Henri de Catt: The War Time Journal
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rheinsbergWhile historians and contemporaries alike have questioned the general reliability for many a Frederician era memoirist - Pöllnitz, Wihelmine, Thièbault, Bielfeld - for various reasons (personal agenda, lack of access to archives for countercheckijng and hence reliance on faulty memory, etc.). Someone who usually escapes this kind of scepticism and whose memoirs in the biographies we've read get quoted without the slightest bit of doubt is Henri de Catt, decades-long lector to Fritz until their fallout in the early 1780s. Now, Catt's memoirs, focusing on the 7 Years War, during which time he started his work for Friedrich II., are based on a journal he kept during that time.
mildred_of_midgard did not only unearth a copy for the memoirs, but of the diary, published in 1884 (i.e. about a century after its author died) in the original langage (mostly French, we'll get to what else later) with a German preface. Imagine our collective surprise when the preface, comparing Catt's actual notes with what he wrote in the memoirs later, revealed Henri de Catt to have been, shall we say, somewhat economic with the truth.
How to beef up a war time journal to memoirs more than twice that size, or: Henri de Catt, historical novelist
It's not that Henri de Catt doesn't use his journal as source material. It's that he uses a great many other sources as well, isn't above putting them in the mouth of Fritz when said sources were someone else, and rearranges the timing of his conversations - both real and imagined - to create the impression of himself as Fritz' most important confidant. The preface says, referring to Henri de Catt as "the author":
Moreover, the author has, where his diaries testified the subject of conversation to him, given said subject a liberal treatment; he has grown out of already existent crystals entire sparkling creations. Where the diaries render the words of the King verbatim, the memoirs stick to them faithfully; but it happenes in a chonological reordering, so that statements which belong to different days and different conversations get thrown together, i.e. get connected through an always aptly invented transition.
The author also put certain statements, especially the flood of characteristic traits, witty ideas and anecdotes which he had jotted down in his exercise books from a variety of sources, in the memoirs into the mouth of the King, even if the diaries did not give him the right for this. Especially in the time before and after the battle of Kunersdorf when Catt had been left with Prince Heinrich's army by the King, the diaries (p. 394 ff.) are rich with stories of the type mentioned, which our author thus has heard from others, not from the King. At one point, the diaries name explicitly someone else, Secretary Eichel, as the source for a story (p.417), which in the memoirs is ascribed to the King.
(Sidenote by me: if Catt talked to Eichel, who of course knew that Fritz had the Katte trial files ordered up upon becoming King and resealed, and also knew a lot about Küstrin, that gives him another valid source. Shame he didn't name it.)
(...) The memoirs are more than twice the size of the diaries. As much as the original material was stretched via rearrangement, the difference in size isn't explainable by this alone. The author has used other material in addition to his Diary.
Something that surprises in the military lessons he has the King give him is the incredibly accuracy of numbers. Are we supposed to believe that the King, when he after lunch talks to his companion about military matters of the morning (...) already has the exact numbers at hand when the report by troops involved usually took longer than that? Certainly not, and thus it is no surprise that the "military crash course" has only been given to the Catt of the memoirs, not to the Catt of the diaries. (...)
A comparison between the work which at the current state of research is still the basis for all studies of the 7-Years-War proves an great equivalance between Tempelhof's depiction of the 1758 campaign and that in Catt's memoirs. The second volume of Tempelhof's history was published in 1785; thus there was the chance for Catt to draw his military wisdom from this source. If his description of the battle of Zorndorf has an impressive similarity to the description given by Tielcke in 1776 in the second volume of his "Beyträge zur Kriegs-Kunst und Geschichte des Krieges von 1756 - 1763", one could further suspect that our author borrowed from the Saxon Colonel as he had done from the Prussian Major. But Catt did not speak German, he would have to get the works of Tempelhof and Tieclke translated for himself. He was, however, not in need of this; he was the owner of a French written journal about the campaign of 1758 which is still among the material in his archive and this very extensive manuscript has proved, in a German version, the source for both these military writers. (Footnote says where Tielcke and Tempelhof got it from; from a collection of 7 Wars Material made by the secretary of the late von Wobersnow and from a partial publication in a miltary journal named "Bellona" in Dresden, 1781 ff, respectively.)
Catt isn't above borrowing literal phrases from this material and rendering it as the King's military expertise in his memoirs. Not enough that Friedrich has to narrate the facts evening for evening, even his strategic judgment is that of the military Anonymous. A fleeting mistake of Catt's in the use of his source then has the consequence that the King in the memoirs mourns for a General on June 17th, 1758, who in real life on that day simply got a strong reproof. (...)
With the year 1759, this oracle (the anonymous military journal) ceases to be available. But the author of the memoirs knew how to help himself. When Glatz fell on July 1760, the war files of Fouque and thus also the letters of Frederick the Great to this general had been captured by the enemy. In various printings fragments of this correspondance got in print and thus known to the public soon after the ending of the war. One of these editions was owned by Catt; he used them for 1759 in a similar way as the military journal for 1758. Whatever the King writes to Fouque in confidence, he tells in the same confidence to his reader. In the "Recuiel" of the letters to Fouque Catt also found a copy of the memorandum the Prince of Prussia had written as a justification of his behavior in the Bohemia campaign of 1757; it gave Catt the possibility to describe the argument between the Prince and his royal brother.
When the letters to Fouque end, Catt helps himsef for the second half of 1759 with the King's "Histoire de la guerre des sept ans", which he seems to have known before its publication in the "ouevres posthumes". Finally, he used the correspondance between the King and the Marquis d'Argens for the third and fourth part of his memoirs in a similar thorough way as he did the letters to Fouque. He seems to have had a copy of this correspondance at his disposal; at least there have been letters to the Marquis used which are missing in the edition "Ouevres Posthumes".
Catt took the stones and pebbles for the mosaic forming his memoirs thus from this series of recognizable quarries. (...) Thus when the memoirs let the King describe the history of the Prince of Prussia's sickness exactly with the words used in an anonmously published biography of the Prince. (Footnote here says "See p. 104, p. 170" which I take it is a reference to Catt's memoirs. But doesn't say which anonymous biography.) In other cases, you can see he used the official military dispatches as they had been given out from Berlin and later collected in anthologies. (....)
Catt repeatedly shows the weakness of memoir writesrs to put their own person in a beaming light. Thus inevitably the author knows the King basically much better and can judge him much better than he knows himself. (p. 128, 233) (...) Whenever there is an important moment happening in Friedrich's life, Catt is there as a witness and confidant. When the news of the death of the Prince of Prussia arrives, Catt is according to his memoirs the first to whom the brother speaks of his pain; whereas the diaries proof that the reader wasn't even received by the King in the first four days after the arrival of the mournful news. When three months later the sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth dies, according to the Memoirs the King immediately must speak to Catt, who gets woken up for this at 2 am; once the King dismisses him three hours later, he sends immediately a letter of condolence, which after all the verbal condolences given in the previous pages seems somewhat redundant, but which makes the recepient send for him again only fifteen minutes later, only to receive him in the evening for the third time and this time for four hours. Whereas the diaries prove that Catt had first written the condolence letter before the King ever talked to him, which makes sense, and then showed up in the afternoon at the regular hour (p. 195).
Preface writer gives some more examples, none of which are related to Küstrin and Katte. Which, incidentally, is curious; you'd think if Catt added that without a basis in his diaries, it would be much more worth mentioning than his letting Fritz give him a military crash course. But maybe that's our gossipy sensationalist priority speaking. For a detailed analysis by Mildred of how Catt stitched the Küstrin/Katte conversation together in his memoirs, using material from various different conversations and sources, read on here.
Also: while Henri de Catt's memoirs and diaries - along with his other papers and Collection of 7 Years War material - weren't published yet, Preuß did have access to them because at that point they had ended up in the Prussian state archive, and he was allowed to use them for his biography. Which explains why he quotes from them in a biography published in the mid 19th century when asmildred_of_midgard told us the memoirs themselves weren't published until a few decades later.
Before we get to actual diary quotes, here'smildred_of_midgard on the language Henri de Catt's journal is written in:
Henri de Catt: Surprise Latin-French-Greek-English
Partway through, he decides he's going to start switching between French and Latin in the same sentence.
It gets even wilder. He quotes Fritz uttering a sentence that goes, word by word, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, French, French, Latin, and then in the very next sentence, which is Catt's, Catt decides to one-up Fritz and go French, French, French, Latin, Latin, Greek, with the last in the Greek alphabet, no less (p. 374).
Look:
»Mais possum finire tragoediam quand je volam.« Je le vis in parvula δόξᾳ.
"But I can end the tragedy when I want." I saw it in a small [...]
I assume this is Fritz showing Catt the little box of opium. (Which he kept as a possible suicide tool.) Is this like sensitive information that we have to put in code? In case some French speaker happens to come along and not be able to figure out Latin? But just in case they can figure out Latin based on their French, let's make absolutely sure they don't know where the opium is kept?
