Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (60 page)

The return of the marquis d’Eguilles from imprisonment in England, plus the scheduled departure of Louis XV for the seat of war in Flanders made it necessary for the ministers of state to make a final decision as to military support for the prince.
¹¹⁷
They assembled to hear d’Eguilles’s final report and to question the envoy closely. They also had before them a report from marechal-de-camp Hérouville de Claye, who had been urging another expedition against England as a means of preserving French possessions in the Americas.
¹¹⁸

In his report d’Eguilles paid full tribute to the prince’s sterling qualities as manifested in the ’45. But he deplored his lack of intellectual grip and ‘lack of reflection’, which led him often to adopt the last viewpoint heard or the one most vociferously expressed.
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This chimed with the mood of the meeting. The comte d’Argenson claimed to have it from the duc d’Huescar that the prince understood nothing of politics and was not quick-witted enough.
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A tentative suggestion was advanced that an expedition to Scotland be mounted to coincide with the 1747 dissolution of Parliament.
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But Puysieux argued that the prince had forfeited any right to such consideration by his behaviour since returning from Scotland, and especially by his extraordinarily mindless journey to Spain.
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The subject of Kelly – always the bone that stuck in French throats – was raised. Kelly was blamed for the prince’s unyielding posture and his insistence that any French expedition must go to England, not Scotland. It was recognised that among the Highlanders Kelly would be the cipher he had been for the first two months of the ’45.
¹²³
But to remove the obstacle of Kelly seemed an impossible task. James had done everything short of issuing a direct order for Kelly’s dismissal, yet the prince had ignored him.

Louis XV intervened to say that there were two things he would never understand. One was why Charles Edward had rushed off to Spain. The other was why he insisted on an expedition to England, which required twenty-five battalions and was in any case impracticable, given the poor state of the French navy.
¹²⁴
Puysieux suggested that the true reason for this was the paucity of Jacobite supporters in England. The prince had often claimed that with a few more French battalions he could have won at Culloden. Why, then, did he not make good his boast? The French court was willing to provide up to 6,000 men provided the prince went to
Scotland
. But this was precisely what he consistenty refused to do.
¹²⁵

The council concluded that French interests were best served by fomenting disaffection in Scotland without regard to the prince, possibly with a view to the ultimate establishment of a republic in Scotland.
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The prince had pushed things to the point where he was no longer regarded by France as a serious factor even in the land of his greatest triumphs.

It seems impossible that any one man could have botched things as perfectly as the prince had done in the six months since his return from Scotland. The obstinate refusal to consider another rising in the Highlands, against the wishes of the French and Lochiel and the clan ieaders, seems so extreme that one wonders whether the single explanation of Kelly’s bad influence is sufficient. It is true that the egregiously dreadful ‘Trebby’ (Kelly’s nickname among the Jacobites) had suborned both Lord Ogilvy and Sir James Stewart against a return to Scotland.
¹²⁷
But the prince’s reluctance to return to the Highlands may have had deeper springs. Along with self-destructive impulses was a profound guilt that made it impossible for him to accept culpability for the sufferings of the Highlanders. This impulse may well have prevented him from taking another gamble that would put more lives and fortunes at risk. Certainly the prince’s refusal to return to Scotland and his insistence that any future expedition had to land in England, when it was clear that France was only prepared to back him in Scotland, has no rational basis.

Whatever the reasons, 1747 seemed to be developing into a year of disaster. It was the duty of a true king to find a suitable marriage for his son, and this James had signally failed to do. After all, especially for a Catholic monarch, marriage was a once-and-for-all affair. James had compounded his private failures as a father with incompetence as a sovereign. Charles Edward’s desire to marry royally was a rational ambition. His father’s unsatisfactory alternative suggestions simply added to the prince’s feelings of being slighted and demeaned.

But what the prince had suffered hitherto was a mere flea-bite compared with what was to come. Suddenly Henry and James together aimed a mortal blow at the prince and the aspirations of the House of Stuart.

(April 1747–February 1748)

HENRY’S FEELING OF
being in a world of chaos had not been assuaged when his brother departed for Spain. Within days Charles had written from Avignon to reprimand him for corresponding with James behind his back.
¹
And Henry’s activities as his brother’s plenipotentiary brought him no sustenance. A meeting with Maurepas was followed by an audience with Louis XV, at which the king’s face clouded over every time Charles Edward’s name was mentioned.
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Yet Henry was nothing if not loyal. When the ministers hinted to him that he had their sympathies in his problems with his brother, he coldly and haughtily rebuffed them.
³

It was abundantly clear to the duke of York that his brother’s precipitate departure to Spain had finished him at Versailles. Never again would Louis XV and his ministers take the hero of the ’45 seriously. What, then, did the future hold for Henry?

By going to Spain and pre-empting Henry’s hope of a permanent niche in Madrid, Charles Edward unwittingly uncoiled a chain of events that led to disaster. If Henry could not endure the hectoring, censorious regime of his brother in Paris much longer, and the escape route to Spain was now closed, what remained? To his horror, Henry found that he had to confront his own homosexuality, for the alternative that both his father and brother seemed to be favouring was marriage.
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Since Charles Edward refused to marry anyone less than a reigning monarch or king’s daughter, it was left to Henry to carry on the Stuart line.

As soon as Henry saw this trap looming, he wrote to inform James that he had a deep repugnance to the worldly life, and especially marriage.
⁵
He was not exaggerating. One of the great events of the social calendar – which Charles missed by going to Spain – was the
wedding
of the dauphine, followed by a celebratory ball. Henry was called upon to dance with many fashionable ladies, especially the Princesse de Conti. Terrified that his father might misconstrue this as fondness for women, he at once dashed off a ‘confession’ to Rome.

