Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (68 page)

(January–February 1749)

IT IS DIFFICULT
nearly two and a half centuries later to convey the sensation caused in Europe by the arrest and imprisonment of the prince. In 1748 Charles Edward was arguably the most famous, and certainly the most glamorous, man in Europe. The French ministers expected a breathless reaction both from foreigners and their own citizens. Even so, the violent response of public opinion must have taken them by surprise.

The indignation flowed in parallel lines towards Versailles. In élite circles, the view was that by binding the prince hand and foot like a common criminal, the French ministers had violated international law.
¹
The marquis d’Argenson thought the ‘
garrottement
’ of the Stuart prince – the legitimate heir to the English throne – put France on a par with Cromwell for infamy.
²
These misgivings were widely shared among the nobility.
³
Even the Abbé (future Cardinal) Bernis, no friend to the Stuarts, said that Louis XV’s advisers ought to have reminded him that Charles Edward was a descendant of Henri Quatre and that the French crown traditionally provided an asylum for unhappy princes.
⁴

Within his own household too Louis XV had his critics. When he heard of the arrest, the dauphin burst into tears and reproached his father bitterly.
⁵
Almost the only supporter for the king in the upper echelons was Frederick the Great, who felt that the prince had gone too far and was an ‘
extravagant
’ personality.
⁶

The opinion which would most have disgusted the prince was his father’s. When the new French envoy to Rome arrived in the Eternal City on 13 January, James told him that he would never forget Louis XV’s wisdom and moderation in this unhappy affair.
⁷
D’Argenson had feared that the arrest of the prince would lead to a total rupture
with
the Stuarts, involving the withdrawal of the Irish brigade from France and many other consequences no one had thought through.
⁸
He did not know James as Charles did.

These were isolated opinions. The ‘middle sectors’ of Parisian society were incensed at the treatment of a popular hero, coming so soon after the humiliating peace.
⁹
The unrest reached the point where Louis XV issued a police edict forbidding the discussion of the topic in cafés – since such conversation inevitably ended in condemnation of the king.
¹⁰
This did little to halt the volume of criticism. The French public, which before the arrest had been divided between annoyance that the prince was flouting French authority and admiration for his heroic stand, now came down unreservedly on his side. A veritable explosion of lampoons and satirical verses burst on the capital.
¹¹

The ridicule for Versailles and admiration for the prince spread across Europe, as Charles had hoped it would. Not even Mann could disguise the near-universal contempt for the French action in Italy.
¹²
In England the prince’s reputation soared. It was the common talk there that Charles Edward would never have surrendered Cape Breton once he had taken it.
¹³

For a while Louis and his ministers were stunned at the Pandora’s box they had opened.
¹⁴
They hesitated about how to react, lest the situation be made worse. One obvious move was to banish the Princesse de Talmont by
lettre de cachet
.
¹⁵
She had compounded her malign influence with insolence. When Berryer’s men searched the prince’s house, they found the princess’s valet there with a
billet doux
. In the intemperate aftermath of the arrest, Mme de Talmont did not choose her words carefully. With icy hauteur she wrote to Maurepas that, since her lackey could not add to the king’s glory, she would like him released from the Bastille. Louis XV wanted to exile her for her impudence, but her friend Maurepas pointed out the embarrassment that might arise in Louis’s own household, since the princess was the queen’s cousin.
¹⁶
In any case, it was thought best at Versailles to keep a low profile for a time and let the general storm of vituperation break over the ministers’ heads.

While the ministers squirmed under the lash, each trying to fasten the responsibility for the binding and imprisonment on someone else, an attempt was made to strike back at the prince through black propaganda. The French tried a campaign of denigration: particular attention was paid to Charles’s alleged cowardice at Culloden.
¹⁷
Furthermore, sustained efforts were made to falsify the record and rewrite history. It was now alleged that the prince had been bound
only
when he tried to jump out of the carriage on the way to Vincennes; also that he had given his word of honour that he was unarmed, only to be discovered by Vaudreuil with weapons about his person.
¹⁸
These scurrilous attempts to discredit the prince reveal the mental state of ministers who had not properly calculated the effect of their actions.

