[Footnote 13: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By ANDREW LANG, LL.D.
(1720-1788)
Charles Edward Stuart, called the "Young Pretender" by his enemies, the
"Young Chevalier" by neutrals, "Prince of Wales" and "Prince Regent" by
his partisans, "Prince Edouard" by the French, "Ned" by his intimates,
as we read in letters of Oliphant of Gask, and "Prince Charlie" by later
generations, was born at Rome, December 31, 1720. His father was James
VIII., of Scotland, and III. of England, according to the Legitimist
theory; his foes called him "The Pretender," partly on the strength of
the old fable about the warming-pan, so useful to the Whigs. No sane
person now doubts the genuineness of James' descent from James II., but
the nickname of Pretender still sticks, though Boswell tells us that
George III. particularly disliked an appellation which "may be
parliamentary, but is not gentlemanly." James III., or the Chevalier de
St. George, was taken up by Louis XIV. on the death of James II., in
France. He is said to have displayed courage in several battles in
Flanders, but his attempt to assert his rights in 1715 was a melancholy
failure. James showed melancholy and want of confidence; he soon left
Scotland for the Continent, and the best that can be said for his
conduct is that he endeavored to compensate the peasants whose houses
were destroyed in the military operations of "the Fifteen." Unable to
reside in France, he retired to Rome, a pensioner of the Pope, and
entertained with royal honors. In 1719 he married Clementina Sobieski, a
granddaughter of the famous John Sobieski, who delivered Europe from the
Turks. Their eldest son, Prince Charles, appears to have inherited the
spirit and daring of his Polish ancestors, which animated him throughout
his youth, and were extinguished less by Culloden than by the treatment
which he received from the French court, by his imprisonment in
Vincennes in 1748, and by the unrelenting animosity of the English
Government, which made him a homeless exile living mysteriously in
hiding on the Continent. Heart-broken by these misfortunes and by other
disappointments, Charles developed an unreasoning and sullen obstinacy,
which alienated his adherents, while the habit of heavy drinking,
learned in his Highland distresses, ruined his head and heart, and
converted the most gallant, gay, and promising of princes into a brutal
dipsomaniac.
[Illustration: Prince Charles Stuart.]
The education of Charles was casual and interrupted. Now he was in the
hands of Protestants, now of Catholic governors and tutors, as the
advice of English adherents, or the wishes of his devout mother, chanced
to prevail. There were frequent quarrels between James and his wife,
turning partly on the question of education, more on the jealousy which
the queen conceived of the Countess of Inverness. The Pope sided with
the queen in these melancholy broils, and James's private life (which
was not faultless) was much more subject to criticism and interference
than that of his at least equally lax rival on the English throne. A
second son, Henry Benedict, Duke of York, was born in 1725, and, at one
time, was regarded as of more martial disposition than Prince Charles.
As the elder, Charles was first under fire, and at the siege of Gaeta,
in 1734, while a mere boy, he displayed coolness, daring, and contempt
of danger. Young Henry, aged nine, "was so much discontented at being
refused the partnership of that glory and that danger, that he would not
put on his sword till his father threatened to take away his garter
too," says Murray of Broughton, in a letter dated 1742. In later life
the Duke of York showed no military aptitude. A kind of progress which
Charles made through the cities of Italy, aroused his desire to be a
prince in more than name. The English Government quarrelled with the
Republic of Venice about the royal honors paid to the prince, and his
ambition was awakened. His education, we have said, was very imperfect.
Murray of Broughton, indeed, credits him with Latin, Greek, history, and
philosophy. But his spelling in both French and English was unusually
bad, even in an age of free spelling; he wrote _époles_ for _epaules_,
"Gems" for "James," "sord" for "sword." He did not neglect physical
exercise; was wont to make long marches without stockings, to harden his
feet (as he told a follower during his Highland distresses). He was a
good shot, fond of hunting, and, about 1742, was probably the first man
who ever played golf in Italy. Murray describes him as "tall above the
common stature, his limbs cast in the most exact mould, his complexion
of an uncommon delicacy, all his features perfectly regular and well
turned, and his eyes the finest I ever saw." Whether they were blue or
hazel is undecided; they are hazel in at least one contemporary
portrait. As a boy, engravings show him pretty, merry, and buoyant; an
air of melancholy may be remarked as early as 1744. With bright
nut-brown hair, golden in the sun, and worn long beneath his peruke, he
certainly justified the endearing name of "Bonny Prince Charlie." The
distinction of his air could be concealed by no disguise, as his
followers loved fondly to declare. He certainly had the royal memory for
faces. At the opera, in 1773, he noticed an English officer opposite,
whom he sent for. The gentleman visited the royal box, accompanied by a
Scotch servant. "I have seen you before," said Charles to this man. "You
once brought me a message at Falkirk, in 1746."
