Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 45

[cahn]

Unfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.

(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

Aaahhh, I love that you chose this quote!

[selenak]

For reals. A most excellent choice. Though I'm not sure whether the non deceiving of his servants holds up. I mean, clearly not in the incompetent way Louis did, but I'm reminded of Mitchell early on in the 7 Years WAr suspecting Heinrich of being set on negotiating with the French behind Fritz' back to make himself look like the saviour, of stabbing Fritz in the back, and of Voltaire using the fact he and Fritz are pen pals once more to get military secrets from Fritz. Meanwhile: Fritz uses both Heinrich and Wilhelmine to sound out the French behind Mitchell's back for a separate peace, and of course sharing military secrets wasn't even on the menu when he was living with Voltaire, let alone midst-war. I mean, Mitchell wasn't Fritz' servant, he was working for G2, but what I'm getting at is that Fritz with his training in paranoia by FW was quite capable of only sharing selected truths with people who were working for him or in alliance with him.

Replies to the last post

[mildred_of_midgard]

judging by contemporary reports, Moltke was the *only* one grieving Frederik. Everyone else is ready to *move on*.

Aw. I mean, I can see why, but that's sad. Most people have at least two people who like them enough to grieve! I guess it's not as bad as not having one?

Well, the "judging by contemporary reports" means we're limited to what people wrote about. The feelings of his middle-class mistress, for example, were probably not deemed worthy of inclusion. Was it more than an exchange of sex and nursing for money and prestige? Who can know? What we know is that as a *king*, he was not super popular at court, nor among his immediate family. (His first wife, Louise, might have missed him, but she had died ~15 years before.)

Furthermore, even less did my way of thinking permit me to cause an honest man to lose his office in order that it should be conferred on me.

Awwww, yeah Moltke.

<3

I knew you were going to like this. I like it too! All respect to Moltke.

Of course my burning gossip question is, does this book say anything about Moltke's daughter that Frederik wanted to marry but whom Moltke abruptly married to someone else????

Haha, I love that you have a burning gossip question about Moltke! This is what the book has to say on the matter, google translated for speed with some corrections from me:

What Moltke alluded to with these veiled expressions was nothing less than a proposal from the King that instead of looking for a new spouse abroad, he should marry Moltke's eldest daughter, Catharine Sophie Wilhelmine, who was born in 1737 and in the years 1747-51 had served as lady-in-waiting to Queen Louise, whereby the King had gotten to know her. It was this proposal which left Moltke in deep embarrassment and consternation, as is seen in the quoted passage from the memoirs. On the one hand, the prospect of becoming part of the royal family itself might seem attractive - and when the proposal came from the King himself, it was naturally difficult to refuse. On the other hand, Moltke clearly realized that agreeing to such a marriage would be a transgressive act that would not only put his young, innocent daughter in an extremely difficult situation and probably ruin the rest of her life, but would also mean that he himself would cross the fine line between the role of discreet royal servant and a new identity as a participant in the royal private sphere. And how risky that could be, is clearly illustrated by Struensee's ill fate twenty years later, after he had not only completely taken over Christian VII's government responsibilities, but also displaced him from the royal marriage bed.

It was therefore clear to the realistic-thinking Moltke that these royal plans - however sincere and well-intentioned they were - had to be thwarted at all costs. However, since it was a matter of directly refusing to comply with the expressed wishes of an absolute monarch, when the King disclosed his plans to Moltke in the spring of 1752, he acted quickly and resolutely. At breakneck speed, he arranged for his daughter, only fourteen years old, to be immediately betrothed to the then twenty-year-old patriarch of the county of Wedellsborg, Count Hannibal Wedell-Wedellsborg. The marriage between the unusually young couple took place just a few months later, namely on 16 June 1752, just three weeks before the King's wedding to Juliane Marie. This hastily arranged marriage lasted until Count Hannibal's death in 1766, after which Catharine Sophie Wilhelmine spent her long widowhood, which lasted until her death in 1806, in her father's county of Bregentved.

A. G. Moltke had thus, by a resolute step, not only saved his daughter from a presumably ill fate, but also effectively prevented himself from being forced to cross the invisible boundary, which no one before or since has successfully escaped crossing, namely that which the Royal Act drew around the absolute monarch and his house. He even managed to do it in such a considerate manner that he not only avoided offending the King, but on the contrary, in connection with his grinding with Juliane Marie, received the highest imaginable proof of his continued favor, namely the Order of the Elephant, and with it the dignity of Blue Knight. With the events of the spring fresh in his mind, it was probably no coincidence that he chose the words "Candide et caute" - with sincerity and caution - as his language of choice as an elephant knight - they very precisely denoted both his relationship with the King personally and the nature of the daily balancing act, as it was to ensure the unbroken functionality of the apparatus of power, even if the official center of power - the autocratic monarch - was in practice not fit to lift the burden of governmental responsibility.

Speaking of mottos, as his motto when Frederik's father, Christian VI, made Moltke a member of the Dannebrog order, Moltke chose "constantia et fidelitate." When Frederik became king a few years later, he had to pick a motto. He picked "constantia et prudentia", and as the author points out, embodied *neither* of them, but the echo of Moltke's motto is very clear and probably not accidental. So basically Moltke is picking the mottos here as well as carrying all the weight of embodying them.

Hessian mercenaries: Oh, yeah, I could not have told you they were from a place called Hesse either! They were entirely in my passive memory.

Heinrich and the crown of Poland:

haha what? It's not only halfway true?

The point of salon, I am finding, is that everything we think isn't true (FS supplied Fritz's army!) is true, and everything we think is true isn't (I'm still mourning "she cried but she took"), or is only sort of true.

At least there was a proposal to make Heinrich king of Poland, even if there wasn't a delegation sent for that purpose!

In both accounts, Fritz responds, "He doesn't want to become Catholic."

Me: I... really... find it hard to believe that this is the problem!

Most unconvincing excuse ever given.

I mean... it makes perfect sense to me that he thinks France should be meddling in the affairs of others, but no one else should :D

It does! I'm just calling him on it. :P

Re: Replies to the last post

[selenak]

Most unconvincing excuse ever given.

FW would like to point out that this title has a strong contender via Katte's declaration that he only aided and abetted Fritz to save him from the marriage to an Austrian Archduchess and the conversion to the Catholic religion.

MT, otoh, thinks Fritz telling FS in a letter he's only invading to protect her and absolutely willing to be her champion takes the price.

Émilie is eying Voltaire's "I'm too fragile and sick to continue having sex with you" with a certain bitterness.

The King's Secret: fighting Fritz

[mildred_of_midgard]

Before we get into foreign policy, a couple quotes.

Re selenak's image of the Comte de Broglie as blustery and self-important, his great-nephew wishes to confirm:

[He had] an invincible bent of character which would have made him distasteful to every monarch in the world—a haughty and independent temper, which never let him obey without arguing, or sometimes even murmuring. He disputed his instructions, and had no scruple about modifying them, or exceeding them, without saying anything about it. He spoke his mind freely on every subject, had his own ideas, and prided himself on understanding what he was ordered to do; a lofty pretension which the strange position in which he had been placed by the King's confidence had still further developed. From having to serve two masters who never agreed with each other, Count de Broglie had acquired a habit of trifling with both, and in the bottom of his heart had no respect for either.

France should always top, not bottom:

In short, he believed France to be sufficiently great, and he wished her to be sufficiently dignified, to dictate the terms of the compact, instead of having them dictated to her. In the flourishing times of the English alliance, thirty or forty years ago, Count Metternich said on a certain occasion, with a smile, "The union between France and England is unspeakably useful, and so is that between the man and the horse; but we must be the man, not the horse." This saying pretty nearly expresses what Count de Broglie thought about the Austrian alliance and the Treaty of Versailles.

(Given Metternich was Austrian, I suspected "we" was a translation of an impersonal construction, and indeed, the original French of Le Secret du Roi has "il faut", i.e., "it is necessary to be the man.")

Okay, so! Remember how Comte de Broglie was single-handedly responsible for Lobositz and the Saxon army's decision to take a stand in Saxony during the invasion? He's now about to be almost single-handedly responsible for Kolin too! (Again, I read with several grains of salt.)

So after alienating everyone at Versailles, Comte de Broglie can neither get anyone to take him seriously about his brilliant foreign policy ideas, nor can he get the post he wants: ambassador to Vienna. Instead, he's sent back to the Saxon court (now located in Warsaw because Fritz has kicked them out of Saxony, so he can steal all the porcelain, impress all the soldiers, and watch them desert again).

Broglie asks for clear orders on what to do about the candidate for Polish king. Does France want to support a French candidate, a French or Spanish Bourbon candidate, one of August's sons...who??

In return, he gets incredibly vague answers from both his official boss, the minister of foreign affairs, and his other boss, Louis.

Then we get a digression from the 19th century Duc de Broglie about civil servants and how awesome they are when the middle class knows their place and can't aspire to anything more than invisible service to the crown, and how much better it was in the 18th century. That's our unpopular conservative politician, all right!

Back in 1757, the Comte de Broglie has set out for Warsaw, but first he's gotten permission to do the thing he second most wants to do in the world, after being posted to Vienna, which is visit Vienna and tell everyone what to do. And lo! He finds everyone in a panic because Fritz's is occupying Bohemia and advancing closer to Vienna. Only MT retains her courage.

Since she, in turn, finds that the Comte de Broglie is the only level head around, she consults with him and takes his advice. Which is to send the imperial army to Bohemia to join the army at Prague, combine forces, and attempt to free Prague.

Our Count modestly demurs at the thought of being put in charge of this operation, but since his father (the first Marshal de Broglie) had first taken Prague during the War of the Austrian succession, then defended it in a siege, and the Comte had been present, he is considered something of an expert and finally accepts the commission of directing the armies from Vienna. To explain his delay in setting out for his official post, Warsaw, he writes:

"I am conducting that operation from hence, as much as it is possible to do at a distance, and with generals of limited intelligence, and I could not leave it half done."

That's a little unfair to Daun, says the Duc de Broglie.

That's the guy who thinks if he shows up in America, he will be made Stadtholder upon the instant, says Mildred.

Though the combining of armies never happens, because Fritz marches out to attack, the result is the battle of Kolin. Which MT says she owes to Broglie as much as to Daun, the presiding general who defeated Fritz!

Citation on this seems to be the Comte de Broglie, whom of course I trust utterly.

At any rate, the Comte then proceeds to Warsaw and succeeds in alienating everyone there, apparently by advocating too strongly for the Poles being oppressed by the Saxons. He gets scolded by his boss.

Who is now the new foreign minister, the Abbe de Bernis (a rather more famous figure than his predecessor, and someone I've encountered before). Bernis is one of those enlightened Frenchmen who entered the church and, eventually rose to the rank of cardinal, because it was a lucrative career path and not because he was extremely pious. He befriended Madame de Pompadour, wrote poetry that Voltaire liked, was elected to the Académie française, and used as an envoy.

Finally he became secretary of foreign affairs in June 1757. He won't last long there, because he decides to try to address the wretched finances of France by centralizing control over the treasury, instead of leaving it in the hands of separate ministers to do whatever they want. Both Wikipedia and a serious scholar (Eveline Cruickshanks) I have read say that he acquired powerful enemies, including Pompadour, who benefited from the decentralized approach to money, and they told Louis Bernis was trying to set himself up as prime minister. You may remember Louis, once Cardinal Fleury had died in 1743, said he would act as his own prime minister (thus copying Louis XIV)...which was really a victory for the various ministers/secretaries, since Louis, unlike his predecessor, was not actually acting as his own prime minister.

So Louis, who doesn't want a repeat Richelieu/Mazarin/Fleury, kicks Bernis out of office in 1758.

Meanwhile, though, it's 1757, and Bernis and the Comte de Broglie are butting heads over how to make France come out on top.

Now, Bernis' idea is that France's involvement in the Seven Years' War should be as limited as possible--so the exact opposite of what the "France should always top, not bottom" Comte de Broglie thinks.

As a result, the two men are completely unable to work together. "There is no reason," says our author the Duc de Broglie,

to believe that the vast task in which Bernis failed would have been accomplished by Count de Broglie, but the latter was not of that opinion.

I'll say!

He had a military and diplomatic solution ready for every difficulty, and he longed to be put to the test under which Bernis was breaking down. Between the First Minister, who was driven to despair by the greatness of his rôle, and whose only desire was to reduce it, and the fiery-spirited agent who was quivering with impatience within the narrow limits to which his action was restricted, no mutual understanding could exist.

So while Broglie is pursuing his own policy at Warsaw and alienating the Saxons, he's getting scoldy letters from back home telling him to please stop alienating Brühl from France, you idiot.

Broglie, who only respects his own opinions, is like, "No, no, I have a plan! We'll get the Saxon envoy to St. Petersburg recalled!"

Now, selenak is probably following the chronology and remembers who was Saxon envoy to St. Petersburg in 1757: Poniatowski!

Zamoyski, whose biography of Poniatowski I am currently reading, tells me that back in 1756, when Poniatowski was first sent by Saxony as ambassador, Broglie first tried to block the appointment, and then, when that didn't work, conspire with Branicki (the Polish Grand General who had defected to the French side) to have Poniatowski kidnapped on his way to St. Petersburg!

Poniatowski gets wind of the ambush ahead, takes a different route, and arrives safely in St. Petersburg, there to change history with Catherine.

Meanwhile, though, by 1758, the Comte de Broglie has managed to conspire with other enemies of Poniatowski and get Brühl to recall Poniatowski.

Speaking of "this sorry personage" (the Duc de Broglie's term for Poniatowski), the ever opinionated Duc wishes to inform you that:

I can best picture him to myself, when, looking back to twenty-five or thirty years ago, to a time when the prejudices of aristocratic Europe against liberal France were at their height, and the Emperor Nicholas was at the head of the crusade of the old régime against the new, I recall the strange impression made upon me in the salons of Paris and at the embassies, by the young Russians who mixed with society there. To hear them talk, to meet them at the theatres, at entertainments, even in the galleries of the legislative assemblies, one would have taken them for Frenchmen by birth as well as in heart--Frenchmen of condition and of the best society. The imitation was perfect, in manners, in dress, in accent, and in conversation. Their clothes were of the latest cut ; they knew the novel of the day by heart ; they discussed contemporary and parliamentary politics with judicious knowledge of persons and even of principles. The words "progress" and "civilisation" were perpetually on their lips. One allowed oneself to be surprised into talking to them with perfect frankness, just as if one stood on a common ground of ideas, sentiments, or interests with them. Then, all of a sudden, a word, a gesture, an unguarded inflection of the voice, revealed that an inveterate enemy of France was speaking. The disappointment was painful, and while one could not help admiring this exact reproduction of foreign and even detested manners and customs, a secret repulsion was caused by that want of individuality and of frankness, of character, and of vigour, which was the inevitable condition of so much facility in the art of imitation.

That was Poniatowski, says the Duc! And the Comte knew it, for:

It might be said, judging from the very hatred with which, in his correspondence, he honours a young man so untried as Poniatowski, that the instinct of his political genius made him aware that in this stage hero there was sufficient feebleness and presumption to lead a country straight to its ruin.

This is definitely the Comte's wise foresight and not at all his abrasive personality that alienates everyone he meets with his contempt, yup.

At any rate, he succeeds! Poniatowski is recalled! He's on the brink of guiding French foreign policy in the direction he wants! And then--

Rossbach!

Not only does the Comte de Broglie lose a brother, but he loses all credibility with the Saxons, who turn more and more toward Russia and support allowing Poland to become a protectorate of the Russians (instead of the French).

Woe! Woe is Comte de Broglie!

He writes many angry letters. Bernis writes to Broglie's uncle:

"There is no managing your nephew...he will do nothing in politics except out of his own head ; he assumes a legislative tone in all his despatches, and in his proceedings there is a harshness and a bitterness which are almost fierce."

As a last resort, the Comte de Broglie writes to Louis XV, advocating for supporting one of August III's Francophilic sons (Xavier) for the throne of Poland, and asking for clarification on whether to support the Russians (his official instructions) or the Poles (the secret instructions), since it's kind of hard to do both right now.

Louis replies, you guessed it, vaguely.

There was nothing to do but ask for his recall, which the Comte de Broglie did. In 1758, he left Warsaw.

He had failed; the whole project was at an end; and with the departure of Count de Broglie the abandonment of Poland was consummated. The impotent notions of the secret diplomacy had only retarded for a day the selfish weakness of the official diplomacy. Such an experience might have sufficed, one would think, to have disgusted Louis XV. with mystery, and his secret Ambassador with confidences, but nothing of the sort was the result. The scene of the secret diplomacy of the King of France was about, on the contrary, to transform and extend itself; and its action, although more varied and strange, was not destined to be either more glorious or more efficacious in the future. This we shall see as we proceed.

And on this cliffhanger, we end this episode, with a new episode as soon as I have leisure to read and write up another chapter. (Keep in mind, I'm reading other relevant works in parallel, like Zamoyski's bio of Poniatowski, and it's looking like I'm going to have to pick up my recently-acquired bio of the Chevalier d'Eon soon, as d'Eon's about to become relevant.)

The fun will continue!

Re: The King's Secret: fighting Fritz

[selenak]

so he can steal all the porcelain,

Except for that which Karoline Fredersdorf tells her husband's former secretary to buy (!), as we now know. :)

That's a little unfair to Daun, says the Duc de Broglie.

I'll say. Also it reminds me of Maupertuis evidently telling everyone FS and MT made quite a fuss over him when he was an Austrian POW in early Silesian War time, that FS gave him a golden watch (this I could believe) and MT asked him whether EC was prettier than her (no way) - and that Maupertuis' biographer swallowed that whole. At least the Duc de Broglie vaguely remembers that Daun existed when repeating his ancestor's claim.

(cahn, bear in mind that Daun already had gotten the better of Fritz (temporarily) in the Second Silesian War, when he essentially got him out of Bohemia by constantly picking strategically great positions and refusing to be drawn into battle while cutting off Fritzian supply lines, so Fritz' "attack attack attack" tactics did not work. According to Ziebura, Teen Heinrich who was in the Second Silesian War as Fritz' AD paid attention, for this informed his own 7 Years War tactics. Anyway, all this happened without Broglie kindly dispensing advice.

Both Broglies bashing Poniatowski: pfff. As said re: would Heinrich have accepted the crown even if the offer had been made to him, King of Poland in the later half of the 18th century was a thankless job, and Poniatowski did the best he could with the cards he was dealt. Also I doubt either Broglie would have lasted five minutes against Catherine the Great. Just saying.

This is all very entertaining, and I continue to admire your write ups!

How Brühl got his job

[mildred_of_midgard]

According to Walter Fellman, 1989 biographer of Brühl, this happened, in 1729:

August the Strong: *returns home*

August: Ah, another nice day, another nice hunt! Life is good.

August: Now, what's all this on my desk?

August: Paperwork??! Awww, I hate paperwork. My minister Flemming used to make summaries and recommendations for me, but then he died last year.

August: Wait! *has a brainwave*

August: Attention all secretaries, chamberlains, and valets! Everybody take one document, and summarize it for me in 10 lines or less.

Everybody: *needs more than 10 lines*

Brühl: Here you are in 8 lines, Sire!

August: No way! My ministry is absolutely not capable of coming up with anything so efficient that it can be summarized in 8 lines.

Brühl: Yes, way! Check it out.

August: *reads the summary, reads the original*

August: Huh. You did it. Hired!

So from then on, Brühl gets to handle all the petitions and reports, and he's on August's radar when August needs someone to organize Zeithain the following year. And Zeithain, of course, is how Brühl makes his name, and it's all an upward trajectory from there.

Zeithain is as far as I've gotten, but I'll let you know if there are more goodies to come.

Re: How Brühl got his job

[luzula]

Hee. This is what my dad used to do before taking on Ph D students, to make sure they could write!

FS in three biographies: An Overview (1)

[selenak]

I've now read the three Franz Stephan biographies I got from the Stabi, products of vastly different eras. To which:

Fred Hennings: Und sitzet zur linken Hand. Franz Stephan von Lothringen. (1963)

Fred Hennings: I'm an early 1960s guy looking back, stylistically, to 1920s/1930s biographies romancees a la Stefan Zweig, and also reproducing the gender images of my era: expect phrases like "her womanly nature" or "he was lacking the benefit of male education". On the other hand, I never do the weird thing Nancy Goldstone does, i.e. imply MT spent her time trying to make up to FS for the indignity of being the husband of a strong woman. My FS doesn't have a problem with that, which of course I like his contemporaries do think is weird, but blame on his indolent lazy phlegmatic nature.

Georg Schreiber & Renate Zedinger: Which he didn't have. We're different from each other, but we both protest against the the characterisation of FS as lazy, pointing out he was in fact working hard.

