Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

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.)

Comments

Re: FW and Robespierre: Soulmates?

[selenak]

Krockow's Robespierre comparison: it's on page 23 f. in my edition. After quoting one of Robespierre's speechfes (as he later reveals, it's from February 1794, Paris), he says this could have been FW's Inaugural Speech, if a Prussian King held one.

"The surprising closeness shows a basic pattern of revolutionary thought and action; taking all the differencces in cause and goals into account, it still always aims at the children of light fighting against the children of darkness in a decisive battle. Injustice is supposed to be replaced with justice, lies with truth, vice and luxury through naturalness and simplicity, in short, Evil by Good. This is how Martin Luther thunders against Popery, how the faithful Puritans in the great English Revolution attack their King and deliver him to his execution, that's what Rousseau says. Always and in a central place, it also concerns education - even if it's education to dictatorship and tyranny: if Old Adam can't be replaced by a New Man, everything has been in vain."

FW doesn't seem nearly as eloquent as Robespierre

That is certainly true. Otoh, Robespierre was a trained lawyer; if FW had gone through the same training and his livelihood had depended on it, who knows, he might have been better than he was at speaking. (Let's not forget, FW was able to make Wusterhausen into a self sustaining estate at age 10. (Or was it 12? One of the two, or he got it as a present when he was 10 and by the time he was 12 it was self sustaining and exporting. This is not something his teachers or his royalty status did for him. If he was motivated to learn something, he did.) Also, Robespierre, while a good public speaker, wasn't as far as I know the type of orator to seduce/urge the masses into immediate action; that was more Danton's thing. Robespierre's brand of charisma also wasn't the instantly-chummy/devoted/slain-by-admiration kind of thing which Fritz had (and again, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins), but he did have force of personality, and whoever was devoted to him remained so. It's difficult to say if FW without being royalty and having the according power would have been able to win anyone over, because it was never put to the test, but he had hardcore convictions, a very emotional way of voicing them, boundless energy and a stupendous work ethic, and that certainly would have come in handy.