So I decided I would reread the Fritz bios that I read way back in July/August, before we started our lovely conversations here, back when none of us knew a fraction of what we know now.
It took me several weeks to get through MacDonogh, due to concentration difficulties, but I highlighted passages as I went (benefits of e-books), and now here they are!
This isn't a review or systematic write-up of the book, bu rather a collection of potentially interesting or entertaining things that we haven't already talked about. The caveat I've repeated ad nauseam: MacDonogh is exactly like Wikipedia, in that he contains a lot of good material, not one of bit of which is reliable until you've tracked it down somewhere else. In fact, when I realized Wikipedia relied heavily on him, I suddenly understood a lot about Wikipedia.
But some very good advice I got when starting graduate school was that it's easy to warn people away from this author and that author, but if you only read authors who have nothing wrong with them, you'll never read anything. Read widely and critically.
And with that caveat, here's MacDonogh!
Grandpa Friedrich I:
His second wife, Frederick William's mother Sophia-Charlotte of Hanover (the sister of King George I of Great Britain), seems to have preferred her wranglings with the court philosopher Leibniz to any form of congress with her extravagant husband. She is reported to have told a courtier 'That idiot Leibniz, who wants to teach me about the infinitesimally small! Has he therefore forgotten that I am the wife of Frederick the First, how can he imagine that I am unacquainted with my own husband?'
To understand the lavishness of the conception [of F1's palace], one has only to think that the famous Amber Room of Tsarskoe Selo was designed for the Schloss. Peter the Great went into raptures when he saw it, and Frederick's austere son promptly had it packed up and dispatched to Russia in exchange for a squad of the tall soldiers he loved so much.
Tiny terror FW:
His tutor, Jean-Philippe Rebeur, had no more luck than his parents. The only way he could instill even the three Rs into the boy was by constantly drawing his metaphors from a battery of military terms. The result, as one recent biographer has expressed it, was to put Frederick William 'on a life-long war-footing with Latin, grammar and spelling.'
Tiny terrorized FW?
Extraordinary as it may sound, George had bullied Frederick William as a child, and married Caroline of Ansbach, the woman Frederick William had his eyes on at the time.
I wonder if MacDonogh has got George and FW mixed up, since he likes to mix people up. Or maybe George started it, and FW finished it?
FW inaugurating his reign:
'Gentlemen, our good master is dead,' he told his father’s courtiers. 'The new king bids you all go to hell.'
Size IS everything, according to FW:
When a stag was sighted, there were hunts in the forest at Stern around the king’s modest lodge. The building [Jagdhaus Stern] still exists, its main room of the Tabakscollegium decorated with hunting scenes, the king in person administering the coup de grâce. A more unusual decorative feature are the antlers shed each year by the king's pet stag 'Big Hanss', a present from the Alte Dessauer. Given his royal owner, the beast was naturally also a giant: the king appreciated size above all else.
FW's A+ parenting toward his daughters:
In general he was not overly impressed with girl-children: he was concerned that they might not all find husbands. He even went so far as to describe them as weeds, and to suggest that they should be drowned at birth, like kittens.
And toward his son:
When the British court asked for a portrait of the crown prince to show to Amalia, Frederick William replied unkindly that she should be sent a picture of a 'big monkey, that's what he looks like.'
Voltaire might agree? He used to call his monkey Frederic II and call Fritz "Luc", after his monkey Luc, and say that Fritz was "like a monkey, he bites the hand that caresses him." (Fritz, as we recall, had Voltaire's rooms at Sanssouci decorated with monkeys when after their acrimonious parting.)
"Brother Voltaire" the honorary Hohenzollern indeed!
Fritz at Küstrin:
Frederick William was keen to wean him on to beer, Küstrin beer being apparently rather good. One does not get the impression that Frederick was utterly convinced, and he told his father that he had been drinking champagne, but only under doctors' orders.
Rare moment of frat boy fun at Küstrin:
At the end of September (1731), he received a visit from his mad, bad cousin Charles of Brandenburg-Schwedt. They drank the king’s health and, in a suitably hearty gesture, smashed all the glasses afterwards. To his new friend Frau von Wreech, Frederick confessed the extent of the damage: 'We didn't really drink that much, but we made a great deal of noise, we smashed a few windows and reduced a few ovens to rubble.'
*Not*, note, the mad, bad (and dangerous to know? Or at least to be married to) Margrave Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Schwedt that Wilhelmine didn't marry and poor other sister Sophia Dorothea did.
Wikipedia doesn't give me any hints that Charles was actually mad or bad, this one window-smashing episode aside, so I wonder if MacDonogh is getting them confused. Or perhaps that branch of the family could give the main Hohenzollern line a run for their money too!
Fritz getting married:
It was Seckendorff who sent the gossip back to Vienna about the wedding night, 'That the king had to parley and threaten the crown prince to get him into the bridal bed, but that he didn't stay there more than an hour and afterwards was clearly to be seen walking in the valley…'
EC getting married:
The linchpin of Elisabeth's suite was a massive ceremonial bed, a present from the king (she actually slept in a smaller one alongside). Questions were being raised once again as to whether there was any sexual congress between the couple.