Fred Hennings: You'll get your turn. Allow me to finish my book's introduction. I'm spending two thirds of my page time on the days before FS ever makes it to Emperor, strong emphasis on his youth and courting MT days as if I was a novelist. As for the working bit: near the end of my book, I remember he was financially successful so devote a very brief time to saying yeah, he did that. Now, I don't dislike FS! I think he must have been a very likeable fellow, if weirdly accepting of being topped by MT, but agree with Charles Hanbury-Williams that nature intended him to be the Duke of Lorraine and no more. In terms of contributing new stuff to Salon knowledge, I don't offer much, except for several pages of direct transcript of the hilarious (to us) conversation between FS and the then Prussian envoy (not Podewils, the one who had to explain how Fritz is invading Silesia the first time around for just reasons and MT's own benefit) hailing from the guy's report to Fritz. Selena will get around to translating the highlights in the future. Also I have transcriptions of some of the courting letters, but Stollberg-Rillinger had those as well, and examples of FS spelling badly in French and German alike, which, again, already known to us. Otoh, I say there is no primary source document available to tell what kind of relationship FS had with his kids when later biographers all quote from his letters to same and from same, so my research can't have been that extensive. Oh, and unlike my direct contemporary, the editor of the "Fritz and MT in the eyes of their contemporaries" book, I don't buy into Prussian propaganda and thus Fritz is a gangster with good PR in my descriptions, though I'm less harsh on him than Nancy Goldstone. (No running away mocking his own troops, for starters.)

Georg Schreiber: I'll say. My book, "Franz I. Stephan. An der Seite einer großen Frau" is from 1986. As a 1980s publishing author, I'm still writing my biography chronologically, but I'm more prone to question or point out source bias in whoever I'm quoting. Like Podewils, the Prussian ambassador to Vienna post Silesia 2, whose descriptions of MT and FS are in basically every Fritz and MT biography, though the FS descriptions never get quoted as lengthily as the MT descriptions except in our three biographies, where on the contrary we three don't quote the MT descriptions at all, since FS is our subject. Anyway, I point out that Podewils wrote his stuff for Fritz' delectation, and wanted his King to like him. Which means that while Podewils' description is an important counter point to the fawning rosy eyed Austrian court stuff from the same period, it still doesn't mean it's objective. Meaning not that Podewils lies, but that he skewers in a way to make Fritz feel good about himself and superior to FS, hence the description of FS as lazy.

(Derek Beales, Joseph biographer in three volumes: And the description of Joseph as a spoiled kid which you repeat. I mean, have you seen Joseph's teaching schedule?)

Renate Zedinger: Ha. You're still missing the point about Podewils. In my biography, I point out that in the same letter where he provides Fritz with his lengthy and much quoted "MT: Hot or not?" and "FS: Hot or not?" portraits, he also admits that as the envoy of a power seen as hostile, he even a year into his posting couldn't make contact with top courtiers and true intimates of the imperial couple, and only got one audience by both of them so far. All his intel hails from third rate gossip and sources. Basically, he's as knowledgeable about FS and MT at this point as Hanbury-Williams is about Fritz during his stint as Ambassador to Prussia. And that's the guy who keeps getting quoted as this great expert in biographies and is to blame for my guy FS being called lazy!

Georg Schreiber: You wait your turn. Like all three of us, I explain about the House of Lorraine early on at some detail. I'm, however, the only one pointing out what while usually if the the woman marries into a family in much of Western European history, including the 18th century, people consider her and her kids as part of her in-law family. Meanwhle, MT when her brother-in-law died wrote in a letter "this is the end of the House of Lorraine". She regarded herself and her kids as Habsburgs, and ensured there were thus seen by the rest of the world as well, though the official name was "Habsburg-Lothringen". Also when I quote the famous description of teen MT's pining for FS by the British envoy to Vienna which is in all three books, it hit Selena that the phrasing is "The man she believes to be born for her", not "the man she believes herself born for" - and that's not someone writing in hindsight but a guy at the time when she's still a teen. If ever there was someone deserving the description girlboss..

Renate Zedinger: I'm much more MT critical than you, in that I emphasize that for all her love for FS she downplayed the support she was getting from him - basically I'm the reverse Nancy Goldstone here - and also she should have listened to him re: Fritz and spared the world Silesia 2 and the 7 Years War. While I'm at it, Kaunitz and the Diplomatic Revolution suck. The alliance with France was a terrible idea. FS knew France was an untrustworthy arrogant parasite who'd never do anything to actually help Austria. MT should have listened to him!

Georg Schreiber: I'm in the middle here - I do think FS had a point with his repeated arguments for reconciliation with Prussia and trying to get it away from France and teaming up with it against France, but then again I also point out that if MT had given into all of Fritz ' demands in Silesia 1 and stuck to this instead of trying to get Silesia back, he might have asked for Bohemia and Moravia next, and also she would have signalled her weakness to all her other enemies. In fact, I'm the author most snarky about Fritz. Have one example, when talking about how MT's Dad greenlighted heigtening the secret pension/bribery money crown prince Fritz was getting from the Austrian court: "Unlike Prince Eugene, he had delusions about Friedrich's gratitude and general character." Also, unlike you, I don't ruin my impeccable research credentials by claiming Fritz did seriously consider making himself HRE.

Renate Zedinger: Did to. I claim Wilhelmine told someone that should the Wittelsbach guy kick the bucket, Fritz was ready to convert to Catholicism in order to become Holy Roman Emperor in 1743. When Selena looked up the relevant footnote, it said: "Durchardt, Protestantisches Kaisertum, 284-289." Mildred, over to you.

Georg Schreiber: Speaking of claims which are the direct opposite of how events are portrayed elsewhere: the three of us present the Lorraine/Tuscany switch and FS' takeover completely different from the Medici books. Far from plundering out Tuscany, we present FS as a champ laying the groundworks for son Leopold's much beloved reign with first reforms. Also, all three of us point out that as to the bitching about taking over Medici jewelry, FS also took over Medici debts. Which were considerable. That duchy was run down. However, it's clear that from the three of us, only you, Renate Z., read things from the Medici pov and present Anna Luisa, Gian Gastone's sister, as the heroine who kept the art work in Tuscany, by and large, and as an impressive figure. I and my predecessor Fred mention her only as an odd weirdo who was despite her initial distrust of FS charmed by him. Also I'm more into presenting anecdotes like MT duetting with the Castrato singer Sensinino than listing Tuscan complaints. But unlike you, I mention that when FS sent his Lorraine guys into the duchy, part of the clean up operation (my phrasing) of the Palazzo Pitti ("which had been run down during Gian Gastone's long illness") was to kcik out "The Swiss Guard for they had become under their Capitano Giulio Dani a rotten pack which begged every visitor to the palace for money". Selena is wondering whether these were actual Swiss, or are they meant to be the Ruspanti? Anyway, back to my presentation of Medici matters: when I describe Gian Gastone getting the news that FS would be his heir, I do say he wasn't happy, but I also claim Gian Gastone still prefered that to the Spanish getting the duchy for Spanish occupation was worst. Apparantly, I never read something about Gian Gastone favoring the other Don Carlos.

Renate Zedinger: What did you say about impeccable research again?

Georg Schreiber. Fine. Over to you.

Renate Zedinger: I say some nice things about your book in my preface but still make the case the world was waiting for the ultimate FS biography, to wit, mine. I'm publishing "Franz Stephan von Lothringen. Monarch, Manager, Mäzen" in 2008, and thus it's a modern biography structured for different areas of occupation (like politics, family life, business, patronage), and there's some jumping to and thro in the time line, as it's only vaguely chronological. My book is the thoroughest. I even describe all the people from FS' Lorraine entourage with pen portraits, not just his siblings. Unlike your rubbish claim of indolent FS, Fred Hennings, I point out there are protocols proving he did work as co-regent with MT in the early days instead of her just giving him the title but he not doing anything with it. I point out how questionable Podewils is as a source of that claim and point out to other people with actual constant access to FS and MT mentioning his working hours. Like this envoy whom FS could only given an 8:00 am audience because he was otherwise booked out, and not with hunting. Georg Schreiber and I both quote from his "how to be a good husband" letter to Leopold, and Georg quotes from a Joseph letter to MT about how Dad is doing when they're both en route to Frankfurt for Joseph's coronation that demonstrates his affection and care for Dad, and further rubbishes the traditional image Fred Hennings reproduces about Joseph not caring for his Dad which btw is solely based on another Podewils report of Joseph supposedly saying FS had only dukes as ancestors, not kings and Emperors. Which btw is incorrect, too, look at his family tree. I also quote from a letter to one of his daughters and from him to her to boost FS' "good and caring Dad" credentials. (Something I conspiciously leave out, though, is FS' "you will get married a second time NOW because your mother and I say so!" letter to Joseph.)

Going back to the Medici bit: I admit to the bad image of Team Lorraine in Tuscany pre Leopold/Pietro Leopoldo as I call him by his Italian name, but I point out that the Florentine and Tuscan nobility had all bet on the Spanish succeeeding and had laid their eggs in that basket and ingratiated themselves there, and it was all in vain. So they started out frustrated already. And then FS brought in a lot of Lorraine people. Far from presenting this as negative as the Medici books to, I present it as an example of FS' excellent leader qualities - as Duke of Lorraine. See, when the big switcheroo was being negotiated, FS didn't just abandon Lorraine without a care, the way it's presented in older books. He went above and beyond to ensure that any Lorraine noble who didn't want to stick around with new Duke Stanislas Lescynski and any non-noble Lorraine too who wanted to stay with him got a place and a job. And naturally, since his father-in-law was still alive, he could only resettle these guys in Tuscany, though later once MT was in charge and especially once he himself was Emperor, he offered them jobs and places in Vienna as well. However, it wasn't like FS handed over Tuscan revenues to his buddies and Tuscany suffered from it, far from it. He always had an eye for competence. Those Lorraine guys in charge did good stuff! Here's what schools and stone cutting factories and other stuff were founded and so forth by them, and how they tried to revitalize the run-down-by-the-Medici duchy, even before Pietro Leopoldo came along and kicked ass! Dad's entourage laid the good groundworks and Adam W. the later Leopold biographer is my chief witness for this, here are my quotes and sources in the footnotes.

And while I'm talking about FS as a Duke and run down duchies, his Dad, Leopold, was a big spender who left Lorraine in huge debts. FS, otoh, proving his unsual for his class good economic sense, immediately started a saving money and reboosting the economy program when he became Duke and before he had to give up his duchy. To the point where even FW would have been impressed, like with cutting the 50 or so Haushofmeister who only got irregular salaries and did few jobs down to only 3, but those with three time the sallaries, regularly paid. Idle good time fellow, my ass!

Oh, and still on a Lorraine note: If I have a bete noire other than the perfidious French - seriously, the way I present the French in my book is the way the Duc de Broglie and his ancestor the Comte talk about the Austrians - whom FS completely rightly saw through and distrusted and would NEVER have allied with if it was up to him, let alone married Maria Antonia with - , if there's one guy I practically boo and hiss at every time it is mentioned, it is not Fritz, it's Stanislas Lesczynski. That ungrateful asshole. See, when August the Strong kicked him out of Poland the first time with Peter the Great's help, where would he find refuge but in Lorraine with FS' Dad Leopold! And then years later, when the War of the Polish Succession ended with Stanislas tradiing in Poland for Lorraine, he said that if he had to give up Poland for good, Lorraine was barely, just about acceptable. Jerk. I call him the lowest of the low for this, ungrateful to the nth degree, which is a logic Selena can't quite follow. Anyway, I'm not a little gleeful when reporting later that FS organized the transport of all the Lorraine art work and furniture and so forth ouf of Lorraine and either to Tuscany or Vienna before handing over the duchy, and that Stanislas Lescynski wrote an indignant letter to son-in-law Louis XV about how FS didn't even leave him an armchair in the palace and he had to refurbish wholesale. Serves you right, jerk! (TBC)

Re: FS in three biographies: An Overview (1)

[cahn]

ahahaha I am loving the round-table discussion of the different bios and biographers :D

Hennings: My FS doesn't have a problem with that, which of course I like his contemporaries do think is weird

Me: Well, okay --

--but blame on his indolent lazy phlegmatic nature.

Me: ...what??
Is this Goldstone's source??

Georg Schreiber & Renate Zedinger: Which he didn't have. We're different from each other, but we both protest against the the characterisation of FS as lazy, pointing out he was in fact working hard.

Thank you Schrieber and Zedinger! (And selenak :D )

Meaning not that Podewils lies, but that he skewers in a way to make Fritz feel good about himself and superior to FS, hence the description of FS as lazy.

Ah! Interesting.

Basically, he's as knowledgeable about FS and MT at this point as Hanbury-Williams is about Fritz during his stint as Ambassador to Prussia.

Lol!

it hit Selena that the phrasing is "The man she believes to be born for her", not "the man she believes herself born for" - and that's not someone writing in hindsight but a guy at the time when she's still a teen. If ever there was someone deserving the description girlboss..

YEAH GO MT

Renate Zedinger: I'm much more MT critical than you, in that I emphasize that for all her love for FS she downplayed the support she was getting from him - basically I'm the reverse Nancy Goldstone here - and also she should have listened to him re: Fritz and spared the world Silesia 2 and the 7 Years War. While I'm at it, Kaunitz and the Diplomatic Revolution suck. The alliance with France was a terrible idea. FS knew France was an untrustworthy arrogant parasite who'd never do anything to actually help Austria. MT should have listened to him!

...what?
(haha, I really like your reference to the perfidious French later :D )

to the point where even FW would have been impressed, like with cutting the 50 or so Haushofmeister who only got irregular salaries and did few jobs down to only 3, but those with three time the sallaries, regularly paid.

Nice! Go FS :P

(must sleep now, but enjoyed the others too! will try to reply when I get a chance)

FS in three biographies: An Overview (2)

[selenak]

Selena: I think all the anti French stuff is how I can see you're an Austrian, not a German author. France/Germany OTP being a post war German credo. Anyway, I note that you three agree on one thing, and that is that FS was the embodiment of Lorraine's neither-French-nor-German nature, because this happens:

FS' Dad: I'm the son of an Austrian Archduchess myself and seeing as it doesn't really look like my cousins Joseph and Charles the MT Dad are producing anything but daughters, and my wife, daughter of Liselotte and Philippe the Gay, sister of Philippe the Regent, keeps producing sons, I'm going to gamble and try to marry one of my sons with an Austrian Archduchess. The Emperor at this point is Joseph I., so I'm proposing to his kid daughters first.

*first two sons of Lorraine Leopold: die*
*Joseph I: Also dies*
*Charles the future Dad of MT: ascends*
*MT: born*
Lorraine Leopold: Okay, I still have still three sons left. How about your new baby/my kid Leopold Clemons, son 3, now likely sucessor?
*Son 3, after some years, when negotiations are far enough that he's about to move to Vienna for his education: also dies*
Lorraine Leopold: A curse on infant mortality! Still two sons left. Franz Stephan, your turn! Off to Vienna with you!
Teenage FS: moves to Austria, ostensibly for his courtly education, but of course mainly because his father hopes for the big time.
Teenage FS: *endears himself to Uncle Charles, who calles him "herzig" und "lieb", and of course long term wise to kid!MT, but is distrusted as too French by Austrian courtiers and Viennese population*
Teenage FS: *encouraged to become as German as possible; grows up*
MT: *gets 12, and now is seen as de facto marriagable*
Emperor Charles: This is awkward. I really like Franzl, but I also need room to negotiate with Spain and other powers I want to sign on my Pragmatic Sanction, and I can't do that if FS is MT's official fiance. Otoh, he's now grown up, so "here for his education" doesn't work as an excuse anymore. What to do?
Lorraine Leopold: *dies*
Emperor Charles: Phew. Bye, Franzl, though don't give up hope, I'm just trying to make everyone sign the Pragmantic Sanction!
FS: *takes over as Duke of Lorraine, sees the state of court finances, decides on austerity program*
Lorraine nobles initial reaction: Ugh! How German! Why are you so German?

Biographers: And did we mention he'll always write German like a Frenchman and French like a German, with phonetic and excentric spelling in both languages?
Renate Zedinger: Though I will correct both his French and German for greater readability when quoting him, which is the only thing I have in common with MT. Well, that and thinking FS is hot.

FS some years later: *finally married MT after Duchy switchero*
Viennese commoners and Austrian nobility: Ugh, he's so French! And surely is secretly paid by Versailles!

All three biographers: So unfair. He never, ever was pro French during all his years with MT. Au contraire. But the xenophobia didn't lessen until he and MT produced Joseph. Until that point, he was vilified and ridiculed as a French plant set on ruining the Empire from within.

Selena: Somehow, this reminds me of his daughter Marie Antoinette and the attitude of the French towards her. Though MA sadly did not inherit FS' business accumen, while having evidently a good part of his charm and gaity. Now, my three biographers: did FS trade army supplies in the Seventh Years War to the Prussians?

Fred Hennings: For sure, and here is the Fritz quote from that historical masterpiece "The History of the Seven Years War" by Fritz to prove it.

Georg Schreiber: He didn't. That Fritz is the only source of that story ought to tell you something.

Renate Zedinger: What Georg Schreiber said. I add that there's another Fritz quote from actually during the war where he complains that FS buying supplies for the Austrian side got the prices up!

Selena: Mistresses?

Fred Hennings: Well, yeah.

Georg Schreiber: The Countess Auersperg definitely. Not sure how many others. As for illegitimate children, some claimed to be later, but they come across as con women and -men to me, and that's certainly how MT treated them. Not locking them up as Kaunitz suggested but not taking them seriously, either.

Renate Zedinger: I'm not sure whether he had sex with the Countess, either. I mean, she was clearly a favourite, but he'd been friends with her Dad and was thirty years older. Maybe she was like a daughter to him? Did I mention I'm the biggest FS fan of us three?

Selena: You all write about how during his Grand Tour he was a big success in England but don't quote from Lord Hervey or his wife, which is a miss because G2 being nice about FS could have been just official politeness, but Hervey was snarky about basically everyone he wasn't in love with at the time, so for him to be complimentary about FS is a true testimony to his charm.

The three biographers: All three of us provide you and Salon with a great new story re: FS visit chez Hohenzollern just when Fritz and EC got engaged, though!

Selena: That's true. According to you, FW first wanted to make the engagement official before even having proposed officially in the name of his son to EC and her parents. When Seckendorff & Grumbkow told him that ought to come first, he hit on the next idea, which was that FS should to the official proposing - i.e. FS should propose, in Fritz' name, to EC.

FS: I don't think so. I've met Fritz. He made his feelings about the whole engagement clear to all and sundry. However, since I'm a diplomatic guy, here's my official excuse to you, FW: If I were to propose for Fritz to EC, this would insult your brother-in-law and cousin G2, who was my most recent host and really really nice to me. As I understand it, he wanted his own daughter to be married to Fritz.

FW: I don't see the downside of insulting G2, but fine, have it your way.

Seckendorff: A plus diplomacy, your highness. May I suggest that while it's good that you've befriended Junior, you don't write to him more often than you do to FW? FW is madly jealous about this kind of thing. Also, add your letters to Fritz to your letters to FW, so he can see you're not keeping any secrets behind his back.

EC: Nobody ever asked me, but looking back, I think I would have enjoyed having FS propose to me for Fritz.

Selena: Who did official proposing for FS to MT, btw?

Biographers: Glad you asked. Eugene was to do it, because he was the highest regarded guy in Austria, but he was already too old and fragile, so FS suggested doing it himself, and did, with aplomb.

MT: Naturally.

Re: FS in three biographies: An Overview (2)

[cahn]

Lorraine Leopold: A curse on infant mortality! Still two sons left. Franz Stephan, your turn! Off to Vienna with you!

Okay, I didn't think you could get me to laugh at infant mortality, but... you got me to laugh at infant mortality :P :D
But seriously, huh, Lorraine Leopold eventually succeeded, didn't he?! Too bad he was dead and couldn't enjoy it, I guess.

Now, my three biographers: did FS trade army supplies in the Seventh Years War to the Prussians?

Fred Hennings: For sure, and here is the Fritz quote from that historical masterpiece "The History of the Seven Years War" by Fritz to prove it.

Georg Schreiber: He didn't. That Fritz is the only source of that story ought to tell you something.

Renate Zedinger: What Georg Schreiber said. I add that there's another Fritz quote from actually during the war where he complains that FS buying supplies for the Austrian side got the prices up!

WELL THEN.

FS should to the official proposing - i.e. FS should propose, in Fritz' name, to EC.

WHAT. This is GREAT

FW: I don't see the downside of insulting G2, but fine, have it your way.
HAHAHAHA

EC: Nobody ever asked me, but looking back, I think I would have enjoyed having FS propose to me for Fritz.

Aw EC <3 Salon would have enjoyed it too!

so FS suggested doing it himself, and did, with aplomb.

:D FS!

FS Choice Quotes - Silesia 1 and getting engaged

[selenak]

Choice quotes:

FS and MT weren't allowed to correspond directly before becoming officially engaged, or to meet without company, but MT's Aja the Countess Fuchs as well as her mother were unofficially helpful with both, i.e. they engineered meetings with minimum supervision when FS was visiting in Vienna after having become Duke and before the official engagement, and FS wrote to the "Fuchsin" knowing she'd forward news to MT. Once they were allowed to write directly, the engagement letters are a mixture of Rokoko German-French with some Italian sprinkled in and for all that the letter writing rules are observed re: salutations and goodbyes, pretty endearing, with this letter of MT's the one to even melt the determinedly anti-Romantic Stolberg-Rillinger a bit when she quoted it in her MT bio, as does Fred H. in his FS bio:

Caro viso, je vous suits infininement obliges pour votre attention de m'ecrire de vos nouvelles, car j'etois en peine comme une pauvre chienne; aimez moi un peu et me pardonnez si je ne vous respons pas assez, mais c'est 10 heure et herbeville attende pour ma lettre. Adieu Mäusl, je vous embrasse de tout mon coeur, menagez vous bien, adieu caro viso

je suis la votre
sponsia dilectisissima

Schreiber who quotes a German translation of this same letter thinks a nickname like "Mäusl" presumably wasn't newly invented for this correspondence when they finally got officially engaged but presumably was used verbally in those semi secret meetings before. Speaking of nicknames, Schreiber is also bewildered wthat only six years into the marriage, FS and MT use "Alter" (FS writes as Zedinger quotes "Chère Mitz" - I have to say here I was relieved to read this, because I kept wondering where I got the "Mitz" nickname from and wasn't able to find it, and now I have proof again I didn't invent it - and signs himself "Dero Alter", MT writes "Mein Alter", i.e. "my old man". Now neither of them as old yet when they started to use this, so my take is that it's clearly a shared teasing.

