Fort Ti War College of the Seven Years’ War, 19–21 May

Fort Ticonderoga is holding its Twenty-Seventh Annual War College of the Seven Years’ War on the weekend of 19–21 May.

This will be a hybrid conference, so fans of the conflict can attend in upstate New York or watch online.

The scheduled presentations reflect that war’s reputation as a global conflict, bringing scholars from multiple countries.

Friday, 19 May

• Matthew Keagle, Fort Ticonderoga Curator, “Highlights from the Robert Nittolo Collection”

Saturday, 20 May

• Ellen Fogel Walker, Public Affairs Coordinator at Culloden Battlefiel, “Anchors for Collective Identity: Culloden Militaria of the ’45, Artefacts and Memorabilia”
• Jay Donis, professor at Thiel College, “Building an American Identity on the Mid-Atlantic Frontier in the 1760s”
• James Kirby Martin, coauthor of Forgotten Allies, “The Six Nations Confronts the French and Indian War: Joseph Brant Versus Han Yerry”
• Ian McCulloch, former Director of the Canadian Forces’ Centre for National Security Studies, “John Bradstreet’s Raid 1758: A Revisionist Assessment”
• Djordje Djuric, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, “Simeon Piscevic (Simeon Piščević), General and Diplomat of the Era of the Seven Years’ War”

Sunday, 21 May
This day’s presenters are all graduate students sharing their new research.

• Jenifer Ishee, Mississippi State University, “Captive Bodies: Examining the Material Culture of Captivity during the Seven Years’ War”
• Clément Monseigne, Bordeaux University, “Feeling Strangeness: the Sensory Experience of War in North America (1754-1760)”
• Daniel Bishop, Texas A&M University, “‘Lay’d up And Decay’d’: Examining the History and Archaeological Material of the King’s Shipyard at Fort Ticonderoga”
• Camden R. Elliott, Harvard University, “‘That Most Fatal disorder to the Virginians’: The Seven Years’ War and a Pandemic of Smallpox, 1756-1766”

In addition, on Friday afternoon there’s a walking tour of the Ticonderoga battlefield led by Director of Archaeology Margaret Staudter for an extra cost.

Basic registration is $175, but there are discounts for being a Fort Ti member, registering early, and participating online instead of on-scene, so a member like myself can listen to the presentations for as little as $100. There are also scholarships for teachers who are attending the War College of the Seven Years’ War for the first time. Check out the whole registration scheme at this webpage.

Mysteries of Marie Antoinette and Her Family

Yesterday I listened to this episode of the History Extra podcast, an interview with Nancy Goldstone about her new book, In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters.

Although the episode title focuses on Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, a large part of the conversation was about the empress’s youngest daughter, Marie Antoinette of France. In that section, Goldstone posited that:

• Louis XVI was on the autism spectrum.
• Marie Antoinette might have been dyslexic.

The latter theory didn’t appear in her book, she said. The former is a major argument, and her publisher is marketing that as part of what’s new.

Another element of Goldstone’s portrait of Marie Antoinette, not so new, is that she had a long emotional and sexual relationship with the Swedish count Axel von Fersen. I discussed the recent reading of their letters earlier this month.

Goldstone has written or co-written quite a range of books, including previous biographies of royal women, memoirs of the book trade, and murder mysteries. She hasn’t written about the eighteenth century before, however. I’ve seen some reviews complain that she’s overlooked sources that have come to light in the last few decades, which specialists would certainly use.

That said, Goldstone’s status as a non-academic historian writing for a popular readership has probably freed her to acknowledge the usual caveats about the impossibility of making any sort of sophisticated diagnosis when a subject has been dead for centuries and share her ideas anyway.

Autism and dyslexia may be like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, homosexuality, and other human conditions with genetic components that appear in individuals in all sorts of societies in all eras. Those societies understand and respond to the conditions differently—accepting, denying, punishing—leaving different evidence in the historical record. Our present understandings of those conditions may be more advanced than in previous centuries but are undoubtedly still limited. Nonetheless, I think these possible diagnoses are worth at least considering.

