Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  He secured an immediate audience with Pius VI, put the full facts before him, and demanded Alfieri’s immediate expulsion from the papal domains. Pius shared Henry’s bitterness at having been duped. He gave the order for the expulsion: Alfieri was to leave Rome within fifteen days.59

  Even then Louise claimed a moral victory. She wrote to Henry to say that she had ‘advised’ Alfieri to quit Rome because of rumours about her ‘blameless’ conduct, and chided the cardinal for mentioning the matter to the Pope before discussing it with her.60 Nevertheless, on Alfieri’s own admission, the expulsion order came as a crushing blow to Psiphio and Psiphia (the onomatopoeic names, significant of kissing, by which the two lovers styled themselves).61 The parting from his lady was so poignant for Alfieri that he records the exact date of his departure from Rome: 4 May 1783.62

  The only satisfaction the pair could take was from Roman public opinion. Rome was a city of libertinism and lubricity, for which emotional Catholicism provided a glittering cloak. Henry made the great mistake of having the details of the Alfieri affair published. Instead of being scandalised, Roman society felt instinctive sympathy for the story-book lovers.63 Henry’s reputation, never high outside the corridors of power in the Vatican, plummeted further.

  Charles Edward meanwhile made a miraculous recovery. By September he was so far on the mend that he was making little excursions to the towns in Tuscany to watch horse races and other local spectacles. He also spent a week in Siena.64 Once his energies were restored, he began again to lobby the French court. On 26 September, he wrote to the comte de Vergennes, renewing the plea that Louis XVI undertake his restoration and adding (doubtless with the loss of the American colonies in mind), ‘the moment was never more favourable’.65 He also reminded the French that the pension promised at the time of his marriage had still not been paid.

  The expulsion of Alfieri and the recovery of his own health seemed to suggest that Charles was on a winning streak (albeit a minor one). This impression was reinforced in the autumn of 1783 when the prince at last began to receive the royal treatment he so craved. His benefactor was King Gustav III of Sweden, then travelling in Italy under the name of count Haga.66 When Gustav came to the baths at Pisa to nurse a broken arm, he heard the sad story of the prince’s misfortunes. He expressed an interest in meeting Charles.67 Chevalier de Tours, Gustav’s friend, who also had Jacobite connections through his marriage to the Irish aristocrat Lady St George, was sent to Florence as go-between.68

  The prince invited Gustav to stay with him. To his great delight, the Swedish king agreed to do so. For Charles this was an unprecedented honour. Protocol had hitherto prevented him (as the count of Albany) from receiving sovereigns. The duke of Tuscany had never graced the Palazzo Guadagni with a visit.69

  Gustav was in Florence throughout December 1783.70 The prince laid on a series of lavish dinners for him. Over the first meal Charles Edward poured out to Gustav all his bitterness about France. He doubted that Vergennes had even shown his recent letter to Louis XVI. He asked Gustav for help to get him the 240,000 livres a year pension that James used to receive from Versailles. Gustav agreed to help; there had been times in his own life, he confided, when he had been close to the financial straits the prince was now in.71

  As mutual confidence grew, Gustav put it to Charles Edward that he should accept that all hopes of a Stuart restoration were vain. Kingly dignity was best served by a patient submission to the caprices of fate; after all, Gustav argued, it was the lot of kings to be less happy than other men.72 Charles seemed to give tacit consent. At any rate, he asked Gustav to find a final solution to his affairs: ‘I agree completely to a total separation from my wife and to her no longer bearing my name.’73

  The appearance of the Swedish king at the Palazzo Guadagni predictably threw the neurotic fusspot Sir Horace Mann into a dither of uncertainty. There had been serious disturbances in Ireland in 1782–3 and Mann feared that the coming of Gustav presaged some new Jacobite scheme on the Celtic fringes.74 At first he reacted by writing dismissively of Gustav. Then his attitude changed. After suborning the chevalier de Tours, he learned there was nothing to fear. De Tours assured him the prince’s ambitions were for money and money alone.75 Charles Edward had told the Swedish king that the French had deceived him once too often. Nowadays, nothing less than a solemn invitation from England with signatures, like that sent to William of Orange in 1688, plus 70–80,000 crack French troops, would induce him to go to Britain again.76

  Mann was content. He was indifferent to the ‘Pretender’s’ applications to foreign courts for money. From now on he received detailed verbatim reports from the chevalier de Tours of every conversation between him or Gustav and the prince, plus copies of every letter sent to Versailles. He was thus able to gloat over the fate of Stuart representations to Louis XVI.

