cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 45

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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) )

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Now I don't think Crown Prince Fritz with FW alive would have said no to the prospect of becoming HRE, not at all. But King Fritz is another matter, not least because the amount of power a HRE had in the 1700s was severely limited.

I agree with you. If MacDonogh can be trusted:

Frederick had never had much time for the Holy Roman Empire. It was an ‘ancient folly’, its envoys dogs barking at the moon, its bishops drunks, he told Voltaire. He was content to allow it to continue, but took no notice of those, like the Alte Dessauer and Podewils, who thought he should make a bid to have himself elected emperor. There was also an attempt to have Prussia made permanent head of the imperial armed forces, which Frederick pushed away with contempt.

but that power came from Joseph having inherited all the Austrian-ruled lands via MT

Ha, yes, when I started reading your sentence, I was like, "But--but!!" :)

This is what Beales has to say about the nuances of Joseph as HRE vs. Joseph as co-regent of the hereditary lands during the Bavarian succession, in his essay "Love and the Empire: Maria Theresa and her co-regents", published in the collection of essays Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe that I've mentioned before:

Secondly, with regard to the question of the Bavarian succession, it has seldom been grasped--though Freiherr von Aretin has stressed it--that two claims and policies competed with each other in Vienna: one on behalf of the emperor and the Empire, the other on behalf of the Monarchy and the dynasty. The imperial claim was that most of the Bavarian lands would revert to imperial control when Elector Max Joseph, the last of his line, died; they should therefore be seized and occupied pending their reassignment. There was talk of the emperor gaining revenue as a result. Kaunitz pointed out that this would work to the disadvantage of the Monarchy, but Joseph succeeded in committing the officials of the Monarchy as well as those of the Empire to this policy from 1772 until 1777. On the other side was Kaunitz's policy, clearly set out as far back as 1764, to make dynastic claims on Bavaria for the Habsburgs, regardless of imperial rights and constitution. When the chancellor in 1777 proposed as a variant to negotiate with the elector of Bavaria's nearest heir, the Elector Palatine, in order to gain territory for the Monarchy by treaty, Joseph accepted this policy and dropped his imperial claims. At the end of 1777 Max Joseph died. Much of Joseph's embarrassment, difficulties and unpopularity in the crisis and war that followed arose from the fact that, though emperor, he was pursuing a policy of aggrandisement on behalf of the Monarchy, as co-regent and commander of his mother's armies.

But the fact that Joseph has money and an army is in his capacity as Austrian Habsburg. A big part of the reason the role of emperor settled down into the de facto hereditary possession of the Habsburgs is that being emperor came with so little power and so few resources that in order to either hold your own against competitors or be any use at all once you got the position, you had to have sizable territory and revenues of your own. Over the centuries, it got to the point where no one could compete with the Habsburgs in that regard.

We'll pour one out for the Fuggers here, who experienced both their rise and their fall thanks to funding this Habsburg endeavor.

Edited Date: 2023-08-12 01:16 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

Ha, thank you both. This is interesting, especially that Joseph's power is actually because of his Habsburg inheritance.

OK, so, the HRE isn't a good proxy for the Iron Throne -- is there something else that would be? One of your non-18th-C possibilites, maybe?

From:

selenak

The HRE at this point in time. I sare say if Fritz had lived in Ottonian times, or Salian Times, or even in Hohenstaufen vs Welfs times, he'd totally have made a play for the throne. Just imagine Fritz in Henry the Quarrelsome's position! Totally taking over kid Otto III and the Empire for Theophanu's benefit, to be her champion, don't you know.

And of course many an era of the Byzantine Empire works as well, once a number of top families were established. Could see Fritz as member of the Phokas or the Komnenos clan deciding that ruling a province just isn't enough. Provided with he comes with an FW equivalent as a father who provides a full treasury as well as parental abuse, and as we've said before - Fritz without FW is not recognizably Fritz.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Just imagine Fritz in Henry the Quarrelsome's position! Totally taking over kid Otto III and the Empire for Theophanu's benefit, to be her champion, don't you know.

Yes! Yes, he would do that!