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cahnUnfortunately, 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) )
(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) )
"She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-09-21 02:32 am (UTC)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.
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
Date: 2023-09-21 05:14 am (UTC)Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-09-21 05:23 am (UTC)ETA: Yeah, the French version is ~150 pages and the editors' note at the beginning says nothing about a translation, just that they corrected some solecisms in the manuscript; the 1816-1817 version titles it "Memoires de mon temps", and the 1862 German article cited by Luh, which is just a few pages of excerpts, says the manuscript was printed in French in 1861. So I think it's the usual case of "18th century German writes in French; is translated partially or fully into German in the 19th century for interested Germans." (And the translation really appears to be partial in this case.) I had a sudden panic that the 1816-1817 version might have been a complete copy dictated in German, because it's no longer the 18th century, but no, looks like the original really was "elle pleurait et prenait toujours."
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-09-21 05:50 pm (UTC)I forgot to mention, Albert Sorel is famous enough as a historian that I recognized the name immediately, though I haven't read any of his work. Wikipedia tells me he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times. So people were reading his stuff. I suspect he and maybe the Duc de Broglie were responsible for this phrase taking off in French (and thereby English) historiography.
I was also going to fix a bunch of typos in the original write-up last night, but
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-09-22 04:34 am (UTC)Now, his name I did *not* recognize, but I was browsing through Horowski today, and in the bibliographic notes to his chapter on Poniatowski, I saw he used Waliszewski's book (the French original)! He also used Simms' other major book, which I also own (in English).
His notes also made the state of Poniatowski's memoirs more clear to me: they are 1400 pages long, were published in 2 volumes in French in 1914 and 1924, and only half of the first volume was ever translated into German so it could be read by
Well, I can get ahold of both French volumes pretty easily, but none of us is up to reading 1400 pages of French (it would take me at least a year at my current rate, and you know what kind of write-up you'd get--none).
I would consider acquiring them, scanning them, and putting them through my translation algorithms if you have time and interest in reading them,
But I admit to not being super enthusiastic about the process, so I'm not guaranteeing I'll do it. It'll depend a lot on how many days I have where I'm too tired to do anything more interesting. (I'm still debating my likely fitness for Yuletide, btw.)
Royal Reading Schedule and other things
Date: 2023-09-23 12:44 pm (UTC)BTW: had a quick look at the Anton Ulrich II essay you've pointed me towards, and it seems Wilhelmine's later husband was for a hot second one of the alternate candidates for Anna Leopoldovna's hand in marriage.
Fritz of Bayreuth, bearing in mind Anton Ulrich's fate: Me being declined was definitely proof that God was looking out for me.
Also, Anton Ulrich liked cousin MT better than brother-in-law Fritz and thought Russia should support her in Silesia 1, which gives Fritz telling Elizaveta to send him and his kids to the back of beyond post coup another layer.
Also, is this Lewin person who wrote the article a Russian? Because no one is gay. Anna/Lynar happened, Julia Mengden, otoh, was simply a devoted servant.
Re: Royal Reading Schedule and other things
Date: 2023-09-23 07:36 pm (UTC)Probably! I'm assuming there will be a ton of internal Polish politics beyond any level of detail salon cares about, which I can't seem to get away from in my current reading either (dear historians: foreign policy, please).
Also, is this Lewin person who wrote the article a Russian?
I've been assuming so. I'm not as fast a reader as you, so I'm only halfway through, but I've already noticed at least one article by him in the footnotes that's in Russian. Also, his first name is Leonid.
Let me check, though--I couldn't necessarily tell Russian from another Slavic language at a glance.
Oh, look, he's got a whole book on Anton Ulrich that's in German, Macht, Intrigen und Verbannung: Welfen und Romanows am russischen Zarenhof des 18. Jahrhunderts, and it seems to cover Anton Ulrich's whole life story. (For those following along from home, the article I emailed Selena and am reading myself only covers Anton Ulrich's life in Russia up until Elizaveta's coup and the start of the imprisonment.) And the author bio on Amazon says Lewin was born in Russia in 1945, so yep, there's your no-homoing right there. The blurb mentions that he started work in Russian/Soviet sources in 1980, before the gate to the west opened, and now (2002) he can finally start researching "here". Makes sense, I noticed in the article he got a grant to go research the Lower Saxon archives in Wolfenbüttel, where all the best Anton Ulrich material is.
I might order this book; born-in-1945-Russia certainly has its drawbacks, but he does at least do archival research, and unlike a certain "Balance of power" und Pentatarchie book I want, it's 12 euros, not 100 euros.
Because no one is gay. Anna/Lynar happened, Julia Mengden, otoh, was simply a devoted servant.
Unsurprising. Lewin did bring my attention to the fact that when Anna/Lynar started, Anna was 16 and Lynar was 33; not sure I'd picked up on that.
