Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  The prince hinted to his father that he seemed unaware of the cost of sending couriers and envoys to Rome, Avignon and England. Since he knew James would suspect him of prodigality, he got other Jacobites like Sheridan to vouch for the truth of his statements.17 Eventually, worn down by his son’s constant lamentations, James asked for a detailed breakdown of Charles’s debts, so that he could make informed representations to the French court.18 The prince was often at fault for inattention to detail; but not this time. He had Sheridan produce the most meticulous accounting for his father. These confirmed the picture of indebtedness only too well.

  The financial troubles of the prince were a real headache for the French court. After a good deal of difficulty persuading his reluctant colleagues, notably Orry, Tencin obtained a pension of 5,000 livres a month for Charles Edward. Yet by now the backlog of royal Stuart debts amounted to some 60,000 livres. Tencin was furious. How could he ask the king to clear such a mountain at a time when stringent war economies were being enforced? Moreover, Louis XV still maintained that he had no moral obligation to the prince, since he had not invited him to France. When these points were put to Charles, he shrugged them off: 60,000 livres was a great sum for an individual, true, but a drop in the ocean to the king of France.19

  The other main factor in the prince’s chaotic world in 1744 was his Jacobite followers. To say that factionalism was endemic would be mild.20 The inability of the Jacobites in France to make common cause approached the pathological. Andrew Lang once spoke of the partisans of the House of Stuart at this time as being divided into a king’s party (Sempill, Balhaldy, O’Brien) and a prince’s party (Sheridan, Marischal, Kelly). Such a neat bifurcation might have presented a manageable situation. In reality there were at least four faction’s, within which each individual tried to down the others and so emerge as, in effect, the prince’s chief minister. Some account of these factions and individuals and their dynamic interaction with the prince must now be given. Such a recital might appear tedious and esoteric at first sight, but much that is obscure about Charles Edward’s later history becomes clear once we penetrate this labyrinth of personalities.

  The four groupings we have mentioned were: first, the Balhaldy/Sempill clique; second, the coterie around Daniel O’Brien and his formidable wife; third, the motley assemblage of disparate individuals Lang identified as the ‘prince’s party’; fourth, a maverick group of Jacobites acting under the direction of the inveterate plotter Eleanor Oglethorpe, marquise de Mézières.

  The Mézières group is the easiest to deal with. It was Pluto to the prince’s sun, on the extreme outer edge of influence. Apart from La Mézières herself, its principal members were Thomas Carte and Father Cruise. Conducting independent negotiations in England and at Versailles, this coterie was frequently rebuked both by James and his son for unwarranted meddling.21 Its principal significance was that it was the only Jacobite cadre that had contacts with Noailles.22 It also had the best channel of communications to Maurepas.23

  O’Brien’s circle had received a crippling blow when James opened up a parallel diplomatic channel to the French court via Sempill and Balhaldy in the first years of the decade. James must take a clear share of the blame for Jacobite factionalism. In addition, O’Brien himself was personally repugnant to Charles Edward, as was Tencin, O’Brien’s principal contact at the French court.24 Yet the prince was forced to bend to the prevailing wind in October, when Tencin began to control his destinies at Versailles. Swallowing his dislike, Charles invited the O’Briens to sup with him and Bailli de Tencin.25 But O’Brien, Tencin and their circle were always at best tolerated by the prince; in their circumspection and regard for protocol, they seemed to him all too much like chips off the paternal block.

  That left the prince’s immediate circle of advisers. Only the toughest survived the internecine struggle to be at his right hand. The emissary sent by James to be a moderating influence, Sir John Graeme, made no impact at all and retired in disarray to Avignon after five months.26 Avignon was also the destination of Earl Marischal, who had ruined whatever chances he might have had to influence the prince by his behaviour at Dunkirk. He had since compounded this error by persuading the French court that if Charles Edward campaigned in Flanders, this would ‘disgust’ the English.27 Some of the prince’s most bitter outpourings at this period were directed at Marischal, whom he rated second only to Tencin and O’Brien as an enemy.28 For once James was inclined to agree with him: truly Marischal’s record had been a discreditable one.29 James had appointed Marischal captain-general of all Jacobite forces in Scotland at the time of Saxe’s invasion project. For his behaviour towards the prince, Marischal came within an ace of having his commission rescinded.30