Such was Prince Charles when, in 1742, Murray of Broughton became
acquainted with the royal exile in Rome, and was appointed secretary for
Scotland. With Lochiel and others, Murray formed a Jacobite association
in his native country. Negotiations were begun with the French court,
which hung off and on, as did the English Jacobites. They would rise, if
France supplied men, money, and arms. France would do this if
sufficiently assured of support in England. The king had no enthusiasm
for the enterprise. He was weary of promises and of leaning on that
broken reed, Louis XV. Murray intrigued in Scotland, Lord Elcho in
England, Kelly at the French court. Lord Semple confused all by false
hopes; Charles was much in the hands of Irishmen--Sheridan, Sullivan,
O'Brien, and O'Neil; already a "forward," or Prince's party was growing,
as opposed to the waiting policy and party of the disheartened and
unambitious James. To what extent English Jacobites were pledged is
uncertain. There was much discontent with the Hanoverian dynasty in
England, but the dread of popery was strong among the middle classes.
The butchers were advised that Catholics ate no meat on Sundays, the
official clergy preached Protestant sermons, the Jacobite gentry feared
for their lives and estates in case of failure, and the sagacity of the
Government has never revealed the extent to which the Duke of Beaufort
and others were committed to King James. The universities, the sporting
squires, and the smugglers drank to "The king over the water," but there
enthusiasm began and ended.
More was expected, and till assured of more, France held aloof, while
making promises enough. Even the Highland chiefs said that without a
French army nothing could be done. In 1744 Charles left Rome, under
pretext of a hunting party, concealed his withdrawal with great skill,
and reached Paris. He was obliged, however, to be incognito and was not
received by the king. An invading force was crowded on board ship. The
chance seemed excellent, England's forces being mainly abroad; but the
old friends of England, the winds, drove the battered fleet back into
harbor, and Charles in vain tried to persuade the Earl Marischal to
accompany him to Scotland in a small fishing vessel.
One result followed the reception of Charles by France, niggardly as
that reception was--war with England broke out, and the French army of
invasion was moved from Dunkirk to Flanders. The prince, not permitted
to serve in the French army, returned to Paris, where he had been
falsely assured by Semple and Æneas Macdonald that England was ready to
rise for him. Murray, who visited him in Paris, tried to dissuade him
from a wild venture; in Scotland he found the chiefs of his own opinion,
but the letter carrying the news never reached the prince. His Irish
friends urged him on; "the expedition was entirely an Irish project." He
borrowed money from his bankers, the Waters, he pawned his share of the
Sobieski jewels, and, with a privateer man-of-war and a brig, La
Doutelle, he left Belleisle on July 13, 1745. Neither the French court
nor his father knew that, attended only by seven men, "The Seven Men of
Moidart," he had set out to seek for a crown. The day before he embarked
he wrote to James; he said that no man would buy a horse, nor trust a
prince, that showed no spirit. "I never intend to come back," he added.
So, dressed as a student of the Scots College, he started. He lost his
convoy, the Elizabeth, on the way, after a drawn battle with the Lion
(Captain Brett). Resisting all advice to turn back, as Æneas Macdonald,
who accompanied him, narrates, he held on in La Doutelle, and reached
Erisca, an islet between Barra and South Uist, on August 2, 1745. An
eagle hovered over his ship, and Tullibardine hailed the royal bird as a
happy omen. But he found himself unwelcome. Boisdale bade him go home;
"I _am_ at home," said the prince. He steered for Moidart, the most
beautiful but the wildest shore of Scotland, a region of steep and
serrated mountains, of long salt-water straits, winding beneath the
bases of the hills, and of great fresh-water lochs. Loch Nahuagh was his
port; here he received Clan Ranald, whose desolate keep, Castle Tirrim,
stands yet in ruins, since "the Fifteen." Glenaladale (whose descendants
yet hold their barren acres), Dalilea, and Kinlochmoidart (now, like
Clan Ranald, landless men) met him with discouraging words. But, seeing
a flash in the eyes of a young Macdonald, of Kinlochmoidart, Charles
said, "You will not forsake me?" "I will follow you to death, were no
other sword drawn in your cause."