The problem with this: δόξᾳ doesn't mean box. In all the dictionaries I've checked, I've not been able to find any definitions other than the ones I was familiar with: judgment, opinion, vision, glory. How on earth does that make sense in context? It should mean box or other type of container. Another layer of code here?
Help?
Anyway, now Catt's just decided that...what's the French + Latin equivalent of Franglais?...is the way to go. Look: "Vidi regem. Mihi dit quod multum pro Keith, et sa résolution etc." Latin, Latin, Latin, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, proper name, French (probably), French, French (p. 375).
ETA: You know, it did occur to me that δόξᾳ is suspiciously like the English word "box", especially if you flip the delta around. But I immediately decided that was me being Anglocentric, why on earth would Henri de Catt use English-Greek code, etc.
But now that I know he has no problem throwing random English words into his diary, that's totally what I think it is! And I do think it's code, because he doesn't want everyone knowing where Fritz keeps his suicide device.
And it occurs to me that one thing I used to do in my own very secret diary was throw *random* words into dwarven runes, just so potential snoops wouldn't home in on the secret words and only the secret words.
And this *is* the first time he starts code-switching. I now think maybe he's covering his tracks with random languages, so his diary doesn't have exactly one sentence in other languages in the midst of all-French diary. Because the very next entry is one sentence of code-switching.
Then just three days later, he's code-switching again. Yeah, he might be covering his tracks.
The further you get into the diary, though, the wilder he gets, I can tell you that. Whatever else was going on, I think he started having fun./ end of Mildred's linguistic expertise
Good thing then, I suppose, your faithful gossipy sensationalists were taught Latin (unlike Fritz). On to De Catt: The Diary version. Featuring, sadly, not a single mention of Katte, but a good deal of highly interesting quotes including Fritz taking a break from 18th century misogony to champion the female right to have extramarital sex if their husbands cheat on them first, and a refreshingly epitepth free assessment of his best enemy, Maria Theresia; morever, I have a theory as to where Catt's description of one particular 1730 episode, which in the memoirs he gives to Fritz but in the diary hears during his weeks with Heinrich's army comes from.
Henri de Catt: Unplugged
The closest thing we get to the memoirs' letting Fritz confide in Catt about Küstrin and Katte barely a month after Henri de Catt started his job is a diary entry set one year later, after the defeat at Maxen, Fritz is depressed, he's telling Catt in direct discourse about being locked up alone by his father in a room for three months, his food passed through a small window, getting his shirt the same way, being miserable, never being happy except at Rheinsberg. No mention of Katte, though.
As the 1884 editor says in the preface, Henri de Catt massively rewrites his involvement when Fritz gets sibling death news. What is in the diary re: AW (who as in the memoirs has been edited out of Fritz' descriptions of his 1740 Straßburg trip when still alive), is, four days post Fritz getting the news, "spoke of his good heart", a quote I'll get to after Wilhelmine's death, and, much later, the "I totally would have retired from kingship after the war had he lived".
(All his siblings: get a coughing fit)
The actual passage:
21. Called at 7. We talked a lot of morals. He often quotes these lines from Agamemnon:, Happy who 'etc. You see, it has been a long time since I thought of these sweet moments that I would find in retirement; I thought of retiring, my dead brother disturbs my plan, because I cannot do it in a time of minority. It is not necessary; my nephew is fourteen, in four years he will be of age. We must put an interval between these worries and death. I still have five years in my body. That is all. I'm losing my fire. Ah, if you had seen me a few years ago! If you saw me in fine weather, you would find me very different.
Bad AW, spoiling Fritz' retirement plans. Sigh.
Which means anything else in the memoirs about AW and his death - and there is a lot - was made up by Catt and/or taken from various other sources, as said in the preface. As is, of course, Fritz in the memoirs saying that AW's private secretary, who just happens to be Catt's future brother-in-law (Henri de Catt will marry in 1761), is one of only two upstanding people around his brother, who surely, surely, would have influenced AW to reconcile with him, unlike those other evil advisors. (Never mind that as as documented by his own letters, it was Fritz who didn't want to reconcile but kept doubling up the hostility.)
On the more amusing side, Fritz is still in the love poetry ghost writing business, even without sister Ulrike and Voltaire being involved:
I tell him that I had made a verse piece for a beauty. He read it, criticized it. "Oh, I'll make you another one. Have you fucked her?" "No," I said. He composed a page of it in my presence and showed me a dictionary he had made during the last wars.
Now here's a civilian job that, as opposed to flutist, no one has imagined for Fritz: love poetry ghost writer.
Lots and lots of "Voltaire is the WORST!" as per the memoirs, and he keeps coming back to the prediction that Voltaire will die as a repentant son of the church with priests at his side out of fear, he's obsessed with it. My current guess as to why he keeps harping on this is: the idea of being broken. He himself has given in, not out of fear for the afterlife but of his father, but still, he has submitted. So Voltaire, who is so similar and yet not, can't be unbroken to the end. He is, of course, also irked that Voltaire still is war-critical.
Catt quoting Fritz quoting Voltaire happens often, but this is the most interesting passage to me, because it's as good a reconstruction of an authentic Fritz and Voltaire conversation we're likely to get:
Voltaire said to me: "But when you fight, are you not in rage?" - "No, that's when you need the most tranquility." - "But all your wars are the same." - "All the oxen appear as such; but to anyone who sees them up close, there is always a difference." - He (V) was attached to the Marquis de Villars, who, no doubt, had described to him a cavalry attack. - "But all these are heroic actions. You destroy the world and we enlighten it." - "But what is enlightenment? Whether the world is flat or round, what does it do for happiness?" - But you need moral principles, and follow them. However, in ten months I will have defeated the French, the Austrians and the Russians.
Err, not so much, Fritz, but okay. He's really irked that Voltaire doesn't appreciate the military genius enough:
I have had a lot of trouble since morning, so far it is not over. Gentlemen, the scholars laugh at our profession. Voltaire ridicules it. It is bad by the evils it causes: but it takes talent. Voltaire won't listen to anything. He says that reading battles annoys him, that he learns nothing there; but when I read the campaigns of Eugène, Montecuculi, Luxembourg, it gives me a thousand ideas.
The poem Fritz wrote to Wihelmine before her death shows up a lot.
"Come, I made a piece to my sister of Baireuth, on friendship." We talked about Voltaire, on the Henriade, which he found very beautiful, with this one flaw that he did not put his hero in the most touching situations. He said it to Voltaire, and he agreed to it. (...)
I was at 6 o'clock; he showed me the epistle to his Princess. Come, he said, see this epistle you're interested in. I worked on it a little, but I will let it rest for 5 or 6 days.
(I would say that Henri de Catt’s main job is admiring Fritz‘ poetry, but that’s unfair. (He's more of a hired civilian friend on call, which seems to have been true for all the readers.) Also, aw on the phrasing "his princess". Sa princesse indeed.)
So, in the memoirs, Catt gets dragged to Fritz at 2 am when the news of Wilhelmine's death arrives and they keep talking about her for hours three times during a single day. Meanwhile, diary:
18. I learned in the morning of the Princess's death. I wrote this letter to the King - His Majesty sent for me. I saw him sorry for this loss. We hardly talked (...).
To be fair, they do talk of Wilhelmine on other days. However, just because Wilhelmine is also dead doesn't mean AW is forgotten. Just...remembered in that special Fritzian way.
I was there after dinner. The King was overwhelmed; his smile always came back to him. He ate nothing. He was just drinking, he was so heated. We reasoned on the price of friendship; how little he indulged. There was talk of his brother, who had caused him much sorrow, in pace ut and in bello. "What consoles me is - without it I would not live."
In peace and in war? Whatever is AW supposed to have done in peace as well as in war, Fritz? There's one upcoming visitor who surely would love to know.
20. I was there at 2. - „Ah, how grieved I am! I don't have time to mourn the loss of this sister. We must hold on." Prince Heinrich arrived, which caused general joy.
I dare say. So how did that meeting go, Henri de Catt?
21. Called at a quarter past five in the morning. His Majesty was very distressed. - »I cried well yesterday with my brother. Here, my dear, it is not the loss of a battle that moves a captain or a warrior, but the death of a sister is irreparable, and what a sweeter feeling than friendship!" His Majesty went out at 8 . "I went for some recognaissance of the Austrian camp." I was there in the evening. His Majesty was fine. „Now here I am in force. We will see how it all ends. The massacre at Hochkirch was terrible. Everything came out pell-mell from the cemetery. Some were slashing their teeth, others were going there with their butts. Marshal Keith, speaking on the eve of the battle to the Margrave, said how the Austrians should attack us and how he would do it himself; we made the rope, them the bow.
As you may recall, Marshall Keith died at that battle. (And is listed on the Rheinsberg Obelisk.)
