Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (32 page)

Charles was determined to live like a prince, even if he was not officially recognized as one. He surrounded himself with his guard of Highlanders, he all but kept court at his residence. He entertained the Scottish exiles, often feeding thirty-five of them at dinner and twenty at supper. His table groaned under the weight of expensive meats and rare delicacies, his wines and liqueurs were of the finest. And when among his guests, Charles drank to princely excess—a vice in which he was encouraged, or so James's dignified, elderly envoy O'Brien believed, by his tough, hard-drinking companion-in-arms "Trebby," the Anglican parson George Kelly.

Kelly (not to be confused with Friar Kelly, Charles's Franciscan confessor, also a man who loved his bottle) was a troublemaker. He made fun of James, sneered at the pious Henry and imitated the French ministers in a way that Charles found very entertaining. Kelly had a gift for mimicry and ridicule, and he gossiped and spread stories about all the Jacobites, even Charles himself in the latter's absence. He outraged the proper O'Brien by suggesting that Henry ought to take a mistress, and joked and told dirty tales about O'Brien and others whom James trusted and whose rectitude he considered to be above reproach. Even the relatively unbuttoned Balhaldie was exasperated with "Trebby," whom he called the worst of the ''animals" Charles kept around him, a liar and a good-for-nothing.
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O'Brien was eager to attribute Charles's bad habits to the influence of the scurrilous Parson Kelly, but in truth Charles was choosing his own path. He was growing older, becoming less the charming young man, eager to please and more the willful adult, quick to take offense, openly pleasure-seeking and above all self-directed. He hated having to grovel before the French ministers, knowing that no matter how able and worthy he was, he was still their creature, to be controlled at their whim. He was incapable of mastering their sort of subtlety and dissimulation, of beating them at their own game; he would make them play his game, his way, or not at all. He went to court infrequently, staying away more and more and relying on Bouillon or Cardinal Tencin—whom he hated as "an absolute rogue and rascal"—to make his excuses. The intricate etiquette of the court confused him, and his own lack of status there was a reminder of his political impotence. Besides, court appearances required a costly wardrobe. When Henry attended a ball to celebrate the dauphin's marriage in January of 1747 his clothing cost him six thousand livres.

Rather than dance attendance on those who ignored him, Charles determined to make things happen on his own initiative. He meditated a daring, if impracticable plan to marry Elizabeth, Tsarina of Russia. In lieu of a dowry he would ask her to provide him with twenty thousand soldiers, to be used on another expedition to England. He would have preferred to marry a French princess, but admitted in a letter to his father that he knew that for the present it would be futile to ask King Louis to become his father-in-law. The tsarina's ties to the Hanoverian court were an obstacle, James pointed out in his reply; why didn't Charles consider a Polish princess? But a Polish princess would be a better bride for Henry, Charles thought, and he kept after his brother—who showed no sign of wanting to marry anyone—to form an alliance with the Polish Radziwills.

Living in their separate houses, surrounded by their very different entourages, Henry cultivating his literary and artistic tastes and Charles pursuing the pleasures of the hunt and the table, while contemplating independent action of a political kind, the brothers grew wider apart. Henry, like James, seemed to accept the political status quo, seeing no alternative; he went to court on King Louis's terms and took what bounty he offered, playing his role with what dignity he could. Charles was restless, and anything but resigned. He craved activity, and was coming to accept the fact that it would have to be undertaken entirely on his own.

The divergence seemed ready to widen into a rift. One day Charles and some of his companions dined at Henry's house, and the obstreperous Kelly provoked a scene by saying what a number of the exiles had been thinking for months.

Kelly asked Henry why he hadn't ordered the French transport ships to sail to England the previous winter. Some would have been lost, he realized, but others would have succeeded in landing.

O'Brien, who was present, rushed to Henry's defense and told Kelly that Henry had been a mere figurehead, with no real authority to command.

"Is that so?" said Kelly belligerently. ''And why was that, pray? For King James in 1708 had command of all troops then gathered at Dunkirk."

