congratulated for getting his books on the Index, because getting banned immediately made people more interested and illicit copies would sell like hotcakes.
So whether Leopold used his authority to say, "No, print this one," or used the usual sneaky methods, I'm sure that as a monarch, he had options. ;)
And also am I understanding this that he can't talk to the lower classes himself, but it's okay if they come to talk to him? Why is it okay for the the peasants to foment revolution and not him?
Probably a few reasons.
Let's be clear: the nobles aren't going to be delighted by the peasants fomenting revolution either. But if they're surrounded by the people below and the guy above agreeing on a revolution, it's got to be harder for them to resist, than if it's just Leopold on his own. So, one, Leopold needs an ally.
Two, if you want your lower classes to participate in representative government, you should probably...make sure they're planning to participate? Enforcing democracy because you think it's the right thing to do does not always end well. *cough*
Three, it's probably better optics for Leopold if he's responding to the wishes and complaints of his subjects, of whom he is the ruler and whose well-being he is responsible for, than if he's just trying to fight his nobles, which is usually done for autocratic reasons. A king-people alliance against nobles plays out again and again in the history of Europe in the battle, not for democracy vs. oligarchy, but for monarchy/totalitarianism vs. oligarchy.
Four, Leopold's predecessor is Joseph. He went and talked to peasants, decided what was best based on what they wanted, and rammed a bunch of authoritarian, anti-nobility reforms down everyone's throats. So basically what I said in point three: a king-peasant alliance looks like autocracy and is usually done for that reason. And I imagine Leopold going, "Whatever Joseph did, don't do that--it didn't work!"
So I think what Leopold wants is the good PR of responding to popular demand for representative government by people who want representative government, and he wants said people prepared to back him on his reforms in an organized manner and to actually participate. It fits with his leadership style of "Lay the groundwork first, then make your move," vs. Joseph's "Decide what you want, then make your move, we don't need no stinkin' groundwork." :P
Okay, that makes me both feel better about him and seems like it makes a little more sense overall (given that even if he didn't have an overtly emotional relationship with her, I would have assumed that family ties were treated as important!)
I have to note that there are also sound realpolitik reasons at play here. As long as Louis XVI was in France, he's been agreeing to the assemblies, reforms, constitutions, etc. Once he's in Belgium, he can announce to Europe that he did so only under duress, and Leopold can help out a victimized fellow monarch who's asking for help. It's the same reason he tried very hard to make his planned war with France look like a defensive war and not an offensive war.
If Leopold had attacked while Louis was agreeing to all the changes, then it looks like Leopold's high-handedly interfering in the self-determination of another country. Once the flight to Varennes fails, of course, it becomes more obvious that Louis is a prisoner needing rescue, so the PR if Leopold invades isn't as bad.
Of course, the European powers underestimate the French resistance, and their heavy-handed threats plus MA's conspiring with them combine to make MA very unpopular as well as make the risks of executing the monarchs lower, i.e. "If we're going to get invaded no matter what we do, we might as well execute the traitors amongst us," and things went from bad to worse. But Leopold was bled 4 times in 4 days a few months before Louis' execution and a year and a half before MA's, so he fortunately never lived to see it. :/
SIXTEEN?
Sixteen! MT also had sixteen, and Leopold's sister Maria Carolina of Naples would like to point out that SHE had seventeen, albeit with a lower survival rate.
Childhood survival rates, taking age 18 rather arbitrarily as the cutoff:
MT: 11 out of 16
Maria Luisa (Leopold's wife): 14 out of 16
Maria Carolina: 6 out of 17
FW and SD: 10 out of 14
Congratulations, Maria Luisa; poor MC. One of MC's kids died onboard the British ship, age 6, while the family was evacuating Naples in the face of a French invasion. A very traumatic time for MC. :(
I see Wikipedia lists at least 8 of MC's kids dying from smallpox. I guess she inherited Mom's initial resistance to inoculation? But at least MT gave in after losing multiple kids and two daughters-in-law!
MA: I was the smart one of the family!
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-04 01:38 pm (UTC)Re: Leopold's cunning plan re: Hungaria, alas since he died after only a very few years of government, it didn't work out (his son Franz squashed both what had remained of Joseph's reforms and most of Leopold's and was an arch reactionary), and so we will never know whether it would have, had he lived longer.