Meanwhile, miliary inspections with Seydlitz cameo are a thing:
22. I went with His Majesty to take a turn to the left wing. Called, I spoke of these three sentries from whom the guns had been taken. - »This is not surprising, if three sleep in an army. It is good, he said, "that kings are sometimes unhappy. Don't you think we are accurate enough? "- Yes. But I don't see how they surprised us. But these misfortunes happen every hundred years. - General Seydlitz, on the 14th, said to the King: "Does not His Majesty want to withdraw the infantry?" "But, Seydlitz, I will lose the battle!" Well, may Your Majesty win it!", and away he went.
One way a depressed Fritz in the early November of 1758 distracts himself from lost battles and dead siblings is by gossiping about the nearly ten years dead Èmilie du Châtelet. According to the memoirs, he does this with D'Argens (who'd known both Voltaire and Émilie from France. It is, however, clear that Fritz is the one contributing the garbled suicide attempt tale whichcahn identified as a gossip story about Émilie predating her involvement with Voltaire.
2. Left at 7, arrived at 3:30 in Jauernick; pretty well with a good peasant, from where I had two men decamped. Dined at 7. His Majesty sent for me. She was very tired. They spoke of Madame the Marquise du Châtelet; that she got fucked, but only by mathematicians or poets; that she was tight with Maupertuis, and that this was the beginning of his feud with Voltaire, who was jealous of him. "Maupertuis' physiognomy, says His Majesty, "is the most gloomy I have ever seen, but he is brutally honest man, he never gives in." The Marquise wanting to make an experiment on fire, burned an entire forest and made to admit to her husband, she said that it was a gallantry that she created for him, so that he had a good view. "" She put herself in a very hot bath, to see how far she could sustain the heat. would have remained without her chambermaid, who ran in a timely fashion. "" She was waiting for Voltaire from Potsdam; as he was late, because he still had some scheme to earn money, "said the King," she came to meet him in Brussels. Not seeing him, believes him unfaithful, takes opium."
(cahn: OK, so, this sounds like a mashup of stories to me -- Zinsser talks about the story that I alluded to in my writeup, where she had a fling (~1728) with this older military guy the Comte de Goesbriand (this was before Voltaire), he broke up with her (possibly for another girl), she said she wanted to die, and Goesbriand told a story of how she had taken opium but he saved her. Zinsser is very skeptical of whether that last part actually happened (as opposed to Goesbriand making it up), but she says that the story was retold as late as 1748. Anyway, I would not be at all surprised if Fritz had heard that story and was recounting it to Catt, and that it got garbled at some point in transmission, though whether at the point of Fritz or at Catt I couldn't say.)
Ferdinand, once predicted by Big Bro to become the most wicked child of FW, now gets a different assessment from our antihero.
4. I was. at 5. He told me that he had mourned his sister, and when in these moments of rest he thought of her, he cried again. He spoke to me with the highest praise of Prince Ferdinand, his brother, of the kindness of his heart; Prince Wilhelm: quoted pieces of Iphigenia which had to do with his situation, the end of the first act: they don't have time to cry; he read some places. This led to the spectacle. He quoted pieces of opera from me.
The "I never liked hunting", which is in the memoirs, though somewhat altered, has a diary foundation. Here with Latin and dissing of the Schwedt cousins. (Looks like Grandson Fritz didn't have a higher opinon of Grandpa F1's half brother than Grandpa F1 had.)
He asked me if I liked hunting. - ›Etiam.‹ »Quam delectionem invenis? My father believed that I was a paste which we poterat facere quid volebat. It was not. He wanted me to be a hunter. I was given all the proper education. You had to run: I stopped the dogs; and we had to be careful. If I had stepped on one, the King would have screamed. The stitcher was very comfortable as I stopped. I haven't danced once since turning fifty. I really liked dancing; now I don't like it anymore, but videre juventutem saltantom, hoc mihi arridet. "Mihi dixit from Margrave's father:" he drank in the morning, at noon, after dinner, beat up all his grooms, drank in the evening: was very orthodox ; said to everyone, even to his grooms: "I am the son of the Grand Elector."
The story of what happened after FW's return to Potsdam after the flight attempt definitely is heard by de Catt when he's with Heinrich's army pre and during the battle of Kunersdorf, while Fritz is elsewhere. (Said story also features in Wilhelmine's memoirs more extensively.) And there's one thing in the diary version which didn't make it into the memoirs which makes me wonder whether, despite Thièbault telling us they didn't get on and Catt making a cryptic comment in that direction in the memoirs, Heinrich might not have been the source for it. Or maybe not him directly but his sidekick and boyfriend du jour Kalkreuth, whom Catt later mentions talking to in another context. The detail in case: Heinrich himself, what he was doing on that occasion. Here's the story, as noted down by Henri de Catt in 1759:
When the King was in Küstrin, the Queen mother told her children to throw themselves on the King's knee to beg for mercy. The Princess of Baireuth, as the oldest one, threw herself before him in the anteroom; she got beaten. Then the family got under the table. Prince Heinrich got squeezed in.The King had a stick, he wanted to beat them. Arrives the chief stewardess, the Countess of Kameke. She spoke. - ›Go away, carrion!‹ Dixit ei Rex. One argues. - ›The devil will take you away,‹ she said, ›if you don't let these children alone!‹ Which she put in a room. The next day the King saw her, thanked her for the madness she had made him avoid. - ›I will always be your good friend,‹ and he was. Grumbkow said to the late King: "You should send this rascal over there", speaking of His Majesty. What horror!
With you there, de Catt, but I wish you'd have clearly said who told you this particular version of the story. Wilhelmine's version in her memoirs, which Henri de Catt couldn't have known (and certainly not writing his diary in 1759) has the intervention by Madame de Kamecke as well, but it has the sibs pleading with their father for mercy after she herself got punched and is dizzy. The other difference is that here the beating threat is to all the children, and Kamecke tells FW to leave the children alone, wereas in Wilhelmine's memoirs she tells FW not to do a Peter I and Philip of Spain with his oldest son. Note the shift in focus, which usually says something about who tells the story and has the memory. Now when I read the Catt memoirs, where Fritz tells this story to Catt, I assumed Fritz had the story from Wilhelmine and it got garbled in retelling. But seeing as Fritz is not the teller in the diary, and Heinrich is the only sibling other than Wilhelmine namechecked (which is edited out in the later memoirs version with Fritz as the speaker), since this version emphasizes the threat to all the siblings (as opposed to the threat to Fritz), and since Heinrich is the one person currently near Catt who actually was there that day, I wonder. Though like I said: it's also possible he told his boyfriend, and his boyfriend told Catt. Since Heinrich's boyfriends aren't known for their tact and restraint in general. Because if it's neither Heinrich nor a boyfriend who heard the story from him - wouldn't some other Prussian who got the story through court gossip and is retelling it to Henri de Catt put the emphasis on the threat to Fritz, current living legend, as Wilhelmine does in her version, instead of on the kids?
Kunersdorf, catastrophic defeat that is is, happens. This evidently is when someone in Catt's hearing voices criticism of the King, or several someones, for we get this indignant entry in the diary:
Alas! How the great ones are served. We aspire to be with them, we enjoy it. If they demand something painful from us, we get disgusted. I saw this Prince who by himself, by the circumstances, where he is, deserves the most to be cherished, the most capable: and I saw a crowd of ignorant people criticizing all his steps, his camps , its maneuvers, its provisions, its particular conduct; lend him views he didn't have; complain about any preference; I have seen people incapable of acting by the third hand, making them conceive of the most advantageous ideas, pushing themselves, believing themselves to be great men, being mysterious on small objects, indiscreet on important ones.
And also:
Men are strange; they have pleasure in lowering the King, in order to raise the Prince; others vice versa; but are we reasonable? The Prince acts sparingly; but he has to answer, the army is not his. And will we condemn his brother who, master, can do more? and can we not risk a few, to hope to win a lot? By pushing people this way, they are wasted or saved, and, the troops having suffered enough, the campaign does not go so quickly.
There's a Lehndorff mention in the camp gossip! (Folded in a mention of the enterprising Countess de Bentinck.)
In a masked ball Madame de Bentinck came with lots of currency and portraits. There was M. de Lehndorff, chamberlain of the Queen, in a basin of a balance, in the other a feather which carried it, with this inscription: ›Lighter than a feather;« - by M. Danckelman like Diogenes, with a lantern, with this inscription: ›Hominem quaero.‹ - Maupertuis, who had fallen out with her, said to him: ›People have a false mind and a wicked heart; you, Madame, have a wicked mind and a false heart.
Once Fritz and Catt are reunited, Fritz makes it clear who's the military genius around here by a reminder of his most admired battle, that of Leuthen:
When the King left for Leuthen, he wrote to his brother what he wanted to do. ›I will march on them, I will try to get them out, I will beat them. I will besiege Breslau, I will take it. You will say to me: this design surprises you, and you may think that only despair today gives birth to it. I apologize for your mistake.
"I apologize for your mistake" (in critisizing me) is the most perfect Fritz-to-Heinrich sentence ever.)
