Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/210

 Sir Philip Sidney, Charles XII of Sweden, Gustavus III of Sweden, Peter the Great of Russia, Paul I of Russia, Amadeus of Savoy (who became Pope Felix-Amadeus VIII)—not to mention a wide circle of typical Italian and Spanish "fighting princes" such as Cesare Borgia and great war-making Umbrian and Tuscan and Lombardian chieftains, indubitably were homosexual. The luckless warrior of the Pfalz, Richard Puller von Hohenburg ended his career in a trial and at the stake, as a confessed sodomite, along with his last young paramour, Anton Schärer. The fine soldier Filippo Maria Anglo Visconti, duke of Milan, conspicuous in the early part of the Fifteenth Century was uranistic; one of his special favourites being Scaramuzza, who had been a good-looking young palace-cook.

.Of the modern soldier-uranians, without bringing us quite to contemporary army-lists, two high names stand out with special clearness; Frederick the Great, and Alexander I of Russia. Frederick was not only a declared woman-hater, but an undeclared sexual adorer of men, from his youth up. The sentiment coloured all Frederick's life, military or civil. Among such episodes were his relations to Baron Trenck and the ill fated Lieutenant Katte, intimacies with young Count Keyserlingk and other. Their nature—suspected or proved—entered into the furious outbreaks of his father against him, that in Frederick's unhappy youth nearly cost his life. In the dramatic affair of Baron Trenck, the fierce jealousy of Frederick played a more cruel role than his anger at Trenck's intrigue with Princess Amalia. It was partly a homosexual tragedy. Von Katte lost his life through the bond with his Prince. The intimacy with Keyserlingk is an episode of the same kind. Another is that of Count Görz. What Voltaire said of his royal friend's foible was not simply ill-humored irony. Frederick's list of male amours extended even to stalwart members of the