  Gustav and Tours drafted a financial remonstrance to the French king in Charles’s name. Vergennes wrote back at once to say that he could not forward the papers to Louis as they were signed ‘Charles, Roi’. In any case, it was beneath the dignity of His Most Christian Majesty to take notice of a domestic quarrel between the Stuart pretender and his wife.77

  Gustav then tried to persuade the prince to liquidate his other assets. The great ruby of the crown of Scotland, held in the Monte di Pieta, was mentioned. This would find a ready buyer in Czarina Catherine of Russia. Charles Edward rejected the idea with indignation: he would never part with the ruby, since he intended to add it to the crown of England when he was restored.78

  Since Gustav seemed even now not to have understood the dimensions of the problem, the prince explained it patiently to him. As far as France was concerned, there were two considerations. Because of the actions of various comptroller-generals, the interest on the funds held by the Stuarts in the Hôtel de Ville at Paris had declined from an annual yield of 80,000 livres to just 36,000. Much more important, France had broken a solemn promise, made in 1771 by the duc d’Aigullon, that if the prince married, he would receive the same annual pension as his father (240,000 livres).79

  Seeing the scope of the problem, Gustav wrote again to the French court. To avoid delays, he sent the letter in his own hand to his minister in Paris. He also wrote to the Spanish court. To tide Charles Edward over immediate problems, he advanced him 4,000 rix dollars (about £1,000). But first he extracted a promise from Charles Edward that he would accept whatever sum the French awarded him. In his letter to Louis XVI, Gustav shrewdly refrained from mentioning any definite amount of money.80

  The prince was delighted with the way Gustav treated him. Here was a fellow-monarch accepting him as a king, pressing his claim with the hated French, giving him all the consideration he had always sought in vain.81 Charles was so euphoric that he hardly noticed when Gustav casually revealed the ulterior motive behind his generosity and altruism. But to make sense of this motive we have to go back more than fifty years, to the early days of the Jacobite movement.

  The primary impetus for the rise of freemasonry in the first quarter of the eighteenth century came from the Jacobites. The great names of early freemasonry were all partisans of the House of Stuart: the duke of Wharton, the earl of Derwentwater, the chevalier Ramsay (Charles Edward’s tutor in 1724). The first lodges in England, France, Spain and Italy were extended Jacobite clubs.82 Many of James Stuart’s closest advisers – the duke of Ormonde, Earl Marischal, even the Anglican clergyman in the Palazzo Muti, Ezekiel Hamilton – were masons. As the 1730s opened, the list of names lengthened to include many of the best-known personalities of the ’45, such as Kilmarnock and Murray of Broughton.

  But this decade also saw the infiltration of the masonic lodges by British intelligence. Freemasonry ceased to be a Jacobite secret society and seemed likely instead to become a Hanoverian fifth column. Alerted by James Stuart, Clement XII began to invoke the papal Inquisition against the masons.