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-18 10:40 pm (UTC)Living in the ages before birth control...
Date: 2022-12-19 08:00 am (UTC)(And that's why in my earliest Frederician story I had MT react to that "you never faced death on the battlefield" remark with basically "oh yeah? Try being pregnant and giving birth just once!")
Re: Living in the ages before birth control...
Date: 2022-12-23 06:39 pm (UTC)Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-18 10:41 pm (UTC)Okay, I am definitely a fan!
(Though Joseph is still the awkward fanboy of my heart.)
Speaking of Joseph....
Date: 2022-12-19 07:54 am (UTC)J: I hear you are a passionate locksmith.
L: *frightened* Yes?
J: Well, then you know that sometimes, a key does not completely fit with a lock right at the start, and then....
(*voice gets indistinct as Sofia Coppola spares audience and camera pulls back*)
The interesting thing is that about twenty minutes earlier, when teen MA gets gossipped about at court because there's no baby and everybody and their valet have figured out there's no marital action going on, two ladies of the court say surely, it's MA's fault, she must be frigid, "just like her brother the Emperor; everyone says he#s such a cold man". So Joseph showing up in person being nice and warm and solving the big marital problem comes as a (nice) surprise to the audience (unless they figured out that since the gossipers guess about MA is completely off base, they're not supposed to be truth tells). (The film is based on Antonia Fraser's MA biography, which I haven't read.) Between Leopold's big "Why my entire family sucks, but especially Joseph!" rant complains about more the opposite (prostitutes! Uncouth people he lets approach him! He's impulsive! He's sarcastic! He's vain!), and the Conspiracy Theorist author who thinks <>Don Giovanni is a Joseph avatar (despite actual librettist da Ponte having no idea bout this, but then for Conspiracy!Author, Da Ponte is a Joseph liking idiot anyway) and Mozart speaking truth to power for the supposed seduction of Constanze by the Emperor, I can't decide who'd be more offended by Nice!Joseph in this film.:)
(Me, I only thought that Danny Huston doesn't look like any portrait of Joseph we have, but in terms of how Joseph came across during his visit in Paris, he's absolutely solid.)
Re: Speaking of Joseph....
Date: 2022-12-23 06:39 pm (UTC)Awwww, okay, that's really sweet!
surely, it's MA's fault, she must be frigid, "just like her brother the Emperor; everyone says he#s such a cold man".
This is also awesome (though in sort of the opposite way) :)
(The film is based on Antonia Fraser's MA biography, which I haven't read.)
Has salon read any Fraser in general? I do remember coming across her MA biography when I got the Zweig (though I didn't read it at all). Scrolling through amazon reviews makes it sound like she might be a little more apologetic towards MA than Zweig, though. (Though I suppose the real question is, does she ship MA/Fersen? :) )
Re: Speaking of Joseph....
Date: 2022-12-23 06:42 pm (UTC)Only in high school, sorry! I know I read and owned her Mary, Queen of Scots bio, and at least one of her others, but I retain no memories.
Re: Speaking of Joseph....
Date: 2022-12-24 08:42 am (UTC)Re: Speaking of Joseph....
Date: 2022-12-24 09:10 am (UTC)Incidentally: this very Christmas, the BBC does a new MA miniseries in six parts, from the same producer as The Favourite. Going by the trailer, there is f/f kissing, at least. I'm very much afraid, though, that the lady saying she'll destroy MA is supposed to be Dubarry, which is really unfair if true. All Dubarry wanted was being talked to by the Dauphine. The whole Dubarry/MA bust up was very much engineered by "the aunts", Louis XV's unmarried daughters, for their own purposes, so if anyone should be blamed, it's them. Also, reminder, when MA gloated about finally being able to send Dubarry packing after Louis XV had died, MT wrote a chiding letter and says MA should be sorry for her instead. (Sidenote: Oh, and when Joseph visited Paris years later, he did visit Dubarry, which was really unexpected because she had no more influence and thus there was no political point. But apparently he wanted to.
