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ODD BITS OF HISTORY.
ODD BITS OF HISTORY
BEING
_SHORT CHAPTERS INTENDED TO FILL SOME BLANKS_
BY HENRY W. WOLFF
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co.
AND NEW-YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1894.
_(All rights reserved.)_
PREFACE.
The chapters composing this book appeared originally in the shape of
review articles. I owe acknowledgments to the Editors of _Blackwood's
Magazine_, the _National Review_ and the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for the
permission kindly accorded me to republish them.
To my regret I find, on receiving the clean sheets, that pressure of time
and a rather troublesome nervous affection of one eye have led me to
overlook a few printer's errors, such as: p. 70, _occassion_ for
_occasion_; p. 137, _Fuensaldana_ for _Fuensaldana_; p. 253, _Nicephoras
Phorcas_ for _Nicephorus Phocas_; p. 267, _Polydore Virgil_ for _Polydore
Vergil_. The misprints will in every instance, I believe, explain
themselves.
H. W. W.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PRETENDER AT BAR-LE-DUC 1
II. RICHARD DE LA POLE, "WHITE ROSE" 58
III. THE EARLY ANCESTORS OF OUR QUEEN 91
IV. ABOUT A PORTRAIT AT WINDSOR 120
V. THE REMNANT OF A GREAT RACE 145
VI. VOLTAIRE AND KING STANISLAS 181
VII. THE PRINCE CONSORT'S UNIVERSITY DAYS 219
VIII. SOMETHING ABOUT BEER 248
I.--THE PRETENDER AT BAR-LE-DUC.[1]
"The Pretender Charles Edward resided here three years in a house which is
still pointed out." So you may read in "Murray," under the head of
"Bar-le-Duc." The information, which is apt to suggest inquiry to those
who, like myself, are fond of picking up a little bit of neglected history
on their travels, is, as it happens, not altogether accurate. For, in the
first place, the "Pretender" who "resided" at Bar was not "Charles Edward"
at all--_could_ not have been "Charles Edward," who was not born till five
years after the Pretender who _did_ reside there had left. In the second,
so little is "the house still pointed out" that, on my first visit to Bar,
in August, 1890, I could actually not find a soul to give me even the
vaguest information as to its whereabouts. Even mine hostess of the
"Cygne," in whose stables, I afterwards discovered, some of the
Pretender's horses had been put up, had never heard of our political
exile. "_Cela doit etre dans la Haute Ville_"--"_Cela doit etre dans la
Basse Ville_"--"_Eh bien, moi je n'en sais rien_." Why should they know
about the Pretender? There were no thanks, surely, due to him. While in
the town, he had given himself intolerable airs, had put the town to no
end of expense and all manner of trouble, and in the end had slunk away
without so much as a word of thanks or farewell, leaving a heavy score of
debts to be paid--and, up in a cottage perched on the very brow of the
picturesque hill--for which some one else had to pay the rent--one pretty
little Barisienne disconsolate, betrayed, disgraced. There was, in fact,
but one man belonging to the town who had taken the trouble to trace the
house from the description given in the local archives--a description,
indeed, exact enough--M. Vladimir Konarski, and he was away on his
holiday. There was nothing, then, for me to do, but to go home with an
empty note-book, _quoad_ Bar, and return in 1891 to resume my inquiry.
Even to us Englishmen the first Pretender is not a particularly attractive
personage. But he is a historical character. And about his doings at Bar
thus far very little has been made known. With the help of M. Konarski's
notes, of the local archives, freely placed at my disposal by the kindness
of M. A. Jacob, of the manuscripts in the _Archives Nationales_, in the
Archives of Nancy and in the Foreign Office at Paris, of the Stuart MSS.
in London, and of other neglected sources of information, as well as some
rather minute local research, I have managed to gather together
sufficient historical crumbs to make up a fairly substantial loaf--all
the information on the subject, I suppose, that is to be got. And, at any
rate, as a secondary side-chapter to our national history at an important
epoch, perhaps the account which within the limits of a magazine article I
shall be able to give, may prove of passing interest to more besides those
staunch surviving Jacobites who still from time to time "play at treason"
in out-of-the-way places.