  The lodges kept a low profile and waited for the storm to blow over.83 It did not. Almost certainly the
principal motive for Clement XII’s dramatic action in 1738 was that the Hanoverians had secured an important victory in the anti-Jacobite espionage battle by bringing the lodges under anti-Stuart leadership.84 But whatever his reasons, Clement issued an edict in that year excommunicating freemasons. In the opinion of his successor Benedict XIV, this was Clement’s worst political error.85

  Outside the papal states the edict had little effect. In Florence the 30,000 or so masons were simply driven underground.86 And in France Louis XIV and Fleury made sure the ordinance was not published – lex non promulgata non obligat, a law not promulgated has no force – so that the masonic movement there did not even have to break step. Most of the great names of eighteenth-century France occupied one or other grade in the lodges: Noailles, Conti, Saxe, Choiseul. French masons like Montesquieu and the duc de Bouillon were among Charles Edward’s most important contacts.87

  With so many friends and associates in the movement it might be thought that Charles Edward, especially with his penchant for secrecy, would be a natural choice as mason. And it is true that at the time of Clement XII’s interdiction, he showed great interest in this secret organisation.88 But his father’s unyielding opposition and that of the influential Jesuit Cordara (who wrote a history of the prince’s adventures in the ’45), prevented him from advancing beyond simple curiosity. The many stories about lodges allegedly founded by the prince turn out to be so many myths.89

  Now we confront one of the many curious aspects of freemasonry. It was a persistent legend among freemasons that Charles Edward Stuart was the secret head of the entire masonic order. Some said that he was the ‘conscious’ head and as such, dressed as a masked knight, had inducted many new members into the recondite secrets of the masons. This Lohengrin-like aspect of Charles Edward was plausible, since it fitted both his role as Nietzschean hero and his love of secrecy and disguises.90

  Others maintained that the head of the Stuart family was the hereditary Grand Master of the Order, whether he realised it or not, since the hereditary principle was integral to masonic beliefs – a curious inverted gloss on the doctrine of indefeasible right. This was supposed always to have been the case, ever since the days of inchoate masonry under Charles II.91

  It was to clear up these mysteries that Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, sent his envoy Baron Wachter to Italy in 1777. The principal object of his mission was to find out if Charles Edward Stuart really was the secret Grand Master of all masonic lodges.

  Wachter interviewed the prince at Florence on 21 September 1777. Charles Edward told him that he had never belonged to the organisation and therefore, presumably, could not be its Superior.92 Most of the names mentioned by Wachter were unknown to him. Kilmarnock he knew purely from his activities in the ’45. Nevertheless the prince, at the time in acute financial straits, saw a chance to turn matters to his advantage. He told Wachter that if the masons were convinced that he had an hereditary right to the title of Grand Master, he would be happy to accept it. It did not take excessive insight to see that both money and political influence could accrue to the holder of such a position. Wachter promised to promote the prince’s cause with the German masons. Charles Edward in turn signed the envoy’s affidavit.93

  When Wachter returned to Germany, he wrote encouragingly to the prince about a Prussian proposal to land 6,000 troops in Scotland provided the prince raised the clans.94 Charles was non-committal, suspecting (rightly) that Wachter was merely sweetening him up prior to revealing his real intentions.95

  Next Wachter asked for details of James’s movements in the 1740s that would clinch the issue of possible secret links between Jacobites and masons after the papal interdiction. The prince replied that James had deposited a large number of his papers in a ‘safe house’ to prevent their coming into his son’s hands.96

  For the next three years Wachter and the prince fenced with each other.97 Predictably, without James’s papers, the German masons made no further mention of the Prussian project. The prince, too, had learned cunning. When Wachter sent an envoy to Florence to make a casual request for old Jacobite papers, Charles rebuffed him on the grounds that, since he had made no mention of freemasonry, he could not be a bona fide agent of Wachter’s!98

  It was at this stage that the Swedes started to steal the Germans’ masonic thunder. Gustav III’s diplomats encouraged Charles Edward to believe that the difficulties the Germans were making over giving him the title of Grand Master were spurious. In Stockholm the prince’s right was fully accepted.99