James’s reply was what one might have expected from a civilised and urbane father: ‘It was indeed a great
galanteria
the Princess of Conti did you to dance with you, and there was no need of any apology being made to me about it, for had I been there, I should have been tempted to have danced with her myself to complete the frolic.’
⁶
The remarkable thing about this correspondence was that Henry should have thought it necessary to raise the matter at all. It illustrates the extent of his fear and mistrust of women.

Fortunately, James had already suggested a way out of his younger son’s psychological impasse. In December 1746 James raised, almost as an aside, the idea – no more than a
jeu d’esprit
at this stage – that Henry might like to consider becoming a cardinal. Henry confessed at the time that the notion had never previously entered his head.
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Yet this was not quite the first occasion the suggestion had been made. In 1742 France and Spain had together asked the Pope to give Henry a cardinal’s hat, after which they would make him Cardinal Protector of France.
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But at various times it had also been suggested that the prince himself take the purple. It is important to be clear that Henry’s deliberations in early 1747 belonged to an altogether different dimension of seriousness.

Once the spark had been lit in Henry’s mind, it quickly caught fire. He became an enthusiast for the idea. Realising the gravity of the step they were about to take, he and his father laid their plans carefully. It was essential that Charles Edward not be given the slightest inkling of their intentions.

As confederates in the plan James chose Tencin and O’Brien, both men at odds with the prince, and who had consistently demonstrated their personal loyalty. Knowing very well the likely consequences of his action, James began by putting it to O’Brien that he would like him back in Rome as his secretary of state.
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Since O’Brien was in any case wilting under the sustained verbal lashings from the prince for ‘disobedience’ (i.e. obeying James rather than him), he was glad to accept.
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For a few weeks Charles Edward enjoyed a halcyon period, the calm before the storm. He even remarked on the improvement in relations with Henry since his return from Spain.
¹¹
His letter to James on this subject was a classic of dramatic irony. Henry was being
more
congenial precisely because the boats were burned and his father committed.

In mid-April 1747 James put the next part of his plan into operation. He asked Henry to return to Rome, explaining to Charles that he needed him there for a few months ‘for comfort and to diminish expense’.
¹²
It was intended that Henry would leave Paris as soon as that letter arrived, before the prince could smell a rat. There was still every possibility that Charles Edward might somehow get wind of the clandestine project. James admitted to being terrified that his elder son might see the incriminating correspondence with O’Brien.
¹³

Henry now laid a trail of subterfuge and evasion. On the last day of April, he invited Charles Edward to his house for supper. He left the house in the early afternoon after giving instructions to his servants to make all ready for the meal.
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The prince duly arrived. The house was illuminated, the supper ready, the servants at their posts. But there was no sign of Henry. With mounting irritation and fury Charles waited until midnight for his brother. Unknown to him, Henry had already been five hours on the road south by the time the prince arrived for supper.
¹⁵

Next day the mystery continued, and the day after. On the third day, when Henry was safely beyond recall, one of his servants delivered a letter for the prince. The letter announced Henry’s departure for Rome. He apologised for leaving without informing his brother, but excused this on the grounds of his keen desire to see James and the attitude of the French.
¹⁶
Here Henry had a circumstantial point. Not only had the ministers refused both brothers leave to campaign, but they seemed to have singled Henry out for especially discriminatory treatment. One incident highlighted this. It was a unique privilege of servants of princes of the blood to enter the Tuileries. No others were admitted. Suddenly, the French decided to treat Henry as incognito. The next time his servants arrived at the Tuileries, wearing the duke of York’s livery, the Swiss guards turned them away.
¹⁷

All this Henry explained, but not the real reason for his departure. On he sped to Rome. In the mountains of Switzerland there was a strange encounter when his path and Dunbar’s crossed.
¹⁸
Dunbar had finally split with James. He had been in disgrace for some time, but the appointment of O’Brien as secretary of state was the last straw. While Dunbar headed for Avignon, Henry descended into the Italian plain and arrived in Rome on 25 May. Even then he did not reveal the true motive for his visit.
¹⁹

Henry reached Rome to find that James had fully implemented
his
end of the operation. The Pope had agreed to elevate the duke to the purple in the July consistory.
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This final strand in the web of deception had been achieved in mid-May, while Henry was still on the road.
²¹
Benedict XIV was surprised at James’s request but granted it out of personal consideration and an appreciation of the sufferings James had sustained through his unwavering championship of Catholicism.
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There was general agreement among the cardinals Benedict consulted that the pious Henry had the makings of a notable prince of the Church.
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All stages in the deception practised on the prince were known to Louis XV, Tencin and Puysieux.
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Neither Louis nor Benedict XIV used normal diplomatic channels for fear that Charles Edward would find out.
²⁵
For two months the prince lived in a fool’s paradise. Just after Henry’s departure, he moved into a fine country house near Passy, given to him rent-free by an admirer, Madame de Sessac.
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With a well-cultivated garden and beautiful prospect, this Passy residence was far more pleasant accommodation than any he had enjoyed in France so far. O’Brien’s departure for Rome went almost unnoticed: angry at his collusion in Henry’s abrupt departure, the prince refused to grant him a farewell audience.
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While his future was being (adversely) decided at Versailles, the prince contented himself with firing off letters of complaint about Henry’s absconding.
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It is clear that the younger brother by this action had already pushed the fraught relationship to breaking point even before the cardinal bombshell burst. In this twilight period, both James and Henry showed themselves masters of duplicity, the equal of Charles Edward when they chose, it seems. Until the full truth was revealed, Henry’s tone continued to be that of injured innocence: ‘what have I done?’ is the burden of his letters to his brother.
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