Back to Fred Hennings, have some excerpts from the "Invading is how you show true friendship" conversation which Gotter, the Prussian representataive, transcribed for Fritz, complete with stage directions. Now as with his letters, Fritz at this point did of course not address MT, or negotiate with MT. He negotiated with FS, assuming along with most folk in 1740/41 that naturally the husband would be the true power, not the ZOMG WOMAN who'd inherited the Austrian territories. However, it was very clear MT was listening in to the negotiations in the next room since at some point she interrupted ostensibly to remind FS of the time, and when he came back with new arguments the Prussian Representative noted to his displeasure that this made clear who they were really talking to, no matter that Fritz wanted to do this among men etc. So, have some quotes from the second conversation between FS and Prussian Representative Gotter on New Year's Day 1741 (note re: the title - FS is only a Grand Duke (of Tuscany) right then, so no "your Majesty"):

Gotter: The King much regrets that the measures he had to take have found such a bad reception here, despite his intentions being only good ones, and only aim to preserve the House of Austria and the improvement of Your Highness' station.

Grandduke: To invade with 30.000 men, to play Master... are those the proofs of good friendship and means to preserve the House of Austria? Do you really want to dress up such outrageous acts in pretty clothing? Does one win friends by beating them with a stick? Judge for yourself!

Gotter: Your Highness should consider the respectable offerings the King has made. Also your ascension to the Imperial dignity.

(At this point Fritz - in his capacity as Prince Elector of Brandenburg - was still offering to support FS as Emperor as part of FS letting him have Silesia.)

Gotter: When invading Silesia, the King is only taking possession of a country which as he believes is rightfully his and which he also considers his reward for the great services he offers.

Grandduke: Rather say - he wanted to have Silesia and thought this was a great opportunity to get it. Couldn't he have made prepositions before attacking - talk to us instead of surprise us, when we least expected it from him? It would have been my pleasure to negotiate, instead of arms deciding everything now. It was in his hand to play a good and glorious role, but now he has filled the world with distrust and no one knows anymore what to expect of him.

Gotter: I am ordered, kind Sir, despite your earlier refusal to listen to me to assure you once again how much the King wants to come to an agreement with you. There are ways and means for everything except death. The King's friendship for you might move him to lessen his demands. And if the King's behavior is a bit odd, if he has started this game a bit early, you can blame only his eagerness to be of use to you before open or secret enemies of his can execute the coup they have prepared.

Grandduke: The King might think benevolently, but he acts lousily, if I may say so. Sir, if someone would barge into your rooms with a drawn sword in his hand and would gesture wildly with it, would you then endure this and treat him as your friend?

Gotter: I would ask him what he wants here, and if he told me that he only wants a corner of the room in order to defend me against those who want to kill mem, I would leave him there and rejoice in his presence. (...)

Grandduke: That looks like someone slapping someone else in the face and then saying: Don't be angry, I didn't do it out of ill will. No?

Gotter is silent but thinks: omne simile claudicat.

Grandduke: What kind of prepositions to you want to make? In which way do you want to play this affair down and make up for it? You want the whole of Silesia of us, and we don't want to hand it over. There is no gap to bridge between everything and nothng.

Gotter: In order to make this easier for you, the King is ready to accept less than everything and will content himself with the majority of the country. It is now up to you, gracious Lord, to satisfy him.

Grandduke: Oh no, Sir, it isn't up to us. The King wants to enrich himself at our expense, and for us the leading principle is to concede to no one, who ever it may be, something of the Queen's territories. Otherwise everyone would come with similar demands, and we'd never be at rest. Better to go down with the sword in hand than letting yourself torn apart without resisting.

Gotter: But, gracious Lord, is it worth enstranging yourself with your best friend, my King, just because of the little trivial thing he wants to have?

Grandduke: A little trivial thing? Are you calling Silesia a bagatelle? Good lord, we know better.

Gotter: The King doesn't claim the whole of Silesia; what he wants is the teensiest weensiest bit that it will neither make the King of Prussia richer nor the House of Austria poorer. He would be able to live well without it.

Grandduke: So in order to oblige him I'm supposed to tear my waistcoat apart.

Gotter: It's not even a sleeve of your waistcoat but a single button.

And so forth, and so on, until MT interrupts again, "reminding FS of the time". Now, all three biographers think while FS did think the whole protection racket was outrageous and while he wouldn't trust Fritz again, he also would have been ready to compromise if it had been up to him, Schreiber and Zedinger point out he had himself given up Lorraine, so might not have thought the loss of one province as so unacceptable as MT did. But I don't think that comparison really works, because FS gave up Lorraine in exchange for Tuscany and a wife who was the richest heiress on the continent, and in a situation where the French had already occupied the duchy (they invaded the moment the War of the Polish Succession began). The alternative to giving up Lorraine would have been no MT, no Tuscany and still an occupied duchy with French troops calling the shots. Whereas giving up Silesia without a fight, well, Mildred wrote lengthy speculations about possible scenarios.

Re: FS Choice Quotes - Silesia 1 and getting engaged

[cahn]

signs himself "Dero Alter", MT writes "Mein Alter", i.e. "my old man". Now neither of them as old yet when they started to use this, so my take is that it's clearly a shared teasing.

I see that FS was more than 8 years older than MT, and especially if they grew up together, that's a very large interval! I can totally see FS being "old" to MT as a young girl :)

Gotter: The King doesn't claim the whole of Silesia; what he wants is the teensiest weensiest bit that it will neither make the King of Prussia richer nor the House of Austria poorer. He would be able to live well without it.

Oh Fritz :)

Podewils' "FS: Hot or not?" Report

[selenak]

from February 15th 1747. Quoted in Hennings. See earlier re: Schreiber and Zedinger's objections re: Podewils as an objective source.

The Emperor is below avarage height. He lets his head sink a bit too much which has earned him a slightly crooked back. Otherwise he stands straight and has a good figure. His posture and his walk are neglectful, for he doesn't pay much attention to them. The form of his face is somewhat quadratic, and the same is true of his fronthead. His eyes are quite beautiful and of a dark blue. They are however not sparkling by nature. His nose is somewhat pointed, but not large, his mouth small and his smile agreeable. His facial colouring is even and healthy. All his features result in a beautiful face, which however is thought of as common by many. He makes himself less attractive by the grimaces he has gotten in the habit of making.

His mode of addressing someone is polite, but somewhat cold and serious, especially towards people he doesn't know well, and he comes across as shy to visiting foreigners. He does express himself with ease in conversation. He has a vivid imagination, a good memory, and much common sense. But since he is indolent by nature, he doesn't know how to really work thoroughly. He hates work. He isn't much ambitious and takes care of governing as little as possible. He only wants to enjoy life and spend it pleasantly and thus lets the Empress have the glory and the worries of government. This princess and her ministers are ruling him, especially in the business of the empire, of which he understands little. If his education had been cared for earlier and his indolence fought and his mind had been focused on what truly matters, this prince might have been adept at governing.
His imagination provides him with some pretty ideas. He's a good and agreeable conversationalist. He likes to joke and even tease if there is opportunity, but has begun to abandon the habit lately out of consideration.
His character is extremely kind, and I haven't heard about him being in a fit of anger ever. During the small arguments which happen between him and the Empress, it is usually he who gives in first and offers reconciliation. He hates malicious gossip and wants that all the world should get along well with each other. He is able to feel love and loyalty. But his favour is worthless due to the small influence has regarding the ambitions of those whom he does honor. So he is only courted out of affection or politeness. His power is limited to asking the Empress to favour those private persons whom he likes. But even for this, he has to use a good opportunity. (...)

He isn't addicted to pomp, least of all in his sdress. Often he dresses neglectfully even on holidays, and often he is the least splendidly dressed of all his court. He likes all the pleasures without being passionate about any of them. He seems to be entertained most by hunting and theatre plays. He rarely neglects attending the later and even has the patience to attend a German comedy which is designed to hurt the sensitivities of even a brute from the beginning to the end. He's not an exceptional dancer though he does it decently. He is a good father, loves his children deeply and adores the oldest Archduke (Joseph), as does the Empress. He is a decent man, unable to break his word or to easily promise something to others. He is benevolent and humane and would make everyone happy if it would be up to him. His temper is cheerful by nature and even.

Schreiber points out that the bit about German comedies is clearly written for Fritz who even this early on is known to loathe them; it's one of bits he uses to argue Podewils while not lying is shaping this report to make Fritz feel superior. Meanwhile, Renate Z. as mentioned points out when Podewils writes this, he has met FS exactly once (where of course he was received with cool politeness). As for the whole "he lets MT do all the work" bit:

Count Sylva-Tarouca, who had constant access to court, could judge the daily schedule of the co-regent much more accurately. In a private letter he reports to Count Kaunitz who is in Brussels he writes that Franz Stephan of Lorraine never rests; his daily schedule is dominated by audiences, receiving foreign envoys, attending conferences and the every day business of government with the reception of reports, dictating of instructions and signing od depeches. Additionally, there are inspections and visits outside of Vienna, like the reception of the Polish Royal family at Olmütz, through now, after the negotiations that took place in Warsaw at January 8th 11745, peace should be achieved.

And that's it for today. Next time I have some leisure: quotes re: Florence and Lorraine, also Joseph's report to Mom about Dad's cold and how he's doing en route to Frankfurt.

Re: Podewils' "FS: Hot or not?" Report

[cahn]

It's hard to know what to say about this given that it could be quite a bit of fabrication/propaganda!
It's nice to know though that the "lets MT do all the work" pat isn't accurate!

More FS related quotes : Lorraine and Tuscany

[selenak]

How bad was the situation for Lorraine in the War of the Polish Succession? This relevant because while FS's mother, named Elisabeth Charlotte after her own mother, was heartbroken that he gave up his duchy for marrying MT (both parts of this were bad for her, the loss of Lorraine and the Habsburg marriage, because being the daughter of a gay Bourbon and an ex Protestant Palatinate princess herself, she loathed the Habsburgs and Austria), all biographers make a good case that keeping his duchy and giving up the marriage instead raelly would not have been an alternative at this point:

France has stationed 4000 men in Lorraine. The demands of the occupying forces became ever more impudent. Not only did they demand them to be supported, cared for and supplied with candles, wood for burning, straw and other horse foodder; France also demanded Lorraine formers to do the transports of troop supplies to the Rhine border. After strong rainfalls which had started on July 4th 1734, many parts of the country were under water. The harvest was nearly destroyed. Similar natural disasters occured in 1735. The result were terrible harvests and famine. Then there was the additional cost of the still stationed in Lorraine soldiers which now amounted to more than 500.000, - pounds per year and which thus demanded 18% of the overall state household. Despite this catastrophic situation, the Duke (FS) was resolved to get high a compensation for his country as possible.

This is from Renate Zedinger's biography. For all that it's really hostile to the French, btw, it has a preface by a French historian which, only slightly paraphrased, has this bit:

"So, in traditional French history, FS isn't popular because being from Lorraine, he's seen as a French prince who betrayed his country by voluntarily submitting and enabling the Habsburgs and Team Austria. But now that I've read Renate's biography, I see he had his reasons!"

R.Z., inwardly: ALSO HE WAS NOT A FRENCH PRINCE!

Dirk from "History of the Germans": France/Lorraine/Germany = it's complicated as permanent relationship status

If you think the problem of Julian (still used by the Russians) vs Georgian Calender is making 18th century history even more complicated, here's another issue. When FS takes over Tuscany, he also imports a new calendar AND way to count the hours of the day:

The actual arrival in Florence probably took place not before January 21st 1739. There aren't any detailed documents about these last few hours and in any case the documented dates invite misunderstandings, since the year started in Tuscany on March 23rd and thus the larger part of the (FS and MT) visit took place still in the year 1738 by Tuscan reckoning. The hours, too, were then counted "all'italiana", from the first hour after the evening Ave Maria twenty four hours to the Ave Maria of the next day; since the Ave Maria was, however, prayed differently according to the seasons, misunderstandings were preprogrammed. This changed because starting on March 30th 1739 the counting "alla francese" was introduced, twelve hours starting from noon and twelve hours after midnight. Which is why the only thing certain is that the arrival of the new Grandduke and Grandduchess happened in the afternoon and that they had made a stop at noon in front of the city in the Villa Corsi before that.

Organization of Tuscan administration once FS was Emperor:

In Vienna, the Secret Council for Tuscan affairs constisted of Baron Jaquemin, Baron Pfütschner, Count Stainville and Ferdinand de Bortholomei, in addtion to Toussaint, the leader of the Chancellery, who consisted of Molitoris as secretary and with eight chancelry writers. The administration offices of the Tuscan Chancellery were placed in teh Emperor's private palace in Wallnerstraße 3, close to the Hofburg. The workday was tightly orchestrated and led. .The organisation had been established by the Emperor, every report had to be presented to him personally, his was the final decision. But he also paid attention to establish a harmonious working atmosphere in the office, condemned intrigues and jealous schemes and expected anyone working in his chancellery to be fluent in Latin, Italian, German and French, as he noted down in scribbled remarks on the documents in his own words. He also reserved the right to appoint people to their posts to himself, both in Vienna and in Tuscany, and demanded lists with exact descriptions of the candidates before making his choice.

Zedinger and Schreiber: And that's the guy Podewils calls lazy! Yes, he didn't work as much as Fritz did, but then the Fritzian workload was insane, thanks, FW, and MT probably did work more than FS, not least because she had far more territory to administrate, but FS worked - no Louis XV he!

There are also, as mentioned, detailed portraits of the various people from Lorraine doing the work in Tuscany itself, as well as of Lorraine and Flemish scientists and artists FS was a patron to. Some of the artists like Jean-Joseph Charmant worked first in Lorraine, then in Florence, then in Vienna and then when Leopold took over the duchy in Florence again. As proof that the description in Italian booiks of FS just carrying those art works that weren't protected by Anna Luisa away and did nothing for culture in Florence for the people is wrong, Zedinger provides counter examples like:

The collections and libraries were openend for the scholars, researches and students again. In August 1746, (FS) ordered that the libraries Magliabechi and Marucelle were to be separated so they could be made accessible to visitors in different times. Maglicabechi, the Medici's librarian, had bought and collected precious books, handwritings and manuscripts in all of Europe and had thus created one of the largest and most precious libraries. Starting 1747, the Bibliotheca Magliebechiana was open on MOnday, Wednesday and Friday, while the Bibliotheca Marucelliana was accessible to visitors on Tuesday and Thursday. Both are today part of the national library of Florence. Another success was in 1753 the foundatijon of the "Accademia economico-agraria dei Georgofili", form which important economic impulses derived; additionally, the renewal of the Botanic Society in 1739 encouraged scientici interest.

(...) Part of the cultural engagement was the nursing, keeping and preservation of the rich Medici heritage, which demanded constant attention and the according financial supplies. Thus, the art pieces in the Galleria had to be constantly restored. The Capella Medici, the famous tomb section in San Lorenzo, needed a complete and general restoration; when Anna Maria de' Medici had been buried in 1743, its decrepit state had been obvious. THe Reggenza Lorenese, the Lothringian rule of Tuscany was better than the reputation it received by nationalistic Italian historiography in the 19th century.

One individual portrait of the Lorraine artists:

Less mysterious (than that of Vidon) is the career of Gabrielle Bertrand, who had left Lorraine at eight years of age together with her father Francois Bertrand, the later Captain of the Guard at Schönbrunn. Obviously trained in Vienna, she was appointed as drawing mistress to the Arch Duchesses Maria Karoline and Marie Antoinette in 1764. As it had been the custom for centuries, a portrait of the Emperor on his deathbed was made; this was the case in August 1765 for Franz Stephan of Lorrainie, and it was Gabrielle Bertrand who has preserved the scene in the Innsbruck Hofburg for eternity. Gabrielle Bertrand accompagnied Maria Karoline to Naples for her wedding in 1768, where she finished one of her famous paintings. Her depiction of Maria Theresia taking up the business of government again after the death of her husband, she achieved such a good reputation as a portraitist that we as appointed an honorary member of the Academy of Painters in 1771. At this time, she also married the sculptor Wilhelm Beyer. The couple were both especially favored by Maria Theresia and often worked in Schönbrunn

Re: More FS related quotes : Lorraine and Tuscany

[cahn]

R.Z., inwardly: ALSO HE WAS NOT A FRENCH PRINCE!

Dirk from "History of the Germans": France/Lorraine/Germany = it's complicated as permanent relationship status

LOL!

and MT probably did work more than FS, not least because she had far more territory to administrate, but FS worked - no Louis XV he!

Go FS! *waves pom-poms*

I also enjoyed the cultural bits, thank you! (Yay libraries!!)

More FS related Quotes: Prussians, Politics and Sons

[selenak]

Zedinger is the only biographer who mentions the MT & Wilhelmine lunch.

Wilhelmine might have been curious to meet the female monarch who had had the courage to stand up to her brother. Their meeting was relatively short but happened in a friendly framing, during which the 28th years old Maria Theresia made a charming impression on Wilhelmine. The farewell, too, was cordial, and the Bayreuth bodyguard escorted the Austrians to their borders. Once these events were reported to Berlin, all hell broke loose. Against her brother's accusations, the Margravine defended herself cooly and matter-of-factly: "Regarding my encounter with the Queen of Hungary, it was a simple polite gesture. (...) We have to pay consideration this court, since they're our neighbours on all sides. (...) Their troops are marching through the country constantly. The Imperial election had already taken place. All these reasons seemed to me enough - especially since we are a neutral country - to do this step. Another behaviour would have been regarded as offensive on our part. The Margravine here addreses openly the difficulties of a tiny principality, but she's not completely honest, since the meeting with Maria Theresia had gone beyond exchanging a few polite sentences.

FS takes a leaf from Voltaire's, Fritz' and Heinrich's book and writes, not an anonymous pamphlet, but an anonymous memorandum "by a true German" to explain why he thinks they should just make up with Prussia already in 1748 (Cahn, the two Silesian Wars are over for some years, but MT is just about to wrap up the War of Austrian Succession as far her other opponents are concerned):

Regarding the King of Prussia, one shouldn't just try for some good neighbourhood but try to manage him instead of playing to the public by openly displaying the hate one has for hilm which, granted, has good cause. To accuse people all the time of being Prussian-minded is of no use, au contraire, we should change our speeches and abandon animosity for the time being and do nothing to heighten our prejudice, nor anything which could embitter him even more against us. Now I don't believe he'll ever be well minded towards us, but I do think we shouldn't waste time to contradict him everywhere in all courts, especially in affairs that do not concern us, but should behave with indifference. If it is of no consequence to us, we should even help him, and thus we should get rid of this idea the whole world has of us that we try to whip up hate against him everywhere all the time, an idea which is wrong but of which as I am told the King is convinced. (...) In a word, we should treat the Prussian court in such a manner as if we were in the greatest harmony with them.

At the end of this memo, FS collects his key theories in puncae form:

1.) We should consolidate in interior affairs both in militari and oeconomico

2. We should stay away from any wars or feuds as much as possible

3) We should try to manage our allies diplomatically - we shouldn't try to boss them around, for no one likes that, but treat them as allies and friends

4) We should try to keep all of our friends we already have and try to win new ones

5) We should never trust our natural enemies, France and Prussia

6) But we should always act friendly towards them

7) Trying to divide France and Prussia from each other should be regarded as a chimera since they need each other far too much

8) The sea powers (England and the Netherlands) and Russia should always be regarded as our natural allies

9) In Italy, we should regard the King of Sardinia as our sole ally, but never trust him completely, and we should never, ever trust those principalities ruled by the Bourbons there and should regard them always as our natural enemies, who only look to their enlargement

10. We should try to keep good neighbourhood with the Turks and shouldn't give them an opportunity for complaints

11. All Alliances we make should be explicitly and only defensive in nature.

This is why FS did not get along well with Kaunitz. Now whether or not a peaceful coexistence with Prussia as FS suggests would have been possible had they stuck with the English alliance is up for debate. (The more recent years of alliance with the Brits from the Austrian pov mostly resulted in the Brits not letting them either ditch the Austrian Netherlands or use their trade and ports in useful way, and in being told to give in to everything Fritz wanted all the time - and that was when the Brits hadn't been allied with Prussia yet.) But one thing is undoubtedly true: this memo isn't written by a guy who only wants to have a comfortable life and doesn't have his own opinion on politics.

