http://www.ftg-comic.com/2008/12/25/index.php
So, Frederick happened to steal the battle plans the terribleness of which more or less allowed his father to live and his kingdom to exist. That’s going to need a bit of fixing, but don’t worry, Frederick has A PLAN!! It’s Frederick the Great and… Frederick the Great.. in a round of cerebral strategizing as yet unparalleled in webcomic history! And it’s at your fingertips now in our 2008 Holiday Special: Part IV: Enter Figaro!
– The Count and Geoff
Well, 40 years ago about this time Apollo 8 was swinging around the moon. I was recently going through some old issues of Popular Science that I have from the late 50s and 60s, just soaking up the excitement of a time when everybody was willing to make small or large sacrifices to achieve something beautiful and gloriously human. It was all long before my time, but just reading old articles speculating about what mankind would be able to accomplish within the next half-century, and reading the new interviews with Borman, Lovell, and Anders, one can’t help but get charged up and think maybe, just maybe, now that we have put behind us Boomer Myopia as the guiding force in policy making, we might start reaching out to do things worthy of ourselves again.
As a small commemoration, I’ve put up NASA’s site on our links page because, really, even at its worst, NASA is still doing more long-term good for mankind than any cash-strapped government agency could reasonably be expected to pull off.
I also linked to Kate Beaton‘s site, because it’s awesome.
So, if you’re of a Jesusy persuasion, have a Merry Christmas, and if not, well, enjoy another day under the sky and stars!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
http://www.ftg-comic.com/2008/12/23/index.php
Louis has a brilliant plan for the Battle of Malplaquet, and a brilliant place to keep it, but expansionist war-happy monarchs DO tend to think alike, and we have a feeling these plans, for better or worse, are about to end up the property of one Frederick the Great. Repercussions MIGHT follow… It’s Part Three of the 2008 Holiday Special: Bad Plans Make Adequate Kings!
– The Count and Geoff
So, last week we talked about what Malplaquet meant for Louis XIV and the course of the War of the Spanish Succession. Now let’s talk about it and the Hohenzollerns, Frederick’s royal line.
Frederick’s grandfather, Frederick I, was a gilded palace-horse on a level that his grandson could only dream of. Modeling himself on Louis XIV, he nevertheless threw the might of Prussia against the monarch in the War of Spanish Succession in exchange for the Holy Roman Emperor’s allowing him to call himself King IN Prussia.
The reason for this weird-ass title was that the Hohenzollern territories encompassed lands formally in the Holy Roman Empire and others (mainland Prussia) not. Since the nature of the HRE didn’t allow for sub-kingdoms (except Bohemia), Frederick I couldn’t be considered a king of the lands he had in the HRE, but he COULD be considered king of the non-HRE Prussian lands. So, he was dubbed a King, but only in Prussia. Thus King IN Prussia.
Frederick the Great was the first one to become King OF Prussia after stompin’ the Habsurgs.
So, indeed, if the Allies had totally lost the War of the Spanish Succession, the Hohenzollerns might well have lost their kingship, such as it was.
Another odd bit of Hohenzollern history: Frederick William, Frederick the Great’s father, WAS at the battle, where he unveiled the new drill he had been training his regiment with, the Prussian Drill which, when combined with the slow march of his friend Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, became the goose step.
And there you have it!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
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