Yet the French were not finished with the prince, nor he with them. Contrary to the final terms of his sworn agreement with Louis XV, Charles Edward came to rest in Avignon. The carriage from Orange delivered Charles, Stafford and Sheridan at the Somme gate of the papal city at 7 a.m. on the morning of Friday 27 December.
¹⁹
The porter immediately directed them to Dunbar’s house. Dunbar was told that an Irish officer wanted to see him: this was Charles Edward, still wearing the disguise he had donned at Chambéry. In Dunbar’s words, ‘I was never more surprised than to see him at my bedside.’
²⁰

The arrival of the prince in Avignon took the papal authorities by surprise. It was widely expected that Charles would now settle in one of the papal states, but the Pope had Bologna principally in mind.
²¹
Avignon, on the other hand, meant trouble with both France and England. But these were matters of high politics, for the Pope to decide. The vice-legate in Avignon at first saw only the glory that would redound to the papal enclave in making Europe’s great hero welcome. When Charles Edward demanded identical treatment to that recently meted out to the Prince Infanta of Spain, the vice-legate did not demur. He had the prince taken out of one of the city’s gates in a carriage with drawn curtains, then brought in officially through another one, accompanied by a retinue of local Jacobites and other carriages occupied by sympathetic local nobility.
²²
Then Charles made his way to the Apostolic Palace where he was to be lodged. Cannon fired a salute. Three congratulatory poems were printed.
²³
The vice-legate made a speech at the Apostolic Palace, referring to ‘your heroic actions, source of the peace we now enjoy’.
²⁴

After three years of snubs, defeats, failures and humiliations, this unexpectedly warm and lavish welcome must have come as a bracing tonic to the prince. He was not to know that he was living in a fool’s paradise, that the vice-legate was acting entirely on his own initiative. As soon as it was known that the Vatican had a cuckoo in its Avignon nest, Secretary of State Cardinal Valenti warned the vice-legate to make no further promises to Charles Edward, pending a final resolution of the matter.
²⁵

The Pope was caught unprepared. He was not disposed to blame
the
vice-legate. True to his sterling character, Benedict XIV took all the blame for this new development on his own shoulders. His mistake, he confided ruefully to Tencin, was in not having forewarned Avignon; he had taken it for granted that the prince would not break the word of honour he had given the French not to settle there.
²⁶

Benedict braced himself for the storm of protest that would erupt from France and England once the prince’s presence in Avignon was known. He sent an express to the vice-legate to warn him that the prince should be prevented from making a permanent base in the city, and still less in the Apostolic Palace.
²⁷
Quite apart from international repercussions, the Pope was worried about the expense. Even when he was prepared to welcome the prince to Bologna, this aspect of things irritated him. It seemed to Benedict that the prince had haughtily turned down a good pension from Louis XV, and then expected the Vatican to pick up his bills. The Pope was determined that this would not happen.
²⁸

So far Benedict had sent no message directly to the prince. He was sceptical that Charles intended to make a permanent home in Avignon, and considered that with someone as stubborn as the Stuart prince the line of least resistance was likely to be more efficacious in the short-term.
²⁹
But the dispatches from the vice-legate soon convinced him that sterner action was called for. The prince had demanded that a festival be held in his honour. There would be balls, dinners in the Apostolic Palace, and carnival in the streets, all to be paid for, naturally, by the vice-legate. The prince had put it to him that this would be a sort of therapy for the trauma of his arrest and expulsion by France. The legate, noting the enthusiasm of the population for Charles and his proposals, did not care to argue the point.
³⁰

