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: FS in three biographies: An Overview (1)

[cahn]

Hiiiii, here I am very briefly! I missed your return; I've been having a lot less evening time lately because I have been doing social skills stuff with E. after A. goes to bed, but I think I will have a little time later this weekend and I'm hoping to catch up more later...

What generous bounty is this!

I knoooow, this is great!

I think perhaps that should read "new stuff to Selena knowledge", because some of us never finish Stollberg-Rilinger and have forgotten most of what you told us. :P

Some of us never started Stollberg-Rilinger :P

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hi! I am largely quiet because in addition to still struggling with work-life balance, I'm trying to get my French and German reading momentum back. I'm still very motivated to work on my Peter Keith and Fredersdorf essays, but now that we've established I *can* read handwriting, I can't keep from thinking that my language proficiency is what's holding me back more than anything else. That's why with the Fredersdorf letters, Selena could sometimes supply words without looking at the original text that I couldn't get even while staring very hard at the text!

So I'm working on that, and I'm also trying to get my Polish and Saxon history and French secret diplomacy momentum back. I'm hoping to do a write-up on the Chevalier d'Eon soonish, and I'm still trying to get to a chapter in Broglie that is about foreign policy and not about the intrigues of French people sniping at each other, which is what the last few hundred pages have been.

But I am back in the sense that I am doing salon-related things and hope to have more to report, as well as a quicker response time than the poor FS posts that languished unread until the big database upgrade was done!

Some of us never started Stollberg-Rilinger :P

I made it about a third of the way through! Before I ran aground on the rocks of financial reforms and German vocabulary for financial reforms (which I think I can handle now; I was able to finish the Fugger book when I went back to it earlier this year, after initially setting it aside because of all the buying and selling).

S-R is still on my list of things to go back to, but I don't know when that will be. My German is noticeably faster than it used to be, but still not instantaneous like English. I really thought we'd be in the instantaneous stage by September 2023, meh. :P

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

[selenak]

While we're sharing S-R confessions, I never finished the bloody book properly, either, I just read all of the first third and then sections I was particularly interested in. She's informative but just so wry and dense!

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ha, I feel better now! I think the end of the first third should have been an appendix, then maybe people would finish the book instead of burning out on financial reforms. :P