I also don't think I knew that Anton Ulrich was, if not exactly the last one to find out that the reason he was in Russia was to marry the potential heir/mother of the heir to the throne, at least not especially clear or focused on this fact from the beginning. He seemed to think the most important thing was the regiment he was supposed to be put in charge of, and what is taking so long?? Everyone else: that is not the main point.
Re: Royal Reading Schedule and other things
Date: 2023-09-30 11:10 pm (UTC)Huh. That sounds... well, I suppose it's less surprising that he came to a bad end, with that kind of political savvy.
Re: Royal Reading Schedule and other things
Date: 2023-09-30 10:58 pm (UTC)Oof. Well, he lucked out, anyway.
Also, is this Lewin person who wrote the article a Russian? Because no one is gay. Anna/Lynar happened, Julia Mengden, otoh, was simply a devoted servant.
Okay, I laughed.
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-09-23 10:58 pm (UTC)Refreshing myself on this, I observe that it is in fact 6 volumes divided into 21 books, of which 20 books go up to 1763, and book 21 is "everything after that."
That beats Macaulay, at least, who straight up stopped in 1763.
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-10-10 07:51 am (UTC)Also:
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.
This cracked me up. :) Now I'm envisioning Catt including a passage where he has Fritz say that you know, him and MT are at war NOW, but in a few years, he prophecies they will divide Poland between them, and then she'll try but she'll take!
The Catherine novel/biography translated into German: you can send it to me, by all means, but I can't promise I'll read it within the next few weeks. (Also, since I'm back in Munich, my address there applies.)
In conclusion: "She cried but she took" is the "Let them eat cake!" of supposed Frederician sayings on an international basis, clearly.
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-10-10 11:56 am (UTC)I am especially confused why he ignored the fact that the memoirs were written in French and went straight to talking about "sie weinte und griff dabei immer zu," and also why he used Brendan Simms' book as his example of modern German historiography, without even wasting a thought on the fact that it was written in English.
Now I'm envisioning Catt including a passage where he has Fritz say that you know, him and MT are at war NOW, but in a few years, he prophecies they will divide Poland between them, and then she'll try but she'll take!
Lol!
The Catherine novel/biography translated into German: you can send it to me, by all means, but I can't promise I'll read it within the next few weeks.
Oh, I don't care if you *read* it! If I wanted you to read it, I would just drop the public domain English translation pdf into the Frederician library and link you. All I want to know from the German copy I'm sending you is how the German translator rendered "Elle pleure et prend toujours." And I care about that because not only is Luh missing English and French historiography, he's also missing out on cases where this line appeared in German works before 1928 because they were translated from works in other languages. (Other languages, Luh: they exist. I was chortling because the very day I posted this comment, you wrote in a post in your blog, "because this is an English article, and thus German language works do not exist." I almost replied, "Like Jürgen Luh, but in reverse!")
Anyway, if you want to read it and have time, feel free; Horowski includes it in his bibliography, so it might be worth reading. But all I need from you is to look up this one line and tell me how it goes in German.
In conclusion: "She cried but she took" is the "Let them eat cake!" of supposed Frederician sayings on an international basis, clearly.
I'm really curious how common it is in Polish historiography, but alas, I cannot read Polish. And the one author I know would be the place to start, Konopczyński, wrote too late to be public domain.
Oh, interesting, *one* of his relevant books is online, his The History of Modern Poland, 1936. Let me see.
spory ojej zastosowanie w praktyce trwały jeszcze pól roku, albowem cesarzowakrólowa, wśród łez i narzekań na ten traktat, "taki nierówny, taki niesłuszny", zagarniała najwięcej ludzi i ziemi.
Disputes about its practical application lasted another half a year, because the empress-queen, amid tears and complaints about this treaty, "so unequal, so unfair", seized most of the people and land.
Okay, not quoting Fritz, but definitely based in the same tradition! I wish I could check Konopczyński's Frederick the Great and Poland, or his The Bar Confederation, or his The First Partition of Poland.
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-10-18 07:27 am (UTC)So when you're back in Munich and check your copy, Selena, if you just want to look at page 247 and see if it contains "Sie läßt Knute und Stock gelten..." with the ellipsis at the end, then you have the same edition (there were apparently at least three editions of the French, I discovered tonight) as Royal Patron's library copy, and there is no need for you to do anything further with this book, unless you want to read it for your own sake.
Royal Patron was also nice enough to scan me a 1933 dissertation entitled "Russland und Schweden*: 1762-1772" which cannot be obtained for any price online, so that should be useful for my 1768-1772 (which is increasingly 1764-1772, because you need the lead-up for context) research as well! He is truly a most generous patron (with access to the UCLA library).
* You see where my inability to type "Sweden" on the first try comes from. ;)
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-10-18 07:33 am (UTC)Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-10-18 07:36 am (UTC)So interestingly, this book *would* not have been an early example of the quote in German, though it is in French and English historiography.
Re: "She cried but she took": according to non-Germans
Date: 2023-10-18 07:37 am (UTC)So interestingly, this book *would* not have been an early example of the quote in German, as I'd originally thought, though it is still a (very) early example in French and English historiography.