As you might recall, by the end of 1759, Fritz takes over command in Saxony again, sends Finck to entrap the Austrians against everyone's advice, including Finck's and Heinrich's, and it's a disaster.
In the evening, I was from 3 and a half until 9. He was very distressed, came back to the same idea. - "So I will have brought my misfortune to Saxony!" I tried to distract him, but this image always returned. - »See how unhappy I was: treated harshly by a father, locked up alone for three months in a room; at noon I was brought to eat by a small window, I was given a shirt at the same time, and then I returned the plates of my food. I only had Bossuet on Variants and Basnage. Misfortune has always pursued me; I was only happy at Rheinsberg. Ah, if this peace comes, can anyone blame me for living a little for myself, for withdrawing and living in peace?
He does make peace time plans. These somehow include THE WORST coming to visit again:
"If Voltaire came to see me, it would be rare, and I would prevent any bother." - He made the plan of the building he would like to have. "There would be no vanity, no stools, but each would have armchairs."
(mildred_of_midgard: And how would you do that, exactly, Fritz? Do tell. :P Because your track record doesn't exactly inspire confidence.)
All kidding aside, I do find it poignant and oddly touching Fritz at this stage believes Voltaire will come back to visit him, even if "rarely".
Meanwhile, someone keeps being Fritz critical:
This Kalckreuth, adjutant of the Prince, jeers with a sneer: "And here is Silesia lost!" I would punch someone who would tell me, my sister is dead, I have no homeland at all.
If it's any consolation, Catt, we don't know whether Heinrich ever hit Kalkreuth, but he will dump him for Kaphengst at a point when Kalkreuth definitely does not want to be dumped.
Prince Ferdinand here is EC's brother, Ferdinand of Brunswick. Catt doesn't say who his source for the following story is:
After Kolin's unhappy affair, which it was believed we could not recover from, Grant came to Henckel, adjutant to Prince Heinrich. The latter announced it to the Prince, who sobbed. He was dispatched to Prince Ferdinand, who was in command; all were in tears. Orders were given to assemble to consult on the retreat. Prince Ferdinand did not say a word and he only wept. - ›This won't do,‹ said the Prince (Heinrich); ›It is necessary to make a decision.‹ It is essential to make yourself known. - ›I can not.‹
›Well‹, dixit princeps, ›I will make a retirement plan.‹ - The King is announced: the Prince goes to meet him, he takes him by the hand, squeezes him; ›Ah, my frater!‹, And he continues. They then enter the room and we sob on both sides. The Prince dixit, quod optimum esset, to make a retirement plan. - "Not possum," ait Rex, "sed crastina die prope meridiem." - ›This hurries!‹ - "Well, do it, mi frater!" - Here it is. - "It will be good, no doubt," said Rex. - The next day the Prince's adjutant was announced to the King, who made the King say if, on leaving, it would not be good to have the march beat and the flags displayed. - »Yes!« - We did it. Marshal Keith was vigorously attacked, he was cannonaded in his tents; but he escaped. Prince Ferdinandus Brunsvicensis in calamitate is admodum sensitilis.
I'm leaving the Latin, btw, because it cracks me up. "Well, do it, mi frater!" and all.
And here's an FW anecdote from none other than Eichel:
The late King, said M. Eichel to me, had brought with him M. de Schumacher, private counselor. - ›I have an important secret to communicate to you, it must not be disclosed. If that happens, one of the three of us will have spoken." Two days after the adviser comes, hears grenadiers talking about this affair; he was surprised, said Mr. Schumacher. He is very worried and surprised. The King said to them: 'How could it be that the affair had transpired? ‹M. Schumacher complained. Councilor Eichel said to him: "Let Your Majesty Remember if he did not speak of it." - "Yes", he said, "I am thick in the head; I told Grumbkow, I had this weakness. ‹-
Grumbkow, not known for his discretion? Tsk.
The two Maria Theresia mentions are great, and as opposed to the memoirs version, come without "at least she hates whores", which makes me wonder whether de Catt isn't the one who has an anti sex worker bias, putting it in the mouth of his boss. This suspicion is also supported by the diary passage featuring our antihero's (theoretical) belief in equal opportunity sexual license:
Before dinner I went to the King...He found that men were unjust towards women; That we allowed ourselves our peccadillos, but wouldn't endure theirs. - »I know that I will never make laws: but those for women are not fair. An infidelity of the husband exempts the wife from being constant. "- I denied it. "Everyone has his ideas."
So, Frederick the Great about Maria Theresia:
"It must be admitted that the Queen of Hungary has talents, that she is capable, that she applies herself; we cannot refuse her, "he said," this justice. "
and
It must be admitted that the Queen's obstinacy and mine do much harm. What a cruel war! We only wreak havoc. "- In the evening, the enemies set fire to the outskirts of Pirna.
As Mildred said, it's the way he equals them both, rather than presenting himself as the menaced party, that makes it feel both honest and poignant.
Meanwhile, he's still hankering for a "Well done, son" from FW:
He thought he was in Strasbourg with Marshal Daun, who was suddenly transplanted to Charlottenburg, where his father was. There he found old Dessan. - "Did I behave well?" - ›Yes‹, said the King, ›yes‹. - »Well, I'm happy; your approval is worth me better than that of the whole universe. "- The French are announced. - "Should I attack?" He said to Prince Anhalt - and he awoke.
Fritz himself is also a memoir writer, and describes his authorial intentions thusly:
I composed my memories for my family. People will talk a lot about me. It can find out the reasons that made me act. Let the public say what they want! What do I care! It is important to me that my family is happy with me. If I made mistakes, it's because I know what men are like.
Fritz, somehow I don't think your memoirs will have the wished for effect on your family. Given, you know, Heinrich's copy of it with hand written comments was supposedly so incendiary that it got disappeared from the state archives.
And lastly, one more Voltaire statement. Can't tell whether this one is meant as a diss or an endearing story:
Voltaire, on leaving, gave three copies of Louis XIV to the cook and the servants.
Louis XIV = Voltaire's "The Age of Louix XIV", one monumental work in terms of histories because it didn't just focus on the monarch and his battles but tried to draw the picture of en entire era, its culture and society. This was according to Pleschinski the first of its kind and changed the way people thought history could be written. When Fritz, years later, writes "I am content to have lived in the Age of Voltaire", he's also alluding to this work in addition to paying a compliment to his frenemy. (And coining a phrase, as this is what the Age will be called in France.)
But, like I said, I can't tell whether he tells that anecdote to -
a) make a point about writerly vanity - i.e. "Voltaire thinks so much of his work, he even hands out copies to the servants
b) reporting a slight against himself - i.e. "here I was thinking Voltaire giving me copies of his works means he thinks I'm special, but guess what, he even gave them to the staff!"
c) telling an "aw, Voltaire" type of anecdote, i.e. "Look, he's not always a meanie; he did give copies of his masterpiece to the servants as a farewell present".
mildred_of_midgard:
I'm not certain either, but reading the entire entry, Fritz seems to be talking about the importance of applying yourself to philosophy and learning things yourself, not just accepting what you're told. And he starts talking in particular about women: women who study philosophy, women who have intrigues but decently (which he seems to find acceptable). And if you put this into context with one of Fritz's writings on how society and parents let women down by not having them be educated as a matter of course, which results in them spending all their time on love affairs and their appearance...maybe he's saying, "Look, even Voltaire thinks women and/or lower class individuals should educate themselves."
mildred_of_midgard did not only unearth a copy for the memoirs, but of the diary, published in 1884 (i.e. about a century after its author died) in the original langage (mostly French, we'll get to what else later) with a German preface. Imagine our collective surprise when the preface, comparing Catt's actual notes with what he wrote in the memoirs later, revealed Henri de Catt to have been, shall we say, somewhat economic with the truth. How to beef up a war time journal to memoirs more than twice that size, or: Henri de Catt, historical novelist
It's not that Henri de Catt doesn't use his journal as source material. It's that he uses a great many other sources as well, isn't above putting them in the mouth of Fritz when said sources were someone else, and rearranges the timing of his conversations - both real and imagined - to create the impression of himself as Fritz' most important confidant. The preface says, referring to Henri de Catt as "the author":
Moreover, the author has, where his diaries testified the subject of conversation to him, given said subject a liberal treatment; he has grown out of already existent crystals entire sparkling creations. Where the diaries render the words of the King verbatim, the memoirs stick to them faithfully; but it happenes in a chonological reordering, so that statements which belong to different days and different conversations get thrown together, i.e. get connected through an always aptly invented transition.
The author also put certain statements, especially the flood of characteristic traits, witty ideas and anecdotes which he had jotted down in his exercise books from a variety of sources, in the memoirs into the mouth of the King, even if the diaries did not give him the right for this. Especially in the time before and after the battle of Kunersdorf when Catt had been left with Prince Heinrich's army by the King, the diaries (p. 394 ff.) are rich with stories of the type mentioned, which our author thus has heard from others, not from the King. At one point, the diaries name explicitly someone else, Secretary Eichel, as the source for a story (p.417), which in the memoirs is ascribed to the King.
