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1764-1772 Foreign policy: Broglie quotes

Date: 2024-02-15 12:55 am (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
And to wind up this series with a couple of quotes from the Duc de Broglie that I couldn't fit in anywhere else:

His take on (P)Russian!Pete:

Peter was a fanatical admirer of Frederick all his ambition was to be like him, at least physically, if he could not be so morally! For a long time past his favourite amusement had been to dress like his model, to imitate his gestures and his tones, and to equip and manoeuvre his own regiments on the Prussian system…In less than two months, without apprising either France or Austria, he had concluded a treaty with Frederick which was more like a declaration of love than one of alliance between two sovereigns.

On Catherine:

Russia had found in a woman the chief best adapted to finish the work of Peter the Great, and procure her entrée into the civilised world. Hard-headed, of unbending will and energetic temperament, uniting the grace and dignity of a queen with the morals of a vivandière, having her senses and reason under perfect control, even when giving way to the coarsest passions, equally at ease when jesting with Voltaire or disputing with Frederick, when leading her squadrons or taking part in the orgies of her Cossacks, Catherine had in herself a mixture of civilisation and barbarism which eminently fitted her to guide her empire through its transition from one social state to another.

And that's it! I have thoughts of doing the 1730s next, but not for a while: I'm trying to focus on archive materials for now, with the goal being to finish these essays, and between the handwriting and the languages (and work, omg), it's slow going. But one day, maybe more foreign policy from more decades!

Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Broglie quotes

Date: 2024-02-15 06:52 am (UTC)
selenak: (Default)
From: [personal profile] selenak
What is a vivandière, a hedonist?
And also, were there any orgies with Cossacks Catherine participated in? I seem to recall that no matter her reputation, her sexual encounters, no matter with long term favourites like Grigorii Orlov and Potemkin or sexy young things in her later years were a one on one combination?

Re: (P)Russian Pete: how is one like Fritz morally? I mean, according to the Duc? Is he referring to the Enlightened Authoritarian Reformist part, or the invading countries part, or the freedom of the penis (and possibly the vagina) promoting gay monarch part?

his favourite amusement had been to dress like his model, to imitate his gestures and his tones


Doing an FW imitation instead, if Poniatotowski is to be believed. Granted, not having actually met Fritz (as opposed to Catherine), getting his gestures and tone right based on description alone must have been tricky...

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Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Broglie quotes

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"Charles Edward Stuart", by Frank McLynn (1988)

Date: 2024-02-15 08:23 am (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
I suppose it was inevitable that I would someday read this biography, which appears to be the most thorough one. It's clearly based on a lot of archival material and has a lot of interesting info, but I do wish the author would keep from psychoanalyzing. Like, he literally says that's what he's doing, and refers to psychoanalysts that he's discussed with.

Samples:
"The later emergence of [BPC's brother Henry] as a homosexual personality reflects the disaster of his childhood."
"[BPC's] precious first years with his mother were enough to give him a predominantly heterosexual personality."

WTF??
selenak: (Default)
From: [personal profile] selenak
Good grief. Sounds familiar from other works of a biographical nature about other subjects, though. I mean, we'd like to think 1988 is too late for homosexuality to be seen as being the result of something wrong and an implied disaster per se, but... sadly no. That's why I'm always impressed when earlier biographers don't go that road (and wear my cheering hat for 19th century novelist, poet and travelogue author Theodor Fontane who doesn't use the word "gay" or "homosexual" for Heinrich but does use "love" without the qualifier "paternal/fraternal" when talking about Heinrich's relationships with his boyfrfiends. (And the description of Heinrich's relationship with his last boyfriend, the French emigré comte, as "the last warming beams of the setting sun" is such a lovely phrasing (and manages to get around 19th century Prussian censorship). All in the chapter on Rheinsberg which starts with: "Heinrich was cool, and if he didn't have the bad luck of being the little brother of even cooler Fritz, we Prussians would be fanboying him". And there's no 19th century code talk for the same sex inclination being in any way warped or degenerate or feminine or what not. This makes Fontane more progressive than 20th century biographer Charlotte Pangels who insistes that only Voltaire ever said Fritz was gay, so he wasn't, and that Heinrich wasn't gay, either, and Lehndorff was a hopelessly devoted...matchmaker who wanted Heinrich and Countess Bentinck to hook up.

Anyway, back to your guy. My symphathies, it does suck if the biography with the best collection of data also spouts those attitudes. If there's one thing worse than psychoanalizing, it's telling the readers who is and isn't sexually attractive in the author's pov. Ugh.

Anyway

Re: "Charles Edward Stuart", by Frank McLynn (1988)

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mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
Oof. I remember being irritated by the McLynn bio back in the day, but not why. Now I see why!