The chiefs caught fire, Charles landed, with the seven men of
Moidart--Æneas Macdonald, the Judas of the cause; the Duke of Athol
(Tullibardine), who had been out in the fifteen; Sheridan, the prince's
tutor; Sir John Macdonald; Kelley, a parson who had been in Atterbury's
affair; Strickland, an Englishman; and Buchanan. Young Lochiel was
disinclined to join, but yielded to the fascination of the prince. With
his accession the rising was a certainty. But Duncan Forbes of Culloden,
the lord president, had influence enough to hold back the Macleods of
Skye, to paralyze the shifty Lovat, and to secure the Sutherland house
for the Hanoverian cause. Charles left Boisdale for Kinlochmoidart, "the
head of Loch Moidart," where an avenue of trees, the prince's walk, is
still shown, though the old house was burned after Culloden. Keppoch cut
off a small party of Scots Royal; this was first blood for the Jacobite
cause. The wounded were hospitably treated by Lochiel; the English
captain was released on parole. Charles now crossed the steep hills
between Kinlochmoidart and the long narrow lake of Loch Sheil, there he
took boat, and rowed past the lands of Glenaladale and Dalilea to
Glenfinnan, where Tullibardine raised the standard, inscribed _Tandem
Triumphans_. A statue of the prince, gazing southward, now marks the
spot. The clans came in, and as Charles marched southeast, each glen
sent down its warriors to join the stream. The clansmen, as a rule, had
probably little knowledge of or interest in the cause. They followed
their chiefs. The surviving Gaelic poetry speaks much of the chieftains;
of _Tearlach, righ nan Gael_, but little is said. It was the middle of
August before the rulers of England received the news of the landing.
They at once set a reward of £30,000 on Charles's head, a proceeding
"unusual among Christian princes," said Charles, who was compelled by
his forces, and their threats of desertion, to follow the evil example.
Sir John Cope was sent with an English army to stop the prince. It
appeared likely that the armies would meet about Dalwhinnie, now the
highest and bleakest part of the Highland Railway. The path then led
over Corryarrack; Charles and his men raced for the summit, but Cope was
not to be seen. He had marched east and north, to Inverness, and all the
south of Scotland lay open to the prince. He passed by Killiecrankie and
Blair Athol to Perth; Cluny came in, with the Duke of Perth, and Lord
George Murray, Charles's most skilled general, who had been out at
Glensheil, in 1719, and had learned the lesson of war in the Sardinian
army. How easily he won Edinburgh, how he held court at Holyrood, how he
routed Cope (who returned by sea) at Preston Pans or Gladsmuir, is
familiar to all. His clemency was conspicuous; he wrote to James that he
would give up Holyrood to the wounded, rather than see them homeless.
Home, a Whig volunteer, and the author of a Whiggish history,
acknowledges the nobility of his conduct, and his "foolish lenity" (he
would not permit the execution of several persons who tried to
assassinate him) is blamed by the fanatics who, in 1749, issued a wild
Cameronian manifesto, "The Active Testimonies of Presbyterians." The
contrast with the savage brutalities of Cumberland is very notable. In
the battle the chiefs refused to let Charles lead the charge, but he was
at the head of the second line, "a pistol shot behind" the first.
Preston Pans was fought on September 21, 1745. That Charles dallied
before Edinburgh Castle till October 21st was no fault of his. Some of
his men had gone home with booty, others were to be waited for, many of
the chiefs were in favor of holding Scotland under James as a separate
kingdom, and it was only by constant personal appeals that the prince
persuaded them to push south. Lord George's strategy deceived the
English, who knew not where to look for the Highlanders. They met at
Carlisle, took it, passed through Preston and Manchester, gave
Cumberland the slip, and their advanced posts, six miles south of Derby,
were within a hundred and twenty miles of London. The army of Finchley
was unlikely to make a stand, the city was partly Jacobite, the mob were
ready for anything, when Lord George and the chiefs insisted on retreat.
