selenak: (Elizabeth - shadows in shadows by Poison)
[personal profile] selenak
The two books are written a few decades apart, with "Empress Elizabeth" published in 1986, i.e. a year after Gorbachev in earnest practiced perestroika and glasnost, and the preface (not by the author) declares it to be very much a product of glasnost applied to history, doing away with both the Marxist pov and with the dea that the post-Peter the Great era until Catherine the Great's ascension is not worth studying. For me, the most obvious difference between the two books is actually that the second one, "The Five Empresses" is far more anecdotal, chatty and emotionial in nature. "Empress Elizabeth" may not be Marxist, but it does apply thematic structures the way I'm used to from current day German biographies (for example of FW, F1 or the Great Elector) I've read in recent years, i.e. foreign policy, domestic policy, private life - which means we go back and forth in time a few times - while "Five Empresses" does not.

Some more general observations about both books and their author's opinions )

Anyway. Anisimov manages to bring his various characters to life, and he's good at establishing where their various strengths and weaknesses come from.

Anna Ivanova: Romanov Cinderella Goes Autocrat )

Mostly, Anisimov brings up the quotes to back up his opinions, but not always. For example: after presenting the Peter I/Catherine I relationship as a love match on both parts backed up by excerpts from their earthy, mutually fond correspondence through the years, he arrives that point in the story where Catherine takes a non-Peter young lover, who happened to be the younger brother of Peter's first love, one Villm Mons. This is after Alexei's death and when speculating why she took that insane risk which easily could have gotten her killed painfully once Peter found out (in effect, he did kill her love, but not Catherine), our narrator suddenly questions whether she loved Peter at all, and points out the former Martha the peasant, war captive, did not have much choice, being handed from man to man until ending up with Peter, and doing anything but please the most powerful man in the land was out of the question. True enough, but might I suggest a third possibility: she both wanted the life with him and loved him until she saw him torture his own son to death. Even if she disliked Alexeii and saw him as a rival for her own children, including her at this point living son (something Anisimov assumes but does not back up with a quote), once you've seen a man do that, I could well see it killing any attachment beyond self preservation.

The First Miracle of the House of Brandenburg - Russian Take )

Elizaveta Petrovna: Charismatic Hedonist Conservative )

How the French Envoy Overrated Himself )

How To Handle Your Holstein Nephew and Rival )

How to Not Raise a Tiny Terror Grandson: By Catherine The Great )

In conclusion, thank you, Mildred, these were two instructive books. Since the author is remarkably not nationalistic - for example, when talking about the Anna Ivanova period is remembered as the time where Germans dominated the court, he points out that firstly, the Germans in question all came originally from different German states, had lived in Russia for many years and were at each other's throats, i.e. were rivals, not a unified German party, and secondly, it was in this very era that the Russian nobility got the massive concessions from the government which plagued every ruler since because they daren't take all those privileges away again, so the Russian nobles had the least cause to complain, as opposed to the general Russian population -, I am somewhat afraid to check whether he's still alive, and how he's doing these days....

[personal profile] mildred_of_midgard: Surprisingly well, at least according to his university page! 74 years old, tenured professor at the HSE University campus in St. Petersburg, tons of publications, named Best Teacher in 2014 and 2015, Winner of the HSE University Best Russian Research Paper Competition in 2021...

Of course, what's not listed on the page (or even what's listed in Russian that may give clues), I cannot say. But at least not in prison, mysteriously dead, mysteriously disappeared, or in exile.
selenak: (DadLehndorff)
[personal profile] selenak
While the estimable Dr. Schmidt(-Lötzen) only had the chance to publish four volumes of Lehndorff's diaries in book form, with volume IV covering the time until and including 1784, he did continue to publish his translations in the journal "Masovia" (where the first four volumes also made their debut in separate installments before being collected in book volumes), up to and including the year 1787.

1785: Twilight of the Fritz )


1785: Meeting Lafayette )

1786: Catherine the Great's true love rival revealed! )


1786: The Death of Kings )

1786-1787: New King, new job opportunities? )

Kalckreuth: The return )

Soon, Lehndorff has other worries, though.

On nearly losing your child (again) )


Karl makes it out of the sickness alive, though. Lehndorff's wife and his two other children get smallpox the same year, but survive as well, so there is more fretting and worrying, and then once he doesn't have worry about their lives anymore, Heinrich gives up and decides to go to Rheinsberg.