What sent the Pretender to Bar every schoolboy knows. We had fought with
France and were, in 1713, about to conclude peace. Our court had, as a
Stuart MS. in Paris puts it, showed itself extremely "_chatouilleuse et
susceptible_" with respect to the countenance given at Versailles to
James, and to his residence in France--where he seemed to us perpetually
on the spring for mischief. Louis XIV., we were aware, had expressed his
desire to render to the Pretender's family "_de plus grands et plus
heureux services_" than he had yet been able to give. And so, very
naturally, before engaging to suspend hostilities, we insisted that James
should be turned out of France. Once we were about it, we might as well
have asked a little more, and pressed for his removal to a farther
distance from our shores. Considering all the commotion which afterwards
arose upon this point, how Queen Anne was periodically pestered with
addresses calling upon her to demand his removal, one might have thought
that so much forethought might have been exercised. However, the idea
seems never to have suggested itself to our wise statesmen at the proper
time. On the contrary, the one thing which in 1712 and 1713 they appeared
eager for was, that James should _not_ be allowed to settle in
"papistical" Italy--the very country into which afterwards, just _because_
it was papistical, so M. de Robethon's official letters admit in the
plainest terms, the Court of Hanover was extremely anxious to see its
enemy decoyed. If he would but go to Rome, that would be best of all. For
it would do for him entirely at home, M. de Robethon thinks. However, in
1713 we took a different view, and, as Lorraine lay particularly handy and
convenient, from the French point of view--being near, and though
nominally an independent duchy, entirely under French influence--to
Lorraine James was sent. There was some talk of his going to Nancy. He
himself did not at first fancy Bar-le-Duc. He feared that he might find it
slow. The French king believed that in a large town like Nancy, which had
still some poor remnants of its once famous fortifications left, he would
be safer. And when Duke Leopold had gone to all the trouble of putting the
half-dilapidated chateau of Bar into habitable order, taking to it the
pick of his own furniture from the palace at Nancy, and embarking in
additional large purchases--in order to make James thoroughly comfortable,
as Louis had told him that he must--he not unnaturally became, as the
French envoy M. d'Audriffet reports, "_fort agite_," on being unexpectedly
advised that after all the Chevalier was to go elsewhere. "Very well,"
said he in high dudgeon, "I will take back all my furniture. But I wash my
hands of the whole business. At Bar I could have answered for the
Chevalier's safety within reasonable limits. At Nancy the king will have
to see to it himself. That is a 'neutral' town, and every dangerous
character from any part of Europe--cut-throat, assassin, Hanoverian
emissary--has access to it. You will have to watch every stranger, to keep
the exile perpetually under lock and key, to give him a large escort every
time he leaves the town. To mark my refusal of all responsibility, I shall
at once withdraw my little garrison of a company of guards from the
place"--a brilliant little troop, decked out gaily in scarlet-and-silver.
James, who was at the time at Chalons, awaiting the king's
pleasure--waiting also for a passport and safe conduct (a most important
requisite in those days)--and waiting, not least, for money, of which he
was chronically, and at that moment most acutely, in want--his mother says
that he had none at all--did not relish the idea of so much restraint and
danger. So he begged Louis to change his mind back again, and to allow him
after all to go to Bar. And Louis, having put poor Leopold to more
trouble--for he had at once set eighty men at work at Nancy, turning his
palace, "_pille, degrade, neglige_" that it was, to rights--coolly has
Leopold informed that his first choice is again to hold good, with not a
word of regret added to sweeten the pill, except it be, that all the
trouble incurred "_sera bientost repare_." Later, James found the air at
Bar "_trop vif_" and accordingly thought of moving to Saint Mihiel. After
that, his courtiers hoped that he would prevail upon the Duke to lend him
his rather magnificent palace of Einville, near Luneville. And in one of
the despatches it is shown that their suspicion that Lord Middleton was
opposing this proposal was one of the reasons why they so very much
disliked him. But, after all, with the interruptions caused by very
frequent, and often prolonged, visits to Luneville, to Commercy, and to
Nancy--as well as to Plombieres, and one or two sly expeditions to Paris
and St Germains--in the interesting and picturesque little capital of the
Barrois, washed by the foaming Ornain, did the Chevalier remain, hatching
schemes, writing despatches to the Pope, _qua_ king, moreover making love
to his nameless fair one, and beguiling the time with the games of the
period, until the _Fata Morgana_ of rather hoped for than anticipated
success lured him on that unhappy expedition into Scotland.