Historians doubt which policy was the wiser; it is certain that success,
if to be attained at all, could only be won by audacity. The chiefs,
however, declared for a return and a junction with French forces then
expected. Charles wept and prayed to no avail. His army, as disappointed
as himself, found their faces set to the north, and the prince, who had
ever walked among the first ranks, leaving his carriage to old Lord
Pitsligo, now rode dejected and heart-broken. The retreat was rapid and
able. At Clifton, Murray turned on the pursuing dragoons, headed a
claymore charge, and drove them back. A hapless garrison of Lancashire
volunteers was left to the tender mercies of Cumberland in Carlisle, and
Charles went by way of Whiggish Dumfries (the house where he lodged is
now an inn) to Glasgow. To all intents and purposes the end had come.
Charles had lost faith in the advisers who dragged him back from the
south, he listened to Murray of Broughton and to his Irishry; he
suspected, unjustly but not unnaturally, the good faith of Lord George.
He dallied at Stirling, besieging the castle without proper artillery,
and Hawley was sent to attack him. On January 17, 1746, the armies met
at Falkirk. A storm of wind and rain blew at the backs of the
Highlanders, they charged, scattered the enemy, drove them in flight,
and cut up the Glasgow volunteers. But, in the dark and the mist they
scarcely knew their own advantage. The pipers had thrown their pipes to
their boys, had gone in with the claymore, and could not sound the
calls. Hawley wrote to Cumberland "My heart is broke ... I got off but
three cannon of the ten." Hawley retreated to Edinburgh, the Duke of
Cumberland came to take the command; the Highlanders began to desert
with their booty, dissensions prevailed, and Charles went on besieging
Stirling. Again Lord George Murray urged a retreat, Charles dashed his
head in impotent rage against the wall of his room, but he had to
follow. With perfect truth he said:
"I cannot see anything but ruin and destruction to us all in case we
should think of a retreat;" his forces in flight would lose heart, his
enemies would gain confidence. All this was true, but all this was
unavailing. Months were spent in unimportant movements. Cumberland,
meanwhile, instructed his men in the method of meeting a Highland
charge, and deceiving the parry of the Highland shields. It was known
that France would lend no substantial aid, and a French subsidy of
30,000 _Louis d'or_ came too late, after the battle of Culloden, and was
buried at the head of Loch Arkaig. One last chance Charles had: Lord
George proposed, and Charles eagerly seconded, a night surprise at
Nairn. But the delays on the march, and the arrival of dawn, made Murray
command a retreat, and Charles's faith in him was irretrievably gone for
the time, though he later expressed in writing a more worthy opinion.
With 10,000 well-fed men against 5,000 who were starving, Cumberland had
every chance of victory at Culloden. The Macdonalds, placed on the left
wing, would not charge. Keppoch's men were discontented because they
were not allowed to have a Catholic chaplain. Crying out, "The children
of my clan have forsaken me," Keppoch charged alone, and died the death
of renown. Beaten and blinded by a storm of snow in their faces, the
Highland right clove the ranks of Monro and Burrell, only to fall, in
layers three or four deep, before the fire of Sempill's regiment in the
second line. The whole English force advanced; Charles rode to his
second line, and offered to charge with them. His officers told him that
it was in vain; Highlanders once beaten would not rally. (MS. "Lyon in
Mourning," and MS. of Stuart Threipland at Abbotsford.) Charles was
hurried off the field by his Irish tutor, and fled to Lord Lovat's, at
Gortuleg. A story of his lack of courage, told by Sir Walter Scott on
the authority of Sir James Stewart Denham's recollections of Lord
Elcho's MS., is erroneous. Lord Elcho's MS. does not contain the
statement. What he objects to is Charles's refusal to meet the fragments
of his army at Ruthven, in Badenoch, whence they hoped to wage a
guerilla warfare. Lord George Murray himself admits that the project was
impossible. Charles, however, should have gone to Ruthven, but he
distrusted Lord George; and his hope of a speedy voyage to France, where
he expected to receive aid in men and money, was frustrated.
