Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[cahn]

Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

Comments

Re: Saxon archivess: Suhm

[mildred_of_midgard]

BTW, Suhm's finances are another argument for him taking all his children and his sister with him when he goes to St. Petersburg, because otherwise, he'd have to pay for the upkeep of an entire household in Berlin in addition to his other expenses - and we know envoy salaries of envoys are notoriously slow to arrive.

Yes, and as I recall, the archive catalogue indicated that Hedwig was still trying to get the posthumous backpay owed her brother in the 1740s!

Speaking of envoys to St. Petersburg, what was the name again of the English one in whose entourage Algarotti attended the Anna Leopoldovna/Anton Ulrich wedding?

Lord Baltimore. As I recall, Fritz liked him too.

But sure, Wilhelmine was the one only pretending to be learned.

Hahaha. Look, it's hard to be an Anglophone where the system doesn't teach you languages! (I consider myself learned but unfortunately monolingual.)

depending how up Suhm was on gossip, he might not have known Lynar did need replacing when asking for a job and thus very unaware St. Petersburg was even an option

Matzke, author of the dissertation on Saxon diplomacy, says they didn't even inform Suhm after they gave him the post! Oh, look, checking again, Matzke also says Brühl totally planned to send Lynar back later, which could be what AvB is getting at.