Re: "Charles Edward Stuart", by Frank McLynn (1988)

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Date: 2024-02-19 08:48 am (UTC)
selenak: (Default)
From: [personal profile] selenak
It says something about the novels I read in recent years that when I was glancing at the French entries I was indignant about the lack of Ida St. Elme, but then found her listed for the Netherlands, which, fair, it’s her origin. :) Also I’m curious how far Louis Ferdinand gets - that’s Heinrich’s favourite nephew who flirted fatefully with the Comtesse, Cahn, who was to inherit Rheinsberg and who died on the battlefield -, since while he was everyone’s favourite Byronic hero for a while in Prussia after his death, I don’t think more than a tiny percentage of academics remember him these days in Germany, let alone anywhere else. Also, here’s rooting for Alexandre Dumas’ Dad the General!

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Løvenørn letters: Sept 24, 1730

Date: 2024-02-18 11:28 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
According to the chronology of salon:

1730, August 5: Manteuffel resigns as Cabinet Minister, retires to his country seat Kummerfrey (= Sanssouci);

Løvenørn's take on developments is this:

The King of Prussia has allowed Monsieur de Manteuffel to stay at the Chateau de Trepton in Pomerania as long as he wishes, and His Majesty has presented him with all the materials necessary to build a beautiful house on the land he has two leagues from there. Friends here are still very busy trying to get him the place of Monsieur de Cnyphausen in the Cabinet.

Remember that Knyphausen is Ariane's father (soon to die), who was conspiring to make the English marriage happen, and who was dismissed after Fritz's escape attempt came to light.

We're almost done with the Løvenørn letters I have in my possession; about 12 pages to go.

Re: Løvenørn letters: Sept 24, 1730

Date: 2024-02-19 09:01 am (UTC)
selenak: (Default)
From: [personal profile] selenak
I see Manteuffel is still popular with the Scandinavians many years after his own stint as envoy there. :) And no mention that his retirement basically came five minutes before Hoym would have succeeded in gettng him fired, or of their rivalry per se?

Re: a possible cabinet post with FW - given that he was actually a citizen of Prussia by birth, he would have been eligible, I guess, and he had already managed to become liked by FW despite not being a mlitary man (at all, not in his entire life) but a professional diplomat and a man of letters with strong ongoing ties to the university, so I suppose it could have happened. But somehow I suspect FW, having never quite lost his belief there must have been SOMETHING to the whole Evil Catholic Kidnapping And Murder Scheme as told to him by Klement/Clement, also never quite forgot Manteuffel (and his boss) had been implicated in that. (Also that Manteuffel had been lovers with Frau von Baspiel who actually did spy for the Saxons.)

What this Lövenörn letter does show is that Manteuffel was really good at networking through several nataions.

Re: Løvenørn letters: Sept 24, 1730

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Løvenørn letters: Sept 27, 1730

Date: 2024-02-18 11:42 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
To show how strong the delusions of the ambassadors can be, Guy-Dickens has just come to Løvenørn and said, "Hey, I know things are really bad here at the Prussian court right now. You know what might come as a consolation in these dark times? Marrying Wilhelmine to Fritz of Wales! I bet we could have the single marriage alliance concluded by Christmas. But strangely, I haven't heard anything from any of the ministers here. I notice you have an in with Borck; do you think you could get him to bring up the idea with FW?"

Løvenørn: *internal sigh*

Løvenørn: Please consider that things have changed a LOT here, plus FW is a TERRIBLE mood, plus he only listens to Seckendorff and Grumbkow these days, and they want the single marriage as little as they want the double marriage. If you bring this up now, the only result will be to piss off FW even MORE at the English court.

You can hear Løvenørn thinking, "OMG, I cannot believe I have to explain this."
Edited Date: 2024-02-18 11:47 pm (UTC)

Re: Løvenørn letters: Sept 27, 1730

Date: 2024-02-19 09:05 am (UTC)
selenak: (Default)
From: [personal profile] selenak
Wow, yes. Incidentally, this means Guy-Dickens must be acting entirely on his own initiative, because G2 never keen on the double marriage to begin with, and certainly not now, given his own (and Caroline’s) relationship to Fritz of Wales.

ETA: Meant to add - didn’t the Brits from the start say that it was either double or nothing and that Wilhelmine/Fritz of Wales alone (which FW actually did suggest at one point) was out of the question?
Edited Date: 2024-02-19 09:07 am (UTC)

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Pic Spam alert

Date: 2024-02-19 06:51 pm (UTC)
selenak: (Sanssouci)
From: [personal profile] selenak
I had work to do in Berlin in Friday evening, so before I went back south I used the Saturday morning to visit a palacein Berlin I hadn't seen since I was 16 - Charlottenburg. Which turned out to have been a great idea..

Re: Pic Spam alert

Date: 2024-02-19 07:00 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
Oh, these are stunning, thank you!