(Sidenote by me: if Catt talked to Eichel, who of course knew that Fritz had the Katte trial files ordered up upon becoming King and resealed, and also knew a lot about Küstrin, that gives him another valid source. Shame he didn't name it.)
(...) The memoirs are more than twice the size of the diaries. As much as the original material was stretched via rearrangement, the difference in size isn't explainable by this alone. The author has used other material in addition to his Diary.
Something that surprises in the military lessons he has the King give him is the incredibly accuracy of numbers. Are we supposed to believe that the King, when he after lunch talks to his companion about military matters of the morning (...) already has the exact numbers at hand when the report by troops involved usually took longer than that? Certainly not, and thus it is no surprise that the "military crash course" has only been given to the Catt of the memoirs, not to the Catt of the diaries. (...)
A comparison between the work which at the current state of research is still the basis for all studies of the 7-Years-War proves an great equivalance between Tempelhof's depiction of the 1758 campaign and that in Catt's memoirs. The second volume of Tempelhof's history was published in 1785; thus there was the chance for Catt to draw his military wisdom from this source. If his description of the battle of Zorndorf has an impressive similarity to the description given by Tielcke in 1776 in the second volume of his "Beyträge zur Kriegs-Kunst und Geschichte des Krieges von 1756 - 1763", one could further suspect that our author borrowed from the Saxon Colonel as he had done from the Prussian Major. But Catt did not speak German, he would have to get the works of Tempelhof and Tieclke translated for himself. He was, however, not in need of this; he was the owner of a French written journal about the campaign of 1758 which is still among the material in his archive and this very extensive manuscript has proved, in a German version, the source for both these military writers. (Footnote says where Tielcke and Tempelhof got it from; from a collection of 7 Wars Material made by the secretary of the late von Wobersnow and from a partial publication in a miltary journal named "Bellona" in Dresden, 1781 ff, respectively.)
Catt isn't above borrowing literal phrases from this material and rendering it as the King's military expertise in his memoirs. Not enough that Friedrich has to narrate the facts evening for evening, even his strategic judgment is that of the military Anonymous. A fleeting mistake of Catt's in the use of his source then has the consequence that the King in the memoirs mourns for a General on June 17th, 1758, who in real life on that day simply got a strong reproof. (...)
With the year 1759, this oracle (the anonymous military journal) ceases to be available. But the author of the memoirs knew how to help himself. When Glatz fell on July 1760, the war files of Fouque and thus also the letters of Frederick the Great to this general had been captured by the enemy. In various printings fragments of this correspondance got in print and thus known to the public soon after the ending of the war. One of these editions was owned by Catt; he used them for 1759 in a similar way as the military journal for 1758. Whatever the King writes to Fouque in confidence, he tells in the same confidence to his reader. In the "Recuiel" of the letters to Fouque Catt also found a copy of the memorandum the Prince of Prussia had written as a justification of his behavior in the Bohemia campaign of 1757; it gave Catt the possibility to describe the argument between the Prince and his royal brother.
When the letters to Fouque end, Catt helps himsef for the second half of 1759 with the King's "Histoire de la guerre des sept ans", which he seems to have known before its publication in the "ouevres posthumes". Finally, he used the correspondance between the King and the Marquis d'Argens for the third and fourth part of his memoirs in a similar thorough way as he did the letters to Fouque. He seems to have had a copy of this correspondance at his disposal; at least there have been letters to the Marquis used which are missing in the edition "Ouevres Posthumes".
Catt took the stones and pebbles for the mosaic forming his memoirs thus from this series of recognizable quarries. (...) Thus when the memoirs let the King describe the history of the Prince of Prussia's sickness exactly with the words used in an anonmously published biography of the Prince. (Footnote here says "See p. 104, p. 170" which I take it is a reference to Catt's memoirs. But doesn't say which anonymous biography.) In other cases, you can see he used the official military dispatches as they had been given out from Berlin and later collected in anthologies. (....)
Catt repeatedly shows the weakness of memoir writesrs to put their own person in a beaming light. Thus inevitably the author knows the King basically much better and can judge him much better than he knows himself. (p. 128, 233) (...) Whenever there is an important moment happening in Friedrich's life, Catt is there as a witness and confidant. When the news of the death of the Prince of Prussia arrives, Catt is according to his memoirs the first to whom the brother speaks of his pain; whereas the diaries proof that the reader wasn't even received by the King in the first four days after the arrival of the mournful news. When three months later the sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth dies, according to the Memoirs the King immediately must speak to Catt, who gets woken up for this at 2 am; once the King dismisses him three hours later, he sends immediately a letter of condolence, which after all the verbal condolences given in the previous pages seems somewhat redundant, but which makes the recepient send for him again only fifteen minutes later, only to receive him in the evening for the third time and this time for four hours. Whereas the diaries prove that Catt had first written the condolence letter before the King ever talked to him, which makes sense, and then showed up in the afternoon at the regular hour (p. 195).
Preface writer gives some more examples, none of which are related to Küstrin and Katte. Which, incidentally, is curious; you'd think if Catt added that without a basis in his diaries, it would be much more worth mentioning than his letting Fritz give him a military crash course. But maybe that's our gossipy sensationalist priority speaking. For a detailed analysis by Mildred of how Catt stitched the Küstrin/Katte conversation together in his memoirs, using material from various different conversations and sources, read on here.
Also: while Henri de Catt's memoirs and diaries - along with his other papers and Collection of 7 Years War material - weren't published yet, Preuß did have access to them because at that point they had ended up in the Prussian state archive, and he was allowed to use them for his biography. Which explains why he quotes from them in a biography published in the mid 19th century when as
mildred_of_midgard told us the memoirs themselves weren't published until a few decades later. Before we get to actual diary quotes, here's
mildred_of_midgard on the language Henri de Catt's journal is written in: Henri de Catt: Surprise Latin-French-Greek-English
Partway through, he decides he's going to start switching between French and Latin in the same sentence.
It gets even wilder. He quotes Fritz uttering a sentence that goes, word by word, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, French, French, Latin, and then in the very next sentence, which is Catt's, Catt decides to one-up Fritz and go French, French, French, Latin, Latin, Greek, with the last in the Greek alphabet, no less (p. 374).
Look:
»Mais possum finire tragoediam quand je volam.« Je le vis in parvula δόξᾳ.
"But I can end the tragedy when I want." I saw it in a small [...]
I assume this is Fritz showing Catt the little box of opium. (Which he kept as a possible suicide tool.) Is this like sensitive information that we have to put in code? In case some French speaker happens to come along and not be able to figure out Latin? But just in case they can figure out Latin based on their French, let's make absolutely sure they don't know where the opium is kept?
The problem with this: δόξᾳ doesn't mean box. In all the dictionaries I've checked, I've not been able to find any definitions other than the ones I was familiar with: judgment, opinion, vision, glory. How on earth does that make sense in context? It should mean box or other type of container. Another layer of code here?
Help?
Anyway, now Catt's just decided that...what's the French + Latin equivalent of Franglais?...is the way to go. Look: "Vidi regem. Mihi dit quod multum pro Keith, et sa résolution etc." Latin, Latin, Latin, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, proper name, French (probably), French, French (p. 375).
ETA: You know, it did occur to me that δόξᾳ is suspiciously like the English word "box", especially if you flip the delta around. But I immediately decided that was me being Anglocentric, why on earth would Henri de Catt use English-Greek code, etc.
But now that I know he has no problem throwing random English words into his diary, that's totally what I think it is! And I do think it's code, because he doesn't want everyone knowing where Fritz keeps his suicide device.
And it occurs to me that one thing I used to do in my own very secret diary was throw *random* words into dwarven runes, just so potential snoops wouldn't home in on the secret words and only the secret words.
And this *is* the first time he starts code-switching. I now think maybe he's covering his tracks with random languages, so his diary doesn't have exactly one sentence in other languages in the midst of all-French diary. Because the very next entry is one sentence of code-switching.
Then just three days later, he's code-switching again. Yeah, he might be covering his tracks.
The further you get into the diary, though, the wilder he gets, I can tell you that. Whatever else was going on, I think he started having fun./ end of Mildred's linguistic expertise
Good thing then, I suppose, your faithful gossipy sensationalists were taught Latin (unlike Fritz). On to De Catt: The Diary version. Featuring, sadly, not a single mention of Katte, but a good deal of highly interesting quotes including Fritz taking a break from 18th century misogony to champion the female right to have extramarital sex if their husbands cheat on them first, and a refreshingly epitepth free assessment of his best enemy, Maria Theresia; morever, I have a theory as to where Catt's description of one particular 1730 episode, which in the memoirs he gives to Fritz but in the diary hears during his weeks with Heinrich's army comes from.
