THE PRINCE IN FAIRYLAND
FEBRUARY 1749-SEPTEMBER 1750—I. WHAT THE WORLD SAID
Europe after Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle—A vast gambling
establishment—Charles excluded—Possible chance in Poland—Supposed to have
gone thither—‘Henry Goring’s letter’—Romantic adventures attributed to
Charles—Obvious blunders—Talk of a marriage—Count Brühl’s
opinion—Proposal to kidnap Charles—To rob a priest—The King of Poland’s
ideas—Lord Hyndford on Frederick the Great—Lord Hyndford’s mare’s
nest—Charles at Berlin—‘Send him to Siberia’—The theory
contradicted—Mischievous glee of Frederick—Charles discountenances plots
to kill Cumberland—Father Myles Macdonnell to James—London
conspiracy—Reported from Rome—The Bloody Butcher Club—Guesses of Sir
Horace Mann—Charles and a strike—Charles reported to be very ill—Really
on the point of visiting England—September 1750.
EUROPE, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, was like a vast political
gambling establishment. Nothing, or nothing but the expulsion of Prince
Charles from every secular State, had been actually settled. Nobody was
really satisfied with the Peace. The populace, in France as in England,
was discontented. Princes were merely resting and looking round for new
combinations of forces. The various Courts, from St. Petersburg to
Dresden, from London to Vienna, were so many tables where the great game
of national _faro_ was being played, over the heads of the people, by
kings, queens, abbés, soldiers, diplomatists, and pretty women. Projects
of new alliances were shuffled and cut, like the actual cards which were
seldom out of the hands of the players, when Casanova or Barry Lyndon
held the bank, and challenged all comers. It was the age of adventurers,
from the mendacious Casanova to the mysterious Saint-Germain, from the
Chevalier d’Eon to Charles Edward Stuart. That royal player was warned
off the turf, as it were, ruled out of the game. Where among all these
attractive tables was one on which Prince Charles, in 1749, might put
down his slender stake, his name, his sword, the lives of a few thousand
Highlanders, the fortunes of some faithful gentlemen? Who would accept
Charles’s empty alliance, which promised little but a royal title and a
desperate venture? The Prince had wildly offered his hand to the
Czarina; he was to offer that hand, vainly stretched after a flying
crown, to a Princess of Prussia, and probably to a lady of Poland.
At this moment the Polish crown was worn by Augustus of Saxony, who was
reckoned ‘a bad life.’ The Polish throne, the Polish alliance, had been,
after various unlucky adventures since the days of Henri III. and the Duc
d’Alençon, practically abandoned by France. But Louis XV. was beginning
to contemplate that extraordinary intrigue in which Conti aimed at the
crown of Poland, and the Comte de Broglie was employed (1752) to
undermine and counteract the schemes of Louis’s official representatives.
{46a} As a Sobieski by his mother’s side, the son of the exiled James
(who himself had years before been asked to stand as a candidate for the
kingdom of Poland), Charles was expected by politicians to make for
Warsaw when he fled from Avignon. It is said, on the authority of a
Polish manuscript, ‘communicated by Baron de Rondeau,’ that there was a
conspiracy in Poland to unseat Augustus III. and give the crown to Prince
Charles. {46b} In 1719, Charles’s maternal grandfather had declined a
Russian proposal to make a dash for the crown, so the chivalrous Wogan
narrates. In 1747 (June 6), Chambrier had reported to Frederick the
Great that Cardinal Tencin was opposed to the ambition of the Saxon
family, which desired to make the elective crown of Poland hereditary in
its house. The Cardinal said that, in his opinion, there was a Prince
who would figure well in Poland, _le jeune Edouard_ (Prince Charles), who
had just made himself known, and in whom there was the stuff of a man.
{46c} But Frederick the Great declined to interfere in Polish matters,
and Tencin was only trying to get rid of Charles without a rupture. In
May 1748, Frederick refused to see Graeme, a Jacobite who was sent to
demand a refuge for the Prince in Prussia. {46d} Without Frederick and
without Sweden, Charles in 1749 could do nothing serious in Poland.
