CARL EUGEN: THE TRADITIONAL VIEW REASSESSED

This chapter is centred on Carl Eugen, the last duke in this study, and its length corresponds not so much to the fact that he ruled for nearly fifty years but to the importance and complexity of the events during his reign. It is also a reflection of the fact that, more than any other Württemberg duke, Carl Eugen has featured prominently in the literature on the duchy at this time.

The picture this literature presents has done much to shape not only the general view of Württemberg in the eighteenth century, but also that of other smaller princes in the Reich. Whenever an example is required to reinforce the stereotype of the petty absolutist in eighteenth-century Germany, Carl Eugen is called upon to provide it. Indeed, his reign does appear at first sight to be the heady rush of hunting expeditions, ballets, mistresses and military adventures that is believed to be so typical of this period. The dramatic events of his reign seem to confirm this. Even to many contemporaries, Carl Eugen was a larger-than-life character whose behaviour was scandalous. However, as we have seen in the case of the subsidy treaties, subsequent writers have often interpreted events as they wanted to see them.