Henri de Catt: Unplugged
The closest thing we get to the memoirs' letting Fritz confide in Catt about Küstrin and Katte barely a month after Henri de Catt started his job is a diary entry set one year later, after the defeat at Maxen, Fritz is depressed, he's telling Catt in direct discourse about being locked up alone by his father in a room for three months, his food passed through a small window, getting his shirt the same way, being miserable, never being happy except at Rheinsberg. No mention of Katte, though.
As the 1884 editor says in the preface, Henri de Catt massively rewrites his involvement when Fritz gets sibling death news. What is in the diary re: AW (who as in the memoirs has been edited out of Fritz' descriptions of his 1740 Straßburg trip when still alive), is, four days post Fritz getting the news, "spoke of his good heart", a quote I'll get to after Wilhelmine's death, and, much later, the "I totally would have retired from kingship after the war had he lived".
(All his siblings: get a coughing fit)
The actual passage:
21. Called at 7. We talked a lot of morals. He often quotes these lines from Agamemnon:, Happy who 'etc. You see, it has been a long time since I thought of these sweet moments that I would find in retirement; I thought of retiring, my dead brother disturbs my plan, because I cannot do it in a time of minority. It is not necessary; my nephew is fourteen, in four years he will be of age. We must put an interval between these worries and death. I still have five years in my body. That is all. I'm losing my fire. Ah, if you had seen me a few years ago! If you saw me in fine weather, you would find me very different.
Bad AW, spoiling Fritz' retirement plans. Sigh.
Which means anything else in the memoirs about AW and his death - and there is a lot - was made up by Catt and/or taken from various other sources, as said in the preface. As is, of course, Fritz in the memoirs saying that AW's private secretary, who just happens to be Catt's future brother-in-law (Henri de Catt will marry in 1761), is one of only two upstanding people around his brother, who surely, surely, would have influenced AW to reconcile with him, unlike those other evil advisors. (Never mind that as as documented by his own letters, it was Fritz who didn't want to reconcile but kept doubling up the hostility.)
On the more amusing side, Fritz is still in the love poetry ghost writing business, even without sister Ulrike and Voltaire being involved:
I tell him that I had made a verse piece for a beauty. He read it, criticized it. "Oh, I'll make you another one. Have you fucked her?" "No," I said. He composed a page of it in my presence and showed me a dictionary he had made during the last wars.
Now here's a civilian job that, as opposed to flutist, no one has imagined for Fritz: love poetry ghost writer.
Lots and lots of "Voltaire is the WORST!" as per the memoirs, and he keeps coming back to the prediction that Voltaire will die as a repentant son of the church with priests at his side out of fear, he's obsessed with it. My current guess as to why he keeps harping on this is: the idea of being broken. He himself has given in, not out of fear for the afterlife but of his father, but still, he has submitted. So Voltaire, who is so similar and yet not, can't be unbroken to the end. He is, of course, also irked that Voltaire still is war-critical.
Catt quoting Fritz quoting Voltaire happens often, but this is the most interesting passage to me, because it's as good a reconstruction of an authentic Fritz and Voltaire conversation we're likely to get:
Voltaire said to me: "But when you fight, are you not in rage?" - "No, that's when you need the most tranquility." - "But all your wars are the same." - "All the oxen appear as such; but to anyone who sees them up close, there is always a difference." - He (V) was attached to the Marquis de Villars, who, no doubt, had described to him a cavalry attack. - "But all these are heroic actions. You destroy the world and we enlighten it." - "But what is enlightenment? Whether the world is flat or round, what does it do for happiness?" - But you need moral principles, and follow them. However, in ten months I will have defeated the French, the Austrians and the Russians.
Err, not so much, Fritz, but okay. He's really irked that Voltaire doesn't appreciate the military genius enough:
I have had a lot of trouble since morning, so far it is not over. Gentlemen, the scholars laugh at our profession. Voltaire ridicules it. It is bad by the evils it causes: but it takes talent. Voltaire won't listen to anything. He says that reading battles annoys him, that he learns nothing there; but when I read the campaigns of Eugène, Montecuculi, Luxembourg, it gives me a thousand ideas.
The poem Fritz wrote to Wihelmine before her death shows up a lot.
"Come, I made a piece to my sister of Baireuth, on friendship." We talked about Voltaire, on the Henriade, which he found very beautiful, with this one flaw that he did not put his hero in the most touching situations. He said it to Voltaire, and he agreed to it. (...)
I was at 6 o'clock; he showed me the epistle to his Princess. Come, he said, see this epistle you're interested in. I worked on it a little, but I will let it rest for 5 or 6 days.
(I would say that Henri de Catt’s main job is admiring Fritz‘ poetry, but that’s unfair. (He's more of a hired civilian friend on call, which seems to have been true for all the readers.) Also, aw on the phrasing "his princess". Sa princesse indeed.)
So, in the memoirs, Catt gets dragged to Fritz at 2 am when the news of Wilhelmine's death arrives and they keep talking about her for hours three times during a single day. Meanwhile, diary:
18. I learned in the morning of the Princess's death. I wrote this letter to the King - His Majesty sent for me. I saw him sorry for this loss. We hardly talked (...).
To be fair, they do talk of Wilhelmine on other days. However, just because Wilhelmine is also dead doesn't mean AW is forgotten. Just...remembered in that special Fritzian way.
I was there after dinner. The King was overwhelmed; his smile always came back to him. He ate nothing. He was just drinking, he was so heated. We reasoned on the price of friendship; how little he indulged. There was talk of his brother, who had caused him much sorrow, in pace ut and in bello. "What consoles me is - without it I would not live."
In peace and in war? Whatever is AW supposed to have done in peace as well as in war, Fritz? There's one upcoming visitor who surely would love to know.
20. I was there at 2. - „Ah, how grieved I am! I don't have time to mourn the loss of this sister. We must hold on." Prince Heinrich arrived, which caused general joy.
I dare say. So how did that meeting go, Henri de Catt?
21. Called at a quarter past five in the morning. His Majesty was very distressed. - »I cried well yesterday with my brother. Here, my dear, it is not the loss of a battle that moves a captain or a warrior, but the death of a sister is irreparable, and what a sweeter feeling than friendship!" His Majesty went out at 8 . "I went for some recognaissance of the Austrian camp." I was there in the evening. His Majesty was fine. „Now here I am in force. We will see how it all ends. The massacre at Hochkirch was terrible. Everything came out pell-mell from the cemetery. Some were slashing their teeth, others were going there with their butts. Marshal Keith, speaking on the eve of the battle to the Margrave, said how the Austrians should attack us and how he would do it himself; we made the rope, them the bow.
As you may recall, Marshall Keith died at that battle. (And is listed on the Rheinsberg Obelisk.)
Meanwhile, miliary inspections with Seydlitz cameo are a thing:
22. I went with His Majesty to take a turn to the left wing. Called, I spoke of these three sentries from whom the guns had been taken. - »This is not surprising, if three sleep in an army. It is good, he said, "that kings are sometimes unhappy. Don't you think we are accurate enough? "- Yes. But I don't see how they surprised us. But these misfortunes happen every hundred years. - General Seydlitz, on the 14th, said to the King: "Does not His Majesty want to withdraw the infantry?" "But, Seydlitz, I will lose the battle!" Well, may Your Majesty win it!", and away he went.
One way a depressed Fritz in the early November of 1758 distracts himself from lost battles and dead siblings is by gossiping about the nearly ten years dead Èmilie du Châtelet. According to the memoirs, he does this with D'Argens (who'd known both Voltaire and Émilie from France. It is, however, clear that Fritz is the one contributing the garbled suicide attempt tale which
cahn identified as a gossip story about Émilie predating her involvement with Voltaire.2. Left at 7, arrived at 3:30 in Jauernick; pretty well with a good peasant, from where I had two men decamped. Dined at 7. His Majesty sent for me. She was very tired. They spoke of Madame the Marquise du Châtelet; that she got fucked, but only by mathematicians or poets; that she was tight with Maupertuis, and that this was the beginning of his feud with Voltaire, who was jealous of him. "Maupertuis' physiognomy, says His Majesty, "is the most gloomy I have ever seen, but he is brutally honest man, he never gives in." The Marquise wanting to make an experiment on fire, burned an entire forest and made to admit to her husband, she said that it was a gallantry that she created for him, so that he had a good view. "" She put herself in a very hot bath, to see how far she could sustain the heat. would have remained without her chambermaid, who ran in a timely fashion. "" She was waiting for Voltaire from Potsdam; as he was late, because he still had some scheme to earn money, "said the King," she came to meet him in Brussels. Not seeing him, believes him unfaithful, takes opium."
(
cahn: OK, so, this sounds like a mashup of stories to me -- Zinsser talks about the story that I alluded to in my writeup, where she had a fling (~1728) with this older military guy the Comte de Goesbriand (this was before Voltaire), he broke up with her (possibly for another girl), she said she wanted to die, and Goesbriand told a story of how she had taken opium but he saved her. Zinsser is very skeptical of whether that last part actually happened (as opposed to Goesbriand making it up), but she says that the story was retold as late as 1748. Anyway, I would not be at all surprised if Fritz had heard that story and was recounting it to Catt, and that it got garbled at some point in transmission, though whether at the point of Fritz or at Catt I couldn't say.)Ferdinand, once predicted by Big Bro to become the most wicked child of FW, now gets a different assessment from our antihero.