Moving on to FS' death, Schreiber provides some gruesome details, because since this was August, poor FS was decaying very quickly and they had to use a lot of herbs and perfumes for the burial. Zedinger doesn't have those details, but mentions something I had been curious about, i.e. who provided the original source for the detailed account of FS' death, complete with Joseph catching him in his arms when FS had his stroke and was falling, the servant's bed, calling doctors and confessors but it being essentially all over etc. .It's not the usual court diarist Khevenmüller who wasn't there, it's a guy from the Austrian Netherlands (i.e. Belgium), Corneille lde Neny, who was at this point one of MT's secretaries and with the Imperial family in Innsbruck in that capacity. He had been present during FS' death and he's the one from whom the original description hails.

Fred Hennings and Georg Schreiber both are a bit confused why MT wanted the Leopold marriage to take place in Innsbruck instead of Milan or Vienna. Zedinger, like Stollberg-Rillinger, is confused they're confused, because the reasons seem obvious to her:

1) The House of Lorraine had a deep connection to Innsbruck. This is where FS' grandfather (the one married to an Austrian Archduchess and who beat the Turks at the famous siege in Vienna) had lived in exile for many years.

2) MT's bff Sophie von Erzenberg was the wife of the Imperial Governor and residing in Innsbruck. Letting Leopold's marriage take place there was a sign of special favour. (And then everything went wrong that could go wrong, from Leopold catching diarrhoea to rain pouring down to FS dying, but who could have known?)

Lastly, something on the funny side again, from Schreiber's bio. It's post 7 Years War, and young Vienna Joe is elected as King of the Romans and crowned as same in Frankfurt, with Dad at his side. (This is the ceremony described by Goethe.) It's typical for the state the late HRE was in that of the Princes Elector, only the clerical ones (i.e. the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne) showed up in person, while the secular Princes Elector all sent representatives to do their job duiring the election and coronation ceremonies. (Okay, the Prince Elector of Hannover happened to be young King G3 who was in England and thus had an excuse for not showing up.) The secular princes are told by the Fritzian representative to not perform the genuflection, the kneeling anymore. FS ignores this, but come the coronation day, he draws a consequence. See, the Prince Elector of Brandenburg was the traditional Reichs-Erbkämmerer. Thus it would have been the job of the Fritz representative, one Erich Christoph Freiherr von Plotho, to carry the imperial scepter ahead of the procession. But instead, FS took it from him and carried it himself through the whole of Joseph's coronation, which was quite the feat since he had to do it on horseback.

As mentioned elsewhere, Joseph was writing detailed descriptions of their Frankfurt journey and how Dad was doing to MT.

On March 14th, when they were still on Austrian soil, he had told her: "His Majesty the Emperor enjoys perfect health except for a cold which causes him to sneeze often and to use his hankerchief a lot. But his appetite is more than well; the fish of Upper Austria and the milk agree with him splendidly. I took the liberty to warn his Majesty, but he replied that this was healthy food."
There are in these letters no traces of a dislike, let alone hatred from Joseph towards his father, which has been occasionally ascribed to him. Now and then he mentiones encounters with friends from Lorraine like the widow of the Prince Beauvau-Craown and with Karl Count Ogara. When ther are repeated often ridiculous complications during the journey, he writes: "An angel would lose his patience at this point, and his Majesty, too, is in a bad mood and exhausted." After their arrival in Frankfurt on March 29th 1764 he praises how the Emperor replied to the opening speech by the Prince Elector of Mainz in very suitable form: "It's impossible to speak better or with more dignity than he did." This is also confirmed by Archduke Leopold in a letter to his Ajo, Franz Count Thurn-Valsassina: "His Majesty the Emperor replied as a true Roman Emperor with fire, dignity and a greatness remarked by all attendants."
Regarding their quarters at Frankfurt, Joseph writes to his mother that they were somewhat modest, even the Emperor had only been given a bed room and two smaller rooms for his servants. The many descriptions of Frankfurt society by Joseph to his mother are amusing to read with their little digs and malices. But important for the relationship between father and son is a passage from a letter by Joseph from April 4th: "Today we had a public dinner. I handed the towel to his Majesty the Emmperor, and I think I did rightly, despite Count Khevenhüller doubting this, but the more respect I show to the Emperor - even if I am treating this only from a political pov - the more I honour myself. Bsides, I believe a son's duties should always have prference to those of a King."

All formalities and the "his Majesty the Emperor" phrasing aside, I'm struck by the domesticity of Joseph reporting on the cold and on exactly what his father has been eating to his mother, because I can just imagine her tasking him with this. Again, I remember the sight of those three coffins in the MT crypt - that beautiful baroque opulent tomb of MT and FS with their statues depicted lying on their bed turned towards each other, and the absolute contract, that zinc coffin Joseph put himself into. But he still wanted to be with his parents in that final resting place. Different as they were from him, and as much as they often had to find each other frustrating, I think he always was aware they loved him.

Re: More FS related Quotes: Prussians, Politics and Sons

[cahn]

We get Wilhelmine's lunch and Joseph's love for his dad in the same comment! <3

Wilhelmine might have been curious to meet the female monarch who had had the courage to stand up to her brother.

Awwww. I love this framing and, I mean. I can't imagine she's wrong.

Once these events were reported to Berlin, all hell broke loose. Against her brother's accusations, the Margravine defended herself cooly and matter-of-factly: "Regarding my encounter with the Queen of Hungary, it was a simple polite gesture.

as we know: FRITZ

FS takes a leaf from Voltaire's, Fritz' and Heinrich's book and writes, not an anonymous pamphlet, but an anonymous memorandum "by a true German" to explain why he thinks they should just make up with Prussia already in 1748 (Cahn, the two Silesian Wars are over for some years, but MT is just about to wrap up the War of Austrian Succession as far her other opponents are concerned):

Thank you as always for the chronology note (maybe someday I will figure out more dates in this fandom -- I did finally get 1730 into my head :P -- but today is not the day) -- also, LOL :D A true German! <3

Fred Hennings and Georg Schreiber both are a bit confused why MT wanted the Leopold marriage to take place in Innsbruck instead of Milan or Vienna. Zedinger, like Stollberg-Rillinger, is confused they're confused, because the reasons seem obvious to her:

Heh. I really am enjoying your parallax view of the three bios, and how some of them have viewpoints that others of them don't have!

Moving on to FS' death, Schreiber provides some gruesome details, because since this was August, poor FS was decaying very quickly and they had to use a lot of herbs and perfumes for the burial

:(

When ther are repeated often ridiculous complications during the journey, he writes: "An angel would lose his patience at this point, and his Majesty, too, is in a bad mood and exhausted."

Awwww. I love these quotes about Vienna!Joe and his dad, and reporting about the random stuff that happens during the journey.

Again, I remember the sight of those three coffins in the MT crypt - that beautiful baroque opulent tomb of MT and FS with their statues depicted lying on their bed turned towards each other, and the absolute contract, that zinc coffin Joseph put himself into. But he still wanted to be with his parents in that final resting place. Different as they were from him, and as much as they often had to find each other frustrating, I think he always was aware they loved him.

Oh, this is just... I'm glad that they shared that love. This is beautiful and touching and there's something in my eye now :P <3333333

Exchanges

[selenak]

Mes amies, the time of ficathons is upon as again. I was reminded in time to nominate some of our gang for Trick and Treat, which was great fun (in a sinister way) last year, and also for Babylon 5 (hello, Road Home AUs!) and a couple of my other fandoms. And next week, of course, it's the time for Yuletide nominations once more.

Now, I can understand if you two won't want to do both, just Yuletide, but just in case, I'm throwing out some suggestions for the former, which after all does not have a 1000 words limit. Due to my recent FS biography reading, I nominated not just Fritz, Heinrich and Lehndorff, but also FS, MT and Joseph. Because for sheer hurt/comfort value, I want Joseph in the miserable last months of his life get some ghostly parental reassurance and love. On a less morbid note: MT and FS reacting to Fritz' original invasion of Silesia, and MT listening in to that hilarious ambassadorial conversation while increasingly getting more bloody minded when thinking of Fritz!

Re: Exchanges

[cahn]

ahhhhhh yeah I don't think I can do ToT this year. But I really want to! Hmm. Definitely going to do Yuletide, though, because Yuletide, so we should Discuss nominations :) (As usual, as long as my faves Emilie, Voltaire, and Heinrich are nominated, I'm good!)

On a less morbid note: MT and FS reacting to Fritz' original invasion of Silesia, and MT listening in to that hilarious ambassadorial conversation while increasingly getting more bloody minded when thinking of Fritz!

I feel like this needs to be an opera! I'm thinking of something like the second act of Figaro...

Toussaint Louverture

[luzula]

Another book report from me!

Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life by Philippe Girard (2016)
This had been on my ereader for years, probably bought on some ebook sale; I picked it up now because it's a part of the 18th century I knew little about. The only thing I knew beforehand was that Toussaint Louverture (which my dictation program picks up as "to some liberty", very fitting) led a successful revolt against slavery on Haiti around the time of the French Revolution. He seems to have been a complicated man!

It's interesting how the 18th century politics I already know about played out in Saint Domingue (which became Haiti). At first, it was the white colonizers who wanted independence from France (because they were afraid the French revolution would take their privileges away), and the enslaved black people fought as royalists! I guess this is not as surprising as you might think--people often seem to hate their immediate overlords the most (peasants their feudal landlord, enslaved people their slave drivers and owners) while the king appears as a far-off benevolent figure who would fix things if only he knew. And in fact the French king had enacted some legislation to try to rein in cruelties in slavery, under the pressure of abolitionists. But over time, Toussaint Louverture and other leaders shifted over to "rights of man" arguments, similar to the French revolutionaries, and he seems to have been fiercely resentful of racism.

I can't help but note some of the arguments of the plantation owners, because plus ca change: "Actually our slaves are perfectly happy and would never revolt if not for OUTSIDE AGITATORS!" "Actually WE are the slaves, because government wants to take our liberties [i e our property rights, i e our right to own people] away!"

It's also interesting how racism increased during the 17th and 18th centuries--at first, social station/class sometimes trumped race, such that people of color could be plantation owners, and poor white people were classed with poor free people of color. But at the end of the period, there was a crackdown on wealthier free people of color, who often owned enslaved people of their own or aspired to it, to keep them down economically and socially. Toussaint Louverture was born enslaved but was freed later on, so he was part of that class.

I can see why he was often called "the black Napoleon" at the time – he was a military leader in a revolutionary war, and after his side had won, he installed himself as military dictator for life. Also he became the richest man on the island, which does not surprise me, because getting private gain from public office is pretty much the standard for 18th century elites. He upheld the abolition of slavery, but he also ordered the former field slaves back to the same work on their previous estates and used the army to enforce his labor laws. At first, people could switch estates once a year, but after a while this was not allowed. The sale of small plots of land was forbidden, to prevent people from setting up small farms of their own. This is admittedly better than being enslaved (you can’t be bought and sold, and you’re at least supposed to get a wage) but the field workers revolted against these conditions, and Louverture had several thousand of them killed. (The book notes that white French abolitionists might have used a similar system, had they had control of the island—it’s not slavery, after all…)

So why did he do this? Obviously he stood to gain from it financially since he now owned many of these estates, but it seems he mainly wanted to prove that a country with black leadership could hold its own economically – the main export was sugar which apparently required large plantations and refineries. When Napoleon (temporarily) conquered the island back after a few years, his representative said "I will more or less follow Toussaint’s labor code, which is very good, and so strict, that I would never have dared to propose one like this on my own."

After reading the book, I read four reviews of it in peer-reviewed journals, since after all I don’t know this subject and don’t know if the book could be biased. The reviews all agree that the book is based on thorough archival research which has uncovered many new sources which were not known before, and they don’t disagree with any facts. Two of the reviews however don’t agree with the author about some of his interpretations of Louverture’s motivations, and don’t think he’s generous enough towards him. It doesn’t surprise me that interpretations vary – a figure like this is bound to be controversial.

Mildred: there's very little info on the military aspects of the revolution (clearly not the author's interest), except that the author says that Louverture quite deliberately used disease as a factor on his side--he would delay such that yellow fever and other diseases would decimate the soldiers newly come from France. And it killed a LOT of them.

Re: Toussaint Louverture

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, I read this one! I didn't do a review of it, but my comments are here. Will read your write-up when I get a chance after work, thank you for reviewing!

Heinz Duchhardt on Protestant Prince X for Emperor Campaigns, or: Fritz for HRE?

[selenak]

Duchhardt's doctoral thesis is a readable and not too dry overview through various centuries, starting, of course, with Charles V (HRE, in whose realm the sun did not set) and the splitting of said realm both in the sense that he ends up splitting it up between son Philip (of Spain) and brother Ferdinand (for HRE) but the arrival of Protestantism on the scene. I have to say in the lead up there's one big mistake, but it's not impactful for the book as a whole, i.e. when Duchardt discusses various non-German monarchs treated as HRE candidates in the campaign where Charles himself was elected (thanks to Aunt Margaret and a lot of Fugger money), thereby as posterity but not his contemparies could tell completing the deadlock the Habsburgs would have on the job for the next few centuries. D lists Henry VIII of England (who did put himself as a candidate) as a "wavering, but in the end Protestant prince". Not when going up against young Charles (and Francis I. of France) for HRE, Henry wasn't. That's when he was still a very faithful son of the Catholic Church writing books against Luther which would earn him the "Defender of the Faith" title from the Pope.

Anyway: come the Reformation, you end up having first two, and then three Princes Elector as Protestants. (Saxony, Brandenburg, and Palatine.) Given that there was no changing the religion of the clerical half of the electoral college, that meant the Catholic still had a super majority, but not only did the Protestants try to get a fourth secular Protestant Prince Elector into the college but the "how about a Protestant Emperor, then?" periodically came up both as a bogeyman for the Pope and an expressed hope for some Protestants in the lead up century to the 30 Years War. (Note that this is one of the reasons why Ferdinand II objected to Frederick of the Palatinate & Elizabeth Stuart becoming King and Queen of Bohemia so much. Bohemia was one of the secular Princes Electorate. Frederick already was a Prince Elector in his capacity as Duke of the Palatinate, but as King of Bohemia - the kingdom the Habsburgs had another deadlock on - he had two voices.) Possible candidates included some Saxon Dukes because House Wettin of Saxony were until August the Strong the oldest Protestant principality in the HRE and seen as the keepers of the Protestant faith, but also various foreign monarchs, including Danish Kings like Christian II (Danish Kings were a serious possibility because in their capacity as Dukes of Holstein and rulers of Schleswig, they were already ruling a sort of German principality, see also Schleswig-Holstein question, and they were of course staunchly Protestant other than Christina), and as a chimera on the horizon Henri IV of France, who also worked as an example of how a Protestant can end up ruling a Catholic realm like France. (By a "Paris is worth a mass" style conversion that makes Team Lutherans and Calvinists feel he's still one of theirs.) However, none of these candidates ever really declared themselves, and it was mostly gossip and part of power brokering and trying to bluff other European powers and/or other German princes, and in the end, it kept being a Habsburg anyway.

However, by the time we're nearing the end of the 17th century, several things change. Firstly, there's another Protestant Prince Elector on the one hand, because (Protestant) future F1 (who is already in the electoral college as Margrave of Brandenburg) has given his support to his (Protestant) Hannover in-laws so they can get the elevation to Princes Elector, hoping for their later support so he can go from Prince Elector F3 to King F1. Secondly, on the other hand the (Protestant) Palatine branch of the Wittelsbachs are looking like they could die out which would mean the (Catholic) Bavarian Wittelsbachs would get another electorate. Thirdly, August the Strong has his eye on Poland and thus the arch Protestant Electorate of Saxony becomes headed by a Catholic Prince as he converts in order to become King of Poland.

This makes for much gossip and speculation when it comes to the Imperial Elections of first Joseph I. and then his younger brother Charles VI (MT's Dad), because not only does it look like a non-Habsburg candidate is possible again but rumor supports various candidates. There's eager Max Emmanuel of Bavaria (Catholic), pushed by France and Louis XIV as part of the long term France vs Austria rivalry. There's August himself, suggested by none other than "Envoy Suhm in Paris in 1711" according to our author, but August the Strong denies wanting to become HRE (he has a good idea he wouldn't get elected, I'd say, and also he has his eyes on the job for his son due to marrying the later with Joseph I's daughter and hoping the Austrian Habsburgs will die out, which would make for a much easier and less expensive election. Among the Protestants, it really can be only a Hohenzollern, because the Hannover Cousins are in line for the English Throne at this point, and no way is the rest of Europe going to stand for someone ruling both Britain, her Colonies AND the HRE, doing Charles V. one better. What really cracks me up is that the "Crown Prince of Prussia" is named as a candidate, because is of course young FW. Damn, FW, you were in the running for at least three thrones at different points in your youth, weren't you? Britain (via adoption from William of Orange) Hungary (in a wild scenario where he'd have to pretend running away so he could get elected by the Hungarians) , and now the HRE? But of course, F1 waves this off and says his son won't do it.

(Obviously in the HRE case, because while there is technically no clause saying a Protestant prince can't become Emperor, the now Catholic again supermajority would still have expected him to convert first. FW would never!)

But among the population, the idea of a Hohenzollern HRE kept being rumored again now and then. When F1 gets his first grandson, Friedrich Ludwig who dies after a few months, there's at least one poem calling him the future Emperor. When finally Fritz is born, Buchhardt says Wilhelmine's memoirs say that child!Fritz is hailed by a captive Swedish Officer (this would have been during the Great Northern War then?) as the future Emperor. (I don't recall that, but I probably skipped it, I don't think he made that up.) And once we're in 1740 and MT's Dad dies, there are a few pamphlets and likes arguing that truly Protestant and German young Fritz would be ever so much better than foreign French plant FS (all his biographers: SO UNFAIR HE WASN'T FRENCH!). However, Fritz himself until ca. late January, early February of 1741, even after invading, was all for FS for Emperor because he assumed he'd come to terms with him about Silesia. Having figured out that FS wasn't the one to come to terms with, MT was, and MT would not budge, he then swung behind Karl Albrecht of Wittelsbach for Emperor instead and teamed up with the French who were of course pushing the Wittelsbach candidate anyway.

But back to the November of 1740: Duchhardt says that one of Manteuffel's dispatches to Brühl discusses there being a rumor in Berlin that Fritz would go for HRE, and him trying to sound out the visiting Wilhelmine about it, but she just smiles enigmatically and changes the subject. And then there's a Voltaire letter (I wonder whether this is how Manteuffel got the idea in the first place? Because I wouldn't put it past him to have read Fritz' Voltairian letters, given that he's not yet given up the Voltaire vs Wolff campaign entirely) after Charles VI kicked the bucket ALSO asking whether Fritz wouldn't/shouldn't try to become Emperor?

Duchardt, however, thinks Fritz never wanted to, despite his answering enigmatically to Voltaire at the time. A decade later, in the Political Testaments of 1750s onwards, he's crystal clear on the subject in that he doesn't exclude the possibility of a Hohenzollern Emperor forever, but thinks conquering provinces and establishing fame must come first, and then his successors if they want to can gratify their vanity and try for HRE. As Fritz sees the HRE as an out of date anachronism he only has increasing contempt for, it's very unlikely he would have devoted his considerable energies into reforming and revitalizing it as opposed to promoting Prussia as an emerging Power and fighting the Habsburgs/Austria for being the dominant German state.

And then there's the 1744 Wilhelmine & Imperial Envoy exchange. Now Renate Zedinger made it sound as if Duchhardt thinks Fritz seriously considered it in her footnoting this book, but the actual passage reads more like the opposite: There is just a singnle hint - in the autumn of 1744, the King's sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth, made the amazing statement towards none other than the Viennese diplomant Cobenzl that if the Emperor - meaning Karl Albrecht, the Wittelsbach guy - should die, her brother would be willing to take the Imperial dignity and would be ready to change his religion for that purpose - and it sees Friedrich not as a future Protestant but a Catholic Emperor (...). This passage is footnoted and sourced to "Droysen, Preuß. Plitik, V/2, S.194", and Duchardt goes on to express his scepticism, especially since by 1744, as opposed to 1740, Fritz wasn't everyone's golden boy anymore but while having impressed with his military abilities had also managed to piss off the allies he'd dumped in Silesia 1, plus MT had mightily kept up in the Propaganda War and was now seen very favourably (also her troops were successfull in Alsace and Lorraine and were holding Bavaria). So there wasn't much chance that the other electors would have either voted for Fritz or voted for another Wittelsbach.

Let me add: in 1744, Fritz and Wilhelmine were already neck deep into their big enstragement crisis. The Erlangen Journalist stuff had already happened, I think the marriage of Female Marwitz with an Austrian Count also had done, and while the lunch with MT was still ahead, they were definitely on the outs. Meaning that if Wilhelmine told Cobenzl this, she made it up, since Fritz was most definitely not sharing confidences with her just then.

Re: Heinz Duchhardt on Protestant Prince X for Emperor Campaigns, or: Fritz for HRE?

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yay! Bookmarked for when work is not swamping me, hopefully this weekend.

Trashy Faves and Poisons

[selenak]

Catching up on some of the earlier Stuarts, I was reminded and/or filled in again how James VI and I's main boyfriends were really good looking trash like Heinrich's, and learned yet another scandal.

So, the two main guys after James succeeded Elizabeth I.

