Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

Re: Money-making schemes

[selenak]

Well, dang. You know, the next discovery could be the scriptwriters also didn‘t invent MT and FS catching Mimi and poor Isabella of Parma in the act or Grumbkow & Seckendorff assassinating Prince Eugene once they considered him no longer useful for Prussia…

The "extortionate prices" makes more sense of it: if the Austrians had access to enough food, and FS could make a huge profit, the Austrians could use that profit to supply and pay their own soldiers. And the reason Fritz could afford extortionate prices was because he was exploiting Saxony and debasing the Saxon-Polish currency!

Verily, and the Saxons truly have a claim of having it the worst in that war, at least in the European arena. But I take it FS didn‘t supply the Prussians until the later part of the war, given that part of our newly discovered correspondence from 1757 between various folk and Fredersdorf is about flour and other horse supply from Northern Germany?

Re: Money-making schemes

[mildred_of_midgard]

You know, the next discovery could be the scriptwriters also didn‘t invent MT and FS catching Mimi and poor Isabella of Parma in the act or Grumbkow & Seckendorff assassinating Prince Eugene once they considered him no longer useful for Prussia…

Exactly! This is why when luzula reported Mrs. Calderwood saying Fritz had ordered all the cats in Saxony killed, and you said, "His war crimes in Saxony did not include cat extermination!", my response was, "We say that now, but just wait!" Salon has taught me to be very cautious about claiming scriptwriters, novelists, Youtube-video makers, and even historians have made something up just because I've never heard of it and it sounds implausible.

Truly, truth is stranger than fiction. (Remember Brühl trying to get a diplomatic revolution going before Kaunitz did, and how we made fun of the Saxon miniseries until I started reading up on Saxon diplomacy, and then we had to apologize?)

But I take it FS didn‘t supply the Prussians until the later part of the war, given that part of our newly discovered correspondence from 1757 between various folk and Fredersdorf is about flour and other horse supply from Northern Germany?

That was the same conclusion I came to, yes. Pity, I would have enjoyed reading those letters!

On the biography in question, I have some quibbles, but I recommend it to you if for no other reason that it's trying really, really hard to be "FS in Augenzeugenberichten". It's almost entirely lengthy passages from letters, envoy reports, and diaries, with occasional connecting tissue in the form of the author writing his own words. It's also really focused on FS as a person, meaning we don't even hit 1740 until more than halfway through the book. We get lots of passages from the envoy reports of the Lorraine envoy in his youth!

So when you have time, here's the Stabi link.