In the podcast Goldstone also raised the possibility of genetic testing to see if, as she suspects, Marie Antoinette’s two younger children were fathered by Count von Fersen rather than King Louis. I don’t know if there’s enough genetic material available to make that possible; both children died young, though one became the doomed Dauphin, whose heart is reportedly preserved.

“I found moreover a liveliness in my whole frame”

Sometime between 1764 and 1767 Benjamin Franklin met a Dutch physician named Dr. Jan Ingenhousz (1730–1799). They were part of the same scientific circle in London.

In 1768 Sir John Pringle, head of the Royal Society, sent Ingenhousz to Vienna to inoculate the imperial family against smallpox. That worked so well that Ingenhousz became physician to Emperor Joseph II and his mother, Queen Maria Theresa of Austria.

Later, when Franklin was representing the U.S. of A. in Paris, he used his correspondence with Ingenhousz to promote the cause of America in Vienna.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ingenhousz continued his scientific and medical investigations in Vienna. On 15 Aug 1783 he wrote to Franklin, recalling the American’s report about accidentally electrocuting himself instead of a turkey, quoted back here, and building on it.

Ingenhousz said:

As the effect of a Similar stroke by which I was struk, was followed by some remarcabel particularities I should like to compare them which those you have experienced.

The jarr, by which I was Struck, contained about 32 pints, it was nearly fully charged when I recived the explosion from the Conductor supported by that jarr. The flash enter’d the corner of my hat. Then, it entred my fore head and passed thro the left hand, in which I held the chaine communicating with the outward Coating of the jarr.

I neither saw, heared, nor feld the explosion, by which I was Struck down. I lost all my senses, memory, understanding and even sound judgment. My first Sensation was a peine on the forehead. The first object I saw Was the post of a door. I combined the two ideas togeather and thaught I had hurt my head against the horizontal piece of timber supported by the postes, which was impossible, as the door was wide and high.

After having answered unadequately to some questions, which were asked me by the people in the room, I determin’d to go home. But I was some what surprised, that, though the accident happened in a hous in the same street where I lodged, yet I was more than two minutes considering whether, to go home, I must go to the right or to the left hand.

Having found my lodgings, and considering that my memory was become very weak, I thaught it prudent to put down in writing the history of the case: I placed the paper before me, dipt the pen in the ink, but when I applyed it to the paper, I found I had entirely forgotten the art of writing and reading and did not know more what to doe with the pen, than a savage, who never knew there was such an art found out. This Struck me with terror, as I feared I should remain for ever an idiot. I thaught it prudent to go to bed.

I slept tolerably well and when I awaked next morning I felt still the peine on the forehead and found a red spot on the place: but my mental faculties were at that time not only returned, but I feld the most lively joye in finding, as I thaught at the time, my judgmement infinitely more acute. It did seem to me I saw much clearer the difficulties of every thing, and what did formerly seem to me difficult to comprehend, was now become of an easy solution. I found moreover a liveliness in my whole frame, which I never had observed before.

This experiment, made by accident, on my self, and of which I gave you at the time an account, has induced me to advise some of the London mad-Doctors, as Dr. [Thomas] Brook, to try a similar experiment on mad men, thinking that, as I found in my self my mental faculties improoved and as the world well knows, that your mental faculties, if not improoved by the two strooks you recieved, were certainly not hurt by them, it might perhaps become a remedie to restore the mental faculties when lost: but I could never persuade any one to try it.

Some medical authors suggest that Ingenhousz has stumbled into electroconvulsive therapy. The confusion and memory loss followed by more “liveliness” correspond to what some people suffering from deep depressions report from the modern treatment.

Back in the late 1700s, scientists like Franklin, Ingenhousz, and Pringle were reporting on electricity and its spooky powers. Such doctors as James Graham and Franz Mesmer claimed, too eagerly, to be using those powers to heal and strengthen the body. Those reports and claims fed into the delusions of Lt. Neil Wanchope and James Tilly Matthews, as quoted yesterday. But ironically, there really were mind-altering properties of electricity to discover.

Cooking Up a Language in Central Europe

Earlier this summer Atlas Obscura published an interesting article by Kaja Seruga titled “The 18th-Century Cookbook That Helped Save the Slovene Language.”