All this was to be without so much as a by-your-leave to the Pope. The prince pointedly refrained from sending Benedict a compliment. He was still too angry over his part in making Henry a cardinal. His behaviour in Avignon was unquestionably designed to punish the saintly ‘philosopher-king’.
³¹
When James remonstrated with his son on this point, Charles Edward bluntly replied that he had made a verbal compliment through the vice-legate. This transparent evasion fooled nobody.
³²

Already Benedict was angry about the prince’s breach of established protocol and normal courtesy. But he did not want to take a strong line against him. To do so would increase anxiety and tension in the Palazzo Muti. Benedict had the greatest affection for James and Henry. He did not want to fall out with them over Charles
Edward
. If the Pope ordered tough action against the prince, the king and Cardinal York would have to demonstrate family solidarity, whatever their private feelings. The result might be a rift between the Vatican and the Stuarts that neither side wanted.
³³
So Benedict had to swallow the humiliation involved in the prince’s pointed ignoring of him. And he had to sanction the continuing expenses of the ‘Charles Edward festival’, even though he fretted that they would eventually bring the papal state to bankruptcy.
³⁴

Yet on one issue he was prepared to dig in his heels. One of the amusements Charles Edward wanted to introduce to the festivities in Avignon was bull-fighting: not the sanguinary duel to the death between beast and
matador
, but the
corredo
or bull-running, as practised in Aix and Arles.
³⁵
In this contest of skill and quick reflexes, there was no cruelty and little danger. The problem from Avignon’s point of view was that Article 40 of Pius V’s bull
Cum Praecelsa
forbade bull-fighting on pain of very severe sanctions. The archbishop of Avignon therefore refused permission. Angrily, Charles Edward appealed through the vice-legate to the Pope for a dispensation.
³⁶
Hardly surprisingly, both on grounds of canon law and his personal relations with the prince, the Pope refused to entertain the plea.
³⁷

Yet the incident brought it home to Benedict that the prince’s presence in Avignon would lead to an escalating set of demands and pressures. Reluctantly he conceded that his ‘softly softly’ approach might not be adequate. He decided to call a conclave of cardinals to advise him on the matter. On Tuesday 21 January, Cardinals Valenti, Spinola, Passionei, Riviera and Lanti conferred with him.
³⁸
It was decided that an envoy be sent to Avignon to tell the prince that his presence in the papal enclave was undesirable, but that he would be welcome elsewhere on papal territory. Benedict drew attention to a good stretch of country between Terracina and Comacchio, more beautiful than Scotland, where he could stay.
³⁹

Meanwhile the news from the vice-legate continued to be disheartening. Charles Edward and seventeen Scots attendants were lodged in the Apostolic Palace, eating and feasting. A major ball was held at least once a week. The prince now definitely seemed to be thinking of settling in the city, and why not? He had been given his best welcome since Edinburgh in 1745 and was content to waste the papal substance indefinitely. The vice-legate confessed himself at his wits’ end.
⁴⁰

Then came the development the Pope had long feared. Vociferous protests from France and England came thundering in on the Vatican. There was talk of the English retaliating by bombarding
Civitavecchia
.
⁴¹
The French were annoyed on two counts: that the prince had broken his word, and that they were being held responsible by London for the task of dislodging him from Avignon.
⁴²
The protagonist on the French side, predictably, was Puysieux. He handed the papal nuncio in Paris a note of protest about the vice-legate’s behaviour and demanded that the prince be forced the other side of the Alps. Puysieux cunningly tried to play on the Pope’s fears by referring to the huge debts the prince had left behind in France.
⁴³

Even if Puysieux had not been actuated by personal animus against Charles Edward, he and the other ministers of state would still have been under enormous pressure from England. London insisted that the prince’s presence in Avignon contravened the 1717 Treaty of Quadruple Alliance – a curious argument to raise when a war had already supervened, and exactly the sort of logic they had castigated in the prince as ‘quixotic’.
⁴⁴
The legalistic British point was that Article Two of that treaty had never been repealed, and it required the French to ensure that the Stuarts were kept behind the barrier of the Alps.
⁴⁵