Fritz at Rheinsberg nicknaming his friends:
Ernst-Christoph von Manteuffel, for example, was 'Quinze-vingts' because he claimed he was 'too blind to illuminate the prince', or sometimes he was 'the Devil', which played on the diabolic part of his name. There was 'Caesarion', an allusion to the diminutive emperor in 'Keyserlingk', who was also the 'Swan of Mitau', in a reference both to his gracefulness and to the Baltic port near his birthplace. Algarotti was another swan, sometimes of Padua, occasionally Mantua, once or twice Venice. His architect was 'Apollodore' or 'le chevalier Bernin'. Jordan was 'Hephaestion' or 'Tindal'. Grumbkow was referred to as 'Biberius' or 'the Cassubian': he came from Pomerania, like the Slavic tribes of that name. Fouqué was 'Chastity'. The military man was reputed one of the best actors of the court. Lastly, the Saxon envoy Suhm was 'Diaphanes'.
Note on "Quinze-vingts": "After the hospital for the blind in Paris. Saint I Louis’s foundation offered beds for 300 blind men and women: fifteen times twenty. The number was associated with the blind ever after."
I'm not entirely sure Caesarion counts as an emperor, but that's not nearly as bad as not recognizing Hephaestion and struggling to come up with a connection to Hephaestus. I promise you, MacDonogh, Fritz knew who Hephaestion was. (I believe he later acquired a painting of Alexander and Hephaestion for his picture gallery.)
Speculates that "Tindal" may be an allusion to William Tyndale.
He doesn't say anything about Bernin, but I'm guessing Bernini.
Apollodorus is probably Trajan's architect, not the more famous ones that immediately came to my mind when I saw this name.
The architect in question is Knobelsdorff, btw.
Diaphanes is a bit of a mystery, different biographers have different explanations. MacDonogh attributes it to Suhm's open-heartedness. If I ever write my Suhm fic, you'll see my own headcanon.
Fritz with his friends at Rheinsberg:
This circle formed the basis for Frederick's 'Bayard Order', commemorating the famous French knight. No joke was intended. The order existed for the serious study of the arts of war. It had twelve members, including Frederick’s brothers William and Henry and, uncharacteristically, his sister Charlotte. The remainder were close friends. The Grand Master was Fouqué. Deliberations were held in archaic French.
EC able to get stuff out of FW, but not always the right stuff:
At the beginning of 1736, for example, Frederick William asked her just what was missing at Rheinsberg: 'I wasn’t aware of anything other than mirrors and chairs … I forgot to mention the ticking for the tableware.' A few days later the king plundered his father’s uninhabited palaces and 150 English chairs arrived at Rheinsberg. Frederick, however, had a rather more grandiose conception for his new home, and he put them straight into storage. He did not want any old junk which his father found lying around the royal palaces.
Bielfeld reports on life at Rheinsberg:
Keyserlingk entered the halls like a whirlwind, 'or like Boreas in the Ballet of the Rose'. Bielfeld later encountered the Balt returning from hunting dressed in a nightshirt. 'While he changed, he recited passages from the Henriade to me and long chunks of German poetry, he spoke to me about horses and hunting, performed a few pirouettes … and discoursed all the while on politics, mathematics, architecture and tactics.'
'We see the prince and princess only at table, at play, at the ball, the concert, or other common pleasures of which they participate.' Despite the restricted size of the house, Frederick could elude his courtiers, and concerts were by invitation only. He was generally closeted in his seven-room empire upstairs, but he was occasionally sighted, wearing the uniform of his regiment, Bielfeld regretted his inaccessibility: 'I would freely go some leagues barefooted, at least once a week, to enjoy the delicious pleasure of supping in his company.' There was still a chance to see him amusing himself at the ball: 'The prince dances in a noble and graceful manner. In a word, he loves all rational pleasures, except the chase, the exercise of which he thinks as troublesome, and scarce more useful than chimney-sweeping.'
One day Frederick came down from his ivory tower (it was indeed a tower) and joined in the debauch. Champagne was served and everyone got drunk. Bielfeld had to go out to empty his bladder. When he returned, the crown princess had changed his water for celery wine, which he then, in turn, poured into his wine to dilute it. 'I became joyous.' Frederick made him drink bumper after bumper of Lunel muscat. When Elisabeth broke a glass, it became the signal for a rout: 'in an instant all the glasses flew to the several corners of the room; and all the cristals, porcelain, piers, branches, bowls, vases, etc. were broke into a thousand pieces. In the midst of this universal destruction the prince stood, like the man in Horace, who contemplates the crash of worlds with a look of perfect tranquillity.'
The evening ended badly for Bielfeld: he fell down the grand staircase and passed out. A servant woman mistook him for a dog and kicked him in the guts, calling him by 'an appellation somewhat dishonourable'. The rest of the party had taken to their beds and remained there all day. Such larks were rare at Rheinsberg: 'the prince is very far from being a toper, he sacrifices only to Apollo and the Muses; one day, however, he may perhaps raise an altar to Mars'.