Re: Pic Spam alert

Date: 2024-02-19 07:10 pm (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
Oh, cool! Also, some of those decorations are...certainly something. I do quite like the wallpaper that has yellow vertical stripes though.

Except for the current chief Hohenzollern, Georg Friedrich, the one who sued the state of Brandenburg and the Federal Republic because he wanted some cash compensation and experienced major backlash, to put it mildly.
Uh, compensation for what?

(I once looked up what the Bourbons were up to these days, and discovered that the current Bourbon pretender to the French throne is also the great-grandson of Franco. Yep, the Franco of the Spanish Civil War.)

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Løvenørn letters: Oct 4, 1730; Oct 11, 1730

Date: 2024-02-21 10:59 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
The Dutch envoy has been ordered to intercede on Fritz's behalf with FW, but he's at a loss for how to accomplish this, since FW is pissed off and not speaking to English-friendly envoys. Løvenørn made some quip about the state of isolation in which he and the other envoys live in a different letter, I forget exactly what, but it was basically along the lines of "we all live in suspended animation, and everyone is afraid to talk to us."

Then! FW invites the Dutch envoy to Wusterhausen to hunt deer. The envoy thinks he may be able to bring up the topic then, but there are new pitfalls, because, as Løvenørn has explained, FW is veering within the space of 15 minutes between outraged king and forgiving father. As a result, no one knows what to say to him.

Ha, now it's the 11th, and the Swedish envoy has a letter from the king to intercede on Fritz's behalf. The envoy asks Borck what to do, and Borck advises not mentioning it. Grumbkow, though, whom the envoy consulted simultaneously, thinks the letter *should* be passed on. So it was. But that was 8 days ago and FW hasn't said anything on the subject, so Løvenørn thinks the letter was without effect.

Meanwhile, FW continues hunting all the time, although he still has the remnants of the gout that has been bothering him in earlier letters (which I may not have mentioned).
selenak: (Default)
From: [personal profile] selenak
Maybe I‘m too cynical, but do we know whether all those monarchs (or Republics with Stadtholder, in the case of the Dutch) had a reason to plead for Fritz that‘s not just human compassion? And were there comparable efforts with Alexei and Peter the Great?

Anyway, I seem to recall FW had a life long fondness for the Dutch who impressed the hell out of him with their cleanliness and good Protestantism and industry the first time Mom and Grandma took him on a visit. But! The Boy Who Will Live, aka Peter von Keith, escaped via the Netherlands, so maybe there‘s some disgruntlement or was? Does Lövenörn mention Peter at all, btw?

Minor Peter Keith findings

Date: 2024-02-24 06:48 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
I'm slowly working my way through the 1500 pages of material from the Aurich archives. My ability to read Kurrent alternates between "I can read Kurrent!" "I can figure this out," and "WTF does this even say??" depending on the person's handwriting. My mood swings alternate accordingly. :P

Almost all of the stuff I've read so far and haven't reported on is financial. SO MANY financial papers. Contracts, testaments, the neverending legal battle between Peter's son and this one merchant in the 1790s...

At some point I'll probably transcribe a couple of the more relevant ones and ask for a translation of the legalese (I can sort of read and decipher at the same time, sort of not), but so far nothing interesting.

A couple findings: Peter's son is consistently "Baron von Keith", which I always assumed was a courtesy title handed down via his mother (not usually how it happens, to my knowledge, but the Knyphausen family was kind of a big deal). But in poring over these documents, I have found a couple after Peter's death that refer to *Peter* as Baron. ?? Since when, inquiring minds want to know.

On the one hand, maybe young Carl Ernst is a Baron von Keith (through his mother) and somebody erroneously projected backwards to his father? OTOH, this is a very title-conscious society. On the third hand, nothing while Peter is alive refers to him as a Baron, and *most* of the stuff after his death refers to Ariane as the widow of "Lieutenant Colonel von Keith", and this is a very title-conscious society. So if he had been a baron and that wasn't confusion, I'd expect it to get used.

His son is pretty consistently a baron, though.

...Thinking here...I don't *think* Ariane is described as a baroness, though. She's either the widow of Lt. Col. Keith, or, later, Great Governess in her own right.

Where do these baron titles come from?? [personal profile] selenak or [personal profile] felis, any ideas? You two know more about German nobility than I do.

Finding number two: I've been wondering who Carl Ernst's heir was, and suspecting it was the head of the Knyphausen family. And indeed, it is a Count von Knyphausen. Part of the reason I care is that the author of the Knobelsdorff book and article, the one who taught us about the Peter-Knobelsdorff friendship, says he doesn't know what happens to Knobelsdorff's library and art collection after it passes to Peter, because Peter is so little studied. (Me! I am studying him! :D) And I've been hoping I can help him with it.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Peter's library inventoried after his death, so when I get to that, I'll make a note of it, and see if I can tell what happens (sold or kept in the family), and I do remember that in the stuff I want to transcribe for salon is a bit about a copper engraving collection Peter has that his sons (iirc) inherit, which I assume includes the engravings he got from Knobelsdorff (again, iirc).