The cookbook in question came from an unlikely author, though he wasn’t alone in his path from the Enlightenment movement into early nationalism:

Valentin Vodnik was born in 1758 near Ljubljana, today the capital of Slovenia and then part of the Habsburg empire. He was a man of boundless energy, curiosity, and drive: Besides his work as a priest and later a high-school teacher and headmaster, he was fluent in half a dozen languages, wrote some of the first Slovene poetry, published the first Slovene newspaper, and began corresponding with intellectuals in Slovene.

Vodnik’s mission was popularizing and elevating the reputation of the language at a time when educated Slovenes mostly spoke German, considering their native tongue to be the vernacular of poor illiterate farmers, unfit for polite society and incapable of expressing complex ideas.

Vodnik set out to publish a cookbook in the Slovene language using as few words with German roots as possible. Creating what he titled The Cookbook (Kuharske bukve) was a challenge, for three reasons:

• “Vodnik had probably never cooked a meal in his life.”
• His sources were all German cookbooks and chefs, not Slovene kitchens.
• The recipes reflected the upper-class cuisine of Vienna rather than the plain fare of most Slovene speakers.

Nonetheless, Seruga writes, The Cookbook caught on and eventually sparked a more practical literature in Slovene.

Even though the largely illiterate, poor Slovenes living in rural areas had little use for Vodnik’s decadent recipes, the book was popular with presbytery cooks working for village priests. These cooks were an important source of new cooking techniques and ideas for small village communities and, with their help, some of Vodnik’s simpler recipes and cooking methods found a wider audience.

In 1868, Vodnik’s recipes served as an important touchstone for Magdalena Pleiweis, who wrote The Slovene Cookbook. This new cooking guide, finally written by a woman who knew her way around the kitchen, included updated versions of Vodnik’s recipes and complemented them with the types of traditional Slovene dishes that he had pointedly ignored, such as buckwheat žganci—once traditional “poor man’s food”—and potica pastry, which comes in more than 100 regional variations.

By then there was enough published in Slovene to codify a language out of several dialects and make it distinct from the related tongues of neighboring regions. It wasn’t until 1991, however, that Slovenia became an independent country to go with Slovene.

News from France and “the language of patriotism”

Boston’s Civic Festival to honor the new republic of France on 24 Jan 1793 came at an unusual cultural and political moment.

The latest news from Europe relayed the events of late 1792. Bostonians knew about how the French assembly had deposed Louis XVI and proclaimed a republic. The French army was pushing back the combined forces of several European monarchies and keeping Britain at bay. It looked like the American model of political liberty and equality was spreading in the Old World.

To be sure, the news included a hint of French Revolutionaries turning on themselves. After trying and failing to preserve the king and constitutional monarchy, the Marquis de Lafayette (shown here) had fled to Austrian territory. He was under arrest, viewed by both French republicans and Austrian monarchists with suspicion.

The 26 January Columbian Centinel showed how Bostonians still admired Lafayette and were following his story. One of the toasts offered at the festival was “Justice to M. LAFAYETTE.” Did that mean justice from France or from Austria? Quite possibly both.

For the most part, however, the people of Boston saw plenty to celebrate. Though Louis XVI’s government did support the U.S. of A. in its fight for independence, Americans had grown up thinking of the French monarchy as an example of tyranny. Now the former king appeared to be in alliance with his fellow despots against his people, so it was easy to hail his downfall. Likewise, New Englanders with their Puritan heritage and established Calvinism felt little sympathy for the Catholic church in France. The decorations on Faneuil Hall included “a crown, sceptre, mitre, and chains” being broken under the feet of Liberty.

The festival toasts signaled high hopes for republicanism:

• “The Law—May it always breathe the spirit of liberty and speak the language of patriotism.”
• “Civic virtues to the military, and a military spirit to the citizens.”
• “May the light of philosophy irradiate the caverns of superstition and despotism, and reveal their horrors."
• “In all governments may Liberty be the check, and Equality the balance.”

There were similar but smaller celebrations in other Massachusetts towns.