The distracted politics of Poland, however, naturally drew the attention
of Europe to that country when Charles, on February 28, vanished out of
Avignon ‘into fairyland,’ like Frederick after Molwitz. Every Court in
Europe was vainly searched for ‘the boy that cannot be found.’ The
newsletters naturally sent him to Poland, so did Jacobite myth.
The purpose of this chapter is to record the guesses made by diplomatists
at Charles’s movements, and the expedients by which they vainly
endeavoured to discover him. We shall next lift, as far as possible, the
veil which has concealed for a century and a half adventures in
themselves unimportant enough. In spite of disappointments and dark
hours of desertion, Charles, who was much of a boy, probably enjoyed the
mystery which he now successfully created. If he could not startle
Europe by a brilliant appearance on any stage, he could keep it talking
and guessing by a disappearance. He obviously relished secrecy,
pass-words, disguises, the ‘properties’ of the conspirator, in the spirit
of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He came of an evasive race. His
grandfather, as Duke of York, had fled from England disguised as a girl.
His father had worn many disguises in many adventures. _He_ had been
‘Betty Burke.’
Though it is certain that, in March 1749 (the only month when he almost
evades us), Charles could not have visited Berlin, Livadia, Stockholm,
the reader may care to be reminded of a contemporary Jacobite romance in
which he is made to do all these things. A glance should be cast on the
pamphlet called ‘A Letter from H. G—g, Esq.’ (London, 1750). The editor
announces that the letter has been left in his lodgings by a mistake; it
has not been claimed, as the person for whom it was meant has gone
abroad, and so the editor feels free to gratify ‘the curiosity of the
town.’ The piece, in truth, is a Jacobite tract, meant to keep up the
spirits of the faithful, and it is probable that the author really had
some information, though he is often either mistaken, or fables by way of
a ‘blind.’ About February 11, says the scribe (nominally Henry Goring,
Charles’s equerry, an ex-officer of the Queen of Hungary), a mysterious
stranger, the ‘Chevalier de la Luze,’ came to Avignon, and was received
by the Prince ‘with extraordinary marks of distinction.’ ‘He understood
not one word of English,’ which destroys, if true, the theory that the
Earl Marischal, or Marshal Keith, is intended. French and Italian he
spoke well, but with a foreign accent. Kelly ventured to question the
Prince about the stranger, but was rebuffed. One day, probably February
24, the stranger received despatches, and vanished as he had come. The
Prince gave a supper (d’Argenson’s ‘ball’), and, when his guests had
retired, summoned Goring into his study. He told Goring that ‘there were
spies about him’ (the Earl Marischal, we know, distrusted Kelly); he
rallied him on a love-affair, and said that Goring only should be his
confidant. Next morning, very early, they two started for Lyons,
disguised as French officers. As far as Lyons, indeed, the French police
actually traced them. {49a} But, according to the pamphlet, they did not
stop in Lyons; they rested at a small town two leagues further on, whence
the Prince sent dispatches to Kelly at Avignon. Engaging a new valet,
Charles pushed to Strasbourg, where he again met La Luze, now described
as ‘a person whose extraordinary talents had gained him the confidence
one of the wisest Princes in Europe,’ obviously pointing to Frederick of
Prussia, the master of Marshal Keith, and the friend and host of his
brother, the Earl Marischal. At Strasbourg, Charles rescued a pretty
young lady from a fire; she lost her heart at once to the ‘Comte
d’Espoir’ (his travelling title), but the Prince behaved like Scipio, not
to mention a patriarch famous for his continence. ‘I am no stoic,’ said
His Royal Highness to La Luze, ‘but I have always been taught that
pleasures, how pardonable soever in themselves, become highly criminal
when indulged to the prejudice of another,’ adding many other noble and
unimpeachable sentiments.
After a romantic adventure with English or Scottish assassins, in which
His Royal Highness shot a few of them, the travellers arrived at Leipzig.
La Luze now assumed his real name, and carried Charles, by cross roads,
to ‘a certain Court,’ where he spent ten days with much satisfaction. He
stayed at the house of La Luze (Berlin and the Earl Marischal appear to
be hinted at, but the Marischal told Pickle that he had never seen
Charles at Berlin), secret business was done, and then, through
territories friendly or hostile, ‘a certain port’ was reached. They
sailed (from Dantzig?), were driven into a hostile port (Riga?), escaped
and made another port (Stockholm?) where they met Lochgarry, ‘whom the
Prince thought had been one of those that fell at Culloden.’