  The most likely candidate to ascend to the position of premier counsellor to the prince was his old tutor Sir Thomas Sheridan, whom James had dispatched to Paris with Charles’s effects.31 Sheridan arrived in Paris in early June 1744, bringing with him among other impedimenta a complicated diet sheet for himself (he was something of a hypochondriac) and another for the prince.32 Yet unaccountably he failed to slot immediately into the old cosy relationship with Charles. Part of the trouble may have been that Sheridan dared to tell the prince that he found Marischal whiter than he had been painted.33 He also did not share the prince’s contempt for the bishop of Soissons’s behaviour. Understandably, Soissons was reluctant to alienate Louis XV by appearing publicly at the prince’s side in Paris.34

  The upshot was that Sheridan was soon markedly out of favour and even comtemplated leaving the prince’s service.35 The prince beat him to the punch. Once he saw how well Sheridan got on with the arch-enemies Tencin and O’Brien, Charles banished him from Paris.36 The prince aimed to show he meant business: he who was not wholeheartedly with him was against him.

  At James’s intercession, the prince reinstated Sheridan and used him as a sort of roving ambassador.37 At the end of September he accredited Sheridan to the comte d’Argenson and then sent him to Metz with a letter of complaint to Louis XV about the continuing incognito.38 Sheridan, who was a depressive as well as a hypochondriac,39 interpreted this as a demotion and fell ill.40 Yet the prince insisted. Sheridan was to lobby all the ministers, especially Maurepas, Tencin and d’Argenson, about the incognito and his debts.41 Sheridan’s mission was a fiasco. He got as far as Strasbourg only to succumb to another of his mystery illnesses. The letters he sent on to the king and the secretaries of state were returned on the ground that Tencin was now solely in charge of Jacobite matters.42 When Sheridan did get to see Tencin, he came away empty-handed.43 Yet he had apparently done enough to reinstate himself. By the end of the year Sheridan was once more in the inner circle.

  The man who had done most to cut Sheridan out, and was also responsible for ousting Balhaldy and Sempill from princely favour, was George Kelly, now and later the prince’s evil genius. A Church of England parson who had been out in the ’15, Kelly endured twenty years’ imprisonment in the Tower of London until his escape in 1736. He had been secretary to the duke of Ormonde before Charles Edward summoned him to Paris.44 Within a remarkably short space of time, Kelly neutralised Graeme and Sheridan, completed the disgrace of his (Kelly’s) erstwhile associate Marischal, and began the process that would bring Sempill and Balhaldy to ruin.45 His skills as a manipulator of the prince were superlative, but his was a purely destructive, self-regarding talent. His influence on Charles Edward was entirely baneful and negative.

  It was Kelly who persuaded the prince and Sheridan of the desirability of a sudden withdrawal to Avignon, on the grounds that this would humiliate Louis XV.46 Fortunately this wild scheme was confided to James, who at once saw its fallacy. Not only would the simultaneous presence of the prince and Marischal in Avignon lead to fresh ructions; such a move would also play straight into Louis’s hands, letting himself off the hook on which he had impaled himself by his own duplicity.47

  But Kelly’s most guileful and devious accomplishment was to compass the d
ownfall of Sempill and Balhaldy in the prince’s favour. James had long fretted that his son was too much under their thumb and wished he would get out from under their dominance.48 Kelly was now to fulfil the king’s wishes, though Sempill and Balhaldy contributed substantially to their own doom through systematic duplicity.

  The first thing to do was to contrive it so that the pair were seen to fail. The changing tide of opinion at Versailles helped materially here. Sempill and Balhaldy had put all their eggs into the Orry basket and openly snubbed Tencin, thinking he was finished as an effective force on the council of state.49 When Tencin replaced Orry as minister in charge of Jacobite affairs, the star of Sheridan and O’Brien rose as Sempill’s and Balhaldy’s dipped. Yet even before this Kelly had manoeuvred the pair into bad blunders. Kelly persuaded Charles Edward to send Sempill to Rheims to lobby Orry for a revival of the English invasion project. Kelly was sure such a mission would fail. Sempill took the bait and set out.50 His mission was a flop. The prince was particularly disillusioned with the way Sempill accepted at face value French protestations that they had seriously intended another descent on England, which was prevented by unforeseen circumstances, and that it was their heavy commitments that prevented their offering the prince a campaign.51