"Do you seriously imagine," O'Brien replied, "that if the king had had the troops at Dunkirk entirely at his command, he would have turned back without trying for Scotland, at all costs?"

The argument raged on, while Charles listened in silence and Henry felt more and more uncomfortable. At last Henry rose to answer for himself. He rounded on Kelly, telling him vehemently that at no time had it been possible to launch the ships, as Kelly knew full well. Furthermore, Kelly ought to keep silent as he was too ignorant to do otherwise. "A few months ago," Henry shouted, "you would not have dared to speak in this manner!"

The implication was clear. In the few months since Charles's arrival in France, suspicions had grown, and Henry had come under more and more unrestrained criticism. Relations between the brothers could not help but be strained.

"He does not open his heart to me," Charles told James, "and yet I perceive he is grieved which must proceed from malicious people putting things in his head, and preventing him against me. Notwithstanding, I am persuaded he loves me tenderly, which is the occasion of my grief. God almighty grant us better days!"
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Charles was right in sensing that Henry was not being candid with him. The extent of his secrecy would become apparent soon enough, but before it did Charles launched himself on another adventure. Toward the end of January, 1747, he left Paris, taking a few companions with him, and rode south. No one in France knew where he was going; the French courtiers speculated that he had left to organize a new expedition against England. In a sense they were right. Charles's destination was Madrid, and he hoped to convince the Spanish king Ferdinand VI to come to his aid where King Louis had not.

Before leaving, Charles had written to key English Jacobites, letting them know what his plans were. He urged them to send one of their number to serve as his Paris agent, since he did not intend to rely on any of his father's agents there any longer. He had heard that King George was in poor health, and could die. His death would cause at least temporary confusion in government circles, given the factionalism that had led to a ministerial crisis the previous year.
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Charles was hoping that, if all went well, he would have a Spanish-backed invasion force to launch against England just when the new king's authority was at its most vulnerable.

It was the sort of daring secret escapade Charles enjoyed most: a mad dash for Madrid, ciphered letters sent to London, a strategy planned in defiance of his father and indeed of all sensible observers. But it backfired. He presented himself at the Spanish court, where King Ferdinand and his ministers received him with "many civilities" but were privately astonished that he should appear on their doorstep unannounced. His outrageous requests for money, arms and one of Ferdinand's sisters as his bride convinced them that he was either hopelessly callow or insane. They soon made it clear that his departure would be welcome.

Instead of learning from this humiliating experience, Charles became angry. The Spaniards were even greater fools than the French, he told his father. King Ferdinand was even more a creature of his ministers than King Louis was, weak and gutless. Back in Paris, Charles moved into his banker's house and refused to have anything to do with James's representatives.

What further schemes he may have had in mind were upstaged by what happened next. For many months, James and Henry had been quietly preparing in effect to abdicate their claims to the English throne. James was too old and too tired to try to guide the Stuart fortunes any longer, and Henry had decided that he had no stomach for political intrigue. The older generation of Jacobite exiles was dying off, those whom Charles had brought with him from Scotland were busily trying to ingratiate themselves with the French and gain appointments in the army, while hoping to obtain pardons from London eventually. Reports reaching Paris from England and Scotland made it plain that the Jacobites of 1745 had been decimated by imprisonment and exile in the colonies. It might still be possible for a young man to rebuild a movement capable of challenging the Hanoverian rulers, but not for an old one and his sensitive younger son.

James had decided to give up, and Henry had made an even more extreme decision: he had decided to become a cardinal.

Henry left Paris suddenly in May, leaving Charles a note to say that he was going to Rome to visit their father. Many weeks later, Charles received a letter from James.