This is nonsense. Lochgarry had been with Charles after Culloden, and
had proposed to waylay Cumberland, which the Prince forbade. Murray of
Broughton, in his examination, and Bishop Forbes agree on this point, and
James, we know, sent, by Edgar, a message to Lochgarry on Christmas Eve,
1748. {50a} Charles, therefore, knew excellently well that Lochgarry did
_not_ die at Culloden. After royal, but very secret entertainment ‘in
this kingdom’ (Sweden?), Charles went into Lithuania, where old friends
of his maternal ancestors, the Sobieskis, welcomed him. He resumed a
gaiety which he had lost ever since his arrest at the opera in Paris, and
had ‘an interview with a most illustrious and firm friend to his person
and interest.’ Though his marriage, says the pamphleteer, had been much
talked of, ‘he has always declined making any applications of that nature
himself. It was his fixed determination to beget no royal beggars.’
D’Argenson reports Charles’s remark that he will never marry till the
Restoration, and, no doubt, he was occasionally this mood, among others.
{51a} The pamphleteer vows that the Prince ‘loves and is loved,’ but
will not marry ‘till his affairs take a more favourable turn.’ The lady
is ‘of consummate beauty, yet is that beauty the least of her
perfections.’
The pamphlet concludes with vague enigmatic hopes and promises, and
certainly leaves its readers little wiser than they were before. In the
opinion of the Messrs. ‘Sobieski Stuart’ (who called themselves his
grandsons), Charles really did visit Sweden, and his jewel, as Grand
Master of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Stockholm, is still preserved there.
{51b} The castle where he resided in Lithuania, it is said, is that of
Radzivil. {51c} The affectionate and beautiful lady is the Princess
Radzivil, to whom the newspapers were busy marrying Charles at this time.
The authors of ‘Tales of the Century,’ relying on some vague Polish
traditions, think that a party was being made to raise the Prince to the
Polish crown. In fact, there is not a word of truth in ‘Henry Goring’s
letter.’
We now study the perplexities of Courts and diplomatists. Pickle was not
yet at hand with accurate intelligence, and, even after he began to be
employed, the English Government left their agents abroad to send in
baffled surmises. From Paris, on March 8, Colonel Joseph Yorke (whom
d’Argenson calls by many ill names) wrote, ‘I am told for certain that he
[the Prince] is now returned to Avignon.’ {52a} Mann, in Florence, hears
(March 7) that the Prince has sent a Mr. Lockhart to James to ask for
money, but that was really done on December 31, 1748. {52b} On March 11,
Yorke learned from Puysieux that the Prince had been recognised by
postboys as he drove through Lyons towards Metz; probably, Puysieux
thought, on ‘an affair of gallantry.’ Others, says Yorke, ‘have sent him
to Poland or Sweden,’ which, even in 1746, had been getting ready troops
to assist Charles in Scotland. {52c} On March 20, Yorke hints that
Charles may be in or near Paris, as he probably was. Berlin was
suggested as his destination by Horace Mann (April 4). Again, he has
been seen in disguise, walking into a gate of Paris (April 11). {52d} On
April 14, Walton, from Florence, writes that James has had news of his
son, is much excited, and is sending Fitzmorris to join him. The Pope
knows and is sure to blab. {52e} On May 3, Yorke mentions a rumour,
often revived, that the Prince is dead. On May 9, the Jacobites in Paris
show a letter from Oxford inviting Charles to the opening of the
Radcliffe, ‘where they assure him of better reception than the University
has had at Court lately.’ {53a} Mann (May 2) mentions the Radzivil
marriage, arranged, in a self-denying way, by the Princesse de Talmond.