James tries to make a serious hardship of his "exile" at Bar. But he
might, without much trouble, have fixed upon a very much worse spot. Bar
was not in his day the important town that it had been. The resident
dukes, with their courts and knighthood, their tourneys and banquets, and
all the pageantry of the days of early chivalry, had passed away. The
famous University of de Tholozan, highly praised by Jodocus Sincerus, had
likewise disappeared. Nor was the town anything like as accessible as it
is now. There was no railway leading to it, no Rhine-Marne
Canal--beautifying the scene wherever it passes--to carry life and
business into the place. The roads were simply execrable. The surrounding
woods swarmed with brigands, outlaws, and other bad characters, whom
special _chasse-coquins_ were retained to keep in awe. Whenever "His
Majesty" moved from one place to another, the forest-roads had to be
literally lined with troops to ensure his safety. But all this was no
drawback peculiar to Bar. The entire duchy of Lorraine was suffering from
the same trouble--the after-effect of French ravages and French
occupation. Leave that out of account, and Bar must have been attractive
enough. Its situation is remarkably picturesque. The castle-hill rises up
steeply, all but isolated from the surrounding heights, above the smiling
valley of the Ornain, with delightfully green and tempting side-valleys
curling around it, like natural fosses, on either side. The view of the
long, bright green stretch of meadows bordering the river; the laughing
gardens, full of flowers and shrubs; the luxuriant fruit-trees and hedges;
the half-archaic-looking streets, venerable with their churches and
monasteries, and the eleven old turreted gates, as they were then; the
soft, rounded _cotes_, covered with clustering vines, but looking at a
distance as if carpeted with velvety lawn; the picturesque range of hills
on the opposite bank, contoured into a telling sky-line; the dark forests
of richly varied foliage, and the charming "hangers" which drop down
gracefully here and there, with pleasingly effective irregularity, into
the plain; the pretty little cottage plots, bright with flowers, shady
with overhanging trees, which then as now lined that useful _Canal
Urbain_; and the peculiarly engaging perspective of the landscape
spreading out right and left--all this combines to form a truly
fascinating picture. The view of the castle-hill from below is no less
pleasing. In James's day the hill was still crowned with the old historic
castle, built in the tenth century, but embodying in its masonry the
remains of the much more ancient structure in which Childeric I. had, like
the Stuart prince, found a welcome refuge--the castle in which Francis of
Guise was born, who drove us out of Calais--the castle in which Mary
Queen of Scots, bright with youthful beauty, and radiant with happiness,
delighted with her cheering presence the gay Court of her cousin and
playmate, Charles III., fresh to his ducal coronet, as she was to the
second crown which decked her head--for she was newly married to Francis
II., newly crowned Queen of France at Rheims. The daughter of Marie de
Lorraine, brought up in Lorrain Conde, she reckoned herself a Lorraine
princess, and as a Lorraine princess the Lorrains have ever regarded, and
idolised, her. To the memory of this unhappy queen, round which time had
gathered a bright halo of romance, not least was due that hearty welcome
which the Lorrains readily extended to her exiled kinsman. Most
picturesque must the castle have been in olden days, when those seventeen
medieval towers (removed by order of Louis XIV. in 1670) still stood round
about it like sturdy sentries, each laden with historic memories. Even now
the view of the hill is pleasing enough--with its winding roads, its steep
steps, its antique clock-tower, its terraced gardens and rambling lanes,
with that rather imposing convent-school raising its walls perpendicularly
many storeys high, the quaint church of St Peter[2] topping the southern
summit with its tower flattened to resist the wind, with those
delightfully green and shady Paquis just beyond, densely wooded with
trees, including the two largest elms in France--the Paquis which, with
their _paslemaile_, formed the favourite resort of James while at Bar, and
in the shady seclusion of which he spun his web of deceiving flattery
round the guileless heart of the girl whom he betrayed. Only to please
him, we read in the archives, it was that the town council put up benches
in that shade, which cost the town nine livres.
At James's time Bar was still a rather considerable provincial capital,
the _chef-lieu_ of the largest _bailliage_ in Lorraine. And in that little
"West End" of the _Haute Ville_, where a cluster of Louis-Quatorze houses
still stand in decayed grandeur, to recall past fashionableness, the
nobility of the little Barrois, locally always a powerful and influential
body--the Bassompierres, the Haraucourts, the Lenoncourts, the
Stainvilles, the Romecourts--had their town houses, and there also dwelt
the pick of the bureaucracy, all ready to pay their court to the Stuart
"king," to whom even the French envoy reckoned it "an honour" to be
introduced. The town had its own municipal government--at one time with
its own _clerge_, _noblesse_, and _tiers etat_; in James's day still with
its _syndic_, to represent the Crown, its elected _mayeur_, _Maitre des
Comptes_, so many _eschargeots_, _esvardeurs_, _gouverneurs de
carrefours_, and so on. It had a wall all round with no fewer than eleven
gates. When James was there, Bar was famed throughout France and Lorraine
for its peculiarly "elegant" _poignees d'epee_ (sword-hilts) and other
cutlery. Corneille tells us that the whole street of Entre Deux Ponts was
full of cutlers' shops, and no visitor ever came to the place but he must
carry off at least one sword-hilt as a keepsake. The town already
manufactured its famous _dragees_ and _confitures_, and pressed that same
sour wine which "Murray" will have it--on what ground I know
not--"resembles champagne," and which then was appreciated as a delicacy.
The sanitary arrangements were not perfect. The _Canal Urbain_
occasionally overflowed its banks and swamped the entire Rue des Tanneurs,
in which the Pretender's house was situated. And, together with the rest
of Bar and Lorraine, the town was still a little bit destitute after the
havoc wrought by French and Swedes, Croats and Germans, _Cravates_ (local
brigands) and Champenois peasants, and all that "omnium bipedum
sceleratissima colluvies," which had again and again overrun the duchy,
robbing, burning, pillaging, violating, desecrating, torturing, exacting,
and sucking the country dry to the very bone. Of all the world "only
Jerusalem" had experienced worse horrors, so a pious Lorrain chronicler
affirms. Oh, how the Lorrains of that day--and long after--hated and
detested the French! When in November, 1714, those habitual invaders at
length evacuated Nancy, the mob dressed up a straw figure in a French
uniform, and led it forth amid jeers and execrations to an _auto-da-fe_.