Back to deciphering financial affairs!
Edited Date: 2024-02-24 06:49 pm (UTC)

Re: Minor Peter Keith findings

Date: 2024-02-24 09:57 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
Okay, a bit of genealogy: the Graf zu Innhausen und Knyphausen who is Carl Ernst's universal heir seems to be Edzard Moritz, whose father was Carl Philipp, whose father was Franz Ferdinand, whose brother was Ariane's father. So his first cousin once removed. (Who will die only a year after Carl Ernst.) Edzard Moritz was made a count in 1815.

Edzard Moritz's younger brother Carl Gustav also gets mentioned quite abit, though what exactly he inherits, I have not yet figured out. (Reading each individual word and getting the gist of it is not the same as keeping track of the contents of pages and pages of 18th century legalese and interest rates.) The only good thing about these all boring financial details is that the same vocabulary keeps getting reused, which is helpful when you're trying to decipher handwriting!

Barons

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Great quote from a mistress of James II

Date: 2024-03-04 04:10 pm (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
I'm currently reading "Sex and the Church in the Long Eighteenth Century" by William Gibson and Begiato, 2017 (that's the Anglican Church).

Here's a quote I knew you guys would enjoy. : D

When Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, a mistress of James II, was admitted to the court after the [Glorious] Revolution, she was received icily by Queen Mary. She brusquely told the Queen: "Why so haughty, madam? I have not sinned more notoriously in breaking the seventh commandment with your father, than you have done in breaking the fifth against him.

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Miscellaneous

Date: 2024-03-05 06:02 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
A few notes from my recent reading that weren't worthy of their own comment:

1) The author of the biography of Philippe the Regent that I just finished doesn't think the infamous "petits soupers" were outright orgies; he thinks that was all slander. The specific claim that lackeys were kept around to satisfy the ladies in case the men got too drunk and incapable is one that can apparently be traced to an unreliable source.

2) According to the same biography, Louis XIV made an effort to prepare his successors, in the sense of involving them in the administration of the realm and giving them some training. Unfortunately, as you may recall, the French royal house fell like dominoes to a series of misfortunes within the space of just a couple years. Every time he trained someone, they died off.

Then, when it became increasingly likely it was going to be Philippe as Regent and a small child ruling, Louis was like, "No training for you, nephew!" They had had some ~conflicts~ over the years. And my guess is that an intelligent and ambitious Philippe also seemed like a more viable threat to a living Louis than any of Louis' direct descendants.

Philippe seems to have done a pretty decent job in spite of being kept far away from anything political or administrative in France during Louis' lifetime.

The training that Louis' successors got reminded me strongly of the training that August the Strong gave to his son, future August III: attending committee meetings, receiving reports, etc. August III got a bad rap as someone who supposedly did not participate in ruling at all and left everything to Brühl, but if you're willing to browse through the boring stacks of bureaucratic papers in the Saxon archives, apparently the evidence showed that he was hands-on both as crown prince and as king. (He just wasn't a micromanaging workaholic with good PR like some people we could name.)

Speaking of browsing through boring stacks of bureaucratic papers, the papers from the Keith archives gave me an example of "douceurs" meaning what it means in English: gratituity, tip, or bribe. You may recall that when reading the Leining papers, this term shows up as something that hasn't been received. My first guess was the meaning I was familiar with, that someone hadn't gotten paid, but Selena, who read the whole passage, translated it as "sweets", because it's Fritz receiving them, and presumably he's not receiving tips!

Anyway, I was interested to see that at least 18th century German did also borrow the same word with the same meaning from French as modern-day English.

3) I also got a little detail on Carl Ernst's death in 1822: it was quick, in that he was active during the day (maybe visiting friends?) and ate with a good appetite, and died of a stroke at 11 pm. The author of the letter calls it a lucky death. There are a couple words I can't read, but something along the lines of: he normally went to bed at 10 pm, but that day he had stayed up until 10:30 talking with friends, and then [rode home?] and didn't stay talking any later.

So I'm guessing he got home just in time to die and didn't die in the street or at a friend's house? Something like that. There are 9 whole words of which I can't make out much more than "ritt[?] er auf[?] dem XXXX sXXXXd mit[?] dem kXXXXX" without spending a whole lot more time on this than I'm willing to right now. The plan is to keep reading and browsing, making notes of what's worth coming back to, and come back to the interesting material with hopefully more proficient skill!

4) Oh, and thanks to the endless set of invoices and payments and account books, I can tell you that his house in Berlin was being worked on at the time of his death. The walls and door(s), I think.