1) Robert Carr or Kerr, both spellings were used in his life time. Meets courtier and poet Thomas Overbury en route to London. They become friends; Overbury, having learned that James is into hot guys, promotes Robert in the hopes Robert will in turn promote him. At first, this totally works. After Robert has an accident at a tournament, James insists on personally nursing him back to health and spends a lot of time in his bedchamber, "teaching him Latin" (yes, that's the official explanation). Robert Carr becomes the undisputed favourite, gets lots of offices and shiny new titles (including Duke of Somerset), which upsets the old aristocracy. It also upsets James' wife, Queen Anne. Robert then falls in love with Frances Howard, one of THE Howards (still seen as crypto Catholics, this is an importata plot points). Now she's already married with Robert Deveroux, Earl of Essex (son of Elizabeth's last fave). They were married very young (he 13, she 14), then he was sent off to the Grand Tour for two years, but since his return the marriage hasn't yet been consumated (Frances says) because he's impotent, so an annulment should be possible with the King's support.

Overbury: BAD IDEA. REALLY BAD IDEA. You need to keep the King sweet, not get married to a strong willed woman who's already married. I tell you, don't marry her! I even write poems against that marriage. Who's your original patron, huh? Listen to me!

Frances: I want to become the Duchess of Somerset and dislike you, Overbury. Also, my male relations now petition the courts to annul my marriage on the grounds of impotence no matter what you say.

Earl of Essex: I am not impotent!!!!!! In fact, I walk around showing everyone who doesn't run away in time how I can get an erection! (Yes, really.) But my wife is such a bitch who mocked me and insulted me when I came back from the Grand Tour that I can't get it up with her.

James I and VI: I am never jealous about my fave's wives, unlike Fritz, and support everything they want while they're still my faves. So I'm supporting the Robert/Frances match.

Overbury: I am still against it. Loudly. I hate Frances.

Robert Carr: Your Majesty, please offer my old pal Overbury the job taking him away as far from London as you can possibly get in tihs day and age so I don't feel ungrateful but am still rid of him.

James I and VI: You're now the new envoy to Moscow, Overbury. (We live pre Peter the Great, which is why St. Petersburg doesn't exist yet.)

Overbury: I decline the job and am staying here, continuing to argue, because Robert/Frances is my NOTP.

James: YOU WHAT? I'm the King, my job offers don't get refused, and also, whose boyfriend is Robert anyway? Off to the Tower with you!

A few months later: Overbury dies in the Tower, supposedly of natural causes. (This is a plot point.)

Robert: This where I have a severe attack of hubris. James, I know you've made me Gentleman of the Bedchamber early on in our relationship, but I don't want to hang out in your bedchamber anymore. I'd rather stay home and have sex with Frances.

James: :( :( :(

Archbishop of Canterbury: AN OPENING! See, I've been not so quietly freaking out that one of the crypto Catholic Howards is now the wife of the most powerful man of the Kingdom after James, but now I can see a silver lining. I am therefore pushing a pretty young man, one George Villiers, James' way.

Anne: I hate Robert and am supporting you in this. I'm sure this new boytoy will be not ambitious at all and can be controlled.

2.) George Villiers: I have the sexiest legs in the kingdom and am seriously underestimated in my willpower, cunning and ego by all my sponsors.

James I and VI: I have a new favourite. Come here, sexy!

Robert: What!

Frances: Try to win him back!

Robert's enemies: Oh no you don't. Your Majesty, horrible news! Remember that Overbury guy who died captivity? Turns out he didn't die of natural causes after all. He was poisoned. By Frances. And your now former fave was totally in on it.

Frances: While the rethoric against me is misogynistic as anything, historians agree I did have at the very least something to do with the poisoning, because I confess to when confronted with the provider of the poison.

Frances and Robert: Take Overbury's place in the Tower, she's condemned as a murderer, he as an accessory

James: commutes their sentences from death to imprisonment; they will get released after a few years, and Robert will actually outlive Buckingham, dying in quiet obscurity in 1645

Rumor: Why would James do that if Robert is his ex and been so ungrateful? Could it be he was into the poison plot as well and wanted to prevent Robert and Frances blaming him in their death speeches?

James-friendly folk: Or he was just nice that way.

George Villiers: Who even cares. Point is: I'm taking over as the undisputed favourite. Among the gazillion titles James gives me is of course "Duke of Buckingham". Speaking of titles, I sell those which means the English aristocracy goes from 80 plus title holders to ca. 160 when I die, and that's a big reason why the old aristocracy hates my guts. Mind you, it doesn't really shift the balance in the House of Lords into my favour because EVERYONE envies and hates me. Everyone, that is, except young Charles, because remember, I accomplish the feat that nearly all other favourites of royals don't pull off, becoming beloved by two generations, a father AND a son.

Henrietta Maria: Tell me about it. I hate you. My marriage with Charles didn't really become the love affair it did until you died. Though no one ever has suspected you of having had sex with Charles as well as James.

James: I would like to object to my presentation as pudding in the hands of my faves. I mean, yes, I was crazy about Robert and then darling Steenie, my nickname for Buckingham, and wrote them tender love letters. But Steenie and my boy Chuck really wanted to start a war with the Spaniards once the Infanta had rebuffed Charles' wooing efforts in the last years of my reign, and I stuck my "no European wars!" guns. In fact, Nancy Goldstone presenting me as a bad Dad to Elizabeth the Winter Queen not withstanding, I to this day get much applause for both keeping England out of the Thirty Years War and for trying to reconcile the continental monarchs who were fighting it with each other. All this was very much not what either of my two big faves advised me to do, meaning like Heinrich, I had bad taste in men but my own political ideas.

Selena: what I don't understand is why anyone bothered with poisoning Overbury AFTER he was already in the Tower. Wouldn't it have made sense to poison him when he was still at large and influential?

Historians: We don't have a sensible explanation for this, either, but are certain that poisoning took place because of all the confessions, including that of Frances. Also, in case you're wondering, he got poisoned through an enema. 'Yes, poison was literally pumped into his behind. If that doesn't smack of personal spite...

Robert Devereux Earl of Essex: I just want everyone to know I WAS NOT IMPOTENT EXCEPT WITH FRANCES. Want to see my erection?

ETA: Forgot to include: after a few years had made it clear Buckingham was every bit as much an arrogant favourite as Robert Carr had been, getting all the great offices but without making Carr's mistake of letting James doubt his affections, a court faction tried to use the same ploy as before, i.e. placing a handsome young man near James in the hopes he's replace Buckingham. But Buckingham, whatever else he was, wasn't dense, and had a good memory. He'd BEEN the hot red Porsche new young boytoy. So what he did wasn't going after the potential boytoy, oh no, he went straight for the potential new boytoy's sponsors, and had them in financial distress and banished from court in no time flat. After which, of course, the potential new boytoy was no longer interested in working for them, and anyway James was happy with his Steenie.

Re: Trashy Faves and Poisons

[mildred_of_midgard]

Holy cow, this is amazing. See, I knew there was good gossip about James VI/I and his favorites, but I don't know many details. So thank you for adding to my trove of details!

Earl of Essex: I am not impotent!!!!!! In fact, I walk around showing everyone who doesn't run away in time how I can get an erection! (Yes, really.)

OMG. I really need to know exactly how this is phrased in the primary source(s).

James I and VI: You're now the new envoy to Moscow, Overbury. (We live pre Peter the Great, which is why St. Petersburg doesn't exist yet.)

For cahn:

James: dies 1625. Much of his reign is during Russia's "Time of Troubles", the anarchy and civil war that prevailed between the time when the Rurik dynasty (the family of Ivan the Terrible) died out in 1598, and when the first Romanov ascended in 1613.

St. Petersburg: founded 1703, after Peter the Great captured Swedish land near the start of the Great Northern War. Karl XII himself, after an initial victory against Peter at Narva, was busy invading Poland at the time, and made the mistake of thinking he could ignore Peter until he was done defeating August the Strong. BIG mistake. If he hadn't made that mistake, would Russia be the world power it is today?

Point is: I'm taking over as the undisputed favourite. Among the gazillion titles James gives me is of course "Duke of Buckingham". Speaking of titles, I sell those which means the English aristocracy goes from 80 plus title holders to ca. 160 when I die, and that's a big reason why the old aristocracy hates my guts.

I knew James gave him a million titles, I didn't know he used them to double the number of titles in the realm!

All this was very much not what either of my two big faves advised me to do, meaning like Heinrich, I had bad taste in men but my own political ideas.

Hee!

Selena: what I don't understand is why anyone bothered with poisoning Overbury AFTER he was already in the Tower. Wouldn't it have made sense to poison him when he was still at large and influential?

Yes, excellent question.

Also, in case you're wondering, he got poisoned through an enema. 'Yes, poison was literally pumped into his behind. If that doesn't smack of personal spite...

Oh, that is interesting. I am reminded of Edward II, who was allegedly killed with a red-hot poker up his anus (cahn, he was gay and unpopular and his male favorites were hated, so this was supposed to be a way of humiliating him). But reports of that claim date to well after his death, and my understanding is that historians no longer believe this was anything but fake news made up much later.

So if we have actual, reliable, contemporary evidence to believe the guy was poisoned with an enema, from the confessions and what-not, that's wildly interesting to me!

Robert Devereux Earl of Essex: I just want everyone to know I WAS NOT IMPOTENT EXCEPT WITH FRANCES. Want to see my erection?

*dies*

So what he did wasn't going after the potential boytoy, oh no, he went straight for the potential new boytoy's sponsors, and had them in financial distress and banished from court in no time flat. After which, of course, the potential new boytoy was no longer interested in working for them

Clever man!

"She cried but she took": according to non-Germans

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay! As you may recall, I have been researching 1768-1772 foreign policy, which mostly means the First Polish Partition and the lead-up to it. Along the way, I have found some more material on "She cried but she took" that can supplement what Jürgen Luh wrote.

To sum up what Luh's article:

****

Most modern accounts of the first Polish Partition include some variant of "She cried, but she took," attributed to Fritz, sometimes with "The more she cried, the more she took." But there's no trace of it in of Fritz's writings, or Catt, or any of the usual sources. Koser, author of the most important biography of Fritz, ignores it!

Why? Rohan said it first, not Fritz.

Then Karl von Hesse wrote some memoirs, published in 1861, in which he says Fritz told some anecdotes, and in one of those anecdotes, Fritz said, "sie weinte und griff dabei immer zu." (She cried and she always kept grabbing at it." This was mentioned in a couple works post 1861, but was ignored by Fritz historians through the end of WWI, because it wasn't true. We repeat, Koser never mentions it!

Then a guy named Maletzki probably coined the snappy form "Sie weinte, aber sie nahm," (she cried, but she took) in 1925.

But that was in a publication for Communists, so it was ignored by conservative historians until it was popularized by Egon Friedell in 1928 in volume 2 of his extremely successful Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit and now you can find it all over the place.

*****

This is all more or less correct, given a very narrow focus on German-language historiography, but there's a huge gaping hole here called "other languages."

First and foremost, I must remind everyone that the memoirs were, naturally, published in French. Luh says the clunky-sounding "sie weinte und griff dabei immer zu" in Karl of Hesse's memoirs got cut down to "Sie weinte, aber sie nahm," but the original French is the already snappy-sounding "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours" ("She cried, and she kept taking"), though other versions will also appear (as we shall see).

After first appearing in 1861, "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours" took off immediately in French historiography.

In an 1865 article appearing in Revue des Deux Mondes, the whole passage is given, and then the author of the article summarizes it as "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours."

In an 1878 serialized history appearing in the Revue des Deux Mondes and then published as a free-standing book, La Question d'Orient Au XVIIIe Siècle, in the same year, Albert Sorel quotes "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours!" and attributes it to Fritz.

In the same year, in Le Secret du Roi, the very book I'm reading and summarizing for salon (I haven't abandoned it!), the Duc de Broglie attributes "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours" to Fritz's memoirs (!). He also cites the Rohan quote.

In 1879, Louis Leger, in Histoire du Austrie-Hongrie, attributes "Elle pleurait toujours et prenait toujours" to Fritz.

Albert Sorel has another book come out in 1885 in which he repeats this quip.

In an 1878 serialized history appearing in the Revue des Deux Mondes and then published as a free-standing book, Le Prince de Ligne et Ses Contemporains, a year later, Victor du Bled attributes "Elle pleure toujours, mais elle prend plus que sa part" to Fritz.

By 1891, Albert Vandal, in Napoleon et Alexander Ier writes, "Elle pleure et prend toujours," with no mention of Fritz or MT, and expects you to recognize it when he's talking about something completely different (Metternich, Talleyrand, and Napoleon).

In 1893, Kazimierz Waliszewski, a Pole living in France and writing in French, attributes "Elle pleure et prend toujours" to Fritz in Le roman d'une imperatrice, Catherine II de Russie. That book gets reprinted for decades, and translated into other languages, including German in 1928. I would be *really* curious how that sentence is rendered in German! (Or if they left it in the original.) But it's a little too late to be public domain, and the Stabi doesn't seem to have it.

selenak, looks like I can send it to you for a very few euros, and to myself for 4 times as many euros, and of course you might get it in a few days and I might get it in a few weeks. Do you mind if I send it to you, and then you can donate it if it's not worth keeping? If you'd prefer not, UCLA does have it, and Royal Patron should be back in LA soon, and I can ask him to look it up for me.

In 1908, as transcribed in the parliamentary annals, a M. Vandervelde, in one of his speeches, attributed "Elle pleure, mais elle prend tout de meme" to Fritz.

And so on, and so forth. So it was definitely mainstream in France before WWI.

Furthermore, and this is madly interesting to me, the quip made its way over to English historiography quite quickly from French. We know that the Duc de Broglie's book was very popular and was translated into English already in 1879. "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours" is translated "She wept; and took always."

Waliszewski's popular book, the one I want to send to Selena, was translated into English already by 1895, so I can see that it's rendered, "She is always crying and stealing."

Come 1896, Robert Douglas writes, ""As he said sarcastically to Prince Charles of Hesse: 'She wept terribly, but her troops took possession of her portions, she weeping all the while. All of a sudden we learned that she had seized much more than the part assigned to her, for the more she wept the more she grabbed." in The Life and Times of Madame du Barry.

1902, Lillian Smythe, The Guardian of Marie Antoinette, very similar: "Frederick the Great observed to Prince Charles of Hesse: 'She wept terribly, but her troops took possession of her portions, she weeping the while. All of a sudden we learned that she had seized much more than the part assigned to her, for the more she wept, the more she grabbed."

In 1903, in a newspaper published in London, known as The Tablet, a contributor writing an opinion piece, in English, about modern French politics writes: "Elle pleure mais elle prend toujours" and attributes it to Fritz.

In 1911, no less than the Encyclopedia Britannica includes "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours" in its article about MT, and attributes it to Fritz.

A more creative variation by Rheta Childe Dorr in Inside the Russian Revolution, 1917: "Maria Theresa, who ruled the Austria of the day, wanted it printed in the records that she wept when she took her piece, but she took it just the same, and Poland has wept ever since."

In the presidential address to the Royal Historical Society, published in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Professor Oman in 1919 attributes "Elle pleure, mais elle prend" to Fritz.

1921: Carlton J. H. Hayes. A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, "She wept, but she kept on taking," also attributed to Fritz.

So it was very mainstream in English before 1925 too. (I can cite more examples in French and English, but you get the point by now.)

Even more interesting, Luh reports that in 1862, Johannes Scherr writes "sie weinte und griff dabei immer zu." This is true, but Luh ignores two things:

1) this is a translation, not the original (he completely ignores the fact that there is an original and it is in French), 2) there are other 19th century translations into German, not just this one. In particular, Mitrofanov, in his biography of Joseph II in 1910 (which Beales overall praises), produced something in Russian in 1907 that got translated into German in 1910 as, "Sie weinte, doch nahm sie."

Another major language Luh ignores is English! I would totally forgive him this, except for the fact that the very first paragraph of his article presents what a modern take on the First Polish Partition looks like, and the quotation he gives for his example comes from something he cites as "Brendan Simms: Kampf um Vorherrschaft. Eine deutsche Geschichte Europas 1453 bis heute, München 2013." Now, I happen to own that Simms book, and therefore I happen to know, if you couldn't already tell from that name, that it was originally written in English by an English speaker named Brendan Simms.

And then Luh segues directly from Simms into "Why do modern authors do this? Let me tell you about German-language historiography to explain why."

Ignoring the fact that the example he gave is from English-language historiography, where we've seen that this quip has been so mainstream that by 1911 it was already in the Encyclopedia Britannica, long before any German communists wrote anything in 1925. And I doubt anything in Simms can be explained by German historiography better than it can be explained by English historiography--that's just sloppiness on Luh's part.

Now, that raises an interesting question. Did this German communist, and his popularizer Egon Friedell, independently re-invent the wheel with "Sie weinte, aber sie nahm"? Or was either, or both, of them influenced by the fact that this quip was widespread in French, English, and Russian, including in books popular enough to be translated into German? I don't know, but I think the question should be asked. I also think there should be awareness that other historiographies took very different paths to arrive at the modern-day commonplace "she cried, but she took" than German-language historiography did.

Maybe this is because all of the Germans were reading their Koser responsibly. But maybe some of those 1920s Germans eventually started reading Broglie, or Mitrofanov, or Waliszewski.

Now, while we're talking about places that this quip doesn't appear where you'd expect it, because it only dates back as far as the memoirs of Karl von Hesse, allow me to point out that if there's one place you'd expect it in English historiography where it's not, it's Carlyle. Carlyle has vast amounts of space (7 volumes! admittedly 6 of them before 1763) to devote to "things Fritz said," and he is extremely interested in anything that sounds cool. And what he says is not, "She cried but she took," but the exact opposite:

I add only this one small Document from Maria Theresa's hand, which all hearts, and I suppose even Friedrich's had he ever read it, will pronounce to be very beautiful; homely, faithful, wholesome, well-becoming in a high and true Sovereign Woman.

The empress-queen to Prince Kaunitz (Undated: date must be Vienna, February, 1772).

"When all my lands were invaded, and I knew not where in the world I should find a place to be brought to bed in, I relied on my good right and the help of God. But in this thing, where not only public law cries to Heaven against us, but also all natural justice and sound reason, I must confess never in my life to have been in such trouble, and am ashamed to show my face. Let the Prince [Kaunitz] consider what an example we are giving to all the world, if, for a miserable piece of Poland, or of Moldavia or Wallachia, we throw our honor and reputation to the winds. I see well that I am alone, and no more in vigor; therefore I must, though to my very great sorrow, let things take their course."

In other words, Carlyle says that Fritz would have had respect for MT's scruples, not mocked them.

And this, of course, is because Carlyle's book was published in 1865, and "elle pleurait et prenait toujours" had not yet become mainstream in France or England. And the fact that Carlyle *doesn't* know about this quip, whether to repeat it or refute it, is evidence that Luh is correct that Karl von Hesse's memoirs are the earliest known source for attributing the quip to Fritz. Granted, that's an argument from silence, but like Lehndorff not saying anything about Fredersdorf's alleged disgrace, it's stronger than most arguments from silence. Catt might not have included this quip, Luh, because Catt's diary and memoirs only go up to 1760. (I'm not sure why you even bothered mentioning him in your article, honestly. Sure, Catt probably relocated material from later conversations with Fritz into allegedly earlier conversations...but it's hard to pack something as topical as a quote about the First Partition of Poland into the Seven Years' War and fool anyone.) But Carlyle would have included it, I'm convinced.

Unrelated note to connect some dots for salon: Karl von Hesse's memoirs are something we've talked about in another source, i.e. he mentions Moltke a few times. He's the one who gives us the description of Moltke being absolutely devastated and barely holding it together when Frederik died. (Karl was married to Frederik's daughter, and later Karl's daughter will marry Christian VII's son Frederik VI.)

Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans

[cahn]

Huh, the evolution of this is interesting! "Elle pleurait et prenait toujours" does sound rather snappy, at that :P

Henri according to a Scot

[mildred_of_midgard]

So while I was looking through Carlyle to see if he mentioned anything about crying and taking, I happened upon this passage with a lengthy citation of a primary source on Heinrich that I felt was worth quoting in full.

William Richardson was appointed British ambassador to Russia in 1768. He published a collection of letters, which I'm guessing was an extremely literary production like Bielfeld's, and not like Mitchell's papers, but I can't be sure. Anyway, here's Carlyle:

It is not true that Friedrich had schemed to send Henri round by Petersburg. On the contrary, it was the Czarina, on ground of old acquaintanceship, who invited him, and asked his Brother's leave to do it. And if Poland got its fate from the circumstance, it was by accident, and by the fact that Poland's fate was drop-ripe, ready to fall by a touch.— Before going farther, here is ocular view of the shrill-minded, serious and ingenious Henri, little conscious of being so fateful a man:— Prince Henri in White Domino "Prince Henri of Prussia," says Richardson, the useful Eye-witness cited already, "is one of the most celebrated Generals of the present age. So great are his military talents, that his Brother, who is not apt to pay compliments, says of him,— That, in commanding an army, he was never known to commit a fault. This, however, is but a negative kind of praise. He [the King] reserves to himself the glory of superior genius, which, though capable of brilliant achievements, is yet liable to unwary mistakes: and allows him no other than the praise of correctness.