Even after annexation, a Nancy housewife declared herself most grossly
"insulted" by a French officer, who simply explained the benefits which he
thought that annexation must bring with it, and in anger she threw the
_friture_, just frizzling in her pan, straight in his face.
Lorraine had been sadly afflicted indeed with long years of warfare. But
in 1713 things were beginning to mend. Leopold, restored by the Treaty of
Ryswick to his duchy--in which, as duke, his father had never set
foot--had been on the throne getting on for sixteen years. And what with
the excellent counsels of that best of Chancellors, Irish Earl
Carlingford, and his own intuitive judgment and enlightened and paternal
despotism, Lorraine was becoming populous and prosperous, happy and
contented, once more. Leopold earned himself a name for a shrewd and
prudent ruler. His brother-in-law, Philip of Orleans (the Regent), said of
him, that of all rulers of Europe he did not know one who was his superior
"_en experience, en sagesse, et en politique_." And Voltaire has
immortalised his virtues by saying: "_Il est a souhaiter que la derniere
posterite apprenne qu'un des plus petits souverains de l'Europe a ete
celui qui fit le plus de bien a son peuple_." In fact, he was the very
ruler whom Lorraine at that juncture wanted. Autocratic he was, and vain,
and self-important, notwithstanding the homely _bourgeoisie_ of his
manner. But he knew exactly where the shoe pinched, and how to devise a
remedy. He it was who first conceived the idea, which has helped to make
France prosperous, of a wide network of canals. He it was, who, in 1724,
set Europe an example, which at the time made him famous, of covering his
country with a network of model roads. And though he again and again
proposed, for the benefit of his own family, to "swap" poor little
Lorraine--for the Milanais, for a bit of the Low Countries, or for other
valuable possessions--while he was duke, he managed to make himself
popular, and he was resolved to do his duty. "_Je quitterais demain ma
souverainete si je ne pouvais faire du bien_," so he said. Under his
father, that brilliant general, Charles V., he had given proof of his
pluck and prowess at Temeswar, of his military ability before Ebersburg.
But in Lorraine, he knew, the one thing needful was peace. And with a
dogged determination which was bound to overcome all difficulties, though
the stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against him, that peace
he managed to maintain, in the midst of a raging sea of war all round,
which had drawn all neighbouring countries into its whirl. He did it--it
is worth recording, because it materially affected James's position at his
Court--by as adroit balancing between the two great belligerent Powers of
the Continent as ever diplomatist managed to achieve. Born and bred in
Austria, allied to the Imperial family by the closest ties of blood--his
mother was an archduchess--trained in Austrian etiquette, an officer in
the Austrian army, beholden to Austria for many past favours--and keenly
alive to the fact that for any favours which might yet be to come he must
look exclusively to the Court of Vienna--in his leanings and
prepossessions he was entirely Austrian. But under his father and
great-uncle history had taught his country the severe lesson, that without
observing the best, though they be the most obsequious, relations towards
France, at whose mercy the country lay, no Lorraine was possible.
Accordingly, almost Leopold's very first act as Duke was to send M. de
Couvange to Paris, to solicit on his behalf the hand of "Mademoiselle,"
the Princess of Orleans. Her hand was gladly accorded. There was a
tradition--with a very obvious object--at Paris in favour of Lorrain
marriages. This was the thirty-third, and there remained a thirty-fourth
to conclude--the ill-starred marriage of Marie Antoinette. King James II.
and his Queen attended the wedding at Fontainebleau, and Elizabeth
Charlotte became one of the best of wives, and best and most popular of
Lorraine duchesses, bearing her husband no less than fourteen children.
Balancing between Austria and France, maintaining his private relations
with the one, giving way in everything to the other, was Leopold's prudent
maxim throughout his reign. So long as he adhered to that he felt himself
safe. Whenever he departed from it, he found himself getting into
mischief.