Yes, this material is riveting. :P

5) In the bio of Anna Amalia recommended by Selena, I learned that in Weimar, all subjects had to ask the Duke's permission before traveling abroad. (I am compiling a list of which countries/principalities have this rule.) Carl August's younger brother Constantin, like Heinrich and AW, struggled with being a younger son who could neither control his own destiny nor live the kind of useful life he wanted. There were conflicts.

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Philippe le Grenouille

Date: 2024-03-06 12:09 am (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
Grenouille meaning frog, of course. ;)

There exists a five-volume biography of Philip V written in the nineteenth-century by Alfred Baudrillart called Philippe V Et La Cour De France, which is based on the gold mine that is envoy reports. It's been on my radar for a while, because it gets cited extensively by all twentieth-century writers on this subject.

I have no intention of reading the whole thing, but I've been waiting until my French was a bit better, to do some dipping in. Well, we've finally gotten to the point where I can start, at least.

It then, belatedly, occurred to me that if Kamen's Philip V biography I did read (one volume, in English) relies so heavily on this biography, and this biography is based on envoy reports, this biography would obviously be where Kamen got the frog story from. Sure enough, that entire page in Kamen is just a close paraphrase of Baudrillart.

Sadly, Baudrillart provides no further details, but he does provide a citation to the unpublished envoy report, so if I ever get around to ordering materials from the French archives, I know where to find this one!

Also in this section I learned that Philip V was beating his wife and everyone around him, and that Isabella was complaining to the French envoy about the scratches and bruises on her body.

Normally, there would be a clear villain in this story: the absolute monarch hitting his wife and others at his mercy. However, immediately preceding this paragraph is the story that I told you that relates how a mentally ill man is trying to escape from his room so he can abdicate, and his wife keeps roping everyone into locking him back in the room and depriving him of writing materials so she can remain in power. In the subsequent passage, we find that, as I reported back in the day, Philip is also mentally ill enough that he is biting *himself*.

I admit, I would be hitting my captors too.

Something that Baudrillart reports that I didn't remember from Kamen is that word got out to the general populace, and a lot of people thought it would be a great idea if the mentally ill king were allowed to retire. Only the queen and courtiers who benefited from this arrangement thought it was imperative that Philip remain king.

This situation SUCKS.

On a completely unrelated note, something I learned from a different volume of this biography forces me to revise something I've said in the past.

Back in the very earliest days of salon, when [personal profile] selenak was summarizing the War of the Austrian Succession, she wrote:

Philip of Spain (another one!): So I'm a French Bourbon, not a Habsburg, but the Habsburgs used to rule Spain until me. (I'm the first Bourbon on the throne.) Therefore, I should totally rule Austria and the Holy Roman Empire now. At least I'm not A WOMAN.

A year ago, we had a lot (loooot) more knowledge of the 18th century, and I questioned whether Philip was after the Holy Roman Empire. As far as I knew, he was exclusively fighting for territory in Italy, based on the claims of his wife (Isabella Farnese) to Parma and Piacenza, plus the territory Spain had lost during the War of the Spanish Succession, like Gibraltar and Menorca.

Having read the very start of the War of the Austrian Succession as recounted by Baudrillart, I can now share his account, which goes like this:

Philip V: No alternating Protestants and Catholics for Holy Roman Emperor!

[Mildred: Has he heard rumors about Fritz as a candidate?]

Philip V: Personally, I think the Wittelsbach candidate is a good idea.

Isabella of Parma: My oldest son, Don Carlos, is married to the daughter of August III. So I think August III is an A+ candidate!

Philip V: While we're here, let's not forget that I have claims to Habsburg hereditary territories!

The rest of Europe: ...

The rest of Europe: *tries to keep a straight face*

Philip V: Fine! But my wife has claims in Italy. If we can't have Habsburg territory, we want Italian principalities as compensation. Those aren't covered by the Pragmatic Sanction. We will fight a whole war for them!

And so I was right that the war was fought over Italy, but none of my sources reported this initial diplomatic angling for Habsburg territory (sadly, Baudrillart doesn't specify what territory or what the basis for the claim is). Checking my copy of Anderson's War of the Austrian Succession, he indeed skips over this step in saying that immediately after the news of the death of Charles VI reached Madrid, Philip and Isabella started pressing for Italian territory.

Foreign policy: always revealing new layers of complexity!