That all sounds lovely, but I hope the "made him drink" wasn't the kind of "made him drink" that FW had done to him. However, in his letter (which I checked), aside from the falling down the stairs incident, he seems to find the entire evening enjoyable, rather than something he later said he didn't want to do (as Fritz did), and even the accident he said he later laughed at, after he recovered. And apparently Fritz came and visited him at his sickbed every day until he did recover. So I'm going to go with "not roleplaying Dad
Early Voltaire letters:
Voltaire was getting to grips with the prince's phonetic spelling, which characterised his French as much as his German: 'auser' rather than 'oser', 'tres' instead of ‘trait’, 'matein' for 'matin', etc. More important, perhaps, his inability to pronounce certain words made it impossible for him to scan his lines: 'amitié' had four syllables instead of three, 'nourricier' three and not four; 'aient' one and not two.
Keyserlingk visits Cirey and has the hots for Émilie:
'when she spoke, I was in love with her mind; and when she didn’t, I was [obsessed with] her body'.
Haven't found the letter for this yet, but haven't looked systematically. Am curious about those brackets.
FW to Pöllnitz in the twilight years of his life:
I am not that worried about living, for I leave behind me a son who possesses all the gifts [necessary] for a good ruler. I should not have said that five years ago: he was still too young then; but, thanks be to God, he has changed and I am satisfied. He has promised me to maintain the army and I am reassured that he'll keep his word. I know he loves the soldiers, he has understanding and everything will go well.
Citation: Carl Hinrichs, Der allgegenwärtige König: Friedrich der Grosse im Kabinett und auf Inspektionsreisen, 3rd ed, Berlin, 1943, 41; Jessen, 80.
Have not been able to check this citation.
MacDonogh thinks FW is a big fan of future Frederick the Great:
Austria's ingratitude towards him riled the king at the end. He must have felt a fool to have placed so much trust in Charles VI. He had not even been informed of the marriage of the Archduchess Maria Theresa to the duke of Lorraine, and despite his willingness to fight for them, they had shown no serious inclination to win him Jülich and Berg. On 2 May 1736 he pointed to the crown prince, that Fritzchen who had caused him so much heart- and belly-ache in the past, and with a rare gift of prophecy he said: 'Here stands someone who will avenge me.'
No citation! From the same guy who said the 1722 political testament specifies his heir should try to get Silesia.
Fritz starting off his reign as the most informal king in Europe:
When the late Field Marshal Grumbkow had written to the crown prince in old age complaining that he had not been addressed as 'your excellency', Frederick had pretended that he was perfectly confused when it came to titles: 'I accord count, marquis, duke, cousin, excellency, brother, etc., to anyone and everyone, without knowing whether I have got it right or not.'
I actually found this letter and it says what MacDonogh says it says!
Fritz refusing to keep a proper court:
What court there was revolved around poor, stuttering Elisabeth: 'it was to her that they went on the appointed times on the fixed days, ministers, generals, envoys and courtiers; it was to her that foreigners and the like made their presentations: the etiquette was entirely with her court'. It must have been stultifyingly dull. Nothing was said, because no one had anything to report. There was nothing much to eat either: one night the wife of Field Marshal Schmettau had to make do with one preserved cherry. The same source mentions a facetious Frenchman quipping later on in Frederick’s reign: 'There is a great gala at the queen’s today … for, as I crossed the Schloss [courtyard] I saw an old lamp lit on the grand staircase.'
SD's chamberlain:
The queen mother was compensated with a small court complete with marshal and chamberlain. The latter was a dullard called Morien. The marquis d'Argens apparently used to amuse himself by lending him the same book over and over again. He managed to get him to read it seven times in this manner. Finally Morien told him, 'Monsieur, I find it admirable. However, if I might be allowed to say, it seemed to me that the author repeated himself from time to time.'
I don't know, the guy sounds kinda witty to me, based on this one quote.
Fritz pays for Voltaire to visit:
"Your miser [i.e. Voltaire] will drink the dregs of his insatiable desire to make money; he is going to get 1300 thalers. His six-day appearance is going to cost me 550 thalers per diem. That is a lot to pay a lunatic; no court jester was ever paid such wages."
For comparison, Peter Keith gets 1200 talers a year at this point, and complains it's not enough to live on in Berlin.
Fritz invades Silesia:
[Maria Theresa] called Frederick the Heretic-king; other epithets were 'the enemy without faith or justice', 'the evil animal' and 'the monster'. Nor was she prepared to cede Silesia: 'Never, never, will the queen renounce an inch of all her hereditary lands, though she perish with all that remains to her. Rather the Turks before Vienna, rather cession of the Netherlands to France, rather any concession to Bavaria and Saxony, than renunciation of Silesia.' It was all music to Frederick's ears. He boasted to Algarotti that in Vienna, 'They say public prayers against me', and soon he would be taken for the Antichrist himself.