  Meanwhile Kelly intrigued with Tencin to increase the suspicion that Balhaldy had been either stupid or consciously mendacious in informing James in December 1743 that the French would greet Charles Edward with open arms.52 Finally, when John Murray of Broughton came over from Scotland in April 1744 to co-ordinate a proposed rising of the Scottish Jacobites, two things became clear. One was that Sempill and Balhaldy had been negotiating with both English and Scots Jacobites behind the prince’s back. The other was that the Scottish leaders did not trust Sempill and Balhaldy and would not co-operate with them. Lord Traquair was especially vehement on this point.53

  The ultimate point in duplicity was reached in September when the prince made clear to his father that the two men were even capable of deceiving each other. Rebutting James’s charge that it was owing to Sempill’s and Balhaldy’s influence that Sheridan had lost favour with him, he revealed that Sempill wanted the prince to show some secret correspondence to Sheridan but exclude Balhaldy.54 By the end of the year Sempill was complaining that he had now been excluded from contact with the French court for five months at the prince’s orders.55

  Yet there were glimmerings of more auspicious signs, the merest hint that the prince might have turned the corner and that the worst was over. The year ended with Sheridan largely restored and Kelly as the prince’s éminence grise.56 The struggle within the Jacobite party was largely resolved. For better or worse, Tencin was the target minister at Versailles. The financial situation was on the point of being cleared up.57 As the prince withdrew to Fitzjames for the winter, there were cautious grounds for hoping that the year 1745 might turn out more favourably. No one could have predicted that it would turn out to be the prince’s annus mirabilis.

  9

  ‘Do or Die’

  (January–July 1745)

  IF THERE WAS one thing that sustained Charles Edward during the dark days of 1744, it was the thought that Scotland might be the key to the door through which he would pass from the darkness into the light. A Scottish expedition became his talisman, his lodestone. Ever since the early 1740s, when he was still in Rome, the idea had inspired him. Murray of Broughton’s mission in August–October 1744 seemed to bring the dream several steps closer to reality.

  John Murray’s embassy was a continuing link in the chain of intrigue that bound together France and the Scottish Jacobites. In 1743 when Murray came to Paris, he had crossed with Butler’s English mission.1 On that occasion he worked closely with Sempill and Balhaldy. But by 1744 their lies, exaggerations and double-dealings were common knowledge in British Jacobite circles. Murray determined to keep them at arm’s length.

  He arrived in Paris in August 1744 and begged immediate audience of the prince. The first meeting took place in the great stables of the Tuileries.2 On this occasion the prince was accompanied by Sempill and Balhaldy. John Murray was bewitched by Charles Edward, as so many of his compatriots were to be later. He saw a tall young man with reddish hair, full of easy grace and charm, ostentatiously wearing the Star and Garter and Cordon Bleu.3

  Yet Murray did not allow the prince’s magnetism to seduce him into fantasy. He began the session uncompromisingly, pouring scorn on the number of Highlanders (20,000) said by Sempill and Balhaldy to be ready to meet the proposed French expeditionary force of 3,000 troops. You would be lucky to find 4,000, commented Murray tartly.4 When Sempill and Balhaldy tried to pour oil on troubled waters, Murray asked for a private meeting with the prince next day. This was granted.

  While Balhaldy hovered in the next room, Murray poured out his bitterness about the supposed royal favourites. He revealed the many different ways in which they had duped their master. Charles Edward listened coolly and calmly to Murray’s recital of their duplicity, merely remarking that everyone has faults. Murray was greatly impressed by the prince’s sang-froid.5 Charles salved his wounded pride by revealing his plan to retire to Avignon, which he had kept from Sempill and Balhaldy.6 Encouraged by this to be really blunt, Murray went on to say that in his view the French military position was as weak as that of the clans in the Highlands; early assistance from Versailles was unlikely.7 It was then that the prince made his momentous statement that he intended to come to Scotland next summer even if only with a single footman.8