It is needless to repeat the tale of Cumberland's almost incredible
butcheries, cruelties, and robberies, or to tell of the executions
accompanied by the torture of disembowelling the living man. The story
of Charles's wanderings and distresses is narrated best in the MS. "Lyon
in Mourning," partly printed by Robert Chambers, in "Jacobite Memoirs."
No words can overpraise the loyalty of the starving Highlanders; neither
English tortures, nor the promise of £30,000, ever moved one man or
woman from their constant faith. Only one hungry boy whom Charles had
fed, attempted to betray him, but was not believed. As for the prince,
he is briefly described by a companion as "the most prudent man not to
be a coward, the most daring not to be foolhardy, whom he had ever
known." He showed a constant gayety, singing and telling tales to
hearten his followers. His resource was endless; he was by far the best
cook and the least fastidious eater of his company. He could cook a dish
of cow's brains, or swallow raw oatmeal and salt-water. Surrounded by
English _cordons_, through which he slipped at night up the bed of a
burn, when the sentinels had reached their furthest point apart, Charles
led a little expedition which cut off the cattle intended for the
provender of his enemies. (MS. "Lyon in Mourning.") He would not even
let a companion carry his great-coat. He knew every extremity of hunger,
thirst, and cold; and perhaps his most miserable experience was to lurk
for many hours, devoured by midges, under a wet rock. Unshorn, unwashed,
in a filthy shirt, his last, he was yet the courteous prince in his
dealings with all women whom he met, notably with Flora Macdonald, the
stainless and courageous heroine of loyalty and womanly kindness. At
last, late in September, 1746, Charles, with Lochiel and many others,
escaped in a French barque from Loch Nahuagh, where he had first landed.
It has been said of him by his enemies, especially by Dr. King, a
renegade, that he was avaricious and ungrateful. Letters and receipts in
the muniment room of a Highland chief show him directing large sums,
probably out of the Loch Arkaig treasure, to be paid to Lochiel, to
"Keppoch's lady," and to many poor clansmen. The receipts, written in
hiding, and dried with snuff or sand, attest that the money came to the
persons for whom it was intended.
Charles' expedition could only be justified by success. That it failed
was due to no want of courage, or audacity, or resolve on his part, but
to the very nature of a Highland army, to the jealousies of Irish and
Scotch, to the half-heartedness of his English partisans, and to the
English horror of his father's religion. By his own creed he held very
loosely.
[Illustration: The First Meeting of Prince Charles with Flora MacDonald.]
In France Charles was a popular hero, and adored by ladies. His
appearance at court was magnificent, and for him the Princesse de
Tallemant made every sacrifice. But the Government was deaf to his
appeals, a journey to Spain was fruitless; worst of all, his brother
Henry, to whom he had been tenderly devoted, accepted a cardinal's hat,
on July 3, 1747. This was fatal. The English would never forgive a son
of their so-called king who became a Romish priest; and the shadow of
the hat fell on Charles. From letters of James to the prince, it is
plain that, for some reason, the Duke of York could not look forward to
marriage and to continuing the Stuart family. The young man, therefore,
having also a vocation withal, accepted ecclesiastical rank, and a
cluster of rich benefices. A breach between Charles and James followed,
which was never healed, despite the touching letters of the king to his
"dearest Carluccio." Charles betook himself to adventurous and secret
projects. In the Highlands he had learned to seek the consolation of the
poor, and to forget hunger, cold, misery, and sorrow in drink. He drank
"our best bowlsman," says an islander, under the table. The habit soon
dominated him, and--with his disgraceful arrest and imprisonment, when
he refused to acknowledge the peace of Aix la Chapelle and to withdraw
from France--soured his character and ruined his life. Released from
Vincennes, he hurried to the then Papal city of Avignon, where he
introduced boxing-matches. England threatened to bombard Civita Vecchia,
and Charles had to depart. Whither he went no man knows. There is a
Jacobite tract of 1750, purporting to be written by his equerry, Henry
Goring. According to this, Charles, Goring, and a mysterious Comte de la