Note for
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cahn: the Turks before Vienna was not a hypothetical. It had happened less than 60 years before, in 1683. There was a siege and a big battle, and the led the battle, in alliance with the Austrians, was John III Sobieski of Poland, which I still remember after all these years because he was the maternal grandfather of Charles Edward Stuart, and please don't ask me about the Jacobites, or we'll be here forever. ;) I do not have selenak's breadth of historical knowledge; I have very specific knowledge of whatever has caught my interest over the years.MacDonogh's dating on Fritz being King of Prussia is 1742:
a few months later the beleaguered emperor returned a few favours by changing him from king in Prussia to a more authentic king of Prussia.
Fritz tries to talk Voltaire into joining his court:
At the beginning of September, he went to Aachen to take the waters, hoping to see Voltaire there. His fellow hypochondriac tried to cry off again. In his then state he would be 'like an impotent man in the presence of his mistress', which would not do at all. He was too ill to submit to a cure, he wailed; but in the end he came. The poet lodged in the king’s apartment and they had a four-hour chat, two days running, during which Frederick again tried to convince him to move to Prussia.
If I can just find the source for that passage where Voltaire compares moving to Sanssouci to getting married to Fritz, our shipping will be complete!
Fritz's friends join him at Charlottenburg after the war:
Charlottenburg. His circle closed in around him. It contained some new members: the plump 'Chevalier Bernin' (Knobelsdorff) was now flanked by M. des Eguilles (the marquis d'Argens) and the 'Limping Satyr' (Pöllnitz), the permanent butt of his jokes as a result of his frequent changes of religion. Frederick kept Rothenburg informed of the cronies: 'Pöllnitz is ill; Fouqué is drinking tokay and losing at chess; Keyserlingk is drinking water and writing elegies to his beloved...'
MacDonogh's strong anti-sibling bias is showing:
There were family chores, not least two unmarried sisters, Ulrica and Amalia, who were enjoying what life Berlin and Potsdam had to offer and running up gambling debts. They even had the temerity to ask Frederick to pay them. History does not relate whether he did or not.
The temerity! In a few years, Ulrica's even going to have the temerity to ask him to pay her dowry! Can you believe it? "Optimism" is more the word I would use.
At the same time, the Austrians were clamouring for compensation and Frederick instructed Podewils to see them off. Money was for the arts alone. In a language worthy of his father, he wrote: 'Le roi de Prusse ne paie rien.'"
Well, as Voltaire said in his memoirs, "Like as Louis XII would not revenge the affronts of the Duke d'Orleans, neither would the King of Prussia remember the debts of the Prince Royal."
Mind you, if we're talking language worthy of his father, another biographer says that FW once replied to a request from one of his subjects with "I don't shit money."
Voltaire shows up in 1743:
Although he was as smitten as ever, Frederick was suspicious that he had not been asked for the usual travel expenses and correctly surmised that Voltaire was spying on him. He was therefore hesitant about discussing matters of state with his friend. Voltaire bought off his employers with letters stressing his intimate relationship with the Prussian king, who spent four hours a day closeted in Voltaire’s apartment, where he amply revealed his foreign political 'intentions'.
At least one biographer's figured out who was smitten!
Not content with making a pass at the French ambassador's cook (she fought him off!), he was now making cow eyes at Frederick's sister Ulrica. They acted together, and in their congress Voltaire forgot his place. He wrote her some verses as a birthday present, telling her that he had dreamed of her.
MacDonogh claims that Fritz was disapproving, but I turned up that article on how Fritz was actually playing along, and having read the poems, I agree. He seems much more concerned that Voltaire isn't giving him, Fritz, his undivided attention than that he's hitting on Fritz's sister. Now I just want the story of the cook fighting Voltaire off!
Our favorite "can't live with you, can't live without you" ship:
Theirs was a puzzling relationship. There was a permanent friction between them, and Voltaire never ceased to cause problems for the king by his indiscretions, yet they seemed to nourish one another. Despite the bad blood over Ulrica and Voltaire's ham-fisted espionage, Frederick was soon writing to him offering him all sorts of blandishments to take up residence in Berlin.
Fritz and law:
From 31 May 1746, Prussia opted out of imperial justice with the scrapping of the appeals to Vienna. This liberated it from the constraints imposed by German law. Already in 1738 Frederick William had asked Cocceji to draw up a complete legal code. After the demise of the appellate jurisdiction, Frederick asked him again. The results were the Codex Fridericianus Pomeranicus and the Codex Fridericianus Marchius of 1747 to 1748. Appeals went to the king. Voltaire cites the case of a man who had enjoyed a love affair with a she donkey, which was a capital offence. Frederick minuted that the sentence was annulled: 'in his lands one could enjoy freedom of both conscience and penis'. A similar tale is told of the cavalry trooper who was found to have sodomised his horse. Frederick again refused to enact the punishment deemed due in the circumstances: 'The man is a pig', he wrote. 'Transfer him to the infantry.'"