Leopold has been much abused by our writers and politicians, as if he had
been a deliberate anti-English plotter and Jacobite accomplice. It is but
fair to him to explain why he afforded our Pretender such liberal
hospitality. The real fact is, that he could not help himself. He was
bound to. France demanded it, and he _could not_ refuse--nor yet refuse to
make his hospitality generous and lavish. There was the additional
attraction, indeed, of a show of importance, of a little implication in
diplomatic negotiations and playing a part in European high politics,
which to Leopold must have been strongly seductive. A good deal is also
said about religious motives, the suggestion of which must have helped
Leopold equally with the Curia and the Imperial Court, with both of whom
he was anxious to stand well. The Pope--it is true, under pressure from
James--subsequently thanked Leopold in a special brief, "_ample et bien
exprime_," for the proof of attachment which he had rendered to the Church
by his reception of the English Pretender, the emblem to all Europe of the
Church of Rome under persecution. Leopold was an exceptionally devout
Roman Catholic. He heard mass religiously every day, spent an hour in
prayer after dinner, and "adored the Sacrament" every evening. He had
revived Charles III.'s stringent provisions against Protestants,
interdicting all public worship and, in theory at any rate, declaring
Protestantism a crime deserving of hanging. In his excessive zeal he would
not even allow the Cistercian monks of Beaupre to retain in their service
a Protestant shepherd, though they pleaded hard that he was the best
shepherd whom they had ever had. So zealous a believer was of course a man
after the very heart of the widow and son of that "_fort bon homme_," as
Archbishop Le Tellier scoffingly termed James II., who had "sacrificed
three kingdoms for a mass." To himself, on the other hand, it seemed
something of a sacred act to open his house to the "Woman persecuted by
the dragon." However, all this was but as dust in the balance by the side
of the compelling necessity of French dictation, doubly compelling at that
particular period. For Leopold had of late been playing his own little
game. Things had gone against France in the field, and he had put his
money on the other horse. He was always after a fashion a gambling and
speculative ruler, willing to stake almost his very existence on the
_roulette_ of high politics. At that moment he was flattering himself with
hopes that the Congress of Utrecht would do something for him. Both
Austria and England had privately promised--at least some of their
statesmen had--that he was to have a seat at the Congress table. That
would add immensely to his dignity and prestige. Then he was to have a
slice of the Low Countries. To ensure this result, he was "casting his
bread upon the waters" with a vengeance--spending money wholesale, bribing
English, and Dutch, and Austrian statesmen with the most profuse
generosity--more particularly Marlborough, in whom he appears to have
retained a belief throughout, who most faithlessly "sold" him, and who
cost him a fortune. At the very time here spoken of our great general had
been favoured with a fresh mark of favour from Leopold--a magnificent
_carosse_, horsed with six splendid dapple-greys (Leopold was a great
horse-fancier), hung with most costly trappings. All this--which proved in
the event to have been entirely thrown away--very naturally gave umbrage
to France. And Louis XIV. had not missed his opportunity of letting
Leopold know that a score was being marked up against him at Versailles.
France had never stood on much ceremony with Lorraine, from Henry II.
downward. Louis XIV., more particularly, had done his best to equal his
grandfather's notorious and most capricious hostility. In 1702, in the
teeth of international law and of Leopold's protests, as well as Elizabeth
Charlotte's prayers, he had marched his troops into Lorraine. They were
still there, indeed, in larger numbers than before. When 1709 brought its
"_grand hiver_"--still remembered as a time of grievous tribulation--when
the crops froze in the fields, the vines in the vineyards, the children in
the nursery, the sacramental wine in the chalice, the water by the fire,
when Dearth and Famine once more laid their grim hand upon all
Lorraine--Louis XIV. had given Leopold a little additional cut with his
tyrant's whip, seizing some of the provisions providently laid up for the
relief of his subjects, and appropriating them to the use of his own
armies, which moreover, he reinforced by a fresh contingent of 20,000 men,
sent with orders to live "_a discretion_." Louis was quite ready to do
something of the same sort again. Therefore, when Louis said: Receive
James, Leopold had no choice but to receive him. His letters and
despatches make this perfectly clear. There is a good deal of talk about
the Pretender's "estimable qualities," how the Duke and Duchess admire
him, how happy they are that he has not gone to Aix-la-Chapelle. And no
doubt the two managed to be for a time excellent friends. But every now
and then, through all this polite buncombe, out comes the frank admission
that all is done "to please the king." And we know how promptly and
unhesitatingly Leopold's hospitality was withdrawn, once French pressure
ceased, in 1716. To ourselves, by receiving an exiled Pretender into his
neutral realm, as we have received many such, Leopold never dreamt that he
was giving cause for legitimate umbrage. No one could be more surprised
than he seems to have been when our Parliament took up the matter as a
grievance.
And, to be fair, he never appears to have afforded to James the slightest
encouragement for a forcible assertion of his claims. His counsel was all
the other way. It was the French, it was the Pretender's own followers at
home, it was Roman Cardinal Gualterio, who countenanced, and occasionally
urged, warlike measures. Cardinal Gualterio, more in particular, prodded
the Catholic prince very vigorously, in the interest of his Church,
arguing that "_il falloit hazarder quelque chose et meme affronter le
sort, ce qui ne se fait pas sans risque_." Leopold, on the other hand,
was all dissuasion. He wanted James to keep _near_ England, in order to be
handy in the event of his being recalled--which he seems to have thought a
likely contingency. When James began to talk of armaments and invasions,
Leopold dwelt upon the difficulties, the all-but-hopelessness of such a
move. When, in June, 1714, shortly before Queen Anne's death, James wrote
from Plombieres, that he _must_ go into England, since he learnt that his
rival, the Electoral Prince of Hanover, had gone there, Leopold, who was
admirably informed from Hanover, through his brother, the
Elector-Archbishop of Treves, sent a message back post-haste with the
trustworthy tidings that George was neither gone nor going. The reasons
which led George's father to forbid his visit read a little strange at the
present day. In the first place, there was that Hanoverian economy--which,
it is true, was ostensibly disclaimed. In the second, the Prince was not
to be received in England as heir-presumptive--so that he would not really
better his chances by going. Moreover, the Elector, "_connoissant l'humeur
brusque et fort emportee de son fils, apprehendoit beaucoup qu'il ne se
rendit odieux aux anglais_." Lastly, and mainly, he was afraid of dropping
between two stools, if he were to stake his son's chances too decidedly on
the English succession. It was quite on the cards, he thought, that "_par
un effet des resolutions que l'inconstance de la nation y a rendues si
ordinaire_," the British nation would _chasser_ its next sovereign as it
had _chasse_ its last-but-one. And then, where would his son be? For if
his son went to England, it was much to be feared that his brother, who
had been not quite rightfully excluded from the succession, might make
good his claim to Hanover. And there would George be, out in the cold! So
his father was resolved to play a waiting game.
