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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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mildred_of_midgard

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

Remember the Struensee biographer* who concluded that MT marrying a "Frenchman" was a sign that relations between France and Austria were already improving and the Diplomatic Revolution was just a continuation of that? And we headdesked a lot.

* Who was not a historian, but a novelist and playwright who decided to write a couple biographies romancees, which are eminently readable but light on scholarship.

If you think the problem of Julian (still used by the Russians)

And the Brits, until 1752, and the Swedes, until 1753!

When FS takes over Tuscany, he also imports a new calendar AND way to count the hours of the day:

Ooh, I had forgotten that, but yeah, it came up in the bio of Giuliano Dami I read.

Huh, interestingly, it doesn't mention the hours, it mentions the first day of the year (March 25 vs Jan 1), and it gives 1750 as the year for the change. So maybe FS made changes at two separate times? 1750 is interesting because Sweden and Britain were making their changes only a couple years later, so I wouldn't be surprised if calendar changes were just in the air circa 1750.

Finally, let us not forget the Swedes, whose king Karl XII decided to split the difference and transition gradually from one to the other, until it became too confusing to have a calendar that was neither Gregorian nor Julian! And then they had to go back to the Julian until they were ready to do what in tech we call a big-bang switchover (because we do this sort of thing all the time, namely having to decide whether it's better to switch abruptly from one technology to another, or have a gradual transition period).