Either all copies of Voltaire's memoirs I have are bowdlerized, or MacDonogh is being creative again. All my copies, French and English, say is that the crime was of an infamous nature, no mention of donkeys.
It's possible, though, since he also mentions the marriage analogy being in the memoirs, and he may just have a copy that I don't.
On the other hand, bowdlerizing Voltaire's memoirs has got to be like bowdlerizing Lehndorff's diaries: surely there's nothing left by the time you're done!
Fritz and MT:
He knew that business remained unsettled between him and Maria Theresa even despite the guarantees of his ownership of Silesia meted out at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, but he never descended to personal insult, beyond speculating on who might wear the trousers in that ménage.
Hmm. You seem to be missing out on the vast amounts of personal insult Fritz descended to, MacDonogh. But good job whitewashing.
This one is interesting because Gundling was FW's court jester/fool:
Maupertuis, freed from Austrian captivity (they had, in fact, treated him with respect), was pestering Frederick for his patent as president of the Academy [of Sciences]: 'that position first made honourable by Leibniz, and rendered ridiculous by Gundling … will be for me, Sire, what you want it to be'.
That's FW for you, always taking the sciences seriously.
Fritz's friends dying off already:
At the time, he had longed for Rheinsberg and his friends, but Frederick's world had since been made poorer and sadder for the loss of such companions as Keyserlingk, Jordan and Duhan. Jordan's portrait was hung up in his cabinet, and Thiébault tells the story of one of his friends — it is hard to say which — whose coffin was taken into Frederick's apartment, after which it was only with some difficulty that his servants convinced him to relinquish it, for the body had begun to stink.
Another case where I tracked down the citations in the Thiébault memoirs and both passages seem entirely unrelated. One I recognized the pagination off the top of my head (lol), because, of course, it's the Katte episode; the other turned out to be Trenck. I'm starting to think his copies have vastly different pagination than mine, but maybe I'm being too charitable. On the other hand, he's definitely got different paginations on the Oeuvres than I do on Trier. I can often find his quotes, but only by ignoring the page numbers (which are also not letter numbers, in case you're wondering).
Fritz on friendship:
Despite his impossibility on close acquaintance, Frederick felt he could not go on without friends. He took issue with d'Argens' contention in his Nouveaux mémoires that a Carthusian might be happy, despite his solitude. 'I should like to say affirmatively that he is not. A man who cultivates the [arts] and sciences and who lives without friends is a lone wolf. In a word, the way I see it, friendship is indispensable to our happiness.'
Fritz, just because you can't do it, doesn't mean no one can. What is it with you not liking it when people react to things differently from you, and also when they react to things the same way as you? Oh, right, emotional stuntedness.
The Palladion:
Readings of Le Palladion surely raised a few laughs at Frederick’s petits soupers. One or two of his friends must have been indiscreet. Soon there was talk in Paris and Versailles, where the French king voiced a singular desire to lay his hands on a copy. Wheedling the poem out of Frederick became a diplomatic priority. A year later Valory wrote that he wanted to read Frederick's description of his exploits with the Pandurs for himself. Frederick was not prepared to let it go: 'how the theologians, politicians and purists would scream'. When Valory pushed, Frederick sent him his Histoire de Brandebourg instead.
Frederick had given Darget a rough ride in verse: sodomised by so many Jesuit fathers. Perhaps for that reason he wrote him a poem too: 'A Darget, apologie des rois'. In it he admitted that the life of a king’s secretary was not always a happy one. Based on Boileau's Epitre XI, A mon jardinier, it is one of Frederick’s most successful poems.
Tous les jours, par cahier, tu mets ses vers au net,
Et quand tu les lui rends, Dieu sait le bruit qu’il fait:
D’un sévère examen le pointilleux scrupule
S'étend par chaque point et sur chaque virgule;
Là sont les e muets qui devraient être ouverts
Ou c'est un mot de moins qui fait clocher un vers;
Puis, en recopiant cet immortel ouvrage,
Tu donnes son auteur au diable à chaque page.
Every day you put whole books of his verse to rights,
God knows, a thankless task which leads to frequent fights:
The meticulous pedant he alights on a
Misplaced colon or full stop, or a missing comma;
Here is a silent e, which should be stressed
And there’s a missing word which leaves the line a mess;
Then as you copy out the immortal autograph,
You damn its author with every paragraph.
I don't have enough data to express an opinion, but Blanning tells me Darget considered this an inadequate apology. If so, one can hardly blame him!
Algarotti gossipy sensationalism:
Meanwhile, keeping Algarotti in line was proving difficult. He was showing an interest in one of the king's dancers, Giovanna Corrini, the wife of Jean-Baptiste Denis, who played commedia dell’arte roles and was known as ‘la Pantaloncina’ as a result. Whether the interest was carnal or not is an interesting question. Frederick evidently thought it was: ‘I hope that you have less need of physicians than you do pimps, from the point of view of both diet and pleasure, and that rather than obtaining galbanum from the chemists you are drinking the wine of Aÿ which makes the blood circulate faster and carries happiness to the brain.'