Re: Philippe le Grenouille

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Re: Philippe le Grenouille

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Re: Philippe le Grenouille

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth

Date: 2024-03-06 10:36 am (UTC)
selenak: (DuncanAmanda - Kathyh)
From: [personal profile] selenak
In the novel? I'd say it's ambiguous - possible, but then this novel is one of the few which I think carries off the problem of conveying to the readers the narrator isn't always right in their assumptions (for example: I think it's crystal clear even before he says so that Charles II wasn't married to Jemmy's mother Lucy, and that Jemmy is grasping at straws and kididng himself because he wants it desperately to be true that his parents were married), and Harriet is the narrator of the epilogue and clearly biased, poor woman. Again, it's possible, because William is described as clever and the kind of long term thinker Jemmy is not, but otoh I also think we're meant to believe his affection for Jemmy is genuine. (Which wouldn't exclude a human sacrifice in the game of thrones, of course.)

In real life? Well, I haven't yet read a biography of William (or Mary), but in the Monmouth biography by Anna Keay she casts the blame somewhere else - on Ferguson and Argyll for pressuring Jemmy into joining an uprising against James NOW (with himself as the figurehead, argueing that he disappointed his followers already once when not continuing his rebellion against dead, and now they're ready to shed their blood for Protestant England and he can't claim filial love as an excuse), going as far as feeding him false information, including the sensational claim that James poisoned brother Charles.

(Now I'm not fond of James II, but yeah, no. Otoh, Jemmy and James loathed each other and from Jemmy's pov, it did look suspicious - there's that last secret meeting with Charles where Charles signals he'll call him back, and then, oops, Charles - who was healthy all his life - dies, and even converts to Catholicism on his deathbed, with seemingly no one but James and the priest as witnesses, sceptical Charles. Biographer Anna Keay points out the relationship with Charles was the most important and central one in Jemmy's entire life, he was reeling from the shock (especially coming so relatively soon after the reconciliation in their last meeting and the prospect of being able to return home), and blaming James was probably all too tempting. And once he believed James had gone that far, well.

But. Bear in mind this is all before James the never III is born to James II and Mary of Modena. At this point, the very Protestant William and Mary are the unquestioned heirs to James, next in line to the throne to the three Kingdoms, not even the most Catholic of Catholics in Ireland would dispute it. Meaning you have Protestant heirs with a perfectly legitimate claim, whose legitimate birth is unquestioned on both sides. Meaning William had no reason to go for a rebellion now. He only had one once James II had a Catholic son, which wasn't the case yet, since he and Mary were 100% secure to inherit once James bit the dust. So there was no chance William and Mary would agree to lead an anti-James uprising at this point, which is why some of the Whigs went for Jemmy in the first place. (That, and good old fashioned Xenophobia, because of William being Dutch and thus in the event of his reign bound to bring his own, Dutch people into juicy positions, as opposed to owing them everything.)

Now, did William have reason to fear Jemmy as competition so much that he needed to set him up? Not according to Anna Keay, who also points out that Jemmy's asylum in the Hague originally did depend on the understanding he wouldn't make a play for the throne. And he always did have the drawback of not being legitimate, and of not enough people believing that his parents were married after all, and again, of William and Mary being the perfectly legitimate Protestant alternative for even the most determined NO POPERY minded Englishman.

What confused a lot of contemporaries, according to Keay, was how warmly William (never the most demonstrative of men, not even when young) and Mary interacted with Jemmy, and they were looking for motives beyond "annoying James", and a Machiavellian strategy would provide one. In any case, for an AU where they remain allies and Jemmy doesn't die, the impression I had from the biography it just needed two factors to change - Jemmy does not listen to the pressure from Ferguson & Co., and also, William continues to not kick him out somewhat longer. (In rl, Jemmy wasn't in the Hague when Charles died, he was in Brussels, i.e. the Spanish Netherlands, where he got kicked out at once following the demand by James II, but he then returned to Holland and William did let him stay there for a while.

The stadtholder went through the motions of congratulating his father-in-law on his accession, but when Monmouth returned from Brussels and James II asked that he be explelled, William did almost nothing. He had witnessed first-hand Monmouth's determination not to be drawn into rebellion - earlier, during the last years of Charles' life - and was not minded to give his friend up. As the dissidents assembled in Rotterdam in early April the English ambassador confronted William again abouto Monmouth. William murmred that he would expel him but, in Skelton's words, 'gave me little encouragement or hope it would ever be done' The frustration in London grew wiht the days that passed. The Earl of Rochester wrote to William claiming that they were not seeking to drive Monmouth from country to country, but surely he could see that they would not have him 'hovering just over against England'. Yet still William prevaricated, knowing nothing of Monmouth's change of hearts, and even a direct and stern letter from James II a few weeks later did not result in any definitive action.

I.e. the way Anna Keay tells it, if Jemmy doesn't listen to any pressure from England and, say, makes a public oath of loyalty that he respects the succession rights OF WILLIAM AND MARY (this wouldn't exclude a later joint action against James II altogether, but otoh right now is not treacherous even for a James II follower, since William and Mary are his legal heirs), chances are William and Mary would keep him against James II's objection and gamble on James II not going to war over his nephew. (The moment James II has a Catholic sons, all conditions change, of course.)

Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth - Quote time

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth - Quote time

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Re: William/Mary/James of Monmouth - Quote time

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Meanwhile with the early Stuarts

Date: 2024-03-09 03:39 pm (UTC)
selenak: (Regina by etherealnetwork)
From: [personal profile] selenak
The tv series Mary and George (about Buckingham's rise to power) is streaming (alas not where I can see it) and gets good reviews, which confirm my suspicion it partly covers the same territory as my story about the two Frances' does:

George and the king’s longtime favourite, young Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, are soon sworn enemies but Somerset is on the skids and knows it.

and:

There is a plot to marry the feeble-minded John (a lovely, heartbreaking turn by Tom Victor) to the daughter of Sir Edward Coke (Adrian Rawlins), who is quite keen on the idea, and of Lady Hatton (Nicola Walker), who is having none of it. “I would rather strangle her dead,” she tells Mary in front of the assembled dinner party when the proposal is mooted. Game recognises game.

James VI and I is played by Tony Curran, whom I remember as a good Vincent van Gogh on Doctor Who, and who in in this interview insistes there's tenderness as well as lust: Sexual allure, he says, particularly for George and Mary, is about power, “but then there’s a friendship and ultimately a love, and vulnerability. There are letters from King James to George, and he would [write] ‘my sweet child and wife’.”

Selena: this last part freaked [personal profile] cahn out.

Hohenzollern/Habsburg: The Origin Story

Date: 2024-03-17 09:33 am (UTC)
selenak: (Voltaire)
From: [personal profile] selenak
„History of the Germans“ currently tells how the first Habsburg got on the throne. Last week included the precious detail that one of his most important helpers, basically the „Vote Rudolf! Habsburg Fuck Yeah!“ guy, was none other than Friedrich von (Hohen)Zollern, Burggraf von Nürnberg. (You might recall this - Burggraf von Nürnberg - is still one of Fritz‘ titles in the document where he gives Zernikow to Fredersdorf.) This week details how Rudolf von Habsburg got rid of his most dangerous opponent, Ottokar of Bohemia, and won Austria, Styria and Carinthia (all owned by Ottokar) while he was at it in a magnificent bastard manner which would win Mildred‘s approval, methinks. Not knowing anything about Rudolf before other than he was the first Habsburg on the throne and the first Emperor after the Interregnum, I was impressed myself.

For Cahn, recapitulation of the sensational bits in these episodes and the circumstances: after the death of the other Friedrich II, Stupor Mundi, in 1250, there was no more Emperor for the next twenty years or so. There was a succession of Kings of the Romans, though (i.e. de facto Kings of the Germans, that just wasn‘t the title used), some voted in with papal backing to get rid of the last Hohenstaufen, and most of whom never even showed up in German territories. (Like Alfonso of Aragon, Richard of Cornwall, or Charles of Anjou‘s son.) Meanwhile, the German nobility had a go in dog eats dog manner at the Hohenstaufen territories within Germany. Just how anarchic this period was in comparison to earlier ones is debated, not least because of course the Habsburgs later had a vested interest in presenting it as bad as possible to make their own arrival on the scene look as good as possible. Anyway, because after two decades simultanously the Crusader states in Palestine and Syria were busy being reconquered by the Muslims, Pope Gregory X told the German princes to get their act together and vote a King of the Romans into office who could then be made Emperor and lead a new Crusade. Said guy was under no circumstances to be related to the Hohenstaufen (that‘s you, Alfonso) or to have territory in Italy (that‘s you, Charles of Anjou). Oh, and he should have military experience, given he was supposed to lead a Crusade to win the Holy Land back. Meanwhile, the German Dukes, having helped themselves to as much territory and privileges as possible, did not want a guy among their ranks with money and soldiers enough to actually boss them around and, shock horror, tell them what to do. Their idea for Emperor was someone who maybe could be an arbiter for internoble disputes, but no more. Which is why the fabulously wealthy Ottokar, King of Bohemia, who after the Babenberg family (until then Dukes of Austria) had died out, had married the sister of the last Babenberg and gotten his paws on Austria, Styria and Carinthia this way, despite her being 30 years older than him, had then ditched the lady in favour of a younger model without, of course, giving her dowry back, did not make it to the top. Despite aggressive campaigning and believing himself made for the job. He even had a golden armour.