"I know not whether you will be surprised, my dearest Carluccio," James wrote, "when I tell you that your brother will be made a Cardinal the first days of next month. Naturally speaking, you should have been consulted about a resolution of that kind before it had been executed, but as the Duke and I were unalterably determined on the matter, and that we foresaw you might probably not approve of it, we thought it would be showing you more regard, and that it would be even more agreeable to you, that the thing should be done before your answer could come here, and so have it in your power to say it was done without your knowledge or approbation."
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Charles was utterly stunned. Not since the decision of the chiefs at Derby to turn the Stuart army back toward Scotland had he felt so betrayed, so powerless. Unable to speak, hardly able to think, he shut himself up in his rooms. No one could reach him or talk to him.

Over the next few hours, as he began to recover from the shock and from the wave of furious anger that no doubt followed it, he must have reflected on the meaning of this unexpected turn in the family fortunes. His father and brother had conspired against him. Henry's choice of vocation had done irreparable harm, and would make his own struggle to uphold his claim to a Protestant throne much more difficult. For from now on there would be only one claimant to that throne—Charles himself. Henry could not, as a cardinal, be heir presumptive, and Henry would have no heirs. The entire burden and responsibility of the Stuart restoration now rested on Charles's sturdy shoulders.

He had the courage to face the task, and the strength of will. But did he have the other requisite qualities? The Spanish ambassador at the French court thought not. Charles, he said, lacked the intellect and presence of mind to conduct serious business, and was neither articulate enough nor sensible enough to achieve even the most modest political aims. James's conclusion was more insightful. He told Cardinal Tencin in confidence that he felt his elder son was "on the edge of a precipice."

Chapter 20

In the summer of 1747 Charles Stuart was at the height of his manly beauty. Tall, lean, energetic, he radiated strength and vitality. Admirers thought his features ''exceedingly noble," and compared him to the handsome Charles XII, King of Sweden. His complexion was sun-browned, his cheeks were full and his lips thicker than the ideal; his high round forehead set off lively eyes and mobile features, and drew attention away from his double chin and jaw with "pretty many pimples" under it. Restless, eager for action, full of élan, his merits, as the Marquis d'Argenson wrote deprecatingly, "were of the antique sort"; he was heroic but empty-headed, valorous but ignorant, with few ideas and fewer words to express them.
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Women loved him, however, and forgave him his shyness in formal situations and his inability to make witty conversation. Living at St. Ouen this summer, far enough from the court to escape the watchful eye of the royal ministers, he dropped his incognito and entertained in style. He was much in demand by aristocratic hostesses as most of the young and middle-aged men were away on campaign in Holland.

Hunting during the day (and sometimes poaching on the king's lands, making his majesty "somewhat angry") and socializing at night, Charles's spirits lifted. He had not yet gotten over his dismay at the prospect of Henry's cardinalate—which some Jacobites were saying was a worse disaster than Culloden—but he was cheered by the war news from Holland, where a huge force led by none other than the Duke of Cumberland had been decimated at Laffeldt by the French. Cumberland himself, it was said, barely escaped with his life.

In August Charles went to his uncle's country house at Navarre, and there, during the long, warm days and sweet-scented nights, he fell in love.

He was twenty-seven, his cousin Louise, Bouillon's daughter, twenty-two. They had known each other for three years, ever since Charles first came to France; in November of the previous year, when Louise was ill with smallpox (at that time a very severe and often fatal disease), Charles had written the family in the warmest terms to say that he sympathized with her in her convalescence. But there had been no romance between the cousins until now, and when it came, it was apparently earthshaking for both of them.
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Louise, whose titles were Duchesse de Montbazon and Princesse de Rohan, was married to Jules-Hercule-Mériadec, Prince de Rohan, Due de Montbazon, Prince de Guéméné, and she was the mother of a two-year-old son. Because, through her mother, Louise was a great-granddaughter of the Polish king John Sobieski, she was an exceptionally wealthy heiress, and King Louis had taken an interest in making the right match for her. Her potential wealth was of far greater interest to her contemporaries than her personality and character, and little is now known about her. Her portraits reveal a pert, determined face, less than beautiful, plump and round like her father's, and with handsome eyes shaped like a doe's.
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