MacDonogh's footnotes:
"Galbanum resin was used for treating venereal diseases. Aÿ is in the Marne Valley, i.e. Champagne."
Re "from the point of view of both diet and pleasure," he says, "Macquereau is the French for both mackerel and pimp."
Immediately following the preceding:
Algarotti knew how to parry this ribbing. He sent the gourmand king broccoli seeds. Frederick was delighted: 'the only way to eat decent stuff, you will have the first'.
Algarotti: the only boyfriend (that we know of) to actually give Fritz broccoli!
Voltaire wants to spy on Fritz yet again:
He once again offered the king his services as a secret agent, but Louis was not interested, and nor was the foreign office in his repeated attempts to renew their relations. Madame de Pompadour was even less impressed at Voltaire’s decision, and never forgave him for going to Prussia. After he left, the French king allegedly quipped, 'That’s one less madman at my court and one more at his.'
Voltaire at Sanssouci:
Summer at Sanssouci was not so bad. In August there was a 'carousel' in imitation of that given by Louis XIV in Paris in 1685; the margravine was the guest of honour. At the party 46,000 Chinese lanterns were lit, and 31,000 soldiers were stationed round the park. There were little armies dressed as Romans, Carthaginians, Persians and Greeks, led by the princes William, Henry and Ferdinand and the margrave Charles of Schwedt. Warlike music was played. At the close, Princess Amalia was there to distribute the trophies.
Despite his minor court appointment at Versailles, Voltaire was treated better in Prussia. He had the right to dine at the queen’s table in Berlin (for all that it was worth — it might have sounded more impressive by report in Paris). He told Madame Denis that he had heard not a word of German spoken so far: ‘our language and literature have made more conquests than Charlemagne’. He wanted her to join him, but she was not at all keen. She told him that she imagined Berlin was like Paris in the age of the first Capetians.
Voltaire replied that the poetry in the opera performed in Berlin was indeed worthy of Hugh Capet. It was unkind of him: it was as often as not written by Frederick!
Notice how he doesn't say it was inaccurate, just unkind. :P
Voltaire at Sanssouci:
Voltaire mocked his own skeletal appearance. It must have been true, or the chambermaids in old Prussia must have been made of strong stuff. On one occasion as he lay in bed, one of these junos mistook him for a heap of dirty linen and picked him up, mattress and all, and threw him on the floor.
Fritz's idea of an intermezzo:
Franz Benda and his family continued to live modestly in their house in Nowawes, across the water from Potsdam, with the rest of their clan of Bohemian immigrants. The present house was built after lightning struck the original building on 22 July 1755. Frederick and Benda were in the middle of the Sanssouci concert, but as soon as the king had finished his adagio he rode over to inspect the damage. Fifty houses had been destroyed by the blaze. Frederick spent an hour and a half at this intermezzo, inspecting the damage and promising financial help, then rode back and finished the concert.
Is this true?
In January 1757, Prussia was expelled from the Holy Roman Empire
The Brits, as
selenak mentioned re portraits, fall hard for Fritz:Frederick was something of a heart-throb in Britain even before his victories turned him into a folk hero. On 18 September 1756, the secretary of state, Lord Holdernesse, wrote to Mitchell to tell him: 'Our constant toast here now is, success to the king of Prussia: he grows vastly popular among us...' Frederick's success with the British largely hinged on his disingenuous assumption of the Protestant cause.
Still smitten with Fritz:
From this time [the battle of Prague in 1757] date the first of the pubs called 'The King of Prussia' that used to exist all over Britain. Less than a handful survive; most fell victim to the anti-Prussian feeling at the beginning of the First World War.
It's worth noting there's a town in Pennsylvania (settled heavily, of course, by Germans), still called King of Prussia. It's adjacent to the Valley Forge national park, which means I was about a mile away a couple years ago and never noticed, and it's best known for having the second largest shopping mall in the US. Named after Old Fritz. Go figure!
Catherine is smitten too:
On 20 November 1756 she wrote to Hanbury Williams: 'I read the writings of the king of Prussia with the same avidity as those of Voltaire. You will think that I am making up to you, if I tell you today that I am a profound admirer of His Prussian Majesty.'
Keep in mind the chronology: she won't be empress until 1762, and by then she'll be somewhat more of a middle-grounder where Fritz is concerned, and definitely more concerned with Russia's interests over Prussia's regardless of any personal feelings.
Fritz unhappy about how the war is going:
'Often I’d like to get drunk', he wrote to his sister Amalia in September, 'to drown my annoyance, but as I can’t drink I distract myself by writing verses and as long as I am absorbed by this distraction, I don’t feel my unhappiness any more.'
The Prussians have their most one-sided victory, at Rossbach, against the French, who basically just run away despite outnumbering the enemy 2 to 1.