The first difficulty which James found himself confronted with, and which
Leopold had to overcome for him--for French good offices were obviously
out of the question--was the procuring of a passport. Such credential was
at the time indispensable, for Europe was swarming with bad characters.
Besides, there was nominally war still; and public roads and even walled
towns were altogether insecure. In the Foreign Office papers we come
across correspondence relating to the robbing of the public coach running
between Strassburg and Paris, at Benameny, in Lorrain territory, by
Palatine soldiers, who had come over from Caub. And even in carefully
locked and watched Bar-le-Duc, Leopold advises King Louis that, with "a
fourth company of his regiment of guards" added to the local force,
besides twenty-five _chevaux-legers_ and twenty-five _gardes-du-corps_ to
act as escort, he can answer for the Pretender's safety only against
attacking parties of not more than fifty or a hundred at the outside,
which, he says, ought to be borne in mind, "_si armees se mettoient en
campagne_." Queen Mary only expresses what everyone felt when she says
that it is to be apprehended "_que quelque mechant en se servissent de
l'occasion pour faire un mechant coup_." She accordingly begs the
"_commnote_" of Chaillot to pray for "the king's" safety.
In 1714 the Emperor, who was the principal sovereign to be petitioned,
would not make out a passport for James, to enable him to move into
Germany--though professedly willing to give the Stuart his niece in
marriage, and avowedly not a little put out with England, but yet desirous
of avoiding offence to King George. In 1713 he raised no difficulty.
Indeed, at Leopold's instance he was obliging enough to supplement his
passport with a special letter of commendation very kindly worded. And he
carefully avoided treading on corns either way by not naming James in the
document--for all of which Leopold takes great credit. But it appears that
plenty more potentates besides the Emperor had to be solicited. And the
two Electors, of Hanover and of Brandenburg, were obdurate in their
refusal--in agreement for once. It was a ticklish matter; for without
their safe-conduct James could scarcely be counted secure. On the other
hand, if their safe-conducts were to be waited for, the Emperor would of a
surety take offence, as if his own passport were judged insufficient.
Leopold, being great on etiquette, took the last-named to be the more
serious danger, and advised running the risk--more particularly since he
had been advised by his envoy in London, Baron Foerstner, that Queen Anne
had privately granted what amounted to a passport to her brother for going
into Lorraine. That was taken to settle the matter, and James put himself
_en route_.
It was on the 22d of February, 1713, that he reached Bar, closely guarded
and travelling _incognito_, on which account an official reception in Bar
was dispensed with, though the French artillery at Toul had fired a
salute. The council were under strict injunctions to omit nothing which
might conduce to their visitor's safety, or minister to his comfort, or
that was conventionally due to a crowned head. Accordingly, we find them
in their next sitting, on the 25th February, passing a whole string of
votes and resolutions having reference to his arrival and his safety in
the town. The police and _chasse-coquins_ are forthwith put on the alert,
sentries are placed at all corners, and, to accommodate them, a whole
number of new sentry-boxes are put up. The authorities are directed to
question every stranger coming into the town carefully, and, if there
should appear to be anything suspicious about any one, rigorously to
detain him and report the case at once by express courier to Luneville.
Iron _grilles_ are put up. All the postern-gates are walled up, so is one
of the principal entrances, and so is--in spite of sanitary
considerations--a main sewer passing through the wall. Soldiers were a
good deal less squeamish in those days than they are now, and sewers had
served for many a surprise in the Thirty Years' War. The remaining ten
gates are to be carefully watched, and never opened before 5 A.M., nor
left open after 8 P.M. Billets are issued for the overflow of James's
suite, which appears to have been numerous, and stable-room is bespoken
for his horses. James evidently was an inconvenient visitor to house. For
he would have all his large apparatus of Court and Household close to
him--chamberlains, kitchen, kennel, and all. Mrs Strickland praises his
habitual economy. His doings in Lorraine do not bear out that praise. From
the Nairne MSS. in the British Museum (which give a full list) we know
that in 1709 and 1710 his household comprised above 120 persons, from the
secretaries down to the grooms' helper, drawing salaries of from 12 to 675
livres _per mensem_. There was the Comptroller, Mr. Bous, who retailed
the anecdotes of the Court to Lady Middleton; a clerk of the green cloth,
a yeoman baker, a yeoman confectioner, a yeoman of the chaundry, Jeremiah
Browne, "Esq.," master-cook, a water-carrier, and a scourer. There were
yeomen's scullery assistants, confessors and chaplains, a doctor, a
"chyrurgien," and an apothecary, a "rideing purveyor," and a "chaiseman,"
"Lady Maclane, laundress," pursuivants, and necessary women--all that
belongs to a royal household. And the whole establishment cost "19,412
lstrs. _per mensem_." All these people did not go to Bar, but a good many
did. And there were a crowd more, for whom the town had to provide. For we
read in the Macpherson Papers that all "Peacock's family"--_i.e._, all
Protestant refugees who had been at "Stanley," _i.e._, at St.