1787: Death of a Princess, Retirement for a Prince )

This would be a good place to end this write up, but unfortunately, there's still a decades-in-the-making rant to go through. It's one long outburst about how much life has screwed Lehndorff over, and thus he concludes 1787:

Money can't buy you love, especially if you keep not getting it )
mildred_of_midgard: Frederick the Great statue (Frederick)
[personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
In 1842, Macaulay was working on his History of England, a monumental five-volume work that he would publish a few years later. In the process of researching English history, he apparently ran across enough Fritz to become fascinated and decided he needed to write a short bio to get Fritz out of his system. To his editor, he wrote:

[Fritz's] personal character, manners, studies, literary associates; his quarrel with Voltaire, his friendship for Maupertuis, and his own unhappy métromanie will be will be very slightly, if at all alluded to in a History of England. Yet in order to write the History of England, it will be necessary to turn over all the Memoirs, and the writings of Frederic, connected with us, as he was, in a most important war.

This despite the fact that his history as published doesn't even overlap with Fritz's lifetime. Fritz is just that fascinating! (He really is. :P)

So Macaulay put together a 100-page bio that got reprinted a lot in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It stops with the end of the Seven Years' War, meaning Macaulay explicitly did what many people tacitly do, ignore the second 23 years of a 46-year reign. Carlyle's bio manages 20 books about the first 23 years (1740-1763) and 1 book about the second 23 (1763-1786).

The copy I obtained from Google Books, published in 1882, has a description of the second half of the reign supplied by someone with less amazing prose and wit than Macaulay. When Macaulay's essay comes to an end and the book continues, the editor puts in a footnote:

The reader will not need to be reminded that the narrative of Macaulay ends here. The descent from the sunny uplands of his style is sudden and painful, but there is no help for it. Herr Kohlrausch goes on honestly enough, and we must let him finish the story or go without it altogether. Patience; it will soon be over, and as a sugar-plum for good children, we promise you near the close a gorgeous picture of the great king in his old age, by Carlyle.

I cannot say I disagree: the post-Seven Years' War material by Herr Kohlrausch is unremarkable. But I give you, in a series of thematically grouped subthreads, Macaulay's most quotable moments. I wouldn't read this for facts or opinions, but you can tell this is the author of the Lays of Ancient Rome: very ringing and memorable prose, often quoted by modern biographers (even if only to disagree with the sentiments expressed).

Oh, apparently Macaulay called Carlyle's style gibberish when he started reading Carlyle's multi-volume Fritz bio in 1858, and I agree wholeheartedly. Humorously quotable in small excerpts; I've never managed to penetrate it as a work.

Oh, one very important thing to keep in mind from this, apart from Macaulay's political opinions and lack of access to the sources we now have: he was a nineteenth century British minister, and his biases are way showing. Do not take this write-up as a source for facts or interpretations of Fritz's life: it tells you far more about Macaulay than about Fritz. I've written it up at such length because Macaulay has an amazing writing style, not because this is a valuable historical source.

But on to the entertaining parts!

FW )

Voltaire )

MT )

Fritzian friends and family )

Fritz as poet )

Fritz's personality )

Fritz the terrier )

It's all Fritz's fault! )

It's not Fritz's fault! )

Miscellanea )
selenak: (CourtierLehndorff)
[personal profile] selenak
One source we've been pointed to from various angles, most recently by Hahn analyzing Fritzian policies in the 7 Years War, are the memoirs of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the last King of the Polish Commonwealth. Poniatowski is a fascinating figure in his own right, and one of the key issues of his life, the Partitioning(s) of Poland, will never cease to be studied intensely, so what follows is by no means meant to be as an overview of either him or Polish history. I simply excerpt passages of particular interest from a Prussian history angle from his memoirs. The memoirs themselves, btw, were written in several stages, starting in the early 1770s and continuing till Poniatowski's death in Russian exile as a glorified state prisoner. What Ive been reading is a German translation of the first two volumes, edited by A. v. Guttry, covering the years until Poniatowski's second departure from St. Petersburg in the August of 1758. As a Polish nobleman who visited Berlin as a youth (along with most other European capitals), became a diplomat in service of King August III of Saxony at the court of St. Petersburg just in time to protest against the Prussian invasion of Saxony at the start of the 7 Years War, and as the long time lover of the Grand Duchess Catherine, later to become Catherine II, Poniatowski has a unique first row seat to key events of the era, as well as a highly readable, often sarcastic writing style (and of course his own bias).

Meeting Fritz: So overrated! )

If young traveler Poniatowski was less than overwhelmed by Friedrich II's wit and manners, Saxon envoy and later King of Poland Poniatowski is withering about Fritz' mobster tactics to finance Prussia through the 7 Years War by bleeding Saxony and Poland dry:

How Fritz won his war by coin forgery and brutal occupation )

While Poniatowski, for understandable reasons, has it in for the Prussians, he can also dish it out in other directions. He was fond of one particular Englishman, the "Chevalier Williams", who seems to have been his Suhm from their first encounter in Berlin onwards; when Williams seriously argues for the first time with him in St. Petersburg, Poniatowski is ready to jump from the balcony, Rokoko guy that he is, but Williams pulls him back, and they reconcile. Hover, re: as for the British nation in general...