More than 5000 of the allied soldiers were killed or wounded and another 5000 taken prisoner. The tally included eleven generals and a rumour ran round that General de Broglie had died of his wounds in Merseburg. Frederick had lost 169 dead and 379 wounded. Prisoners kept arriving in dribs and drabs. Before the battle a boy had come to Seydlitz to enlist. The cavalry commander had told him he was too young to be a trooper. 'What must I do?' asked the youth. Seydlitz told him to take a French general prisoner. After the battle the boy came in trailing a dejected Gaul: 'See, here is a French general as you ordered.' Keith commented that he had done it as 'coolly as if he had been ordered to buy a pound of biscuit'. He was promptly made an officer. Two peasant girls brought in a French soldier on the end of a lead. Mitchell thought that if there had been two more hours of daylight the French would have been annihilated.
The Prussians score their most famous tactical victory, at Leuthen in Silesia:
Frederick surprised a number of exhausted and wounded Austrian officers in the manor house in Lissa. 'Good evening, gentlemen; certainly you weren't expecting me here, is there any room to spare?' Perplexed, but aware that the Prussian army was not far behind, they led him up to the hall of the manor where dinner was being served. Frederick talked to them politely for a while then found himself a room and settled down to pen letters and dispatches.
Fritz in 1761, looking for help with the war:
In June, Prussian officers were drinking to the health of Musrapha III, their new ally, but despite Frederick's hoping against hope, it was not a military alliance: Turkey was too weak. His new friends were considerate enough, however, to send him a brace of camels in September 1762.
Meanwhile, the gossip mill back in Berlin is hard at work:
A prostitute has accused Porporino of siring her child; the courts declared the child to be his, sentenced him to pay the prostitute 100 thalers and to feed the infant. There was no question of appealing against the verdict, Porporino paid the 100 thalers at once and admitted paternity of the child, which he took away and is having brought up in his house; and he thanked the judges for making good the loss inflicted on him by the Venetian surgeons. This story has spread mirth throughout the city.
Fritz not terribly impressed with Rousseau:
The earl Marischal alerted Frederick to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was seeking asylum in Prussian Neufchâtel. Frederick was willing. 'His only sin is having peculiar opinions, which he thinks are good.' He sent him 100 thalers. 'If we were not at war, if we were not ruined, I would have a hermitage built for him, with a garden where he could dwell as he thinks our forefathers lived … He will never persuade me to graze on herbs and to go on all fours.'
Shortly after Peter III's death:
[Fritz] was interested to note the sales of his Poésies divers among the [Russian] officer corps. They had ordered 900 copies: half the print run. He was philosophic about the popularity of his poetry in Russia: 'It is probably only in that country that they take me for a good French poet.'
Fritz roleplaying lightside Dad:
On one occasion his coach tipped over and the king of Prussia was landed in a ditch. He went for the coachman with his cane. The driver shouted at him, 'Don't you believe that I am not a thousand times angrier than you?' Frederick laughed, and forgot his temper.
I've also seen a variant on this anecdote where the retort goes: "And has Your Majesty never lost a battle?" I don't know, if you don't want to get whacked, I feel like the MacDonogh version would work better. But this is all apocryphal as far as I'm concerned.
Fritz meets Wilhelmine's husband's cousin's wife's second husband. MacDonogh says Wilhelmina's stepmother-in-law, but I think he's confusing his margraves. (It's a sad day when I trust Wikipedia over a biography, but confusing people is a specialty of his.)
He met Graf Hoditz-Roswald in Moravia during the Seven Years War, the husband of the dowager margravine of Bayreuth — Wilhelmina's stepmother-in-law. Roswald's gardens were renowned: they were full of concealed fountains that took promenaders by surprise. Behind a wall in a park, Hoditz kept a brothel for his sole use. Frederick visited Hoditz and on that occasion refused to reveal his identity. He came again in 1769, this time in majesty, if that was the word. Hoditz was charmed, and gave a magnificent feast for the king of Prussia. Hoditz had his own little opera at his Schloss and the local peasants acted in his plays. The women also stocked his private brothel. If they so much as looked at another man, he had them locked up and put on a diet of bread and water. Frederick loved Hoditz's conversation, and built a little frigate to bring him up the Oder to Berlin and Potsdam. When he was not in Prussia, the two men sent one another gifts: Brinza cheese, prunes, Istrian wine, champagne, even swans. In later years Hoditz took the place of the earl Marischal.
I like to imagine Hoditz being like crackfic!AW: "The King of Prussia keeps talking about how he misses his dead swan. I know, I'll send him a replacement!"
Fritz hasn't left off writing on behalf of his dogs:
One poem was ostensibly written by his dog Diane to 'wicked Elisabeth', the first wife of the future Frederick William II. Frederick’s purpose is clear:
Une chienne en ce jour vous donne un grand exemple.
j'ai mis au monde deux petits;
Tout curieux qui les contemple
Les trouve comme moi beaux, bien faits et gentils.
Soyez marraine à leur baptême,
Et mes voeux seront accomplis,
Si, madame, dans peu vous en faites de même.