"To judge of Prince Henri by his appearance, I should form no high estimate of his abilities. But the Scythian Ambassadors judged in the same manner of Alexander the Great. He is under the middle size; very thin; he walks firmly enough, or rather struts, as if he wanted to walk firmly; and has little dignity in his air or gesture. He is dark-complexioned; and he wears his hair, which is remarkably thick, clubbed, and dressed with a high toupee. His forehead is high; his eyes large and blue, with a little squint; and when he smiles, his upper lip is drawn up a little in the middle. His look expresses sagacity and observation, but nothing very amiable; and his manner is grave and stiff rather than affable. He was dressed, when I first saw him, in a light-blue frock with silver frogs; and wore a red waistcoat and blue breeches. He is not very popular among the Russians; and accordingly their wits are disposed to amuse themselves with his appearance, and particularly with his toupee. They say he resembles Samson; that all his strength lies in his hair; and that, conscious of this, and recollecting the fate of the son of Manoah, he suffers not the nigh approaches of any deceitful Delilah. They say he is like the Comet, which, about fifteen months ago, appeared so formidable in the Russian hemisphere; and which, exhibiting a small watery body, but a most enormous train, dismayed the Northern and Eastern Potentates with 'fear of change.'

"I saw him a few nights ago [on or about New-year's Day, 1771; come back to us, from his Tour to Moscow, three weeks before; and nothing but galas ever since] at a Masquerade in the Palace, said to be the most magnificent thing of the kind ever seen at the Russian Court. Fourteen large rooms and galleries were opened for the accommodation of the masks; and I was informed that there were present several thousand people. A great part of the company wore dominos, or capuchin dresses; though, besides these, some fanciful appearances afforded a good deal of amusement. A very tall Cossack appeared completely arrayed in the 'hauberk's twisted mail.' He was indeed very grim and martial. Persons in emblematical dresses, representing Apollo and the Seasons, addressed the Empress in speeches suited to their characters. The Empress herself, at the time I saw her Majesty, wore a Grecian habit; though I was afterwards told that she varied her dress two or three times during the masquerade. Prince Henri of Prussia wore a white domino. Several persons appeared in the dresses of different nations,— Chinese, Turks, Persians and Armenians. The most humorous and fantastical figure was a Frenchman, who, with wonderful nimbleness and dexterity, represented an overgrown but very beautiful Parrot. He chattered with a great deal of spirit; and his shoulders, covered with green feathers, performed admirably the part of wings. He drew the attention of the Empress; a ring was formed; he was quite happy; fluttered his plumage; made fine speeches in Russ, French and tolerable English; the ladies were exceedingly diverted; everybody laughed except Prince Henri, who stood beside the Empress, and was so grave and so solemn, that he would have performed his part most admirably in the shape of an owl. The Parrot observed him; was determined to have revenge; and having said as many good things as he could to her Majesty, he was hopping away; but just as he was going out of the circle, seeming to recollect himself, he stopped, looked over his shoulder at the formal Prince, and quite in the parrot tone and French accent, he addressed him most emphatically with 'Henri! Henri! Henri!' and then, diving into the crowd, disappeared. His Royal Highness was disconcerted; he was forced to smile in his own defence, and the company were not a little amused.

"At midnight, a spacious hall, of a circular form, capable of containing a vast number of people, and illuminated in the most magnificent manner, was suddenly opened. Twelve tables were placed in alcoves around the sides of the room, where the Empress, Prince Henri, and a hundred and fifty of the chief nobility and foreign ministers sat down to supper. The rest of the company went up, by stairs on the outside of the room, into the lofty galleries placed all around on the inside. Such a row of masked visages, many of them with grotesque features and bushy beards, nodding from the side of the wall, appeared very ludicrous to those below. The entertainment was enlivened with a concert of music: and at different intervals persons in various habits entered the hall, and exhibited Cossack, Chinese, Polish, Swedish and Tartar dances. The whole was so gorgeous, and at the same time so fantastic, that I could not help thinking myself present at some of the magnificent festivals described in the old-fashioned romantes:—' The marshal'd feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneschals.' The rest of the company, on returning to the rooms adjoining, found prepared for them also a sumptuous banquet. The masquerade began at 6 in the evening, and continued till 5 next morning.

"Besides the masquerade, and other festivities, in honor of, and to divert Prince Henri, we had lately a most magnificent show of fire-works. They were exhibited in a wide apace before the Winter Palace; and, in truth, 'beggared description.' They displayed, by a variety of emblematical figures, the reduction of Moldavia, Wallachia, Bessarabia, and the various conquests and victories achieved since the commencement of the present War. The various colors, the bright green and the snowy white, exhibited in these fire-works, were truly astonishing. For the space of twenty minutes, a tree, adorned with the loveliest and most verdant foliage, seemed to be waving as with a gentle breeze. It was entirely of fire; and during the whole of this stupendous scene, an arch of fire, by the continued throwing of rockets and fire-balls in one direction, formed as it were a suitable canopy.

"On this occasion a prodigious multitude of people were assembled; and the Empress, it was surmised, seemed uneasy. She was afraid, it was apprehended, lest any accident, like what happened at Paris at the marriage of the Dauphin, should befall her beloved people. I hope I have amused you; and ever am"—[ W. Richardson, Anecdotes of the Russian Empire, pp. 325-331: "Petersburg, 4th January, 1771."]

Much of this is familiar already, like the fact that he comes across as stiff at first, but okay, the parrot! and also--they made fun of his wig in 1771! Just like we do today in salon! :D :D

They say he resembles Samson; that all his strength lies in his hair; and that, conscious of this, and recollecting the fate of the son of Manoah, he suffers not the nigh approaches of any deceitful Delilah.

Ha, a dig at his sexuality and his wig, all in one go. I like it!

Re "what happened at Paris at the marriage of the Dauphin" (future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette), a quick Google tells me it was what Guiness still considers the deadliest fireworks accident in world history: there was a large crowd gathered on the Place de la Concorde, some fireworks landed in the crowd, and there was a huge stampede in which many people were killed.

The official death toll was something like 132 or 133, but many people felt it was underestimated, and much higher numbers were given out unofficially. Guinness gives it as 800, but one of the google hits says that even at 133, it would still be a record.

If anyone wants to browse Richardson to see if there are any more good anecdotes regarding the heroes and antiheroes of salon, the volume is now in the Frederician library here.

Re: Henri according to a Scot

[cahn]

Ahahaha, I also loved the Samson/Delilah line! And the parrot anecdote, awwww!

How British diplomats got their jobs

[mildred_of_midgard]

In the last post, when Selena was reading us Hanbury-Williams' correspondence with Catherine, she commented:

But still, as I said when reading the two books on him: he should never have become a diplomat, and how he got a couple of really important assignments is a mystery to me.

And I replied:

The Count de Broglie has an entertaining opinion on that too!

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams appears to have been one of those dissipated diplomatists who are not unfrequently met with in the English legations; whither they are banished by British scruples, which, holding them unworthy to fulfil the serious duties of parliamentary life, consider them fit for the looser ways of the Continent.

Well, in the course of my 1768-1772 foreign policy research, I have come across a more serious answer. According to the opening of Macartney in Russia, by Michael Roberts, historian and author of *numerous* books and essays on British diplomacy (and Swedish history), several of which I have read and/or am reading now:

It was one of the tacit conventions of eighteenth-century English politics that almost any man who had been born into the ruling class, or who had contrived to get himself accepted by it, could probably fill a public office with a reasonable degree of competence. There were, of course, exceptions: it was recognized that the navy was not for amateurs; the law had its own private staircases; the exchequer could not for very long be left to inexpert hands, for fear of alarming the country gentlemen and the City. But for the rest, office was the consequence of 'weight', the reward for fidelity to a connection, the consolation of the needy, a useful step on the road to a peerage. And the assumption that almost any man could make a fair shot at almost any job was, on the whole, justified. The business of government was still relatively uncomplicated, the techniques of administration easily acquired; a man with a clear head, a modicum of industry, and that dignity and perspicuity of style which seemed inborn in the political nation, could undertake a position of responsibility untroubled by any morbid doubts as to his ability to fill it.

To these generalizations the diplomatic service was no exception. The major embassies were sufficiently attractive to tempt, and perhaps sufficiently expensive to require, men of high social standing and ample private fortune: if the Duke of Bedford, or Lord Hertford, could be persuaded to go to Paris, a secretary of state would not be so foolish as to start doubts about his competence in diplomacy. In this, of course, the British diplomatic service was not unique. The Comte de Saint-Priest, appointed French minister to Portugal at the age of twenty-seven ,recalled without embarrassment that at the time of his appointment

Je n'avais d'autre connaissance en ce genre qu'un fonds d'histoire et de géographie, et j'ai vu, par mon expérience, que c'est à peu prés tout ce qu'il faut, en fait d'études préliminaires, pour la diplomatie, la politique n'étant autre chose que la juste application du jugement sur les personnes et les circonstances; le reste est une routine qu'on ne peut guère manquer d'acquérir promptement.

Such men began as novices; and if in the course of their mission, they happened to discover a talent for their work, so much the better; if not, they had secretaries--official or unofficial--to assist them. It might happen that the secretaries were amateurs too--as David Hume was; but some, at least, were men who hoped to make a career in diplomacy. They did not always succeed, and when they failed their lot was often hard; but if they did make good their footing, they provided the service with its only really professional element. Yet it is sitll true that too many men accepted a diplomatic appointment as a stop-gap until something better should fall in at home, or until they should inherit the family estate, or establish their fortunes by a judicious marriage.

The idea that any man of the right class could hold almost any role in public office struck me as very plausible, because one thing I remember from my Classics days was that in the democracy of ancient Athens, appointment to public office happened via lottery, because of this very principle.

I can also confirm from my reading that it was hard to get people to go as ambassadors to almost all the courts of Europe; that even when people were browbeaten into going, they spent most of their time complaining about their post and asking either for recall or for a different (either cheaper or more prestigious post); and that a lot of them really just wanted a plum job back home. Many of them delayed their departures and practically had to be shoved out the door by the government. (This is why I believe Suhm when he tells Fritz he doesn't want to go to St. Petersburg; yes, he'd been asking for a job, but that was not considered a desirable job.)

I can also confirm that being an ambassador was expensive, so your volunteers tend to fall into these financial categories:
1. The filthy rich who can afford it out of pocket (sometimes by selling property).
2. The less filthy rich, who nonetheless come from a prestigious enough family that they can easily get credit, and who are willing to go into debt, and who spend most of their time writing home asking for the arrears on their salary to please be paid.
3. The ones who are in financial trouble at home and think they'll be better off a few countries away from their creditors, who also spend most of their time writing home asking for the arrears on their salary to please be paid.

Roberts adds in a footnote:

In 1766 Horace Walpole wrote, 'The embassy [to Madrid] has been sadly hawked about; not a peer that would take it.'

So quite possibly, H-W got a lot of his jobs because the government was happy just to find someone who was willing to go!

Re: How British diplomats got their jobs

[luzula]

it was recognized that the navy was not for amateurs
*laughs* Some jobs actually require training, believe it or not!

Thanks, this was interesting!

James I and VI: Scotsman on the English Throne

[selenak]

So, James, I and VI: has drama happen to him before his birth even, when father Darnley holds mother Mary at gunpoint, the gun in questioned aimed at her pregnant belly, while her friend and according his accusation lover David Rizzio is murdered by Darnley's co-conspirators. James had a miserable childhood, but given this, it's highly questionable whether the presence of his parents would have made it better. (I mean, for all we know Mary would have been a great mother in a royal mother kind of way, but growing up with your parents at war is to no one's benefit, say Fritz and Wilhelmine.)

(Sidenote about poor murdered Rizzio: he spent a few centuries as gossip material as potential Mary Queen of Scots lover - for example, Henri IV of France made a quip when James had his court poets style him the new Salomo that sure he was, given Salomo was the son of David - and then Maxwell Anderson in his play and script based on play about Mary turned it around and made Rizzio gay and Darnley's ex boyfriend whom he's thus extra spiteful to because Rizzio sides with Mary. This seems to have been an enduring invention, because in the latest movie about Mary Rizzio is still gay and has a fling with Darnley before Darnley marries Mary and Rizzio sides with her, and he's even trans (or at least fond of cross dressing) to boot. This amuses me because as far as I can tell, Gay!Rizzio and bi!Darnley were entirely made up by Anderson. Though now that I've said it, undoubtedly Mildred will find gay Rizzio depictions preceeding good old Maxwell.)

Post-birth, the drama in baby James' life continues: Darnley gets famously blown up and strangled, Mary marries or is forced to marry Bothwell who killed him, Scotland is up and in arms against Mary, and Mary for reasons still befuddling historians doesn't flee to France, where as an ex-Queen they'd have been forced to take her in graciously even if Catherine de' Medici probably wasn't keen, but to England, where she spends the next two decades imprisoned by Elizabeth while baby and then child James goes through a succession of Regents in Scotland who all murder their predecessor but have the common denominator of loathing both of James' parents. To complete his candidacy for Fritz-like woobieness pre power having, James also gets beaten by his teachers so harshly that it's noticed even in those times where physical punishment for children was the standard. And then there's the hobby the Scottish nobility has of king-napping to become Top Dog, which happened to teenage James repeatedly, too. All of which results is a King who is truly fond of books but writes his first one about witches because he's deeply convinced much of the horrors of his childhood come from them. An episode once young James has actual power and almost but not completely tamed his earls: he's become engaged, as royals to, sight unseen to one of the Protestant princesses in continental Europe, Anne of Denmark. Anne is supposed to be escorted to Scotland in the usual way, with noble delegations and by boat, of course. But there's a mighty storm making it impossible for her ship to leave as scheduled. Does young James once hearing this wait a month or two, or even three, until the weather improves? He does not. In the sole grand gesture directed towards a woman which can be interpreted as romantic in his life, he insists on on sailing to Scandinavia himself to get his bride. There's a storm during his sea crossing as well, but he makes it to Norway (where Danish Anne is because that's where her own storm-tossed boat had ended up) and sweeps his bride off her feet.

(Even discounting the exaggarations that come with court scribes, Anne and James seem to have gotten along very well the first few years of their marriage. What made their relationship get worse was less his tendency towards boyfriends and more that he refused to let her raise their oldest son Henry but insisted this was, as was custom in both England and Scotland, to be done by by a worthy noble (one of his buddies, the Earl of Mar, as it happens) elsewhere. Cue years long royal marital argument. Remember that Sophie of Hannover has some sharp statements in heir memoirs about her mother, James' daughter, letting her children be raised elsewhere, too. In fairness, James had the money to spare to follow etiquette at this point, Elizabeth otoh in her Dutch exile could have used the saving of same by not setting up a separate household for her children.)

When James and Anne return to Scotland, he’s convinced that his current main enemy, the Earl of Bothwell (not his mother’s third husband, that guy’s cousin or son, I honestly don’t know right now and can’t looik it up) who is of course a sorceror in conjunction with a bunch of witches has conjured up those storms to stop him from marrying (Anne’s dowry is really handy for becoming an Earl-defying, independent King). If this was a fantasy movie, he’d have been right. It’s reality, and so it leads to the deaths of various innocent women.

When Elizabeth I. dies and James becomes the first King of both Scotland and England, he's first greeted warmly, and not just by those of her councillors who have been secretly corresponding with him for some years now, like Robert Cecil. (Son of the legendary William C., Lord Burghley, and also one of Elizabeth's most important councillors in her later years.) It's the usual effect of a monarch having reigned for a long time - four decades - that makes people ready for a change, plus some misogyny (at last a male King again, surely doing manly things!), plus the fact that the war against Spain in combination with the nine years of war in Ireland have left England weary, exhausted, and in pretty bad financial shape. (Yes, it's nice to capture the occasional treasure-carrying Spanish warship, but that doesn't make up for all the war costs.) Enter James to great jubilation and acclaim, though there are some early grumblings because he is after all a Scot, and that brings me to the failure of James' first big project. See, ruling over both Scots and English, he thought he'd unite the island while he was it into one realm. He was, in fact, the first monarch to call himself "King of Great Britain". Unfortunately, no one else called him that.

English: OMG no way! We know only one way of union: conquering! Which is why, say, Edward I ("Longshanks") tried to conquer Scotland. But we didn't conquer you. If a SCOTTISH King rules us AND renames us, that would imply you conquered us! NO WAY! The noble name of England must stay together. And also, let's start a few centuries of xenophobic paranoia right now about Scottish folk coming from your miserable north to our nice and wealthier (even after two wars) south to take our jobs and money!

Scots: ARE YE MAD, JAMIE? WE HATE THOSE BASTARDS!!!!!

=> result: both the English and the Scottish parliaments refuse a union of both countries and insist James will rule them only in personal union (i.e. as King of both), but as two separate countries. This will stay the case until the last Stuart monarch, Anne, in whose reign the act of union finally formally happens.

(Oh, and the flood of greedy Scots draining English wealth and dominating English politics that got conjured up in Parliament and which proved an enduring bogeyman in English propaganda never materialized. James did bring a Scottish entourage with him, of course, but the majority of those nobles got given titles and sent back to Scotland. He adopted most of Elizabeth’s last privy council, and his three top advisors - Robert Cecil, soon Earl of Salisbury, Thomas and Henry Howard, later Earls of Suffolk and Northampton - nicknamed by him his “three knaves”, were all English.)

James’ other big idea, it turns out, is peace as a foreign policy. Peace with Spain, most of all, but also peace with other European countries in general. Here he was aided by the fact that Philip II of Spain had died even before Elizabeth did, and Philipp III wasn’t any more keen on continuing battles with the Brits than James was. The Spaniards would, of course, continue to battle the Dutch, and there were still English volunteers serving in the Netherlands to fight the Protestant cause, but no more official English military support. No more “privateers”, either. (I.e. officially licensed pirates capturing Spanish treasure ships.) Peace allowed for trade relations with what was still the world’s mightiest superpower with those rich new colonies, which even from a purely pragmatic standpoint was way more profitable than battling the Spaniards and capturing the occasional ship.

Now, given that ever since Spanish Armada days, the Spaniard were THE Big Bad of English imagination, this became an increasingly unpopular policy, though at first there was also some general relief because of the near brokeness of English state finances and the according costs for the population. There were some early conspiracies, infamously the Gunpowder Plot but also two other ones, that were easily foiled. BTW, one of those ended up in Elizabethan hero Sir Walter Raleigh accused, convicted and ending up in the Tower. Here a younger Selena had always read in various fiction, including Rosemary Sutcliff’s, that Raleigh was framed (with Robert Cecil getting most though not all of the blame), so I was surprised that both the podcasts I listened to - “Early Stuart England” and “Pax Britannica” - took it as given Raleigh was in fact guilty as charged, and didn’t even bother to present an argument for or against, it just was treated as an undisputable fact. Presumably historical theory marches on? I can well believe Raleigh was romantisized later because the further we get from Elizabeth’s reign and especially once James’s on Charles is on the throne, the more criticism not just of Charles but his Dad as well gets voiced by the historians, summed up in the quip that Elizabeth ruled as a King while James ruled as a Queen, which has exactly all those implications you think it does.

When I said Robert Cecil got most of the blame: the rest is given to the new Spanish envoy, Gondomar, who becomes THE sinister Spaniard of popular imagination. A decade or so later, there’s a very popular pamphlet claiming to present excerpts of Gondomar’s corrspondance where he is muhahaing about having James under his thumb and preparing the Spanish conquest of England, and this was taken as the real deal for quite some time until grudgingly the Brits were ready to admit it was a very successful forgery. In reality according to those two podcasters, Gondomar was an able envoy presenting Spanish interests well, but by no means was he dominating or fooling James. James saw peace with Spain as a good thing because by and large it was, and continuing war with Spain when you inherit an almost broke country really would not have been. (Always worth remembering: England didn’t yet have colonies of its own to draw wealth from. It started to aquire them under James. Including poor Ireland, which had been militarily ruled by the English before, but during James’ reign, the whole “planter” project of importing a lot of Protestant new landowners into Ulster started. Jamestown in Virginia is of course named after him, too.)

It wasn’t all pragmatism on James’ part, though, he does seem to consider peace as desirable as a Christian monarch, too. He’d been raised by hardcore Presbyterians but ended up a Protestant moderate ready to do business with Catholics, which isn’t the same as considering the Catholic religion as good. The idea for Ireland, for example, was that once there were enough god-fearing rightly thinking Protestants there, surely the unenlightened Catholic masses would see how much better Protestantism was and would convert. 800 years later…. Also James’ first address to European Catholic monarchs went something like: “Guys, how about peace for all of us! We should be responsible Christian rulers, and I believe we can get on the same page here, right? But I must say that the Pope sucks, and here are an additional two pages to my peace message of why he’s the Antichrist.”