They don't impress me much )

He's nicer about the Austrians, while giving the caveat he's written these positive assessments pre-First Polish Partitioning. A passage about Maria Theresia's first minister Kaunitz, aka the one who hit on the idea of the Diplomatic Revolution, leading into a passage about MT:

My Not Yet Problematic Fave European Monarch )

Poniatowski turns out not to be a believer in "De mortuis nihil si bene" at all. It's doubtful that he'd have had much sympathy for his lover's husband, the ill-fated Peter III, under any circumstances. As the circumstances included Peter's Fritz admiration in all likelihood preventing Prussia's defeat in the 7 Years War...

Peter: Useless, Ridiculous or Dangerous? You decide! )

He did feel very differently regarding Peter's wife. Whether Poniatowski fell in love with Catherine for purely romantic reasons or already with an eye to potential mutual non-romantic benefits is debated (though the net result was that she used him, not the other way around), but she was undoubtedly the woman with the most influence on his life, and he gives her a starring role in his memoirs, starting with the first time they met (courtesy of his friend Williams, by then the British Ambassador in Russia):

Deflowered by Catherine the Great and Proud of It! )

Given all these entertaining descriptions, how did Poniatowski see himself as a young man? It's 1756, and Grand Duchess Catherine challenges her admirer to write a self portrait for her. Which he does:

Hot or not? Me! )

Lastly, here's Poniatwoski as seen by someone else, to wit, Ernst Ahasverus, Count Lehndorff, diarist extraordinaire. It's the lovely month of May 1781, Lehndorff, using his retirement to at last travel for as long as he wants to, likes Warsaw just fine, though he thinks the palace is a bit too overbudget for the Poles. He successfully angles for an invitation at court.

On the 9th at 10 am, I get presented to the King of Poland. He asks me to join him in his study and greets me with charming amiablity. He is still a beautiful man. He rises from his desk and tells me several pleasantries, while recalling that he has met me thirty years ago in Berlin. The conversation extends for quite a while. Finally, he tells me that he wants to show me his country seat himself. I must admit: even leaving his royal dignity aside, he is the most charming and witty man his kingdom has to offer, and he has a nice figure besides.


In conclusion: between this and their mutual fondness for Heinrich, one can make a case for Lehndorff and Catherine II having the same taste.
selenak: (M and Bond)
[personal profile] selenak
Of all the foreign diplomats serving at the court of Friedrich II., Andrew Mitchell certainly had the most exciting time of it. He started his time as the British envoy in the April of 1756, spent the entire Seven Years War in the field with Fritz - and occasionally with Heinrich -, and remained British envoy till his death in 1771 in Berlin, where he was buried in the Dorotheenstädter Kirche; Fritz attended his funeral, and a memorial bust of him in the church was paid for by Heinrich and some other friends. (Said church was reduced to rubble by the Allied bombing on November 22, 1943, and the area today is a park. Not to be confused with the Dorotheenstädter Friedhof.)

Mitchell's various dispatches, private letters and journals - one by his own hand, one dictated to his secretary - were edited and published in 1850 in two volumes by Andrew Bisset, about whom more below. Given how by now we've come across various memoirs which were either severely cut (Trenck, Thiebault) and even rewritten (Thiebault) in later editions, or memoirs which are better described as historical novels courtesy of the memoir writer (Catt), the questions "How reliable is Mitchell?" and "how reliable is Bisset?" as well as "what are their respective biases and agendas?" are important.

Andrew Bisset and the world of 1850 )

So much for the editor. On to Andrew Mitchell himself. His general reputation in other people's memoirs and diaries is a good one.

Lehndorff about Andrew Mitchell )

Mitchell is an Aberdeen Scot, friends especially with James Keith (who when he writes about his death he laments wasn't "always used" as well as he could have been), is also friends with Lord Auchinleck, father of James Boswell, and thus will be visited by Boswell when Boswell is on the Grand Tour. (See about the Boswell-Mitchell connection here.) In this context, he's described as " an Aberdeen Scotsman, creditable to his country, hardheaded, sagacious, sceptical of shows, but capable of recognising substances withal, and of standing loyal to them stubbornly if needful".

One big reason why I don't think Mitchell's papers were rewritten with hindsight, either by hismself before his death or by Bisset in 1850, is that they repeatedly feature him making judgments he later changes his mind about, whether about the French dominating the alliance against Fritz (they didn), or about the people he meets. This is a striking difference to memoirists like Catt who have themselves always be correct in their opinions from the get go. One case in point: Mitchell changing his opinion of Prince Heinrich around 180° during the course of the war.