On May 17, Yorke hears from Puysieux that the French ambassador in Saxony
avers that Charles is in Poland, and that Sir Charles Williams has
remonstrated with Count Brühl. On May 1, 1749, Sir Charles Hanbury
Williams wrote from Leipzig to the Duke of Newcastle. He suspects that
Charles is one of several persons who have just passed through Leipzig on
the way to Poland; Count Brühl is ‘almost certain’ of it. {53b} On May 5
(when Charles was really in or near Venice), Hanbury Williams sends a
copy of his remonstrance with Brühl.
‘I asked Count Brühl whether, in the present divided and factious
state of the nobility of Poland, His Polish Majesty would like to
have a young adventurer (who can fish in no waters that are not
troubled, and who, by his mother, is allied to a family that once sat
upon the Polish throne) to go into that country where it would be
natural for him to endeavour to encourage factions, nourish
divisions, and foment confederations to the utmost of his power, and
might not the evil-minded and indisposed Poles be glad to have such a
tool in their hands, which at some time or other they might make use
of to answer their own ends? To this Count Brühl answered in such
terms as I could wish, and I must do him the justice to say that he
showed the best disposition to serve His Majesty in the affair in
question; but I am yet of opinion that, whatever is done effectually
in this case, must be done by the Court of Petersburg, and I would
humbly advise that, as soon as it is known for certain that the
Pretender’s son is in Poland, His Majesty should order his minister
at the Court of Petersburg to take such steps as His Majesty’s great
wisdom shall judge most likely to make the Czarina act with a proper
vigour upon this occasion.
‘Your Grace knows that the republic of Poland is at present divided
into two great factions, the one which is in the interest of Russia,
to which the friends of the House of Austria attach themselves; the
other is in the interest of France and Prussia. As I thought it most
likely, if the Pretender’s son went into Poland, he would seek
protection from the French party, I have desired and requested the
French ambassador that he would write to the French resident at
Warsaw, and to others of his friends in Poland, that he might be
informed of the truth of the Pretender’s arrival, and the place that
he was at in Poland, as soon as possible, and that when he was
acquainted with it he would let me know what came to his knowledge,
all which he has sincerely promised me to do, and I do not doubt but
he will keep his word. . . . It is publicly said that the
Pretender’s son’s journey to Poland is with a design to marry a
princess of the House of Radzivil.
‘As soon as I hear anything certain about the Pretender’s son being
in Poland, I will most humbly offer to your Grace the method that I
think will be necessary for His Majesty to pursue with respect to the
King and republic of Poland, in case His Majesty should think fit not
to suffer the Pretender’s son to remain in that country.
‘C. HANBURY WILLIAMS.’
On May 12, Williams believes that Charles is _not_ in Poland. On May 18,
he guesses (wrongly) that the Prince is in Paris. On May 25, he
fancies—‘plainly perceives’—that the French ambassador at Dresden
believes in the Polish theory. On June 9, Brühl tells Williams
(correctly) that Charles is in Venice. On June 11, Hanbury Williams
proposes to have a harmless priest seized and robbed, and to kidnap
Prince Charles! I give this example of British diplomatic energy and
chivalrous behaviour.
_From Sir Charles Hanbury Williams_.
‘Dresden: June 11, N.S. 1749.
‘ . . . Count Brühl has communicated to me the letters which he
received by the last post from the Saxon resident at Venice, who says
that the Pretender’s son had been at Venice for some days; that he
has received two expresses from his father at Rome since his being
there; but that nobody knew how long he intended to stay there. . .
Mons. Brühl further informs me that he hears from Poland that the
Prince of Radzivil, who is Great General of Lithuania, has a strong
desire to marry his daughter to the Pretender’s son. The young lady
is between eleven and twelve years old, very plain, and can be no
great fortune, for she has two brothers; but yet Mons. Brühl is of
opinion that there is some negotiation on foot for this marriage,
which is managed by an Italian priest who is a titular bishop, whose
name is Lascarisk (sic), and who lives in and governs the Prince
Radzivil’s family. This priest is soon to set out for Italy, under
pretence of going to Rome for the Jubilee year, but Mons. Brühl
verily thinks that he is charged with a secret commission for
negotiating the above-mentioned marriage. If His Majesty thinks it
worth while to have this priest watched, I will answer for having
early intelligence of the time he intends beginning his journey, and
then it would be no difficult matter to have him stopped, and his
papers taken from him, as he goes through the Austrian territories
into Italy. The more I think of it the more I am persuaded that the
Pretender’s son will not go into Poland for many reasons, especially
for one, which is that for a small sum of money I will undertake to
find a Pole who will engage to seize upon his person in any part of
Poland, and carry him to any port in the north that His Majesty shall
appoint. I have had offers of this sort already made me, to which
your Grace may be sure I gave no answer, except thanking the persons
for the zeal they showed for the King, my master, but I am convinced
that the thing is very practicable.
