"THE FORTY-FIVE."
[Sidenote: 1720--Birth of "Prince Charlie"]
Thirty years had come and gone since England had been alarmed,
irritated, or encouraged, according to the temper of its political
inhabitants, by a Jacobite rising. The personality of James Stuart,
the Old Pretender, was little more than a memory among those clansmen
who had rallied round the royal standard at Braemar. In those thirty
years James Stuart had lived his melancholy, lonely, evil life of
exile, the hanger-on of foreign courts, the half grotesque, half
pitiable, sham monarch of a sham court, that was always ready to be
moved from place to place, with all its cheaply regal accessaries, like
the company and the properties of some band of strolling players. Now
there was a new Stuart in the field, a new sham prince, a "Young
Pretender." After the disasters of the Fifteen, James Stuart had
become the hero of as romantic a love-story as ever wandering prince
experienced. He had fallen in love, in the hot, unreasoning Stuart
way, with the beautiful Clementine Sobieski, and the beautiful
Clementine had returned the passion of the picturesquely unfortunate
prince, and they had carried on their love affairs under conditions of
greater difficulty than Romeo and Juliet, and had overcome the
difficulties and got married, and in 1720 Clementine had borne to the
House of Stuart a son and heir. Every precaution was taken to insure
the most public recognition of the existence of the newly born prince.
It was determined that none of the perplexity, the uncertainty, the
suspicion, which attended upon the birth of James, should be permitted
to arise now. There must be no _haro_ about warming-pans, no
accusations of {200} juggling, no possible doubts as to the right of
the new-born babe to be regarded as the son of James Stuart and of
Clementine Sobieski. The birth took place in Rome, and cardinals
accredited from all the great Powers of Europe were present on the
occasion to bear witness to it. The city was alive with such
excitement as it had seldom witnessed since the days when pagan Rome
became papal Rome. The streets in the vicinity of the house where
Clementine Sobieski lay in her pain were choked with the gilt carriages
of the proudest Italian nobility; princes of the Church and princes of
royal blood thronged the antechambers. Gallant gentlemen who bore some
of the stateliest names of England and of Scotland waited on the
stair-ways for the tidings that a new prince was given unto their
loyalty. Adventurous soldiers of fortune kicked their heels in the
court-yard, and thought with moistened eyes of the toasts they would
drink to their future king. From the Castle of St. Angelo, where long
ago the besieged had hurled upon the besiegers the statues that had
proved the taste of a Roman emperor, where Rienzi lay yesterday, and
where Cagliostro shall lie to-morrow, thunders of artillery saluted the
advent of the new rose of the House of Stuart.
In the years that followed, while the young Prince Charles was growing
up to his tragic inheritance, it can hardly be maintained, even by the
most devoted adherent of the Stuart line, that James showed himself in
the slightest degree worthy of the crown towards which he reached.
Indeed, his conduct showed a reckless indifference to the means most
likely to attain that crown which it is difficult to account for. When
everything depended for the success of his schemes upon the friends he
made abroad and the favor he retained at home, he wantonly acted as if
his dearest purpose was to alienate the one and to wholly lose the
other. His conduct towards his wife, and his persistent and stupid
favoritism of the Mar man and woman--especially the woman--drove the
injured and indignant Clementine into a convent, and made the great
European {201} princes of Spain, Germany, and Rome his adversaries.
Spain refused him entrance to the kingdom unaccompanied by his wife;
the Pope struck him a heavier blow in diminishing by one-half the
income that had hitherto been allowed him from the Papal treasury. But
worse than the loss of foreign friends, worse even than the loss of the
Sistine subsidy, was the effect which his treatment of his wife
produced in the countries which he aspired to rule. His wisest
followers wrote to him that he had done more to injure his cause by his
conduct to Clementine than by anything else in his ill-advised career.
At last even James took alarm; his stubborn nature was forced to yield;
the obnoxious favorites were dismissed, and a reconciliation of a kind
was effected between the Stuart king and queen. But fidelity was a
quality difficult enough for James to practise, and when the Queen died
in 1735 it is said that she found death not unwelcome.
[Sidenote: 1734-1735--Charles in his first campaign]
In the mean time the young Prince Charles grew up to early manhood.
Princes naturally begin the world at an earlier age than most men, and
Charles may be said to have begun the world in 1734, when, as we have
seen, at the age of fourteen, he took part in the siege of Gaeta as a
general of artillery, and bore himself, according to overwhelming
testimony, as became a soldier. Up to this time his education had been
pursued with something like regularity; and if at all times he
preferred rowing, riding, hunting, and shooting to graver and more
secluded pleasures, he was not in this respect peculiar among young
men, princes or otherwise. If, too, he never succeeded in overcoming
the difficulties which the spelling of the English language presented,
and if his handwriting always remained slovenly and illegible, it must
be remembered that in that age spelling was not prized as a pre-eminent
accomplishment by exalted persons, and that Charles Stuart could spell
quite as well as Marlborough. He knew how to sign his name; and it may
be remarked that though he has passed into the pages of history and the
pages of romance as Charles Edward, he himself never signed his {202}
name so, but always simply Charles. He was baptized Charles Edward
Louis Philip Casimir, and, like his ancestors before him, he chose his
first name as his passport through the world. If he had marched to
Finchley, if Culloden had gone otherwise than it did go, if any of the
many things that might have happened in his favor had come to pass, he
would have been Charles the Third of England.