4. I was. at 5. He told me that he had mourned his sister, and when in these moments of rest he thought of her, he cried again. He spoke to me with the highest praise of Prince Ferdinand, his brother, of the kindness of his heart; Prince Wilhelm: quoted pieces of Iphigenia which had to do with his situation, the end of the first act: they don't have time to cry; he read some places. This led to the spectacle. He quoted pieces of opera from me.
The "I never liked hunting", which is in the memoirs, though somewhat altered, has a diary foundation. Here with Latin and dissing of the Schwedt cousins. (Looks like Grandson Fritz didn't have a higher opinon of Grandpa F1's half brother than Grandpa F1 had.)
He asked me if I liked hunting. - ›Etiam.‹ »Quam delectionem invenis? My father believed that I was a paste which we poterat facere quid volebat. It was not. He wanted me to be a hunter. I was given all the proper education. You had to run: I stopped the dogs; and we had to be careful. If I had stepped on one, the King would have screamed. The stitcher was very comfortable as I stopped. I haven't danced once since turning fifty. I really liked dancing; now I don't like it anymore, but videre juventutem saltantom, hoc mihi arridet. "Mihi dixit from Margrave's father:" he drank in the morning, at noon, after dinner, beat up all his grooms, drank in the evening: was very orthodox ; said to everyone, even to his grooms: "I am the son of the Grand Elector."
The story of what happened after FW's return to Potsdam after the flight attempt definitely is heard by de Catt when he's with Heinrich's army pre and during the battle of Kunersdorf, while Fritz is elsewhere. (Said story also features in Wilhelmine's memoirs more extensively.) And there's one thing in the diary version which didn't make it into the memoirs which makes me wonder whether, despite Thièbault telling us they didn't get on and Catt making a cryptic comment in that direction in the memoirs, Heinrich might not have been the source for it. Or maybe not him directly but his sidekick and boyfriend du jour Kalkreuth, whom Catt later mentions talking to in another context. The detail in case: Heinrich himself, what he was doing on that occasion. Here's the story, as noted down by Henri de Catt in 1759:
When the King was in Küstrin, the Queen mother told her children to throw themselves on the King's knee to beg for mercy. The Princess of Baireuth, as the oldest one, threw herself before him in the anteroom; she got beaten. Then the family got under the table. Prince Heinrich got squeezed in.The King had a stick, he wanted to beat them. Arrives the chief stewardess, the Countess of Kameke. She spoke. - ›Go away, carrion!‹ Dixit ei Rex. One argues. - ›The devil will take you away,‹ she said, ›if you don't let these children alone!‹ Which she put in a room. The next day the King saw her, thanked her for the madness she had made him avoid. - ›I will always be your good friend,‹ and he was. Grumbkow said to the late King: "You should send this rascal over there", speaking of His Majesty. What horror!
With you there, de Catt, but I wish you'd have clearly said who told you this particular version of the story. Wilhelmine's version in her memoirs, which Henri de Catt couldn't have known (and certainly not writing his diary in 1759) has the intervention by Madame de Kamecke as well, but it has the sibs pleading with their father for mercy after she herself got punched and is dizzy. The other difference is that here the beating threat is to all the children, and Kamecke tells FW to leave the children alone, wereas in Wilhelmine's memoirs she tells FW not to do a Peter I and Philip of Spain with his oldest son. Note the shift in focus, which usually says something about who tells the story and has the memory. Now when I read the Catt memoirs, where Fritz tells this story to Catt, I assumed Fritz had the story from Wilhelmine and it got garbled in retelling. But seeing as Fritz is not the teller in the diary, and Heinrich is the only sibling other than Wilhelmine namechecked (which is edited out in the later memoirs version with Fritz as the speaker), since this version emphasizes the threat to all the siblings (as opposed to the threat to Fritz), and since Heinrich is the one person currently near Catt who actually was there that day, I wonder. Though like I said: it's also possible he told his boyfriend, and his boyfriend told Catt. Since Heinrich's boyfriends aren't known for their tact and restraint in general. Because if it's neither Heinrich nor a boyfriend who heard the story from him - wouldn't some other Prussian who got the story through court gossip and is retelling it to Henri de Catt put the emphasis on the threat to Fritz, current living legend, as Wilhelmine does in her version, instead of on the kids?
Kunersdorf, catastrophic defeat that is is, happens. This evidently is when someone in Catt's hearing voices criticism of the King, or several someones, for we get this indignant entry in the diary:
Alas! How the great ones are served. We aspire to be with them, we enjoy it. If they demand something painful from us, we get disgusted. I saw this Prince who by himself, by the circumstances, where he is, deserves the most to be cherished, the most capable: and I saw a crowd of ignorant people criticizing all his steps, his camps , its maneuvers, its provisions, its particular conduct; lend him views he didn't have; complain about any preference; I have seen people incapable of acting by the third hand, making them conceive of the most advantageous ideas, pushing themselves, believing themselves to be great men, being mysterious on small objects, indiscreet on important ones.
And also:
Men are strange; they have pleasure in lowering the King, in order to raise the Prince; others vice versa; but are we reasonable? The Prince acts sparingly; but he has to answer, the army is not his. And will we condemn his brother who, master, can do more? and can we not risk a few, to hope to win a lot? By pushing people this way, they are wasted or saved, and, the troops having suffered enough, the campaign does not go so quickly.
There's a Lehndorff mention in the camp gossip! (Folded in a mention of the enterprising Countess de Bentinck.)
In a masked ball Madame de Bentinck came with lots of currency and portraits. There was M. de Lehndorff, chamberlain of the Queen, in a basin of a balance, in the other a feather which carried it, with this inscription: ›Lighter than a feather;« - by M. Danckelman like Diogenes, with a lantern, with this inscription: ›Hominem quaero.‹ - Maupertuis, who had fallen out with her, said to him: ›People have a false mind and a wicked heart; you, Madame, have a wicked mind and a false heart.
Once Fritz and Catt are reunited, Fritz makes it clear who's the military genius around here by a reminder of his most admired battle, that of Leuthen:
When the King left for Leuthen, he wrote to his brother what he wanted to do. ›I will march on them, I will try to get them out, I will beat them. I will besiege Breslau, I will take it. You will say to me: this design surprises you, and you may think that only despair today gives birth to it. I apologize for your mistake.
"I apologize for your mistake" (in critisizing me) is the most perfect Fritz-to-Heinrich sentence ever.)
As you might recall, by the end of 1759, Fritz takes over command in Saxony again, sends Finck to entrap the Austrians against everyone's advice, including Finck's and Heinrich's, and it's a disaster.
In the evening, I was from 3 and a half until 9. He was very distressed, came back to the same idea. - "So I will have brought my misfortune to Saxony!" I tried to distract him, but this image always returned. - »See how unhappy I was: treated harshly by a father, locked up alone for three months in a room; at noon I was brought to eat by a small window, I was given a shirt at the same time, and then I returned the plates of my food. I only had Bossuet on Variants and Basnage. Misfortune has always pursued me; I was only happy at Rheinsberg. Ah, if this peace comes, can anyone blame me for living a little for myself, for withdrawing and living in peace?
He does make peace time plans. These somehow include THE WORST coming to visit again:
"If Voltaire came to see me, it would be rare, and I would prevent any bother." - He made the plan of the building he would like to have. "There would be no vanity, no stools, but each would have armchairs."
(
mildred_of_midgard: And how would you do that, exactly, Fritz? Do tell. :P Because your track record doesn't exactly inspire confidence.) All kidding aside, I do find it poignant and oddly touching Fritz at this stage believes Voltaire will come back to visit him, even if "rarely".
Meanwhile, someone keeps being Fritz critical:
This Kalckreuth, adjutant of the Prince, jeers with a sneer: "And here is Silesia lost!" I would punch someone who would tell me, my sister is dead, I have no homeland at all.
If it's any consolation, Catt, we don't know whether Heinrich ever hit Kalkreuth, but he will dump him for Kaphengst at a point when Kalkreuth definitely does not want to be dumped.