Meanwhile, Friedrich of (Hohen)Zollern: So, here‘s my idea: let‘s go not for a Duke, but a Count. Without a Dukedom of his own, he‘ll never be able to compete with you guys, or boss you around. Also, he‘s a seasoned and successful campaigner, so good military credentials. AND he‘s 55, so no spring chicken, and if we‘ve made a mistake, well, he won‘t be around that long, clearly. Vote Habsburg! Vote Rudolf!“

Enter Count Rudolf von Habsburg. Whom later Habsburg propaganda painted as a poor and modest man to make his rise even more impressive. He was neither. While not controlling Ottokar‘s kind of means, he was an ambitous and clever go getter who had used his family‘s fecundity, as DIrk puts it, to gather wealth and territory. (Yes, tu felix Austria nube was a thing before they ever had Austria.) He had a lot of sisters, daughters, and cousins whom he married into a lot of dying out noble families, so every time someone died out, here was Rudolf with a marriage certificate. Also, he was a passionate chess player and able to outhink while a lot of the opposition. And what he couldn’t marry into, he wasn’t shy to acquire by good old fighting and stabbing. So he actually did have money and soldiers when showing up as a candidate for the throne. He knew, of course, that being voted King of the Romans would be of no use if Ottokar would just fight against him and squash him, so he had to get there first. And also, he needed to stabilize the country/countries in a way that didn‘t make the powerful nobles who had voted for him believing he was a tool switch to Team Ottokar. So on the one hand he invented the office of Landvogt, putting members of the nobility in charge of enforcing the law (including the "no feuding and burning each other's farmers' estates!" one) in various regions, thereby tying them in, on the other hand, he revived a ceremony which hadn't been done since Federico Secondo, to wit, where the nobility paid homage to a newly elected King and renewed their oaths of fealty (and got assured they still held their fiefdom). In Nuremberg, home of his buddy Friedrich von Zollern. Ottokar refused to come, as Rudolf knew he would, thereby pissing off a lot of other Dukes who felt this was an insult to them and their voting power. This gave Rudolf a reason to get his soldiers marching, and while ultimately it turned out to be a close thing, he did win, and decided to keep Austria, Styria and Carinthia while he was at it as personal fiefdoms for his family. (Ever since till the end of WWI: Habsburg/Austria OTP.) Bohemia he let Ottokar's son keep, but made sure said son married his, Rudolf's daughter. You know. Just in case.

Now, and this isn't in the podcast, Franz Grillparzer, one of the most famous German (and Austrian) playwrights of the 19th century, wrote a play about this, which I looked up the wiki entry of since I had never gotten around to reading it yet. And lo, hilarity was had, because: it was the 1820s, post Napoleonic Wars, when Metternich had ensured hardcore censorship laws in all German speaking states, and this play initially was forbidden, until a (female) member of the Habsburg clan got a hold of it, read it, and intervened because she thought it was a beautifully patriotic play, and where was the problem?

The problem ahd been this: in the play, which is Ottokar-focused, you have this self aggrandizing guy aiming for the imperial crown who sends his older wife away and marries a young one, and said young wife then turns out to be a conniving cheater and bitch whereas the older one had truly loved him, and then this self aggrandizing guy goes down courtesy of an alliance of princes. Evidently the Austrian censor thought this was an ever so subtle allusion to Napoleon, Josephine and none other than Habsburg princess Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife, who by now was happy (if not married to) with her man of choice, Count Neipperg, and thus an insult to the Habsburg family who preferred to forget and downplay that one of theirs had been married to a Bonaparte, let alone to THE Bonaparte. Which is a really far stretch on the censor's part but tells you something about the climate created by Metternich in the post Napoleonic Wars world.

Re: Hohenzollern/Habsburg: The Origin Story

Date: 2024-03-17 11:14 pm (UTC)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
I do indeed approve of the magnificent bastardry! I also clearly need to get back to catching up on episodes. (Probably when the weather warms up a bit; I can only listen to podcasts when on very long walks.) I also need to get back to salon in general; work is calming down and I have no excuse now except lack of momentum.

So thank you for this write-up; it's inspiring me to take more steps in the direction of coming back!

(I owe you all a write-up on the Duc de Richelieu, whose biography I'm halfway through.)

Oh, lol, here's an update that surfaced as I was typing this: I'm idly browsing the list of books owned by Peter and catalogued after this death, and whoever was cataloguing them decided that they should compose an entry this way:

Antimachiavel par Voltaire, Hage, 1746.

You read this, and you realize just how inaccurate even archival sources are. Peter's been listed as a baron a number of times circa 1757), including by the same person who called him academy director (not curator), so...I'm pretty sure all references to Peter as Baron are just word-of-mouth confusion over his wife being a baroness*, the same way the guy who printed a book gets confused with the guy who wrote it (or maybe it's 1757 and everyone is all...let us never speak of Fritz and that book again. Something something keeping treaties. :P)

* I mean, in a status-conscious society, better safe than sorry, right? I myself have been addressed as "professor" in contexts where the reasoning was clearly "better to call someone in academia a professor when they're not, than not give a professor their proper title."

Re: Hohenzollern/Habsburg: The Origin Story

From: [personal profile] selenak - Date: 2024-03-18 10:32 am (UTC) - Expand

Peter's library

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