Later missives stopped short of the Pope bashing, but something which Spain never stopped demanding was the freedom for (English) Catholics to practice their faith without recriminations. As it was, the legal situation was that any Catholic doing that had to basically pay a fee for it to enrich the royal coffers, plus they were bared from a couple of professions. Obvious irony of Spain, champlion of freedom of conscience (Gedankenfreiheit!) is obvious, but logical. (Also reminds me of a novel about Elizabeth I. when young Elizabeth tries to get out of committing to Catholicism by arguing wiith sister Mary "Didn't you fight for freedom of religion in our brother's reign, sister?" and Mary replies "Of course I did - mine was the true faith!" and adds that she'd have been ready to die for it, and if Elizabeth really was ready to die for the Protestant heresy, which Elizabeth is not.) Anyway, what Gondomar and also the French ambassodor, who as envoys got license to practice their Catholic faith in their respective households, did was open their services to any English Catholic who'd want to attend as well, and because there was royal license for the mass itself the English Catholics in London who did so could do so without fees. With the result that the de facto Spanish embassy (they didn't call the house of the envoy that back in those days) was regularly packed, which fueled conspiracy theories of Gondomar preparing a Spanish invasion of England with dirty traitors even more. James didn't budge on the fee business until the last few years of his reign when he was trying to conclude the endless Spanish marriage project (first son Henry, then after Henry's death son Charles with a Spanish infanta- this was literally negotiated for twelve years), more about that later, but full equal rights for Catholics was impossible to sell to the English (and Scottish, for that matter) majority, not least because by then the Thirty Years War had started.

Re: James I and VI: Scotsman on the English Throne

[mildred_of_midgard]

Another deeply informative and entertaining write-up! I think I knew about two thirds of this going in, but having it all tied together with added details is very helpful. 17th century is...not my period, to say the least.

Though now that I've said it, undoubtedly Mildred will find gay Rizzio depictions preceeding good old Maxwell.

Lol! Well, Mildred doesn't care enough about this one to go looking, but I see salon is training us both!

his current main enemy, the Earl of Bothwell (not his mother’s third husband, that guy’s cousin or son, I honestly don’t know right now and can’t looik it up)

Looks like it's his nephew, according to Wikipedia.

Scots: ARE YE MAD, JAMIE? WE HATE THOSE BASTARDS!!!!!

Lol!

=> result: both the English and the Scottish parliaments refuse a union of both countries and insist James will rule them only in personal union (i.e. as King of both), but as two separate countries. This will stay the case until the last Stuart monarch, Anne, in whose reign the act of union finally formally happens.

And from everything I've read and been told, the Scots still largely hated those bastards, but the Scottish Parliament was basically bribed into dissolving itself and letting Scotland be ruled from London. OTOH, that could be Jacobite propaganda, idk.

Ah, yes, Wikipedia says "The role played by bribery has long been debated" and doesn't come to a firm conclusion. It does agree, though, that "the Union was carried by members of the Scottish elite against the wishes of the great majority. The Scottish population was overwhelmingly against the union with England."

And that was in 1707, after a hundred years of personal union! I can only imagine how they felt in James' time.

The idea for Ireland, for example, was that once there were enough god-fearing rightly thinking Protestants there, surely the unenlightened Catholic masses would see how much better Protestantism was and would convert. 800 years later….

*facepalm*

Although technically it would be 400 years since James' introduction of Protestant planters, 800 since Strongbow initiated English occupation. Either way, though.

Of course, I still can't help being reminded that my history teacher in high school insisted James (of the King James' Bible) was Catholic! Because all the Stuarts were Catholic! And none of young Mildred's counterarguments held any weight.

full equal rights for Catholics was impossible to sell to the English (and Scottish, for that matter) majority, not least because by then the Thirty Years War had started.

cahn, this will still be the case in our period. In the 1770s, the government will start trying to lift the restrictions on Catholics just a liiiitle, and there will be massive popular riots, e.g. the Gordon riots of 1780. Catholics won't end up getting emancipated until 1829.

This will become relevant, at least tangentially, when I do my 1768-1772 foreign policy write-up. On which work continues apace!

James I and VI: Money and Favourites

[selenak]

Before I get to that: one thing James was never good at and which was a fatefully legacy bequeathed to Charles was getting along with his (English) parliament. (He'd gotten along reasonably well with the Scottish variation, but then in Scotland the Kirk was the far more argumentative and powerful institution and James argued with them a lot of the time, not least because he wanted to bring back the bishops, who had cancelled in the hardcore Presbytarian time of his youth. It's always worth remembering that while the English Reformation had been driven from above because Henry wanted a divorce, and monasteries aside had kept the administration and institution of the Church pretty much intact, especially the bishops, the Scottish Reformation had been driven from below AGAINST their monarchs - first regent Marie de Guise, then Mary Queen of Scots and thus had been far more anti authoritarian from the start.) 99% of the times James called for a parliament, he ended up disbanding it in frustration because he and the Commons and Lords could not see eye to eye on most things, especially money, which was the reason why he called it to begin with - i.e. he had to, they were the ones granting him a budget. Early on, part of the problem was that by enobling Robert Cecil and making him Earl of Salisbury (Robert C. had been William Cecil's younger son and thus did not inherit the Lord Burghley title), James had removed Elizabeth's top parliament whisperer and handler from the Commons, and there was never a good replacement. Another problem was the increasing religious paranoia, and a third one that the reputation of James' and James' court steadfastly went downwards the more years passed - scandals like that of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset and Frances and the murdered Overbury made it easy for the Commons to argue that what James wanted the money for was evidently not a worthy patriotic cause like war with Spain, but to throw it at his amoral corrupt and murderous favourites, and hell no!

Evidently James wasn't the first monarch to have favourites, and favourites who were given offices. Elizabeth had given her favourites some nice and lucrative positions, too, as had every monarch before here. And royal Favourites being hated by nobility and commoners alike is also the rule rather than the exception. (The exception was the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's last favourite, who was very much popular with the masses, which went to his head and contributed to him losing it.) But here the combination of build up expectations, James' peace policy and and James' style of governing made for an unhappy m ix. Instead of being the manly man succeeding the old woman who brought back a manly style of governing, James was a peace loving gay nerd, and that he loved to hunt (which he did, majorly so) and drink a lot didn't help because that's what he liked to do in a small select company. Renember, access to the monarch is THE most valuable thing to have in this society. All the Tudor monarchs had taken their Privy Councils with them when they went on progress and whereever they were residing, they attended the Council's meetings regularly, especially Elizabeth who was a workhorse. With the male Tudors, becoming a Gentleman of the Bedchamber also as a way for a noble to gain access to the monarch, and these were sought after positions for that reason; the Henries plus young Edward in the short time he had balanced the Privy Council and the Bed Chamber Gentlemen and kept them competing with each other. Evidently Mary and Elizabeth could not appoint Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, so the Privy Council gained dominance, especially in Elilzabeth's long reign. James could and did have Gentlemen of the Bedchamber. (All gay insinuations aside, this really was an important job because of the access thing), and now the situation completely reversed itself, because James rarely made a showing at the Privy Council, he delegated that to his Three Knaves, meaning Robert Cecil most of all for as long as he lived, while spending most of his time with his Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, whom he took along on those hunts etc. And while, as mentioned, James had practically only Englishmen in the Privy Council, the majority of his Gentlemen of the Bedchamber were Scots. This faded out somewhat the longer James ruled in England, but what became appearant was the way for an English newbie to catch the King's eye and be appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber was.... by being good-looking and sexy. And remember, there was no war in which the young nobles could distinguish themselves anymore (unless they went as volunteers to the Netherlands or some other continental army).

As oopposed to son Charles, James was pragmatic enough to maintain the ever useful "evil councillor" fiction (i.e. the King's not to blame, it's that evil councillor!!!!) by ditching the occasional too unpopular figure in his adminstration. Not his two most important boyfriends, though. Robert Carr, as we've seen, contributed to his own downfall by withdrawing from James, and George Villiers aka Buckingham managed the all time outstanding magic trick for royal Favourites, endearing himself to the next monarch and having both Kings stick to him through thick and thin.

As also mentioned earlier, young future Buckingham was originally promoted as an alternative to Robert Carr by the Archbishop of Canterbury and some other nobles and even Queen Anne. This included a great public spectacle on St. George's day (= national English holiday), with Anne pointing out to her husband that he could promote that nice young man because hey, his name is George! And they were all sorry very soon, because unlike Robert Carr, who didn't really have ambitions beyond making a lot of cash and used his influence on James for whoever could provide it until the marriage with Frances allied him to the Howards, who then called the shots until his downfall, young George Villiers was no one's toy and strictly in business for himself. He was relatively low provincial nobility and knew he needed a network, so he arranged for his numerous relations (siblings, cousins, etc.) to marry into the high Enligh nobility, and said nobility grudgingly did accept those matches because of the access to the King factor. (This also meant that the high noble families knew that if they ever brought him down, they would suffer as well, being now his in-laws.) He also didn't invent but quadrubled the selling of titles and offices which made him THE most important patron in England. As for politics, originally Buckingham was fine with promoting whatever James wanted to do, he didn't have political goals of his own in the first few years. But when he got closer to 30, it wasn't lost on him that that he would in all likelihood outlive James and spend the majority of his life in King Charles' rule, not King James'. (They were closer age wise, too; when Charles was 23 Buckingham was 30.) He therefore put some efforts into befriending Charles, and while young teen Charles supposedly hadn't liked Buckingham at first, later teen Charles came to adore him. (In a platonic manner. No one has ever suggested Charles I. to be bi, interestingly enough, not even his worst enemies, of which he had a lot, and they all wrote pamphlets.) But befriending Charles coincided with developing a political agenda independent from what James wanted.

For this, we have to back up and check out the continent again. Now Nancy Goldstone has a lot of sharp things to day about James first marrying his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick of the Palatine, i.e. which was taken as a signal of him going to support Frederick in any future struggle with the Habsburgs and then throwing both Frederick and Elizabeth to the dogs when all hell broke loose, and also about him being naive and letting the Spaniards play him by wanting to marry first Henry, then Charles to a Spanish Princess. Meanwhile, the podcasters: by intending to marry one of his kids to the most important Protestant Prince Elector and the other to a daughter of the most important Catholic monarchy in Europe, James intended to establish and entrench his role as mediator and ensurer of European peace. And then that IDIOT Frederick fucked it all up by accepting the Crown of Bohemia from the Bohemian anti Habsburg rebels. It must have at least occured to Elizabeth that Dad might be angry, for she wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him whether he thought her Dad would swallow his anger and support her and Frederick anyway if push came to shove, and the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote back to say, absolutely, hail the Protestant cause, go got the Empire from the Catholic Habsburgs fuck yeah! (Sidenote: yes, that was the same guy who' d originally promoted Buckingham, which had been a religious thing, too, because remember, the Howards were seen as Crypto Catholics, who either were real Catholics or had very strong Catholic sympathies and would undoubtedly lead the country into Spanish subjugation, so Robert Carr had to go.) As it happened, James was furious, and he remained so, but that wasn't the reason why he didn't back Frederick, it was not wanting a bloody religious war engulfing the European continent and then swapping over to Britain and Ireland! Also, he didn't throw Elizabeth and Frederick to the dogs immediately. He did say he would support Frederick's claim to his own realm, the Palatinate, but not Bohemia, and after Frederick had been driven out of Bohemia, James did manage to secure a tentative angreement from Emperor Ferdinand to leave it at t hat if Frederick officially renounced any claim to Bohemia, but THAT IDIOT FREDERICK, despite already being kicked out of Bohemia, refused to do so. He had his subsequent exile in the Netherlands coming. As for not letting him and Elizabeth touch English soil: remember, after the death of Henry, Charles was James' only living son and heir. Charles himself had not yet married and produced offspring, which meant directly after Charles - who had been such a sickly child that no one had really expected him to live into adulthood - came Elizabeth. And Frederick the idiot as the next King of James' realms was his ultimate nightmare. Elizabeth, given that she had supported her husband, wasn't seen as much better.

Charles getting married and reproducing was therefore of increasing importance. Now, as mentioned, James' dream would have been his son (no matter which one)/A Spanish Princess. (Whichever was available. T'he first Spanish princess James had his eye on was actually teen Anne of Austria who got married to teen Louis XIII instead and ended up as the Queen of the Three Musketeers.) But the two main obstacles here were a) the Spanish demand for religious freedom for Catholics in England, including the Infanta if she went there, and b) the religion of any children from that marriage. Contrary to English rumour, the Spanish at no point demanded that the Prince of Wales himself should convert. Round and round the negotiations went, and once Spain stopped dragging its feet about whether or not they'd intervene on the side of their Austrian Habsburg cousins in the Bohemia business and decided to do so, practically all of England hated the very idea of a Spanish match. On the Spanish side, people weren't keen, either, but they also didn't want to ditch the treaty with James and go to war against England again, not least because that would mean England officially backing the Netherlands again (which after a lengthy truce Spain was now at wars with again, still in the hopes of getting them back). The de facto Spanish PM, Olivares, thought the ideal solution would be to talk James into accepting a different Habsburg princess for his son instead - not a Spanish but an Austrian one, not least because the Austrian Habsburgs were a bit more flexible with marrying their daughters to Protestants IF they also had sons to succeed them, and also this would make James an in-law to Emperor Ferdinand as well, cancelling out the Elizabeth connection to Frederick, and started to prepare the groundworks when.... Charles and Buckingham had a brilliant idea for a continental trip!

Re: James I and VI: Money and Favourites

[cahn]

(The exception was the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's last favourite, who was very much popular with the masses, which went to his head and contributed to him losing it.)

Gosh but you have a way with words :P :) <3

James was a peace loving gay nerd

Aw! (Gosh, I can see why Alan Cummings had a field day with him.)

but what became appearant was the way for an English newbie to catch the King's eye and be appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber was.... by being good-looking and sexy.

...whoops.
(Now I'm imagining the AU in which Heinrich is king and Prussia has Gentlemen of the Bedchamber...)

As it happened, James was furious, and he remained so, but that wasn't the reason why he didn't back Frederick, it was not wanting a bloody religious war engulfing the European continent and then swapping over to Britain and Ireland!

Oh wait... can I have a couple more sentences unpacking this? :)

James I and VI: Charles and George's Excellent Adventure

[selenak]

To get out of the circle the negotiations were moving in, and finally get married, young Charles decided to follow Dad's example in braving a long journey to claim his bride. (Remember young James making that boat trip to Norway for Anne?) As for Buckingham, he could see that a shared continental trip would be the ideal way for bonding and becoming fireproof friends with the Prince for as long as Charles was still a Prince. Mind you, for Buckingham this was also a gamble, because by then he was so envied and hated that people had already tried to supplant him in James' bed by a new hot young guy. He had defused that situation, but if he want with Charles to Spain, it would last months, and undoubtedly they'd try again. But whether Buckingham was sure enough of James' affections or whether he decided to bet on the future over the past, he risked it. This was supposed to be an anymous trip until they'd arrive in Spain, but of course the pair didn't even make it to Dover before giving the game away because they were as terrible as travelling undercover as Fritz would be on that Straßburg trip. Then they were in France where Buckingham managed to offend the French and provide Alexandre Dumas with a future plot by hitting on Queen Anne, and finally they made it to Spain. Where they really weren't wanted, including by the English envoy, the Earl of Bristol, who figured that the Prince coming here would be seen by the Spaniards as a sign of weakness, of England being that desparate for the match they could heighten their demands, and who soon came to loathe Buckingham. As for Olivares, as mentioned, his goal was for James to accept a marriage to the Austrian Habsburgs instead. Which is something you can suggest at a distance, but not if the prospective groom is suddenly on your doorstep. Saying outright no to Charles then would have been totally against the Royal Bro Code. As for the Infanta, not that anyone asked her, but her pov was: I don't want to become Catherine of Aragon, thanks but NO THANKS!

So it was a few months of increasing awkwardness in Spain for Charles and Buckingham. There, Buckingham was hit by another brainwave. It was evident he and Charles would not, as first imagined, return triumphantly with the Infanta. And he knew how very unpopular the Spanish match was in England anyway. AND James was in increasing bad health. What if he completely rebranded himself, as the Protestant hero who organized this journey really to put an end to Spanish Catholic schemes, ferreted out the fact the Spaniards were never negotiating in good faith anyway, and then, having braved the evil country of the evil inquistion, escaped with his Prince to England, to denounce the evil Spaniards and organize a war against Spain instead? It would mean doing what he'd never done before, going explicitly against one of James' core policies and wishes. But would salvage this entire operation and prepare a good future for Buckingham.

Charles at 23 might have been a romantic but even he could see this Spanish marriage was going nowhere, so he was fine with leaving in a huff. But he had to formally ask his host Philip III for permission to leave, and Philipp said no because remember, the Spaniards still wanted Charles/Austrian Habsburg Princess to happen, and they could see if he left pissed off, it never would. Buckingham then suggested outright lying - a promise under durress doesn't count - and up the ante by Charless offering to convert to Catholicism if they let him leave and formally ask Dad for permission. Which Charles did. Whether or not Olivares actually believed Charles would do that, there was no way Spain could have said no to such an offer. This news arrived in England before Buckingham and Charles did and was the obvious bombshell, confirming everyone's worst fears. When Charles and Buckingham did arrive and explained, this reversed and there were celebrations about the marriage not happening, and for the first and last time the pair were Protestant heroes beloved by all, including the parliament James had to call to explain all of this. Charles and Buckingham presented their "War with evil Spain NOW!" case and again for the first and last time in his life, Charles actually got a parliament to do what he wanted, while James must have felt like never get out of facepalming. By now, he really was in bad shape, he had athritis and gout, and that the pain made him drink more and more didn't help. And Buckingham spent less and less time with him. He did rush to James' side for the end, though, as did Charles, they spend James' last week with him and James died in Buckingham's arms. Because of how hated Buckingham was, and how this death meant he could no focus all on Charles, there were the inevitable poison rumours - it wasn't like a Royal Favourite hadn't done it before in living memory -, but the general opinion seems to be no, he didn't, he wasn't as cold blooded as that. With James died peace, war with Spain was on, the Earl of Bristol coming back to say that it wasn't the evil Spanish who had intended to stab England in the back but Buckingham fucking things up first by arriving with Charles where Charles' presence wasn't wanted or needed and then by rebranding himself for entirely selfish reasons wasn't of any use anymore, either. And Charles had learned that making promises under durress doesn't count, a lesson he'd use so often in the up and coming Civl War that his subjects knew they could never come to an agreement with him he'd actually stick to. As for foreign wars, there wasn't a single one Charles and Buckingham led which they finished successfully.

So was James a good or bad monarch, either by contemporary or modern standards? His policy of no foreign wars benefited the country undoubtedly, the start of colonization in earnest was a good thing for England if not for the people getting colonized (whose opinions did not count in his era), the King James bible project undoubtedly enriched the English language, and his deep and personal confiction that witchcraft was real and witches needed to be killed did great damage. Here, the podcasters point out that James was not the type of fanatic wanting convictions no matter what, and in his later years by his persistent questioning in one case because he was sceptical of what evidence the prosecution provided saved a woman's life, i.e. that he did allow the the possibility that people might make wrong accusations out of personal motives and wanted to ensure against that. But he still changed the laws from Elizabeth's time (where witchcraft was also a thing, but you were "only" condemned to death the second time you were caught, and only if your spell had lethal consequences) to making any type of witchcraft warrant the death penalty, and the consequences were awful. He could be personally ruthless (though that he ensured Elizabeth didn't take his token protest against his mother's execution too seriously is forgivable if you consider he had been parted from Mary as a baby and had been raised exclusively by her enemies) and capable of strong attachment (see Robert Carr and Buckingham; in the first case, it wasn't James who'd originally withdrawn from the relationship, and he did commute the death sentences for Robert and Frances). Perhaps his most negative heritage was demonstrrating to his son that there was no way of getting along with parliament other than dissolving it in disgust. But given he started out as an abused child all the adults in his life tried to browbeat into submission and followed one of the all time royal stars on the throne, the fact he peacefully ruled over two kingdoms who'd been at war with each other for centuries, managed to push through an incredibly unpopular but beneficial foreign policy (peace with Spain) for decades and was the first monarch to die in bed succeeded by his adult son since, drumroll, Henry VII, the first T'udor King, is definitely impressive.

Re: James I and VI: Charles and George's Excellent Adventure

[cahn]

but of course the pair didn't even make it to Dover before giving the game away because they were as terrible as travelling undercover as Fritz would be on that Straßburg trip.

LOL!

Then they were in France where Buckingham managed to offend the French and provide Alexandre Dumas with a future plot by hitting on Queen Anne

...oh he's THAT Buckingham! :P (I get confused, okay. There are a lot of Buckinghams!) Huh, that reminds me I still have to finish Three Musketeers...

As for the Infanta, not that anyone asked her, but her pov was: I don't want to become Catherine of Aragon, thanks but NO THANKS!

<3

What if he completely rebranded himself, as the Protestant hero who organized this journey really to put an end to Spanish Catholic schemes

WOW. That's... some chutzpah.

And Charles had learned that making promises under durress doesn't count, a lesson he'd use so often in the up and coming Civl War that his subjects knew they could never come to an agreement with him he'd actually stick to. As for foreign wars, there wasn't a single one Charles and Buckingham led which they finished successfully.

Gosh. This is helping me with figuring out how Charles' eventual fate happened...

So was James a good or bad monarch, either by contemporary or modern standards?

Yeah, I can see that some of his legacy was rather harmful but idk, it sounds like he did really well with what he had, much better than a lot of these guys...

James VI and I: Crying Murder Most Foul!