‘I had this day the honour to dine with the King of Poland, and, as I
sat next to him at table, he told me that he was very glad to hear
that the Pretender’s son was at length found to be at Venice, for
that he would much rather have him there than in Poland; to which I
answered that I was very glad, upon His Polish Majesty’s account,
that the Pretender’s son had not thought fit to come into any of His
Majesty’s territories, since I believed the visit would be far from
being agreeable. To which the King of Poland replied that it would
be a very disagreeable visit to him, and after that expressed himself
in the handsomest manner imaginable with respect to His Majesty, and
the regard he had for his Sacred person and Royal House; and I am
convinced if the Pretender’s son had gone into Poland, His Polish
Majesty and his minister would have done everything in their power to
have drove him out of that kingdom as soon as possible.
‘C. HANBURY WILLIAMS.
‘P.S.—Since my writing this letter, Count Brühl tells me that the
news of the Pretender’s son’s being at Venice is confirmed by letters
from his best correspondent at Rome, but both accounts agree in the
Pretender’s son’s being at Venice incognito, and that he appears in
no public place, so that very few people know of his being there. . . .
C. H. W.’
In 1751, Hanbury Williams renewed his proposal about waylaying Lascaris.
Charles, as we shall see, was for a short time at Venice in May 1749.
Meanwhile the game of hide and seek through Europe went on as merrily as
ever. Lord Hyndford, so well known to readers of Mr. Carlyle’s
‘Frederick,’ now opens in full cry from Moscow, but really on a
hopelessly wrong scent. As illustrating Hyndford’s opinion of Frederick,
who had invested him with the Order of the Thistle, we quote this worthy
diplomatist:
_Lord Hyndford to the Duke of Newcastle_. {58a}
‘Moscow: June 19, 1749.
‘ . . . I must acquaint your Grace of what I have learnt, through a
private canal, from the last relation of Mr. Gross, the Russian
minister at Berlin, although I dare say it is no news to your Grace.
Mr. Gross writes that, some days before the date of his letter, the
Pretender’s eldest son arrived at Potsdam, and had been very well
received by the King of Prussia, General Keith, and his brother, the
late Earl Marshal; and all the other English, Scotch, and Irish
Jacobites in the Prussian service were to wait upon him. This does
not at all surprise me; but Mons. Valony, the French minister, went
likewise to make his compliments at a country house, hired on purpose
for this young vagabond. This is all that I know as yet of this
affair in general, for the Chancellor has not thought proper as yet
to inform me of the particulars. However, this public, incontestable
proof of the little friendship and regard the King of Prussia has for
His Majesty and His Royal Family, and for the whole British nation,
will, I hope, open the eyes of the people who are blind to that
Prince’s monstrous faults, if any such are still left amongst us, and
I doubt not but it will save His Majesty the trouble of sending Sir
C. Hanbury Williams or any other minister to that perfidious Court.
‘HYNDFORD.’
This was all a mare’s nest; but Hyndford is for kidnapping the Prince.
He writes:
‘Moscow: June 26, 1749.
‘My Lord,—Since the 19th inst., which was the date of my last letter
to your Grace, I have been with the Chancellor, who made his excuses
that he had not sooner communicated to me the intelligence which Mr.