His education was, from a religious point of view, curiously mixed. He
was intrusted to the especial care of Murray, Mrs. Hay's brother, and a
Protestant, much to the grief and anger of his mother. But he
professed the tenets of the Catholic Church, and satisfied Pope
Clement, in an interview when the young prince was only thirteen, that
his Catholic education was sound and complete. For the rest, he was a
graceful musician, spoke French, Spanish, and Italian as readily as
English, and was skilled in the use of arms. As far as the cultivation
of mind or body vent, he might fairly be considered to hold his own
with any of the preceding sovereigns and princes of the House of
Stuart. When in 1737 he set out on a kind of triumphal tour of the
great Italian towns, he was received everywhere with enthusiasm, and
everywhere made the most favorable impression. So successful was this
performance, so popular did the prince make himself, and so warmly was
he received, that the Hanoverian Government took upon itself to be
seriously offended, ordered the Venetian ambassador Businiello to leave
London, and conveyed to the Republic of Genoa its grave disapproval of
the Republic's conduct. The zealous energy of Mr. Fane, our envoy at
Florence, saved that duchy from a like rebuke. Mr. Fane insisted so
strongly that no kind of State reception was to be accorded to the
travelling prince that the Grand Duke gave way. Yet the Grand Duke's
curiosity to meet Charles Stuart was so great that he had prevailed
upon Fane to allow him to meet the stranger on the footing of a private
individual; but sudden death carried off the poor Grand Duke before the
interview could take place.
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[Sidenote: 1734-1737--The omen accepted]
When Charles Stuart, as a general of fourteen, was helping to besiege
Gaeta, he had been hailed by Don Carlos as Prince of Wales, and as
Prince of Wales he was invariably addressed by those outside the little
circle of the sham court who wished to please the exiled princes or
show their sympathy with their cause. The young Charles soon began to
weary of being Prince of Wales only in name. It seems certain that
from a very early age his thoughts were turned to England and the
English succession. There is a legend that at Naples once the young
prince's hat blew into the sea, and when some of his companions wished
to put forth in a boat and fetch it back he dissuaded them, saying that
it was not worth while, as he would have to go shortly to England to
fetch his hat. The legend is in all likelihood true in so far as it
represents the bent of the young man's mind. He was sufficiently
intelligent to perceive that masquerading through Italian cities and
the reception of pseudo-royal honors from petty princes were but a poor
counterfeit of the honors that were his, as he deemed, by right divine.
So it was only natural that with waxing manhood his eyes and his
thoughts turned more often to that England which he had never seen, but
which, as he had been so often and often assured, was only waiting for
a fit opportunity to cast off the Hanoverian yoke and welcome any
lineal descendant of the Charleses and the Jameses of beloved memory.
More than one expedition had been planned, and one expedition had
decisively failed, when in the summer of 1745 Prince Charles sailed
from Belleisle on board the _Boutelle_, with the _Elizabeth_ as a
companion vessel. He started on this expedition on his own
responsibility and at his own risk. Murray of Broughton, and other
influential Scottish friends, had told him, again and again, that it
would be absolutely useless to come to Scotland without a substantial
and well-armed following of at least six thousand troops, and a
substantial sum of money in his pocket. To ask so much was to ask the
impossible. {204} At one time the young prince had believed that Louis
the Fifteenth would find him the men and lend him the money, but in
1745 any such hope had entirely left him. He knew now that Louis the
Fifteenth would do nothing for him; he knew that if he was ever to
regain his birthright he must win it with his own wits. It is
impossible not to admire the desperate courage of the young aspirant
setting out thus lightly to conquer a kingdom with only a handful of
men at his back and hardly a handful of money in his pocket. Judging,
too, by the course of events and the near approach which the prince
made to success, it is impossible not to accord him considerable praise
for that instinct which makes the great soldier and the great
statesman, the instinct which counsels when to dare. The very ships in
which he was sailing he had got hold of, not only without the
connivance, but without the knowledge, of the French Government. They
were obtained through two English residents at Nantes. On August 2d
the _Boutelle_ anchored off the Hebrides alone. The _Elizabeth_ had
fallen in with an English vessel, the _Lion_, and had been so severely
handled that she was obliged to return to Brest to refit, carrying with
her all the arms and ammunition on which Prince Charles had relied for
the furtherance of his expedition. So here was the claimant to the
crown, friendless and alone, trying his best to derive encouragement
from the augury which Tullibardine grandiloquently discerned in the
flight of a royal eagle around the vessel. Eagle or no eagle, augury
or no augury, the opening of the campaign was gloomy in the extreme.