[selenak]

Remember young Charles and Buckingham returning from Spain rebranding themselves (especially Buckingham) as champions of the Protestant cause, let's go to war with Spain, Rawwwr!, Parliament cheering (enjoy the sound of that, young Charles, you're not likely to hear it again) and James facepalming before dying? With instant rumours spread by his enemies that this death is mighty convenient for Buckingham because now he doesn't have to divide his attention between father and son anymore, and it's still questionable whether James would have gone along with actual war on Spain, no matter how much Parliament was cheering? Also, remember the Earl of Bristol, England's ambassador to Spain who was PISSED at Buckingham for showing up like a bull in a china shop and ruining years of negotiations, convinced that it was was for the entirely selfish reason of not wanting to look like an incompentent fuck up that Buckingham was suddenly discovering his inner Protestant Champion and Spanish evilness?

Well, one year later, all these factors combine with a new one. In the meantime, Parliament has okay'd the war, Buckingham, who among his many other titles is also Lord Admiral of England, organized a fleet for some merry war making, plundering, town burning on the Spanish coast, everyone was sure this would result in a glorious rerun of the Elizabethan Age's greatest hits... and then they got routed by the Spaniards. Turns out Cadiz - which the Earl of Essex Elizabeth's Fave had burned down back in the day - had been refortified, as were those other coast towns. Turns out there were Spanish ships prepared to receive the Brits, because they hadn't been very discreet with their intentions. Turns out that at a certain level of universal corruption with titles and offices, you end up with lousy supplies for your soldiers and sailors, so badly that they're forced to try to land days before reading Cadiz to resupply themselves (hence the Spaniards being well prepared). In short, it was an utter fuck up and a national humilation.

What's more, after selling this war as being FOR PROTESTANT FREEDOM FUCK YEAH!, Charles of course was still in need of a wife and an alliance with a mighty Catholic power now that he was going up against Spain, to wit, Spain's arch rival France, so he married Henrietta Maria, youngest sister of Louis XIII, future hardcore Catholic grandma of Jemmy, cahn. This caused some side eyeing by the hardcore Protestants in the Commons even before the national humiliation at Cadiz. However, people were still hesitant to go after the (young and still new) King directly. Not if there was an Evil Advisor (tm) to go after instead.

Buckingham's innumerable enemies in the House of Lords and Commons: Let's impeach him!

(Yes, Impeachment was a thing. Parliament had done this with two of James' officials, Francis Bacon and Cranfield, and James had thrown both of them to the dogs.)

William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, one of the two candidates for Mr. W.H., the fair youth from Shakespeare's sonnets, now a middle aged guy proud of his political savvy: Guys, I'm so with you there, but there's just one problem: Fucking up as Lord Admiral and hording titles and offices isn't against the law. Also, Charles will just say that Buckingham did everything on his orders. If you haven't noticed, he's not a pragmatist like his Dad. He will shield Buckingham.

Earl of Bristol: I'm living in genteel house arrest since my fuming return from Spain, sort of accused of being in Spanish pay but not really, with a trial endlessly delayed because James simply hadn't wanted me to make life difficult for Buckingham but also didn't want to put me on trial for treason. I had to live with Buckingham in Spain for months, he ruined my life's work, I hate him more than you, and I have a brilliant idea: Let's impeach him for killing James!

The Commons and Lords: Say what?

Bristol: Surely you've heard the rumors. What you don't know yet is that shortly before his death, James was totally willing to hear me out and believed me there was no evil Spanish scheming, that it was all Buckingham's fault, and now I'm sorry I told him because a week later he was dead. COINCIDENCE? I think not! Also, if you guys accuse Buckingham of regicide, Charles CANNOT shield him. He can't say he ordered hm to do it, he can't pardon him after you proclaimed him guilty. It's THE BEST METHOD EVER to get rid of Buckingham! I will totally testify for you!

Most of The Commons and Lords: We like it!

Pembroke: I like it, too, because I want Charles to see me as his buddy's savior and make me the new Buckingham, and for that I need you guys to apply pressure. But not to much. If you openly accuse Buckingham of regicide, you better have the receipts ready. Just in case you don't and it's more circumstantial evidence, let me suggest that you impeach him for being high handed with James' medicine. Because he did bring some home remedies along for that last week of James' life. We can then massively imply he did so with a sinister intention without saying so out loud, and Charles won't dissolve the Parliament outright, which I guarantee you he'll do if you accuse Buckingham point blank of murdering James in as many words.

The Commons and Lords: Okay, let's do that. Buckingham, you're impeached for fifteen reasons, among them hording too many offices and titles and fucking up the war against Spain, but the most sensational charge is being high handed with the late King James' medicine, by which we mean you totally did poison James.

One of the MP's reading out the charges: Just to be careful, I will add that I'm of course not claiming our new King Charles had anything to do with that!

Another MP: I, by contrast, don't want to be careful. I'm totally comparing Buckingham with Sejanus. Make up your own minds whether I'm casting James or Charles or both as Tiberius in that constellation.

Charles: Did I hear that right? Not only are you accusing my BFF Buckingham of killing my Dad, but you're as good as saying I was in on it by claiming you're not saying that which everyone knows means you're thinking it? And whom are you calling Tiberius?!?????!!!!! Okay, that's it. You two MPs are arrested. And you, Bristol, go from genteel housearrest in your own countryside mansion to the Tower. So does the Earl of Arundel for good measure.I know he's neck deep in this outrageous slander against Buckingham and me plot!

Pembroke: OMG, that escalated too quickly. Your Majesty, you can't arrest two MPS if you want Parliament to give you money which you really really need given there's no nice Spanish treasure so far to make up for the war debts!

Charles: My Dad arrested MPs, too.

Pembroke: Not during a freaking session of Parliament! He had them arrested when Parliament was already over and had closed shop!

Charles: I don't care. These bastards are trying to rob me of my only friend AND they're claiming he poisoned my Dad which he so did not, AND they're comparing Dad and self to Tiberius.

Commons: *go on strike* (this is done by being utterly silent but sitting around, so no other business can be discussed*


Charles: *really needs the money*

Buckingham: How about you make a good will gesture and release the MPs? Surely they're now shocked out of their cheekiness and will stop this ridiculous impeachment business.


Charles: *releases the MPs*

House of Commons: BUCKINGHAM IMPEACHMENT NOW! BUCKINGHAM DIE DIE DIE!

Charles: That's it. I'm offically dissolving Parliament. I think I'm gonna reign without Parliament now.

Bristol: In case anyone cares, I got released from the Tower and back to genteel housearrest in my own estates as well. And Buckingham got to fuck up relationships with France next. Whether or not I truly believed he poisoned James, we'll never know. All I'm saying is that if Charles had thrown him to the dogs, history might have played out quite differently...

Ghost of James VI and I: *facepalms*

Re: James VI and I: Crying Murder Most Foul!

[luzula]

Parliament cheering (enjoy the sound of that, young Charles, you're not likely to hear it again)
LOL!

I love the Commons going on strike.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[luzula]

So I was doing some research on court martials, as you do, and came across a case which really illustrates the contradictions under which army officers operated. Also it illustrates the terrible, no good aspects of the honor code.

Of course I already knew that duelling was prohibited in the British Articles of War (probably because the Crown did not want to lose officers), but that these prohibitions were almost never enforced, and that army officers were among the men who duelled the most, because they were so steeped in the honor code. The prohibition against duelling really illustrates the fact that just because there’s a rule against something, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not done--it might just mean that a lot of people do it and someone thinks it’s a problem.

But I did not know that it actually happened that army officers were court-martialed for NOT duelling, under the charge of ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’! Here’s an example written up in the article ‘Law and Honour among Eighteenth-Century British Army Officers’ by Arthur N. Gilbert (1976). It’s about a Captain Beilby in Minorca in 1766. Aside from the main topic, it’s also interesting because it shows the way insults were formulated.

Beilby was accused of 'having repeatedly received from Captain Robinson language unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman without taking proper notice of it... '. Evidently Robinson had insulted Beilby on a number of occasions. Ensign Pierce Dalton testified that he heard Robinson say to Beilby on parade, 'Is that the way you march your guard, you shitten dirty fellow.' Another officer said that Captain Robinson also remarked '...is that the way you make your men slope their arms, you dirty dog... '. As a result, the subalterns of the 11th Foot refused to associate with Beilby. It is important to note that the sanctions imposed by the officer corps were not directed towards Robinson for starting a quarrel in violation of the Articles of War, but against Beilby for allowing himself to be insulted. The officers, among other things, refused to dine with Beilby until he cleared his name and on one occasion, when he attempted to join the officers for dinner, he was turned away. Once again Robinson insulted him by saying 'By God he shall not dine here, nor any poodle dog like him...’ The honour code called for a duel between Robinson and Beilby, but Beilby made no response. He was then visited by another officer in the regiment, Lieutenant Price, and the following conversation took place.

Captain Beilby said that he had sent a letter to Captain Robinson.
Mr Price said he knew it, but as he had not acted in consequence of that letter, the Regiment thought it not material.
Captain Beilby then said that he was sick.
Mr Price replied, Captain Beilby, the world in general thinks you are not sick, and that is my opinion in particular.
Captain Beilby said, Mr Baines knows that I am sick.
Mr Price replied, Mr Baines as a Physician may not chuse to give his opinion but in conformity to his Patient. As a man, I venture to say he is of mine.
Captain Beilby said, this is odd usage Mr Price.
Mr Price answered, not odder than your behaviour.

In his defence, Beilby claimed that he was sick, that he had not heard Robinson's insults, that he had demanded satisfaction from Robinson in a letter but that he (Robinson) had refused to receive it, and that Price had a grudge against him and was guilty of 'nursing cabals'. Beilby was found guilty of neglect in not demanding an explanation from Robinson and, as a result, was suspended from pay and duty for one year. The Lieutenant-Governor of Minorca approved the suspension, but left the length of time up to the king. In England, the Judge Advocate General, after reviewing the minutes of the case, recommended that the conviction be reversed. He argued that the particular charge was not covered in the Articles of War: 'I do not conceive that the sentence of a Court of Justice can at any rate be supported which awards a punishment for neglecting to seek a method of redress forbidden as well by the military as the common law.'

I feel bad for Beilby; it seems to me like he was being bullied by his peers. What an example of victim-blaming! I am reminded yet again of that Duffy quote about 'the seething violence and insecurity of the upper classes'.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[selenak]

Good grief, yes, that sounds like awful bullying, and I bet Beilby was of a slightly (or not so slightly) lower perdigree than the rest of them, and so they all ganged up on him.

Thank you for telling us; I didn‘t now about hararssment for NOT dueling, either! I mean, about that open kind of harrassment. There‘s a famous conversation in Fontane‘s novel Effi Briest between her husband and said husband‘s friend. The husband, Innstetten, has found letters from years ago proving Effi had a short affair with another man. Though this was years ago and the letter also make it clear it ended for good, and even though he still loves his wife and doesn‘t hate the other man, AND even though duelling is illegal in the German Empire as well (this is a late 19th century novel), he feels obliged to go through with the duel. His friend swears he would never say anything, and tells him to forget about it, but Innstetten says no, though he trusts his friend he also knows the friend will always know, and if you don‘t adher to the rules society has given itself then it‘s chaos and anarchy, and thus he has to go through with the duel and separate from his wife. Despite still loving her and having no urge to kill the other guy. It‘s one of the most famous scenes in 19th century German literature, supposed to epitomize the kind of society it was (not a good one) without employing caricature or boo-hiss one dimensionality. So that was my association for duelling code perversity, but as I said - I never expected this real life example!

Essex: Erection Time!

[selenak]

In case you were wondering whatever became of the Third Earl of Essex. (Also the third Robert Devereux, yes, he has the same name as his father (Elizabeth's last favourite) and his grandfather (not famous for anything other than fucking up in Ireland, like the fave).)

To recapitulate: Dad overreaches himself and gets beheaded while Bob the future NOT IMPOTENT Earl is still a kid, after which the family temporarily loses the title for a few years. James when becoming King restores the title to the kid because he feels fond of the late Beheaded Favourite, who like Cecil was secretly corresponding with him behind Elizabeth's back. Bob the kid is even allowed to participate in the coronation ceremony and carry one of the royal insignia a head of James. Then he's made a companion of Crown Prince Henry. All looks great for young Bob! This is also why the Howard family has their eyes on him and marries him to their girl Frances when he's 13 and she's 14.

Young Bob is sent on several years of touring Europe, with the idea that when he comes back as an adult he and Frances can establish a common household and consumate their marriage. We already know how that turned out. However, what I did not mention is that even before publically humiliated by Frances claiming impotence, Bob manages to fuck up his relationship with Henry Prince of Wales by arguing with him to the point where Bob beats Henry over the head with a Tennis racket. This about sums up his future relationship with royalty, too.

After the whole NOT IMPOTENT EXCEPT WITH FRANCES annulment has gone through, Bob retires to his country seat, fuming, but then as you've heard his love rival Robert Carr loses James' favour and gets put on trial for poisoning Overbury together with Frances. Bob Essex is feeling extremely thrilled by this and ensures he becomes a member of the jury and votes for Frances and her husband to DIE DIE DIE. As James commutes their sentences, this does not work out, but at least Bob consoles himself with the fact now everyone knows the annulment of his marriage, which the King supported, was all the evil poisoning woman's fault and not due to IMPOTENCE.

Bob decides to go to the continent, soldiering on in the Netherlands and in Germany in the early years of the Thirty Years War. He's not particularly great nor bad at it, but it does make him one of the few high ranking Englishmen with actual military experience by the time James dies and Charles and Buckingham are ready to go to war with Spain FUCK YEAH! In fact, Bob is the vice admiral on the ill fated expedition to Cadiz, Cadiz, which his late father burned to the ground so gloriously in Elizabeth's time, and where the nation now gets humiliated. Bob thinks, along with the rest of the nation, that this is totally Buckingham's fault and is part of the IMPEACH BUCKINGHAM! BUCKINGHAM DIE DIE DIE! movement.

Also, he gets married again, to one Elizabeth Pawlett. Alas, marital harmony still does not happen. Elizabeth gets pregnant. Bob declares, in public, that if the kid is born before a certain date, he will accept his own fatherhood, but it the kid is born after a certain date, he will divorce her for adultery. All courtiers take bets, Elizabeth is feeling VERY FOND OF HER HUSBAND INDEED, and delivers the kid on the deadline. Bob of Essex accepts fatherhood, but the baby does not live long, and dies of the plague. Elizabeth understandably has had it with Bob and moves out. She will have other children with her next husband, and said children in their speeches upon her funeral will insist on her innocence, decades later.

Bob, being a military veteran, decides to give the House of Stuart one more chance to appreciate him, in the Bishop's War, but for some reason, maybe because Bob has consistently supported the anti Buckingham faction in Parliament, Charles doesn't promote him to head of the army but gives him a secondary position. Bob has head it with the Stuarts! As the Civil War starts in earnest, he becomes the first commander in chief of the Parliamentarian Army. The most famous battle he engages in is the one of Edgehill where he and Charles' nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine (another bloody Stuart!), son of Elizabeth the Winter Queen, achieve an inconclusive stalemate. And then Bob dies and subsequently becomes completely overshadowed in fame by Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax as a commander of the New Model Army. He does get buried in Westminster Abbey by them and gets a statue errected. Once the Restoration happens, Charles II has the statue torn down, but he leaves Bob's body buried in Westminster Abbey where his bones are to this day, evidently not deeming him important enough to remove (unlike Oliver Cromwell). As Bob did not marry a third time and did not have an illegitimate offspring, the Devereux line dies out with him.

But he wants you to know he was never impotent! Except with Frances!

Re: Essex: Erection Time!

[(Anonymous)]

Well, at least his statue was, uh, erected. Thanks for the lunchtime reading!

Anton Ulrich and Ivan VI

[mildred_of_midgard]

Courtesy of having finished Lewin's full-length book on Anton Ulrich and his family at the Russian court, I can add a few details to what selenak and I read in the author's article on Anton Ulrich:

* Julia Mengden is still the devoted servant and best friend, *but*, one envoy report is cited saying that Julia and Anna sleep in the same bed and "may they rise from it without scandal." No comment from our born-in-1945-Russia author, but I suppose that's better than nothing.

* Not only was Friedrich* of Bayreuth considered as a candidate for marrying Anna Leopoldovna in 1730, but apparently there was discussion of both Fritz and AW as candidates!

Although the author, who gets a *lot* of Western names and relationships wrong, calls him Karl of Bayreuth, I can find no Prince Karls of Bayreuth who would have been on the marriage market in 1730, and so it must be Friedrich.

Also, it occurs to me that Fritz might well have proposed himself as king of Poland, because even in 1730-1732, everyone knew August II was going to die soon, and the diplomatic scene was in a flurry of activity to try to resolve the impending succession crisis without a war. In fact, August, FW, and Charles VI were in the middle of trying to negotiate a treaty with Manuel of Portugal (remember him?), when August died with the treaty still unsigned. Fritz might have thought he could get the crown via negotiation the way Manuel almost did; gotten out of Küstrin for the low, low price of conversion to Catholicism; and ended up like August the Strong: king of a Catholic country and Catholic head of a Protestant electorate in personal union. As August III later did.

* Fritz may have told Elizaveta in 1743 to lock Ivan VI and the rest of the family away where the sun don't shine, but he did intercede for his two brothers-in-law Anton Ulrich and Ludwig Ernst in 1742. No dice on AU, of course, but Ludwig Ernst, AU's younger brother, was luckier. He was in St. Petersburg at the time (having been made Biron's successor as Duke of Courland), and he got caught up in the coup and placed under house arrest. He lost the dukedom but was eventually allowed to return to Germany. Lewin says Fritz's intervention may have been instrumental in getting at least him released.

* POOR IVAN VI.

I mean, just those three words could be a whole bullet point that speaks for itself, but ALSO there was this whole episode I just learned about. Catherine, as soon as she took over, told Ivan's guards to try to convince him that 1) he wanted to be a monk, 2) the way to earn monkhood was to be very quiet and obedient.

Ivan gets on board with this idea, and decides he wants to be a deacon, then a priest, then a bishop. But the guards are bored and start needling him about not bowing deeply enough and that he should be totally silent. Eventually, Ivan figures out that the guards aren't members of the church at all and that it's all a trick, and then he becomes totally monosyllabic and stops engaging with the guards.

At this point, he's 22 years old, and he has less than two years left to live. :(

Reminder to cahn if you've forgotten how he died: both Elizaveta and then Catherine had a standing order that if there was a rescue attempt, Ivan was to be killed rather than allowed to fall into enemy hands. There was an attempt, and Ivan was killed by his guard.

(Rereading that episode, I was reminded that Luh said there was no way Fritz could have lost the encounter with FW, and even if we join Luh in ignoring the existence of childhood trauma, there was this whole letter--which exists and I have read!!--from FW to Fritz's guards ordering them to kill Fritz in the event of a rescue attempt, rather than let him fall into enemy (read: Hanoverian) hands. Luh. WTF.)

* When the poor boy was killed at age 23, he was sleeping in his bed. The started stabbing him with swords, and he woke up and fought so hard he broke one sword and needed eight wounds to kill him.

:(

* No mention of AU's children by the servants that I remember, but I was also reading fairly quickly. (I can read German fairly quickly, yay!) (As long as it's about a topic I'm familiar with and the prose is straightforward. And only "fairly". But progress!)

Re: Anton Ulrich and Ivan VI

[cahn]

*but*, one envoy report is cited saying that Julia and Anna sleep in the same bed and "may they rise from it without scandal."

Oooooh. I like it!

Eventually, Ivan figures out that the guards aren't members of the church at all and that it's all a trick, and then he becomes totally monosyllabic and stops engaging with the guards.

This is terrible :(

Reminder to [personal profile] cahn if you've forgotten how he died: both Elizaveta and then Catherine had a standing order that if there was a rescue attempt, Ivan was to be killed rather than allowed to fall into enemy hands. There was an attempt, and Ivan was killed by his guard.

Yes, I did forget, and I'm not sure how I did, because that is ALSO terrible :(

If you give a monarch a bear

[mildred_of_midgard]

If you give August III a bear, this happens:

"Numbers of wild beasts, taken in cages into the middle of the thickets in this charming spot, and forced to climb on little paths of planks between two walls, to the top of trees on the edge of the canal, were precipitated through a trapdoor into the water thirty feet below, and thus gave the King the chance, should he wish for it, of shooting wolves, boars and bears in the air. Hounds were waiting for them at the foot of the trees, to pursue them on land and water until the time came when the King thought fit to slay them. One of these bears, finding a boat, climbed on to the prow, in order to get away from the hounds. A young Rzewuski, brother of the Marshal, and Saul, chief clerk in the Saxon Foreign Office, in drawing back to the stern of the boat against the boatman who was steering, managed to make the craft heel over so far that she capsized. The bear for a second time described a circle in the air, and fell in the water close to these men, who got off with a fright, and gave the King much amusement by their adventure."

Courtesy of Poniatowski's memoirs, cited in the biography of Hanbury-Williams.

I *guess* it's better than locking Gundling up with bears and firecrackers, which the daily Frederician emails have just reminded us happened on October 10 (1716).

But from 2023, it's hilarious to read about! Flying bears catapulting through the air! What will 18th century monarchs with bears think of next?

Re: If you give a monarch a bear

[cahn]

The moral of the story (all the stories) is, Do Not Give Monarchs Bears :PP

(Gundling! :( )