Gross, the Russian minister at Berlin, had sent him concerning the
Pretender’s eldest son. The Chancellor confirmed all that I wrote to
your Grace on the 19th upon that subject, and he told me that he had
received a second letter from Mr. Gross, wherein that minister says
that the Young Pretender had left the country house where he was, in
the neighbourhood of Berlin, and had entirely disappeared, without
its being hitherto possible for him, Mr. Gross, or Count Choteck, the
Austrian minister, to find out the route he has taken, although it is
generally believed that he is gone into Poland; and that now the King
of Prussia and his ministers deny that ever the Pretender’s son was
there, and take it mightily amiss of anybody that pretends to affirm
it. I am sorry that the Russian troops are not now in Poland, for
otherwise I believe it would have been an easy matter to prevail upon
this Court to catch this young knight errant and to send him to
Siberia, where he would not have been any more heard of; and if the
Court of Dresden will enter heartily into such a scheme, it will not
be impossible yet to apprehend him, and as it is very probable that
the King of Prussia has sent him into Poland to make a party and
breed confusion, it appears to be King Augustus’s interest to secure
him.
‘HYNDFORD.’
Many months later, on Feb. 2, 1749–1750, Lord Hyndford, writing from
Hanover, retracted. The rumour of Charles’s presence at Berlin, he
found, was started by Count de Choteck, the Austrian ambassador. In
fact, Choteck used to meet a fair lady secretly in a garden near Berlin,
and near the house of Field-Marshal Keith and his brother, Lord
Marischal. Hard by was an inn, where a stranger lodged, a rich and
handsome youth, whom Choteck, meeting, took for Prince Charles. He was
really a young Polish gentleman, into whose reasons for retirement we
need not examine.
Frederick, in his mischievous way, wrote about all this from Potsdam, on
June 24, 1749:
‘We have played a trick on Choteck; he spends much on spies, and, to
prove that he is well served, he has taken it into his head that
young Edouard, really at Venice, is at Berlin. He has been very busy
over this, and no doubt has informed his Court.’
On July 7, 1749, Frederick, in a letter to his minister at Moscow, said
that only dense ignorance could credit the Berlin legend. {61}
These documents certainly demonstrate that the Prince fluttered the
Courts, and that the Jacobite belief in English schemes to kidnap or
murder him was not a mere mythical delusion. Only an opportunity was
wanted. He had spared the Duke of Cumberland’s life, even after the
horrors of Culloden. But Hanbury Williams knows a Pole who will waylay
him; Hyndford wants to carry him off to Siberia. It was not once only,
on the other hand, but twice at least, that Charles protected the
Butcher, Cumberland. In 1746 he saved his enemy from Lochgarry’s open
attempt. In 1747 (May 4), a certain Father Myles Macdonnell wrote from
St. Germain to James in Rome. He dwells on the jealousies among the
Jacobites, and particularly denounces Kelly, then a trusted intimate of
Charles. Kelly, he says, is a drunkard, and worse! It was probably he
who raised ‘a scruple’ against a scheme relating to ‘Cumberland’s hateful
person.’ ‘Honest warrantable people from London’ came to Paris and
offered ‘without either fee or reward’ to do the business. What was the
‘business,’ what measures were to be taken against ‘Cumberland’s hateful
person’? Father Myles Macdonnell, writing to James, a Catholic priest to
a Catholic King, does not speak of _assassination_. He talks of ‘the
scruple raised against securing Cumberland’s person.’ ‘I suspect Parson
Kelly of making a scruple of an action the most meritorious that could
possibly be committed,’ writes Father Myles. {62a} The talk of
kidnapping, in such cases as those of Cumberland and Prince Charles—men
of spirit and armed—is a mere blind. Murder is meant! Father Myles’s
letter proves that (unknown to James in Rome) there was a London
conspiracy to kill the Butcher, but Prince Charles again rejected the
proposal. He was less ungenerous than Hyndford and Hanbury Williams.
The amusing thing is that the English Government knew, quite as well as
Father Macdonnell or James, all about the conspiracy to slay the Duke of
Cumberland. Here is the information, which reached Mann through Rome.
{62b}
_From Mr. Thomas Chamberlayne to Sir H. Mann_.
‘Capranica: November 18, 1747.