Luze (Marshal Keith?), went to Lyons, Dijon, Strasbourg. Here Charles
rescued a beautiful girl from a fire, and honorably declined to take
advantage of her manifest passion for her preserver. The party was
attacked by assassins, Charles shot two of them, La Luze and Goring
accounted for others. They took ship from some northern coast, were
tempest-driven to an unfriendly port, visited, apparently, Frederick the
Great, spent some time in Lithuania, and there are hints of a love
affair, though Charles had already proclaimed that he would never
marry to beget royal beggars. He certainly visited Sweden; there was
talk of him as a candidate for the Polish crown. For many years
(1749-1755) neither James nor the English Government knew where Charles
really was. Grimm says that for three years he lay hidden in the house
of a lady in Paris, a friend of the Princesse de Tallemant. A sportsman
and a lover of the open air is not likely to have loitered so long with
Armida in a secret chamber. There is tattle about him in D'Argenson's
"Memoirs;" a disguised shabby prince appears now and then, none knows
whence, and vanishes. In the papers of Charles Stuart, Comte d'Albanie,
one finds a trace of a visit paid by the prince to Ireland. There is
evidence, in the State Papers, that he was not far from Paris, in June,
1749. We have it under his own hand, in the Stuart Papers at Windsor,
that he visited London on September 5, 1750, returning to Paris on
September 13th. Here, as we know from the document left by Archibald
Cameron, Lochiel's brother, the last man executed for the rising, or
rather for a later plot, Charles renounced the Catholic faith. Charles
himself gives 1750 as the date of this conversion. It came five years
too late, and he recanted his recantation. He was in England again later
(1752), and held his last council in Merriworth Castle in Kent. There is
a legend of his ghost haunting a house in Godalming, which probably
comes from a tradition of his residence there. Since 1750 or
thereabouts, a Miss Clementina Walkinshaw, of Barrowfield, had been his
mistress. He is said to have met her near Glasgow, and flirted with her;
when or where she fled to him on the continent is obscure. Mr. Ewald
supposes her to have been with him in Paris before the affair of
Vincennes (1748). The writer, however, has seen a letter from Paris to a
sister of Miss Walkinshaw describing the arrest at the Opera House,
without the most distant allusion to Clementina, about whom her sister
would be concerned. Clementina, judging by a miniature, was a lady with
very large black eyes; a portrait in oil gives a less favorable view of
her charms. In 1754 Charles was again in England, and in Nottingham. He
actually walked in Hyde Park, where someone, recognizing him, tried to
kneel to him. He therefore returned at once to France. He is reported to
have come back in 1755 or 1756, braving the reward of £30,000 for his
head. The Jacobites now requested him to dismiss Clementina Walkinshaw,
whose eldest sister was a lady housekeeper in the Hanoverian family. A
scrap in Charles's hand at Windsor proves that he regarded some lady as
a possible traitor, but he declined to be dictated to, in his household
matters, by his adherents. This gave the English Jacobites an excuse for
turning their coats, of which they availed themselves. Sir Walter Scott
makes the romance of "Redgauntlet" hang on the incident. About this time
jottings of Charles prove that he fancied himself a Republican. He hated
Louis XV., and declined on one occasion to act as a bug-bear
(_épouvantail_), at the request of France. He had already struck a medal
in honor of the British Navy and contempt of the French. He is now lost
sight of till 1760, when Miss Walkinshaw, with his daughter, left his
protection for that of a convent. This lady, in some letters, now
unluckily lost, endeavored to persuade her family that she was married
to the prince. A later myth averred that her daughter (the Duchess of
Albany) had been secretly married, and a General Stuart, claiming, on
this evidence, to be a legitimate descendant of the prince, died about
1852. As Charles, late in life, legitimatized his daughter by Clementina
Walkinshaw (a thing needless had he been married to her mother), and
made affirmation that he never had any other child, all these legends
are manifestly absurd. (The affirmation is among documents in possession
of Lord Braye, and is published by the Historical MSS. Commission.)
