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Now, thanks to interesting podcasts, including characters from German history as a whole and also Byzantine history! (More on this later.)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Some tidbits from the Struensee bio that didn't fit anywhere else.

* Back when Selena read us the book on Danish-Prussian relations in the 18th century, we saw that Hartmann's take on Struensee was that he was a selfish schemer, and that Danish minister Bernstorff was Fritz's only contemporary equal as a genius.

So imagine my entertainment at Barz's take on Bernstorff:

Johann Hartwig Ernst Bernstorff is one of those not so rare phenomena in politics that everyone considers great men, without anyone being able to say what actually accounts for their greatness. Their basic trait is perseverance, their principle strict conservatism. They are the great harmonizers of existing relations...

Deliberately, more reliable than resourceful, he steered Denmark's fortunes for twenty years. But even before Struensee's appearance, his time is coming to an end. He feels it himself: Denmark needs newer, fresher impulses than his policy of neutrality. The treaty with Russia, which is so brilliant on the outside, has brought the country into a threatening state of almost unlimited openness to blackmail.

* A summary of Fritz's satire on Struensee:

In the satire he wrote on the subject, Struensee was not only convicted, but already executed, and in the afterlife the beheaded poisoner gave a French colleague, Friedrich's arch-enemy Choiseul, good advice to give his ruler a few opiates as well.

Remember that Struensee was accused of poisoning/drugging Christian. When the conspirators went through the papers in the palace after his death, they were dismayed to find no prescriptions for anything suspicious. But that doesn't stop ~~Fritz~~ the rumor mill.

Also, this book, at least, doesn't present any evidence that Struensee destroyed his papers Katte-and-Wilhelmine style, but he did know he was unpopular and that a coup was probably coming in general. So the lack of evidence against him for the numerous charges could have been because there was nothing to find (the author's take) or because he had been warned (me trying to keep an open mind).

* When recounting the execution, Barz draws a contrast with the famous Damiens execution we've talked about before, in that Struensee's execution was a lot more lowkey. He adds an (apocryphal?) anecdote that I hadn't encountered: that while the four horses Damiens were tied to were being whipped to pull him into four pieces, i.e. quarter him, a lady watching is supposed to have cried, "Oh, the poor horses!"

"Se non fu vero, fu bene trovato": it would be the most 18th century thing ever.

I *did* know that at the Damiens execution, if your place of residence or business had a window with a view, you could make good money selling "seats", as it were.

* Barz repeats the usual popular myths that Doctor Guillotin invented the guillotine (he did not) and then was executed by it (this was an unrelated Guillotin), but he does add another apocryphal anecdote that was new to me, or at least I had forgotten it:

The French are supposed to have presented Louis XVI with the brand-new guillotine in 1792, and he, the hobbyist locksmith, is supposed to have critiqued the design. "The blade is too weak to go through a lot of necks; for example, mine would be too thick," (he was pretty fat), and gave technical advice on how to make the blade more effective.

My immediate reaction was "No way!" French Wikipedia tells me that it is in fact considered apocryphal.

So I cannot recommend this author, and I'm looking for other works on the subject, but I will say the man could write (he also wrote novels and plays, unsurprisingly), and I was fascinated all the way through. I hope you all can see why I felt contractually obliged to share the gossip!

Edited Date: 2023-02-12 02:44 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

So imagine my entertainment at Barz's take on Bernstorff

LOL. I imagine the apoplexy of Hartmann the Bernstorff fan now. I mean, I don't know nearly enough about Danish history to judge, but that Hartmann treated the Fritz written histories as his next to only sources on the 7 Years War and Prussian politics did not enhance my trust in his historical judgment.