Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 48

[cahn]

Some awesome historical RPF candyheartsex stories for meeeeee (or by me, in one tiny case) with historical characters! I'm just going to note whom the stories are about here. They are all so good!!

Anne Boleyn/Catherine of Aragorn
Frances Howard and Frances Coke (or: James I's court was basically a HOTBED of scandal, omg)

And two that are also historical RPF but also consistent with the Jude Morgan novel The King's Touch, which is an excellent historical novel narrated by James ("Jemmy") Scott, Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son.

Princess Henrietta of England (Charles II's sister and wife of Philippe I duc d'Orleans)
James of Monmouth/William/Mary

Comments

Meinerzhagen's death

[mildred_of_midgard]

I was looking up Meinerzhagen in 1730, to see if he really died that night (inconclusive)

He did, he did! I finally have the Kurrent-and-German skills to decipher and read the 1730 protocols pertaining to Peter's trial that I ordered over a year ago, and I've now read all but one of the Meinerzhagen and Du Moulin documents (those are the long ones, in German; there are shorter ones in French and Dutch that I haven't read), and I have news to report.

One of the documents was driving me crazy, because it was signed Du Moulin, but it was obvious even from a glance that it was in Meinerzhagen's handwriting. It also, once I read it, talked about Du Moulin in the third person. I started wondering if there were two Du Moulins! But they had the same signature.

Well, having read the documents in the legible Kurrent first (which all turned out to be Meinerzhagen) and moving on to the less legible Kurrent, I have discovered two things:

On the same day that Meinerzhagen and Du Moulin discover that Peter has gone to England, Du Moulin writes (in his crazy handwriting) to FW, "I have to report sad news; after Meinerzhagen and I chatted about what to do about the Peter situation, I went home at 9 pm. Then one of his servants came and got me at 3 am, and told me to come, the sooner the better, because his master had just had a stroke and wouldn't last much longer. I arrived to a sad sight: the preacher and the whole family kneeling and praying for the Hausvater, who gave up the ghost 2 hours later."

Du Moulin also writes, "I attached his report and signed my name to it."

I am vindicated! I can identify different scribal hands! Not only was it not Du Moulin's, but after spending 50 pages deciphering Meinerzhagen's, I was pretty sure it was specifically M's. The two are easy to tell apart, because Du Moulin's handwriting is *insane*. It's readable with practice, but I've never seen the likes of it before. Here's how he writes "bin":



It's "binn", and each 'n' is two dots. D: You can see why it took me a while to get the hang of deciphering Du Moulin's documents.

In more interesting-to-everyone-else news (sorry, deciphering is an all-consuming and difficult task that tends to take over your brain):

1. Meinerzhagen totally died of a stroke the night after he discovered Peter had gone to England! That was not just oral legend conflating accounts ten years later.

2. This was 4 days after Peter had gone to England, so Nicolai's summary here:

At once Colonel von Dumoulin, later General lieutenant von Dumoulin, had to take up the pursuit of Keith, and he was given a letter to the King's envoy at the Hague, which ordered the later to assist Dumoulin in demanding Keith should be surrendered. Dumoulin and Meinertzhagen learned that one day a foreign officer had arrived and had gone to the envoy in question, without ever having been seen again. Their spies told them that in the mansard roof of the envoy's house, light was burning late at night, and that this room had not been used before. From these circumstances they concluded that Keith was hiding at the envoy's, and now their spy didn't let the envoy's house out of his sight. The envoy learned of this and that Keith's habit of reading late at night had given him away.

The following morning, the envoy came to Keith and told him: You are betrayed. Your King has spies after you, so be ready, I'll bring you to Scheveningen today, and everything there is ready for your transport to England. In the evening, he brought Keith in his own carriage to Scheveningen, and gave him letters of reccomendation for London, and didn't leave him until he saw him depart on a fisherman's boat. Keith happily arrived in England, from where he went into Portueguese service armed with reccommendations from the court. A few days later, Dumoulin learned by accident that Keith had escaped. He had gone to Scheveningen in order to see the fishermen arrive and was surprised that they dared to brave the sea in such little boats. One of the fishermen told him: With such a boat, we even make the trip to England; I'm just returning from there, and have transported a foreign officer. Dumoulin demanded a description of the officer, and from the circumstance that said man had been crosseyed, he concluded that it had been Keith.

is pretty close to the truth! As we know, Chesterfield himself wasn't home, it was his staff (more details on this once I translate the stuff I've deciphered), but the "few days" is accurate.

Nothing about Peter being cross-eyed in what I've deciphered, but D & M did go to Scheveningen a few days later, ask a bunch of questions, and get a description of a passenger that matched Peter's description. I assume being cross-eyed was a key feature in the description (we know it was in FW's description to Degenfield in England).

And of course, the names Dumoulin and Meinertzhagen are correct.

In short, it's not a perfectly accurate account, but Nicolai definitely did his research.

3. Nothing in the protocols (unless it's in the very last dispatch I haven't deciphered, or unless I missed something in my first pass) about the light on in Chesterfield's house. And given the SHEER amount of detail D & M are using to try to impress FW with, to convince him that not turning up Peter isn't because they haven't been trying REALLY hard, I have to assume one of them would have mentioned a light on. So unless I turn it up in my second pass or in the last doc, I'm going to be forced to conclude it probably didn't happen.

It is plausible that Peter read at night, though! It would be almost weirder if he didn't, given the scrutiny he'd be under as FW's body page, and given his BFF at this age was Fritz, Mister Reading at Night.

My main motivation for deciphering these protocols is to see if the reading at night appears; it's relevant to my essay. Fingers still crossed, but hope is fading.

I will try to get a write-up for salon after I finish deciphering the protocols. I'm alternating them with revising the decipherment of the Fredersdorf correspondence, and making good progress on both.