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

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

FS takes a leaf from Voltaire's, Fritz' and Heinrich's book and writes, not an anonymous pamphlet

I seem to recall Leopold will also later write anonymous pamphlets to get around the nobility's opposition to his planned reforms.

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.

No, but I can see where contemporaries and military-minded historians would say it was written by a guy who only wants to have a comfortable life foreign policy-wise and isn't willing to risk everything for glory! I can also see where they find this consistent with the guy who lets his wife have the final say. And the patriarchy takes it from there, and you end up with an "indolent" emperor. (What you have in reality is a guy who is not willing to die on his hill the way Fritz and MT were willing to die on their respective hills, both in terms of foreign policy and in terms of who's in charge at home.)

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.

That's hilarious. I don't think Stollberg-Rilinger mentions it in her book on the Holy Roman Empire and ritual symbolism. I'd think I'd remember it?

No, I don't see it in searching my copy. What I do see is:

The coronation ritual was an even more grotesque spectacle to later historians: "How might Frederick the Great have performed the task of bringing the emperor washing water and a towel on horseback!" It is all the more remarkable that Frederick the Great, as the archchamberlain of the Empire, was also present at the coronation through his envoy Plotho, who did not bring the emperor water to wash his hands at the Römer (that was the job of the hereditary imperial chamberlain of the Hohenzollerns), but who did help him dress and undress and handed him the scepter. Evidently all participants maintained the normative order of the Empire by publicly participating in the joint ritual, even if they did so through representatives. Nobody took the first step to destroy the collective imagination.

Oh, this is interesting, she does talk about the refusal to kneel, but with a different revenge:

In Frankfurt, where the electoral envoys had to appear before the emperor for a solemn audience, both sides continued the strategy of gaining ceremonial ground with all means. The bone of contention was the “Spanish reverence” on bent knee, which the emperor demanded from the electoral envoys in his written regulation but not from the envoys of foreign monarchs. “But since the reverence on bent knee in this regulation was very offensive to the delegation from electoral Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate, and especially to electoral Brandenburg,” the Brunswick envoys wrote to their lord, the King of England, it was the subject of protracted negotiations. “Yet the imperial court did not wish to yield the least bit on this, and the delegation from electoral Brandenburg, to which the others could not accord any priority, would not even entertain the proposed compromises. Thus they found themselves compelled to act united in refusing the reverence on bent knee.” The delegation from electoral Bavaria was the first to be summoned to an audience, and “was the first to suffer this steadfast decision.” Although it had previously been stated that the emperor would not appear in the official Spanish mantle (Mantelkleid), and the envoys therefore also had to appear in Campagne Gala—according to the courtly code, en campagne was the formula for the reduced level of formality that prevailed at the pleasure residences in the countryside and gave greater leeway to dress—the imperial court marshal surprised them upon their arrival with the announcement that things would be different now. They thus had to fetch their mantles (Mantelkleider) in all haste to change on the lower floor of the imperial quarters, which they regarded as a shrewdly arranged embarrassment. The other envoys were given a timely warning, allowing them to appear in the requested ceremonial attire. While the imperial Obersthofmeister passed this “considerable confusion” off as a misunderstanding, which even the envoy from electoral Bohemia had been unable to prevent, the envoys were convinced that this was the emperor’s payback for their steadfast refusal to pay their respects on bent knee. But even after this incident they were not willing to do it.

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.

<3