‘ . . . The family at Rome . . . was informed, by one who arrived
there last October from London, that there are twelve persons, whose
names I could not learn, but none of distinction, that are formed in
a club or society, and meet at the Nag’s Head in East Street,
Holborn. They have bound themselves under most solemn oaths that
this winter they will post themselves in different parts of the City
of London mostly frequented by His Royal Highness, the Duke of
Cumberland, in his night visits [to whom?], and are resolved to lay
violent hands on his royal person. The parole among the different
parties in their respective posts is The Bloody Butcher. They are
all resolute fellows, who first declared at their entering in this
conspiracy to despise death or torture. This motive is worthy of
your care, so I am certain you’ll make proper use of it . . .
‘THOMAS CHAMBERLAYNE.’
If Charles afterwards attempted to repay in kind the attentions of his
royal cousins, or of their ministers, this can hardly be reckoned
inhuman. If he was fluttering the Courts, they—Prussia, Russia, France,
Poland—were leading him the life of a tracked beast. They were
determined to drive him into the Papal domains; even in Venice he was
harried by spies. {63} On May 30, to retrace our steps, Mann, from
Florence, reports that Charles has arrived at the Papal Nuncio’s in
Venice, attended by one servant in the livery of the Duke of Modena.
Walton adds that he has not a penny (June 6). Walton (July 11) writes
from Florence that the Prince is reported from Venice to have paid
assiduous court to the second daughter of the Duke of Modena, a needy
potentate, but that he suddenly disappeared.’ {64} On Sept. 5, 1749,
Walton says he is in France. On Sept. 26, Walton writes that he is
offering his sword to the Czarina, who declines. He is at Lübeck, or
(Oct. 3) at Avignon. On Oct. 20, Mann writes that, from Lübeck, Charles
has asked the Imperial ambassador at Paris to implore the Kaiser to give
him an asylum in his States. On Oct. 31, Mann only knows that the Pope
and James ‘reciprocally ask each other news about’ the Prince. On Jan.
23, 1750, poor Mann is ‘quite at a loss.’ James receives letters from
the Prince, but never with date of place, otherwise Mann would have been
better informed. Walton hears that James believes Charles to be
imprisoned in a French fortress. From Paris, Jan. 17, 1750, Albemarle
wrote that he heard the Prince was in Berlin. The Prince later told
Pickle that he had been in Berlin more than once, and, as we shall see,
Frederick amused him with hopes of assistance. Kelly has left Charles’s
followers in distress at Avignon. Kelly, in fact, received his _congé_;
he was distrusted by the Earl Marischal, and Carte, the historian. On
Jan. 28, Albemarle hears that Charles has been in Paris ‘under the habit
of a Capuchine Fryar,’ and this _was_ a disguise of his, according to
Pickle.
Meanwhile the French Government kept protesting their total ignorance.
On April 3, 1750, Walton announces that James has had a long letter from
Charles containing his plans and those of his adherents, for which he
demands the Royal approval. James has sent a long letter to Charles by
the courier of the Duc de Nivernais, the French ambassador in Rome. By
the middle of June, James is reported by Walton to be full of hope, and
to have heard excellent news. But these expectations were partly founded
on a real scheme of Charles, partly on a strike of colliers at Newcastle.
A mob orator there proclaimed the Prince, and the Jacobites in Rome
thought that His Royal Highness was heading the strike! {65a} In July,
the same illusions were entertained. On August 12, Albemarle, from
Paris, reports the Prince to be dangerously ill, probably not far from
the French capital. He was really preparing to embark for England.
Albemarle, by way of trap, circulated in the English press a forged
news-letter from Nancy in Lorraine, dated August 24, 1750. It announced
Charles’s death of pneumonia, in hopes of drawing forth a Jacobite
denial. This stratagem failed. On August 4, James, though piqued by
being kept in the dark, sent Charles a fresh commission of regency. {65b}
Of the Prince’s English expedition of September 1750, the Government of
George II. knew nothing. Pickle was in Rome at the moment, not with
Charles; what Pickle knew the English ministers knew, but there is a
difficulty in dating his letters before 1752, and I am not aware that any
despatches of his from Rome are extant.
We have now brought the history to a point (September 1750) where the
Prince, for a moment, emerges from fairyland, and where we are not left
to the perplexing conjectures of diplomatists in Paris, Dresden,
Florence, Hanover, and St. Petersburg. In September 1750, Charles
certainly visited London. There is a point of light. We now give an
account of his actual movements in 1749–1750.