New Englanders didn’t know that the French government had indicted Louis XVI for treason in December and beheaded him just three days before their festival. Once news of that execution arrived in late March, Americans’ support for the French republic began to fade. Splintering opinion about France was a big part of the development of two semi-organized political parties in the U.S. of A.

In the spring of 1793, some Americans founded what historians later called Democratic-Republican Societies, the basis of what became the Jeffersonian party. On 8 April, Edmond-Charles Genêt arrived in Charleston as the new French minister to America and set about commissioning privateers to attack British ships. President George Washington issued a controversial neutrality proclamation on 22 April.

Those developments changed how Bostonians responded to the French Revolution. In January, as I discussed, Benjamin Russell’s Columbian Centinel not only applauded the Civic Festival but referred to local dignitaries and the editor himself with the title “Citizen.” By June, however, that newspaper was firmly Federalist and using that honorific only for officials from France. In his book Parades and the Politics of the Street, Simon P. Newman wrote that by spring Federalist politicians were conspicuously absent from further celebrations of the French republic.

The Centinel continued to refer to “Liberty Square” instead of Dock Square for several months, but that term faded away. As for “Equality Lane,” the name appeared almost exclusively in advertising for John Bryant’s tavern (no longer called “Liberty Hall”). The last reference that I found came in the 23 Aug 1793 American Apollo, in an advertisement for young acrobats.

After that, “Equality Lane” reverted to being called “Exchange Lane” (no more “Royal”) or “Shrimpton’s Lane” after an early owner of the land. The new name had lasted such a short time that it was never official, never appeared in town directories or on maps. When historians have mentioned “Equality Lane,” it was always in the way William Cobbett used it, as evidence of Boston’s brief infatuation with the French Revolution.

But for a moment in early 1793, Bostonians were calling each other “Citizen” and honoring “Equality” over commercial “Exchange.”

News of the Revolution in Vienna

Back in February, the Age of Revolutions blog featured Jonathan Singerton’s interesting analysis of how the American Revolution was reported in the Holy Roman Empire.

As the article’s headline notes, the Empire was an “Absolutist State” with strict censorship of the news. As in authoritarian regimes today, the rulers feared that any critique of other rulers could be interpreted as critique of themselves and inspire the local opposition.

Singerton focuses on the news reported in the Wienerisches Diarium, Vienna’s newspaper, and the behind-the-scenes arguments over that reporting. About the Declaration of Independence, he writes:

First news of an announcement arrived in Vienna in mid-August 1776, but on 17th August, the Diarium proclaimed, “We have news from America, which reports that the General Congress has finally declared itself independent with a small majority.”[12] The fact that Congress’s adoption was unanimous and only New York abstained was lost on the Diarium and the Declaration was not immediately reproduced. On August 31st, only the concluding paragraph of the Declaration appeared, and several weeks later, the immortal lines of the preamble featured in the September 11th edition.[13] The body of the Declaration, however, parts of which enumerated the grievances against King George III, were omitted – the Diarium’s managers could not risk disseminating such anti-monarchical writing.

When this edition reached the Queen-Regent Maria Theresa (1717-1780) [shown above] and her co-regent son Joseph II (1741-1790), they were incensed that such an article had passed the censors. Count Christian August von Seilern (1717-1801), the Governor of Lower Austria and previously Ambassador in London (1766-1770), sympathised with the article and futilely attempted to reason with the monarchs, insisting that their authority had not been questioned.[14] The newspaper’s perceived transgressions brought an even higher level of scrutiny.

This reporting created a hotbed of pro-American sentiment in Habsburg territories, which influenced the first diplomatic mission between the United States and the Habsburgs in 1778, when the American representative William Lee arrived in Vienna hoping to procure an alliance with the monarchs. Though he failed to get access to the court, the fervor for the American cause stoked by newspaper coverage created a welcoming environment outside of the court for Lee. He remarked to his brother about his amazement of such interest, “Some of distinction here are warm for the part of America.”[15]

That William Lee was a brother of Richard Henry, Francis Lightfoot, and Arthur Lee—a Virginia dynasty not quite as controlling as the Hapsburgs.