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 archives

[mildred_of_midgard]

Also, thinking about the two cases further, there's a difference between Suhm being open about his friendship with Fritz and his ultimate intention of joining him once FW dies and Hoym conducting a secret correspondence and making a secret pledge (in addition to the differences between the two men's positions and state of knowledge about Saxon interior matters).

Yes, this is very true. That's part of how Suhm exudes trustworthiness, I say! :D

Given that Suhm wrote a solid Fritz assessment for Brühl 1739/1740ish (and on time when Brühl asked for it, as opposed to Manteuffel not finishing his)

Hahaha. Manteuffel: But I had so much to say that I ran out of time!*

* I am reminded of the time I got an A on the Latin historical linguistics qualifying exam in grad school and the guy who knew much more than I did got a B, because he ran out of time to write down everything he knew.

I still like your idea that young Brühl might have tipped off FW at Zeithain

That was Jürgen Luh's idea! He wrote a paper on it, which I reported to salon. I'm not even convinced, I just think it's a possibility.

it would have needed him to be informed of Fritz and Katte approaching Hoym in real time, and if that had been the case, the accusation much later that Hoym kept the information to himself would not have worked.

I'm not sure this is the case. Hoym being accused of not reporting things through official channels is not the same as a third party reporting that they've observed and/or heard rumors of Fritz and Katte acting shady around Hoym's tent. Brühl doesn't need to have told FW "Hoym told me what Fritz and Katte said," he just needs to have said, "Btw, a lot of suspicious activity going on, thought you might like to know."

I mean, everyone already knew Fritz wanted to escape, so putting 2 and 2 together would not have been hard.