The Off Topic Topic

[HVC]

My takeaway so far is that it's good I never married, because I can't become a doomed widower.

We shall die as we lived!


 Alone

[Syt]

 

[Grey Fox]

With the advent of WFH, I find myself alone in my house. It is still weird to me.

[Valmy]

My takeaway so far is that it's good I never married, because I can't become a doomed widower.

My uncle lost his wife and he had been doing great and he is in his 80s. So it is not a death sentence.

[Syt]

With war in the news at all times now, I was curious how it was covered in the past.

The Austrian national archive has a fair number of newspapers archived till 1955 (many in their entirety), so I checked July 1863 to see what the reporting of the American Civil War and Gettysburg was.

Now, it took some browsing to figure out what the time delay was. Austrian international reporting was primarily focused on Polish uprisings in Russia, including diplomatic discussions about whether or not to intervene, with some speeches from the Houses of Parliament in London that called for/against Britain stepping in quoted in full on the matter. (Die Presse in 1863 generally seems to like quoting from British Parliament.)

By the 10th there were news about Lee's army moving into the North and that things were looking bleak for the Union and speculations about how this might go.

On the 13th Die Presse wrote that maybe there has already been a big clash in the Civil War, but that it's difficult to get any straight picture from fragmentary news and sift through exaggerations and misleading statements of the involved sides.

On the 14th it reported the news from July 1st(ish) that Hooker was relieved of his command by his request and various troop movement and rumors of command changes (McClellan taking over for Halleck) but that overall things are muddy.

It took till the 20th to get a report of the battleinto the papers. E.g. Die Presse gave it almost a full page (out of 8 or so total) about the battle itself in fairly comprehensive detail. A day later they're back to giving 20% of their space to the latest developments in The Polish Question.

Sidenote: one of the funnier finds was an article about the King of Hanover sending a telegram to the town of Stade, thanking them for their splendid hospitality a year prior, and wishing them all the best and God's blessing, getting almost the same space in the Wiener Zeitung of July 21st as Gettysburg.



Oh, and finding under "domestic news" Prague, Pest, Ragusa, Venice, Hermannstadt (now Sibiu) ...

Also, browsing through the papers I came across a short article about the Kingdom of Two Sicilies struggling to recruit for their military to fight against brigands and over 3500 people fleeing recruitment.

And there's sporadic news from Madagascar whose king had been murdered in May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radama_II

The Militärzeitung had an article about the Englische Armee and their recruitment rules (number, how they're split between infantry (and how many of those are grenadiers or guards), cavalry etc.). I found it interesting that it distinguished between troops and officer pools  from Great Britain and Ireland, though I suppose that's because so did the Brits.

But a lot of it is budget discussions, who made what proposal and which aristocrat and/or diplomat is traveling where. Die Presse's financial news page is called "Der kleine Capitalist"

So over two weeks for battle reports to get from America to Viennese printers. Not sure if I prefer it over the breathless LIVE reporting these days.

Link to the archives: https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?zoom=33