  Intense negotiations between Murray and Sheridan then ensued. Murray was given secret instructions from the prince to prepare the ground in the Highlands. An arms cache was to be built up in the remote Clanranald country.9 All the Jacobite clan chiefs and the ‘Associators’ were to be put in the picture. The key figures in the lowlands were to be lords Elcho and Traquair.10

  Murray returned to Scotland in October 1744. Both English and French spies had dogged his footsteps in Paris.11 Charles Edward now turned this to his advantage. He wrote to Louis XV (then campaigning on the borders of eastern France) to say that he had just received the strongest possible assurances from the English Jacobites. If the French brought an army of 12,000 to England plus a reserve of arms, the Jacobites themselves could put a force of 30,000 men in the field. If this demand proved impracticable, the overthrow of the Hanoverians could be initiated in Scotland. Only 3,000 French troops (or conceivably even Spaniards) would be needed for this.12 The prince was using good negotiating tactics, making an impossible primary demand in the hope that a compromise by the French king would secure the secondary one.

  One of the problems about mounting a Scottish venture was that the prince was not a free agent. His father was vehemently opposed to an operation in Scotland alone.13 The first stage was to sell the idea to James. Surely, argued the prince, if France offered him troops for Scotland alone, he would have to take them?14 James was not easy to budge. His thinking was prophetic. Expressing grave doubts about the idea, he told his son:

  It would, to be sure, be a melancholy thing for you to return to Rome without doing anything, but it would be certainly much more melancholy to return there, however, after an unfortunate expedition, and the ruin of a number of our friends, who might not be able to remain at home, while we might not be able to sustain them abroad.15

  At this point Charles Edward received assistance from an unexpected source. O’Brien put it forcefully to James that the Jacobite choice was now Scotland or nothing. The reason the French wanted to begin operations there was that the Highlands would give them a line of retreat if their army was defeated. To be confident of success in England on the other hand, they would have to land troops in overwhelming numbers – out of the question at the present stage of the war.16

  Grudgingly James acquiesced. The only certain path to a Stuart restoration was a simultaneous descent in Scotland and England. A small French army sent to Scotland alone made the project much more precarious. But if, in their
wisdom, the French insisted on sending their troops to Scotland rather than England, he neither could nor would oppose it. It would be for the prince, on the spot, to decide what to accept and what to reject.17

  Throughout the winter Charles Edward worked away on his Scottish inspiration. He even gave up the pleasures of hunting to sit in conference and refine his ideas.18 Hope buoyed him up, enabling him to ride out the high seas of 1744. He professed to be untroubled by his exile from Paris: ‘he would put himself in a tub like Diogenes if necessary!’19 There was also the welcome prospect of some hunting once he had worked out a plan to his own satisfaction. The prince was worried about his declining physical fitness. He suffered from severe toothache in January 1745. As he confided to Edgar, as a result of the severe winter, he did not handle a gun for months.20

  Yet the early months of 1745 made it clear that not even the tiny force of 3,000 men for Scotland would be forthcoming from Versailles.21 The truth was that the French were by now disillusioned with the prince: he was dangerous and unpredictable, not at all malleable like his father. The settlement of the prince’s debts by the marquis d’Argenson, achieved by Sheridan’s bypassing of the normal channels, was the last straw for Tencin.22 Nor did the prince win any friends by boasting that he had exaggerated the extent of his debts in order to force money out of the coffers of the tight-fisted Orry.23 But Charles Edward was determined that his own patience would not snap. France would have to order him from its territory; it would never be able to claim that he left of his own accord.24

  To cock a snook at the French, the prince decided to pay a number of clandestine visits to Paris, in defiance of the informal agreement. This was in any case a necessary safety valve. His life at Fitzjames on the Calais road (seven posts from Paris) had settled into a routine of intrigue and dull social life. Just before he left for Fitzjames, Louis XV had relented slightly on the incognito and allowed the prince to meet his French cousins, the Prince de Turenne and the duc de Bouillon and members of the Berwick family (such as the duke of Fitzjames and the bishop of Soissons himself).25 It was at this time that he met the Prince de Turenne’s sister Louise (duchesse de Montbazon), later to be his mistress.26 The couple afterwards rationalised the meeting as coup de foudre. At the time, though, the prince’s thoughts were firmly fixed on making war, not love.