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-06 02:56 am (UTC)Welp. I just ran across this episode in FS's life in which he doesn't exactly shine.
It all starts when some Tuscans want free trade for grain, which FS doesn't give them. He lifts a couple restrictions, but mostly leaves things in place, which is why Leopold still has to deal with them decades later. Then:
Unfortunately, the grand duke came up at the same time with what he thought to be a still better plan. Flattered by petitions from some of his former subjects and misled by a somewhat racist notion that Northerners were more industrious than Mediterraneans, he brought in two thousand colonists from Lorraine and settled them on plots of abandoned land near Massa and Sorano. When it came to providing them with cattle, tools, capital, and accessible markets, however, he remembered that his wife had a war on her hands; and guns, in the unenlightened eighteenth century, took precedence over plows. In spite of the heroic but unbudgeted efforts of the Florentine superintendent, and in spite of the pleas of the local bishops, the colonists were left to die of starvation and malaria. By 1766 only ninety-four of them were still there.
Now, Cochrane's attitude toward footnotes, as laid out in the preface, is that most readers won't care, and those who do can write to him at his University of Chicago address, where he will be happy to tell you his source for any given claim...until his death in 1985. So I have no sources on the veracity of this episode.
That said, I have never encountered anyone saying anything positive about FS's treatment of Tuscany in all my time in salon, so it's entirely possible that he did something not great here.
Either way, I'm starting to feel sorry for 18th century European colonists, I have to say.
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-06 09:00 am (UTC)OMG, what a frustrating attitude!!!
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-18 10:43 pm (UTC)Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-04 03:40 pm (UTC)Alas, while you can use "kümmerte" in the first sense - i.e. for example "Sonsine war diejenige, die sich um Wilhelmine kümmerte" - from the context I fear Peham means it in the second sense.
See also our earlier exchange of the idea of motherhood as a woman's first and foremost calling not just then, and if you, as a mother, don't have presentable evidence that you think of your children all the time before you think of anything else, you are a BAD mother and get judged. Even when your separation from your son really really REALLY was not your fault. (I bet Livia rued the day she let Leopold sweet talk her into coming to Austria with him.)
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?
Quite, and there was even yet another addendum five minutes before the HRE expired, because the Landgraf of Hesse-Kassel demanded to be made an Elector which did happen - but that one isn't relevant any longer for the Leopold years, I think, it happened when Franz II was Emperor. HOWEVER, when the Elector Palatinate inherited Bavaria because the original Wittelsbach line bit the dust and thus the Palatinate line took over, it meant there were only eight, and then Napoleon happened, which meant the arch bishoprics of Trier and Cologne were dissolved in the treaty of Luneville (1801), and the remaining spiritual Elector post transfered from Mainz (occupied by France, first German republic during that time) to Regensburg.
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-04 07:41 pm (UTC)Ugh, that was my reading, but then I thought I would give her the benefit of the doubt and check with you.
Between this and the homophobia about Isabella, I am not liking Peham as a person!
Also, the only thing she's mentioned as having done while moving on with her life is getting married...like a good respectable woman. You can't win!
Quite, and there was even yet another addendum five minutes before the HRE expired, because the Landgraf of Hesse-Kassel demanded to be made an Elector which did happen
The part where he was demanding this was actually mentioned by Peham, where he wanted electoral status in return for giving Leopold troops to use in Belgium, but that was after Leopold was already emperor.
HOWEVER, when the Elector Palatinate inherited Bavaria because the original Wittelsbach line bit the dust and thus the Palatinate line took over, it meant there were only eight
OH RIGHT. Sheesh, my early 18th century history is more solid than my later 18th century. Thank you. But still, the way Peham writes it is this:
Since the 13th century, the Roman king was elected exclusively by the seven electors (three ecclesiastical: Mainz, Trier, Cologne; four secular: Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg, King of Bohemia), their rights and duties were laid down in the "Golden Bull" of 1356.
Which makes it seem like nothing at all changed between then and 1790.
So assuming the Hanovers were still interested in electing emperors in 1790, her "The three spiritual and the envoys of the four secular electors" description of Leopold's election has to be wrong.
Re: Leopold II
Date: 2022-12-05 08:27 am (UTC)