From this point there is little historical or personal interest in the
life of Charles. His father, James III., died in 1766, and was buried as
a king. Charles hurried from Bouillon to Rome; his brother, the
cardinal, tried to secure his recognition by the Papal Court, but the
Pope dared not, and no other government chose to defy the English
Ministry. Charles's life was spent, now in seclusion, now in society; he
still was fond of shooting, of music, and the drama; he still retained
his grace of demeanor when he happened to be sober. Late in 1771 he went
in disguise to Paris, where he accepted a pension from France, and a
beautiful bride, Louise, Princess of Stolberg, descended from the Earl
of Ailesbury into whose arms Charles II. fell under the stroke of his
fatal illness. The ill-matched pair were married on Good Friday, April
17, 1772. At first Charles behaved with more sobriety and good humor
than usual. A child of the marriage was expected, at least by the Scotch
Jacobites, in 1773. There is a legend that a child was actually born,
was intrusted to Captain John Carter Allen, was brought up by him as his
own, and this infant, grown to manhood, became the father of two
gentlemen calling themselves John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart and Charles
Edward Stuart, Counts of Albany. They lived till late in the present
century, were picturesque figures in society, and writers of some spirit
and vigor. For long they were much cherished by some noble Highland
families. Charles, the younger, has left descendants. It is needless to
discuss here the authenticity of these claims.
Charles's relations with his wife were on the pattern of his relations
with his mistress. He was jealous, and brutal beyond description; she
was courted by Alfieri, the poet, and, after fleeing from her husband to
a convent, she united her fortunes with Alfieri's. On his death she
chose a young French painter, Fabre, as his successor, and to him she
left her rich collection of relics, spoils of the poet and the king. A
beautiful, witty, and engaging woman, she was long a centre of society
in Italy. She died in 1824. In 1784 Charles sent for his daughter by
Miss Walkinshaw. Both had long been maintained by the cardinal. He made
her Duchess of Albany, medals were designed, if never struck,
representing her as _spes ultima et exigua_, "the last frail hope," of
the Stuarts. For the last time, in conversation with a Mr. Greathead,
the old spirit blazed out. His face brightened, he began the tale of his
campaign, but, when attempting to narrate the butcheries of Cumberland,
the cruel executions in London, he fell on the floor in convulsions. He
used to solace himself by playing on the pipes, and at the sound of the
martial music which he had heard on three stricken fields, he was able
to live in the past. On January 31, 1788, the anniversary of the death
of Charles I., Charles Edward passed away from earth. His daughter did
not long survive him; she was killed by a fall from her horse. Henry now
took the title of Henry IX. "by grace of God, not by the will of men."
He died in 1806; the French had stripped him of all his property, even
the famous Sobieski rubies were gone, and he was in receipt of a pension
from the English Government. In 1819 George IV. erected a monument by
Canova, in St Peters at Rome, to "James III., son of James II., King of
Great Britain, to Charles Edward, and Henry, his sons, the last of the
Royal Stuart line. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." Sir Walter
Scott visited this alone of Roman sights, in 1832, just before he came
home to die.
Had Charles fallen at Culloden, history could find no blot on his name,
no stain on the white rose. Surviving, as he did, a broken-hearted
exile, with no home, no chance of a career, "eating his own heart,
shunning the paths of men," as Homer says of Bellerophon, he fell a
victim to the habit which has ever the same wretched results, which
turns a hero to a coward, a gentleman to a brute. Yet, in his one year
of brilliance, he won immortal love. Scott had seen strong men, the
prince's ancient comrades, weep at the mention of his name. No man, in
any age, ever inspired such a large, such a gallant, such a tender and
melancholy body of song. Even now as one hears the notes of
"Will ye no come back again,
Better lo'ed ye canna be,"
sung by the lads of a Scotch village, one feels that Charles Stuart did
not wholly fail; the song outlives the dynasty, and relics of Prince
Charlie are fondly cherished, while no man cares a halfpenny for his
Hanoverian rivals.
The best life of Prince Charles is that by Mr. Ewald (London, 1875). Mr.
Ewald alone has used the State Papers at the Record Office. Lord
Stanhope's and Mr. Chambers's "Histories of the Forty-five" are also
excellent; as are "Jacobite Memoirs," selected from Bishop Forbes's MS.
"Lyon in Mourning." These works, with the contemporary tracts, and some
MSS., with Lord Stanhope's "Decline of the Last Stuarts," and the Stuart
Papers at Windsor, as given in Browne's "History of the Highland Clans,"
have been consulted in compiling this study of Prince Charles.
[Signature: Andrew Lang.]