Today a lowly bitch sets a grand example.
I delivered my puppies two;
The curious come and marvel
They’re as pretty as me, kind and tough too.
Be godmother and bring them fame,
And all my wishes would come true,
If, Madam, in a while, you did the same.
KPM is Königliche Porzellan Manufaktur, the porcelain factory where Fritz is effectively CEO:
Three years later KPM was issuing busts of Voltaire, 'which resemble you in the old days, perhaps even now', said Frederick. Voltaire peevishly acknowledged the gift of an 'old man in porcelain'. The king thought it a very good likeness and told d'Alembert it lacked only the power to speak. He recommended that the best effects could be had by reciting the Henriade to it and watching it at the same time. Voltaire wanted revenge in the form of a Frederick, but the king of Prussia still adhered to his policy of keeping portrait painters at arm’s length, deeming them as adept at flattery as the most refined courtiers. He allowed Anna Dorothea Therbusch, however, to make the familiar bust of him that served as the KPM's model, injecting a little youthful grace into his raddled face. Voltaire received one in good time. Frederick decided that the bust would be more likely to 'ruin an apartment than to decorate it'. The king joked that the sculptress had refused to clothe him in the garb of an anchorite.
The First Partition of Poland:
Henry was much keener on the idea of territorial expansion than his brother. He had his eyes on [territories enumerated]. Thiébault observed, 'Clearly the First Partition of Poland was his invention.' Frederick did not wholly see eye to eye with his brother. He thought the Russians were unpleasant neighbours, to say the very least, and he did not want them to have any more land than they already had.
The immediate cause of the partition was Frederick’s feeling that the Russians should be kept sweet, which was why he had dispatched Catherine’s childhood friend Henry in the first place.
Childhood friend? Is that true, or is he confusing Henrys again?
Fritz rejecting Henry's initial partition suggestions:
If you are too eager to snatch at trifles, it gives you a reputation for greed and insatiability which I don't want to have any more than I do already in Europe.
Fritz...I hardly even know where to begin with that statement. I'll just leave it there so we can all blink and stare at you.
Fritz and Voltaire after the partition:
[Fritz explained to Voltaire that he] was keen to honour the memory of the region's most famous son, Copernicus, who was buried in the cathedral at Frauenburg. Voltaire was pleased at Frederick's interest in the astronomer: 'Put up a little man on his ashes so that the sun, which he put in its proper place, should come and salute him every day at noon, its rays coupled with your own.'
Frederick began to boast in April 1769 that anyone wanting to set eyes on one of the breed would have to come to Silesia. Elsewhere they had all been 'despotically' banished. D'Alembert enjoyed the joke too. He wrote to the king in June that year: 'It is going to be odd, Sire, that whereas Their Very Christian, Very Catholic, Very Apostolic and Very Faithful Majesties [France, Spain, Hungary, Portugal] are destroying the grenadiers of the Holy See, Your Most Heretical Majesty is the only one to preserve them.'
Fritzplaining how to make German into a usable language:
The basic sounds of German would not do. You could do nothing with sagen, geben or nehmen. Frederick's suggestion was to add an 'a' at the end to give them a down beat: 'sagena', 'gebena', 'nehmena'.
I'll just let this one speak for itself too. (To his credit, at least he acknowledges that even if the HRE and imperial diet decided to promulgate a decree to the effect that these words were to be pronounced this way, everyone would continue doing exactly what they had always done.)
Oh, remember when Fritz sent his Jacobite friend the Earl of Marischal as foreign envoy, and said "I don't give a fuck" when asked if this might offend the English? When Marischal is dying, you can see why he and Fritz were friends:
As the campaign got under way, Milord had seized the moment to die, but not without wit. He summoned the British envoy, Elliot, on 23 May 1778: 'I called you, because I find pleasure in emitting the last sighs of a Jacobite to a minister of King George.'
In case you're wondering about what Fritz liked to eat:
We know the complete menu for one of his last meals, on 5 August 1786: broccoli soup à la Fouqué, beef in breadcrumbs with carrots, chicken with cinnamon and stuffed cucumbers in the English style (Frederick crossed it out and asked for cutlets), little pasties à la Romaine, young roast hake, salmon à la Dessau, chicken fillet à la Pompadour with ox tongues and croquettes, Portuguese cake, green peas, fresh herrings and gherkins.
Broccoli again!
It's worth adding that as he's dying, his doctors are trying to get him to cut down on rich food, and he refuses, because since when did he ever listen to
I'm kind of with Fritz? I'm sure he's getting upset stomachs from his diet, but you have to consider a cost-benefit analysis, and he's only got a little time left to live. I don't think the 18th century had the ability to come up with a heart healthy diet, I think he's going to have upset stomachs anyway (maybe fewer), there's no way he's quitting tobacco, it's probably too late anyway, and I think he should just enjoy one of the few pleasures left to him. By August 5, 1786, he was in too much pain to enjoy reading, and he'd had to give up playing the flute a few years before. Let him eat cake!