Germains--had followed the Chevalier to Bar. There was not one of them
left. So writes the Queen. And the Duke states, quite independently of
this, that the Pretender is surrounded with Protestant exiles. Altogether
James's Court ran up a goodly bill, which it was disappointing to the town
afterwards to find that, though incurred by express order of the Duke, the
burgesses were expected to meet out of their own funds. To enable them to
do so, Leopold allowed the council to appropriate the _deniers_ of the
_octroi_ to their involuntary hospitality.
The more or less Protestant colouring given to the refugee establishment
was scarcely palatable to the very orthodox population of Bar. But James
was playing, not to the Bar pit, but to the English gallery. "Downs or
Leslie should at once go there," so we find O'Rourke writing to Middleton
early in 1713. Leslie did go soon after, and the Chevalier, as his
advocates take credit, prevailed upon the Duke to relax his rigid rule in
one instance, and allow Protestant service in an upper room in James's
house. That was in the "Rue Neve." The upper room, which, we read, was
just over James's own apartment, cannot have been large. So it is to be
feared that the service was not over well attended. But it was enough to
save appearances, and to give the Jacobites of England a shadow of reason
for declaring, as they did, that James really was a Protestant. James
himself spoke a very different language. "He would rather abandon all than
act against his conscience and his honour." He protested over and over
again that "all the crowns in the world would not make him change his
religion."
Thanks to King Louis's perpetual ordering and countermanding, when James
got to Bar, the chateau was once more as bare and uninhabitable as ever it
had been, and for a few days the Pretender had to be content with the same
rather humble house which he was destined subsequently to occupy for a
considerable time, in the "Rue des Tanneurs"--Number 22, Rue Neve, it is
now--a plain, square, three-storeyed building (counting the upper range of
rooms, which is very low, as a storey). This is described as at the time
"the principal house" in the town, the property of one of the most
distinguished residents, Councillor of State M. Marchal. It has eight
windows frontage, facing severally the Rue Neve and the Rue des Pressoirs,
and abutting width-ways on the very narrow passage Rue St. Antoine. A few
days later, however, we find the Pretender safely established in the
chateau, and there on the 9th of March he receives the Duke of Lorraine
and his brother Francois, Abbe of Stavelot, with an amount of circumstance
and scrupulous weighing of precedences which is described with rather
amusing minuteness in the 'Gazette de France.' Not to hurt James's
feelings--to whom royal honours could not be openly shown, out of
consideration for Queen Anne--Leopold ordered that he himself should not
be received with the usual ceremonial, troops under arms, and councillors
presenting addresses. But the Lorrains were a devotedly loyal population.
They would not be forbidden. The whole population of the town and of all
the surrounding district crowded into the streets, to receive the ruler of
the land with shouts of welcome. James, being the resident, played the
host at Bar. There was, a dinner, a supper, and a long private talk in the
chateau, with the result, we read, that the two princes at once became
fast friends. James, we know, though wanting in most of the qualities
which are regarded as specifically manly, was a good-looking and agreeable
fellow enough. As for Leopold, with his experience of Courts, and his kind
and considerate disposition, he could not very well prove otherwise than a
pleasant companion and a kind patron. We have plenty of portraits of him
left, limned both with pen and with brush. Short and stumpy,
round-bellied, red-faced, with a free allowance of pimples, and, moreover,
with those abnormally stout legs which remained his most striking outward
characteristic to his dying day, he must have looked a veritable _Jacques
Bonhomme_ put into a full-bottomed wig and court-dress. There is a tale to
those legs. Leopold came into the world about two months before his time,
_very_ sickly and _very_ delicate. More particularly his legs were very
spindles. Under a special treatment designed to remedy this defect, they
grew just as much too big as previously they had been too thin. Terrible
stickler for etiquette that Leopold was, and intent upon lavish display,
when occasion seemed to demand it, both himself and his wife were
simplicity itself when such occasion was withdrawn. They could talk to a
peasant in the peasant's brogue about his _ouiettes_ and his hemp. One of
the princesses thought nothing of accepting a lift home in a market-cart,
and, as the driver commendingly related, showed herself "_bien sage_."