Prince Ferdinand here is EC's brother, Ferdinand of Brunswick. Catt doesn't say who his source for the following story is:
After Kolin's unhappy affair, which it was believed we could not recover from, Grant came to Henckel, adjutant to Prince Heinrich. The latter announced it to the Prince, who sobbed. He was dispatched to Prince Ferdinand, who was in command; all were in tears. Orders were given to assemble to consult on the retreat. Prince Ferdinand did not say a word and he only wept. - ›This won't do,‹ said the Prince (Heinrich); ›It is necessary to make a decision.‹ It is essential to make yourself known. - ›I can not.‹
›Well‹, dixit princeps, ›I will make a retirement plan.‹ - The King is announced: the Prince goes to meet him, he takes him by the hand, squeezes him; ›Ah, my frater!‹, And he continues. They then enter the room and we sob on both sides. The Prince dixit, quod optimum esset, to make a retirement plan. - "Not possum," ait Rex, "sed crastina die prope meridiem." - ›This hurries!‹ - "Well, do it, mi frater!" - Here it is. - "It will be good, no doubt," said Rex. - The next day the Prince's adjutant was announced to the King, who made the King say if, on leaving, it would not be good to have the march beat and the flags displayed. - »Yes!« - We did it. Marshal Keith was vigorously attacked, he was cannonaded in his tents; but he escaped. Prince Ferdinandus Brunsvicensis in calamitate is admodum sensitilis.
I'm leaving the Latin, btw, because it cracks me up. "Well, do it, mi frater!" and all.
And here's an FW anecdote from none other than Eichel:
The late King, said M. Eichel to me, had brought with him M. de Schumacher, private counselor. - ›I have an important secret to communicate to you, it must not be disclosed. If that happens, one of the three of us will have spoken." Two days after the adviser comes, hears grenadiers talking about this affair; he was surprised, said Mr. Schumacher. He is very worried and surprised. The King said to them: 'How could it be that the affair had transpired? ‹M. Schumacher complained. Councilor Eichel said to him: "Let Your Majesty Remember if he did not speak of it." - "Yes", he said, "I am thick in the head; I told Grumbkow, I had this weakness. ‹-
Grumbkow, not known for his discretion? Tsk.
The two Maria Theresia mentions are great, and as opposed to the memoirs version, come without "at least she hates whores", which makes me wonder whether de Catt isn't the one who has an anti sex worker bias, putting it in the mouth of his boss. This suspicion is also supported by the diary passage featuring our antihero's (theoretical) belief in equal opportunity sexual license:
Before dinner I went to the King...He found that men were unjust towards women; That we allowed ourselves our peccadillos, but wouldn't endure theirs. - »I know that I will never make laws: but those for women are not fair. An infidelity of the husband exempts the wife from being constant. "- I denied it. "Everyone has his ideas."
So, Frederick the Great about Maria Theresia:
"It must be admitted that the Queen of Hungary has talents, that she is capable, that she applies herself; we cannot refuse her, "he said," this justice. "
and
It must be admitted that the Queen's obstinacy and mine do much harm. What a cruel war! We only wreak havoc. "- In the evening, the enemies set fire to the outskirts of Pirna.
As Mildred said, it's the way he equals them both, rather than presenting himself as the menaced party, that makes it feel both honest and poignant.
Meanwhile, he's still hankering for a "Well done, son" from FW:
He thought he was in Strasbourg with Marshal Daun, who was suddenly transplanted to Charlottenburg, where his father was. There he found old Dessan. - "Did I behave well?" - ›Yes‹, said the King, ›yes‹. - »Well, I'm happy; your approval is worth me better than that of the whole universe. "- The French are announced. - "Should I attack?" He said to Prince Anhalt - and he awoke.
Fritz himself is also a memoir writer, and describes his authorial intentions thusly:
I composed my memories for my family. People will talk a lot about me. It can find out the reasons that made me act. Let the public say what they want! What do I care! It is important to me that my family is happy with me. If I made mistakes, it's because I know what men are like.
Fritz, somehow I don't think your memoirs will have the wished for effect on your family. Given, you know, Heinrich's copy of it with hand written comments was supposedly so incendiary that it got disappeared from the state archives.
And lastly, one more Voltaire statement. Can't tell whether this one is meant as a diss or an endearing story:
Voltaire, on leaving, gave three copies of Louis XIV to the cook and the servants.
Louis XIV = Voltaire's "The Age of Louix XIV", one monumental work in terms of histories because it didn't just focus on the monarch and his battles but tried to draw the picture of en entire era, its culture and society. This was according to Pleschinski the first of its kind and changed the way people thought history could be written. When Fritz, years later, writes "I am content to have lived in the Age of Voltaire", he's also alluding to this work in addition to paying a compliment to his frenemy. (And coining a phrase, as this is what the Age will be called in France.)
But, like I said, I can't tell whether he tells that anecdote to -
a) make a point about writerly vanity - i.e. "Voltaire thinks so much of his work, he even hands out copies to the servants
b) reporting a slight against himself - i.e. "here I was thinking Voltaire giving me copies of his works means he thinks I'm special, but guess what, he even gave them to the staff!"
c) telling an "aw, Voltaire" type of anecdote, i.e. "Look, he's not always a meanie; he did give copies of his masterpiece to the servants as a farewell present".
mildred_of_midgard: I'm not certain either, but reading the entire entry, Fritz seems to be talking about the importance of applying yourself to philosophy and learning things yourself, not just accepting what you're told. And he starts talking in particular about women: women who study philosophy, women who have intrigues but decently (which he seems to find acceptable). And if you put this into context with one of Fritz's writings on how society and parents let women down by not having them be educated as a matter of course, which results in them spending all their time on love affairs and their appearance...maybe he's saying, "Look, even Voltaire thinks women and/or lower class individuals should educate themselves."
no subject
Date: 2020-02-07 05:34 pm (UTC)Which he kept as a possible suicide too
Typo for "tool".
a refreshingly epitaph free assessment
That should be "epithet free."
that we allowed ourselves to be disturbed and that we did not suffer from them
I think Google translate is so unclear here that it's worth fixing. I would say "we allowed ourselves our peccadillos, but wouldn't endure theirs [women's]." My French is weak enough that it may not be literal, but from context, I think it's what Fritz is getting at.
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Date: 2020-02-07 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-07 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-07 09:48 pm (UTC)I have a theory as to where Katte's description of one particular 1730 episode
Katte, Catt...they're both felines!
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Date: 2020-02-11 11:08 pm (UTC)The problem with this: δόξᾳ doesn't mean box.
You know, it did occur to me that it's suspiciously like the English word "box", especially if you flip the delta around. But I immediately decided that was me being Anglocentric, why on earth would Henri de Catt use English-Greek code, etc.
But now that I know he has no problem throwing random English words into his diary, that's totally what I think it is! And I do think it's code, because he doesn't want everyone knowing where Fritz keeps his suicide device.
And it occurs to me that one thing I used to do in my own very secret diary was throw *random* words into dwarven runes, just so potential snoops wouldn't home in on the secret words and only the secret words.
And this *is* the first time he starts code-switching. I now think maybe he's covering his tracks with random languages, so his diary doesn't have exactly one sentence in other languages in the midst of all-French diary. Because the very next entry is one sentence of code-switching.
Then just three days later, he's code-switching again. Yeah, he might be covering his tracks.
The further you get into the diary, though, the wilder he gets, I can tell you that. Whatever else was going on, I think he started having fun.
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Date: 2020-02-13 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-13 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-13 07:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-14 09:43 pm (UTC)From the diary:
Speaking of opera, we searched for a name, but couldn't find it. I withdrew, saying that I would seek, and that, if I did not find it, that would prevent me from sleeping. I was going to bed when he sent me his page with a half-sheet containing the word in question: Abdolonym.
From the memoirs:
Following this conversation, the King spoke of the operas of Berlin, of their virtues, and of the excellent singers he had.
“If I see Berlin again, I will have an opera produced which is all beauty.”
He wished to tell me its name, but he could not remember it. He sought and sought again, and then became impatient.
“This is diabolical,” he said, “I can’t find that name. Good evening. Perhaps it will come to me when I am alone. If I do not find it, it will be impossible for me to go to sleep.”
In the night, at one o’clock, there was a knock at my door. "Who is there?"
"It is the servant. I come from the King. Your master must be awakened. I have brought him a paper to which he must reply."
A candle was lit, and I read these words:
“I have found the name: it is Montezuma. I shall now be able to sleep quietly. Do the same. With the idea that you might be restless about this name and not able to sleep, I wished to spare you a bad night.”
It was not so bad, for I was sleeping quietly, and, awakened, it was not possible for me to go to sleep again. I thanked the King, however, on the following day for his kind intention."
Now, I have *always* been surprised and slightly skeptical Fritz forgot the name of an opera for which HE had written the libretto just a few years before, and not only that, but it was his and Graun's most acclaimed collaboration. But okay, these things happen.
The real upshot of this account, for me and tumblr fandom, has always been: "If Fritz can't sleep, he assumes no one can sleep, and if he's going crazy trying to remember the name of something, he assumes it's driving everyone else crazy. Well-meaning but lacking in emotional intelligence and possibly theory of mind."
Now we not only have a different opera, but it was Catt who said *he* wasn't going to be able to sleep if he couldn't think of the name, and he was only *about* to go to bed when Fritz sent him the name.
Everything else so far could be passed off as vanity + trying to make a more exciting narrative, but are you TRYING to make Fritz look bad? In return for firing you?