The first clansmen whose aid the prince solicited were indifferent,
reluctant, and obstinate in their indifference and reluctance.
Macdonald of Boisdale first, and Clanranald of that ilk afterwards,
assured the prince, with little ceremony, that without aid, and
substantial aid, from a foreign Power, in the shape of arms and
fighting-men, no clansman would bare claymore in his behalf. But the
eloquence and the determination of the young prince won over Clanranald
and the Macdonalds of {205} Kinloch-Moidart; Charles disembarked and
took up his headquarters at Borrodaile farm in Inverness-shire. A kind
of legendary fame attaches to the little handful of men who formed his
immediate following. [Sidenote: 1745--The Seven Men of Moidart] The
Seven Men of Moidart are as familiar in Scottish Jacobite legend as the
Seven Champions of Christendom are to childhood. Tullibardine; Sir
Thomas Sheridan, the prince's tutor; Francis Strickland, an English
gentleman; Sir John Macdonald, an officer in the service of Spain;
Kelly, a non-juring clergyman; Buchanan, the messenger, and Aeneas
Macdonald, the banker, made up the mystic tale. Among these Seven Men
of Moidart, Aeneas Macdonald plays the traitor's part that Ganelon
plays in the legends of Charlemagne. He seems to have been actuated,
from the moment that the prince landed on the Scottish shore, by the
one desire to bring his own head safely out of the scrape, and to
attain that end he seems to have been ready to do pretty well anything.
When he was finally taken prisoner he saved himself by the readiness
and completeness with which he gave his evidence. No more of him.
There were, happily for the honor of the adherents of the House of
Stuart, few such followers in the Forty-five.
The position of the young prince was peculiar. His engaging manners
had won over many of the chiefs; his presence had set on fire that old
Stuart madness which a touch can often kindle in wild Highland hearts;
his determination to be a Scotchman among Scotchmen, a determination
which set him the desperate task of trying to master the Gaelic speech,
insured his hold upon the affections of the rude chivalry whom his
presence and his name had already charmed. But some of the greatest
clans absolutely refused to come in. Macdonald of Sleat, and Macleod
of Macleod, would have none of the "pretended Prince of Wales" and his
"madmen."
Though these chieftains were appealed to again and again, they were
resolute in their refusal to embark in the Stuart cause. They pledged
themselves to the House of Hanover, they accepted commissions in the
royal army; {206} the cause of Charles Stuart must sink or swim without
them. With them or without them, however, Charles was going on. The
number of clans that had come in was quite sufficient to fill him with
hope; the little brush at Spean's Bridge between two companies of the
Scots Royal, under Captain Scott, and the clansmen of Keppoch and
Lochiel, had given the victory to the rebels. The Stuarts had drawn
first blood successfully, and the superstitions saw in the circumstance
yet another augury of success. The time was now ripe for action. All
over the north of Scotland the Proclamation of Prince Charles was
scattered. This proclamation called upon all persons to recognize
their rightful sovereign in the young prince's person as regent for his
father, invited all soldiers of King George, by offers of increased
rank or increased pay, to desert to the Stuart colors, promised a free
pardon and full religious liberty to all who should renounce their
allegiance to the usurper, and threatened all who, after due warning,
remained obdurate with grave pains and penalties. Everywhere through
the west this document had been seen and studied, had inflamed men's
minds, and set men's pulses dancing to old Jacobite tunes. In
Edinburgh, in Berwick, in Carlisle, copies had been seen by astonished
adherents of the House of Stuart, who were delighted or dismayed,
according to their temperaments. Scotland was pretty well aware of the
presence of the young prince by the time that it was resolved to unfurl
the flag.
[Sidenote: 1745--An auspicious opening]
The royal standard of crimson and white was raised by Tullibardine on
August 19th in the vale of Glenfinnan, in the presence of Keppoch and
Lochiel, Macdonald of Glencoe, Stuart of Appin, and Stuart of Ardshiel,
and their clansmen. No such inauspicious omen occurred as that which
shook the nerves of the superstitious when James Stuart gave his banner
to the winds of Braemar a generation earlier. Indeed, an invading
prince could hardly wish for happier conditions under which to begin
his enterprise. Not only was he surrounded by faithful clansmen,
prepared to do or die for the heir to the House of Stuart, but the
{207} stately ceremony of setting up the royal standard was witnessed
by English prisoners, the servants and the soldiers of King George, the
first-fruits of the hoped-for triumph over the House of Hanover. "Go,
sir," Charles is reported to have said to one of his prisoners, Captain
Swetenham, "go and tell your general that Charles Stuart is coming to
give him battle." That clement of the theatrical which has always hung
about the Stuart cause, and which has in so large a degree given it its
abiding charm, was here amply present. For a royal adventurer setting
out on a crusade for a kingdom the opening chapter of the enterprise
was undoubtedly auspicious reading.
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