"_Cousine_," said the Duchess to the Duchess of Elboeuf, "_restez chez
nous, nous avons un bon gigot_." This simplicity and familiarity with
humble ways as a matter of course made the Duke and Duchess popular. But
what helped them more than anything to gain their people's hearts was
their remarkable readiness to enter into all those local _fetes_ which
long custom had sanctioned as common to both high and low. The French
occupation had made a long break in the observance of those _fetes_. How
should the Lorrains "sing songs" in what had become to them practically "a
strange land?" For something like thirty years their harps remained hung
up upon the willow-trees. Great, however, was the joy when at the first
_Fete de la Veille des Rois_--kept in commemoration of the brilliant
victory achieved over Charles the Bold in 1476--and at the _Brandons_ or
_Faschinottes_,[3] following that _fete_, the Duke and Duchess appeared
in person among the merry-makers, entering most good-humouredly and,
indeed, jovially into all their doings. Of the many local customs which
Lorraine boasts, the _Brandons_ was at that time still the particular
favourite. It had been handed down from hoary antiquity. Every couple
married since the last _Brandons_ was expected to join. The husband had to
provide himself with a faggot or log of wood, and carry it in procession
through the town, accompanied by his wife, along a roundabout route
prescribed by custom, to the Duke's palace, march three times past the
Duke's window, and then deposit the piece of fuel on a huge pyramidal pyre
built up in the ducal courtyard. Some couples went on foot, others rode on
horseback. All were dressed in their best, and the procession must have
looked exceedingly picturesque. Every lady was expected to wear some
little ornament--generally made of silver--specially devised to indicate
either her calling or her station in life: a coronet, or a sickle, or
whatever it might be. The streets were lined with people, who freely
expended their wit--a pretty ready one--in chaff pointed at the new
victims to matrimony, who in their turn were expected to put on a most
dejected look, as if seriously repenting the allegiance rashly entered
into to Hymen. In the evening the pyre was lighted, and round this huge
bonfire people made mildly merry with gambols and dances. Tables were
spread, at the Duke's cost, richly laden with viands and native wine. In
1698, at the first revival of the _Brandons_ after a long pause, the file
of matrimonial victims was, of course, quite exceptionally long. It was a
delightful surprise to the crowd to see at its head the Duke and Duchess
themselves, newly married as they were--the Duchess, being slightly
_enceinte_ with her first-born, wearing at her girdle a little silver
cradle. That was not all. In the evening Leopold mixed freely with the
revellers, stopped at table after table, drank here and drank there,
proposing a toast or responding to one,--with the result that the people
went half-mad with enthusiasm. Not a tumbler had the Duke drunk out of,
which was not religiously treasured as a relic. And long after the French
had forced their yoke firmly home upon the shrinking neck of unwilling
Lorraine, those tumblers were still shown to growing children as memorials
of the "good old time." At the carnival, which followed the _Brandons_,
Leopold and Elizabeth Charlotte were again to the fore. They did not mind
figuring in public--even sometimes on an amateur stage. Leopold once
appeared masked as Sultan--his consort, not quite appropriately, as an
Odalisk; but the loyal Lorrains saw nothing incongruous in that dress.
The striking difference very apparent in the characters severally of host
and guest in our little chapter of history, may have helped to draw them
together all the more closely. James was in his ordinary mood anything but
mirthful. References to him are frequent in the correspondence as being
"terribly sad," or else "very pensive, which is his ordinary humour,"
"_tres serieux et reserve_," so much so that "_rien ne l'auoit pu tirer de
la profonde melancolie ou il etoit_," and so on. Yet he could be merry,
too, and more in particular he loved a dance. At one ball, given in the
Palace at Luneville, we read that he managed particularly to ingratiate
himself with the ladies who were past their first bloom, by an act of
undoubted chivalry. They wanted badly to dance, but dared not, while the
Duchess was sitting. And the Duchess considered herself too much of a
matron to foot it with the young ones. James, however, made her. He would
take no refusal. The dead room became reanimated once more, and many an
aging heart in its night-thoughts blessed the gallant _pretendant_. James,
we are told, was a prominent figure in the Nancy _Brandons_ and Carnival,
kept with peculiar _eclat_ in 1715, after a fresh break of thirteen years,
due to French occupation. Court chroniclers seem to consider that the
presence of "_Le Roi d'Angleterre_" added peculiar lustre to that
performance.
Reporting himself after his visit to Bar, as in duty bound, to King Louis,
Leopold declares himself "_charme de l'esprit, de la sagesse, de la
douceur et des manieres gracieuses de M. le Chevalier de Saint Georges_."
The 'Journal de Verdun,' drawing its information, of course, from official
sources, announces that after their first encounter the two princes "_se
separerent extremement satisfaits l'un de l'autre_" in "_parfaite amitie
bien cimentee_." Of James it will have it that he is "_d'un caractere si
doux, si affable, et si populair, qu'il s'est bientot acquis, de tous ceux
qui ont eu l'honneur de le voir, le respect et la veneration dus a sa
vertu et a sa naissance_."