cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

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I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

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From:

cahn

Like most modern historians, he thinks that while the marriage was awful, Minette did not die of poison, but that it wasn't surprising there were rumors galore

Ah, neat.

All that Innocent XI. could do was to attack the Marquis de Lavardin with the worn-out weapon of excommuinication, a weapon which is now as little regarded in Rome as elsewhere.

Ha! Well, that is a very Voltaire kind of phrasing!

but prudent people were of a more moderate way of thinking.

Because William is competent, people!

That's right! :)

This is a truly remarkable paragraph to be written by an 18th century French author about a 17th century French national icon and his wars.

Ah, that's really cool. Go Voltaire!

Also remarkable: Voltaire is aware of global consequences and is not a fan of colonialism, to put it mildly:

<3

From:

selenak

It's not that Voltaire doesn't have his share of biases and contradictions (see also: "Fritz, why don't you join Catherine and Joseph on an anti-Turkish crusade?"), but "taking other people's territories, exploiting them, and then exporting wars to them = bad!" is not an equation I see many other people in the 18th century draw about their own nation. (You can always find people going on about how competing country X' barbarisms.) It's things like these that make his champion-of-Enlightenment moniker earned.