Mitchell's Henry: from scum to hero )

Now, the main reason why we looked up Mitchell is that his 1757 journal contains an actual bona fide mention of Katte by Fritz, albeit a brief one, and a far more extensive description of the FW methods of child raising. Bearing in mind that the Katte story in Catt's memoirs has no counterpart in Catt's diary: would Mitchell have either made this up, or presented an account by someone else on Katte and Fritz' childhood as being said by Fritz? (Which Catt also did.)

Of course it's in Mitchell's interests to present himself as being in the confidence of the King to his superiors - that's an envoy's top goal. And it's important to note that the intermittent journals he writes aren't private journals in our sense, or like Lehndorff's diary; they are written so he can draw on them for his later dispatches home, and with the awareness that if pressed for time, he might just send the entire journal.. But I really doubt he would invent a Katte & Küstrin conversation for that purpose; mid 7 Years War, there are other concerns. Which means I do think what he quotes Fritz saying is indeed the horse's mouth. Further support for this is the phrasing. "He talked much of the obligations he had towards the Queen Mother, and of the affection he has for his sister the Margravine of Bayreuth, with whom he has been bred." (In the entry after SD's death news reach the camp.) If you remember, in his letters to Heinrich, Fritz keeps saying "I was brought up with her" or "think that I was born and raised with my sister of Bayreuth". Conclusion: Mitchell is quoting authentic Fritz.

The entire 1757 entry: Fritz about his childhood, Katte and Küstrin )

Mitchell recording frequently erronous predictions about what's going on with the enemy - both by Fritz and himself - also highlights how much Prussian and British intelligence through the 7 Years War was dictated by wishful thinking. And by understandable paranoia, as with Mitchell's side-eyeing Fritz' ongoing Voltaire correspondance.

Spy reports and Voltaire-addicted monarchs )

Not that Mitchell in general strikes one as gullible. A great example of Mitchell being a good judge of character and seeing through hyperbole in either direction is when he has his first chat with the Russian envoy post coup (that brings Catherine to power and deposes her husband Peter III), on August 6th, 1762, and writes:

Mitchell on Peter III, preceding current historians by more than 200 years )

Like everyone else who hung out with Fritz for longer, Andrew Mitchell also got treated to the King's literary efforts and asked for feedback. This was a potentially dicy situation ably solved :

Fritz as a writer, by Andrew Mitchell )

Mitchell's editor Bisset has his own early Victorian take on Frederick the Great's literary efforts:

Fritz as a writer, by Andrew Bisset )

Something else Mitchell changes his opinions about is the terrible price paid by the civilian population for the war. Early on, in 1756, Fritz invading Saxony is a bold strategic choice Mitchell is totally behind, even if he's a bit disturbed at the occasional plundering. By the end of 1760/ start of 1761, though, he's horrified by the way the Saxons are treated. (He's also horried that Fritz and Heinrich are at odds about this and in one of their "I'm not talking to you" stages and reports "I have laboured underhand with the Prussian Ministers here to bring about some reconciliation, but they have made no progress. They are well disposed, but timid." Mitchell, getting between Fritz and Heinrich must have been only slightly less uncomfortable than getting between FW and Fritz, so no surprise there.) Some choice quotes showing Mitchell the war reporter. The difference to early Mitchell accounts tonally resembles US reports on WWII vs US reports on Vietnam:

Apocalypse Now )

And if you think this implicit war time criticism of Fritz that goes with "abject flattery" is remarkable, wait for Mitchell in full critical mode post 7 Years War.

Hohenzollerns in peace time are a trial )
mildred_of_midgard: Frederick the Great statue (Frederick)
[personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
[personal profile] selenak's write-up of the Pragmatic Sanction:

Pragmatic Sanction )

[personal profile] mildred_of_midgard's write-up of the Silesian Wars at a high level, with emphasis on the first two:

Silesian Wars )

[personal profile] selenak fleshing out the non-Prussia side of the War of the Austrian Succession:

Austrian Succession )

A write-up of the Seven Years' War, with emphasis on Peter III, by [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard:

Russian shenanigans )

Peter III's life story. A little bit of context: this all started with [personal profile] selenak's hilarious crackfic in which our heroes and antiheroes are in a chatroom, and user HolsteinPete changes his handle to (P)RussianPete. [personal profile] cahn asked for the context on that, and [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard provided the following.

Holstein Pete )

[personal profile] mildred_of_midgard on the War of the Polish Succession:

Polish Succession )

Not exactly a war, but definitely conquest: the geographical history of the region called Prussia, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Polish partitions, by [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard.

Prussia and the Polish Partitions )

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