  Charles would have done well to remember these straws in the wind when Gustav appeared in Florence, but it is likely that his mental faculties had been severely affected by his near-fatal illness in the spring of 1783. It is abundantly clear that Gustav’s real purpose in visiting the prince in December that year was to secure a formal transfer of the title of Grand Master.100 Gustav was already head of Swedish masonry. What he wanted, and obtained, from Charles Edward, was a patent proclaiming him Grand Master of the entire Templar order. Even if the prince had fully realised what Gustav was up to, it is likely that he would have sold the title in return for the immediate advance of 4,000 rix dollars and the promise of more to come. As it was, the prince got a better deal than that. In exchange for a financial settlement, including the divorce of his wife, Charles gave Gustav a clear title as Grand Master once he died. The prince signed a document making the Swedish king coadjutor in the masons and his eventual successor.101

  At the eleventh hour the German masons realised that they had been too clever by half. They sent Wachter on another urgent mission to Italy. But he did not arrive until April 1784, by which time Gustav had the transfer patent in his pocket.102 The sequence of events after Gustav’s departure from Florence at the end of December 1783 takes on an entirely different hue once we realise what his true purpose was. The fact is that Gustav III came close to securing the bargain of the century with the quid pro quo negotiated in the Palazzo Guadagni.

  The Swedish king had been shocked by Charles’s general state of health. The prince was bent forward and decrepit and walked only with great pain. His mental faculties were deserting him. After a quarter of an hour he would repeat identical anecdotes told earlier. Clearly he was hanging by a thread during Gustav’s visit and sustaining himself with the ‘honour’ a fellow-monarch was paying him.

  No sooner had Gustav departed than Charles Edward fell seriously ill again. This time the prince was thought certain to die. At first he lost all power of speech. His physicians thought he had suffered an apoplectic stroke, then changed the diagnosis to inflammation in the brain. For two days Charles lay speechless and insensible. Then for a short time he recovered consciousness but not the power of speech. Next day he had just two hours of mental lucidity, again with no speech. Just when his doctors were despairing of him, he recovered.103

  Meanwhile in Rome Gustav’s mission ran into a hitch. From Louise of Stolberg and her champion Cardinal Bernis the Swedish king heard a quite different version of events. According to them, Charles Edward was a rich miser who neither needed nor deserved financial assistance.104 There is some evidence that Gustav half believed them, but he was now firmly committed out of fear that the prince might otherwise repudiate his masonic succession, especially with Wachter in Italy.

  Gustav counterattacked. Calmly he agreed with Louise but pointed out certain facts of life. Did she really want to remain forever in a Roman limbo, tied to the strings of the capricious Cardinal York, when she could obtain a favourable divorce settlement, giving her the freedom to live anywhere and be with Alfieri?105 The argument was irresistible. With the acquiescence of Henry and the Pope, Gustav hammered out a financial agreement. Louise was to give up her 4,000 crowns of the papal pension and the 15,000 livres pin money in return for the freedom to reside wherever she liked. On formal separation she would receive a pension of 60,000 livres from France plus an annual payment of 6,000 crowns on the prince’s death. Charles Edward received the full papal pension of 10,0
00 crowns plus uncontested rights to the effects in the Palazzo Muti and to his share of the Sobieski jewels.106

  Louise was agreeable in principle, but she wanted more binding guarantees, in particular a written statement from Charles Edward that the two of them were living apart by mutual consent. This Charles Edward duly provided: ‘We give our free and voluntary consent to this separation and agree that she should live in Rome or whatever other town seems agreeable to her.’107

  The divorce settlement was a great diplomatic triumph for Gustav III. Louise wrote profuse letters of thanks to him and his minister Baron Sparre.108 By, in effect, getting France to foot the bill for the sundering of the unhappy Stuart couple, he gained his patent as Grand Master of Freemasons at an outlay of just 4,000 rix dollars. The cunning Swedish fox had instructed his Florentine banker to use the excuse of the prince’s illness not to pay the second instalment of rix dollars.109 He then ‘assumed’ that his particular financial agreement with the prince was now subsumed in the general divorce settlement. Quitting Rome in mid-April 1784, Gustav lost no time in shaking the dust of Italy from his heels.110

  Only when the Swedish king was gone did it occur to Cantini and other financial managers in the prince’s household to examine the situation. On application to Gustav’s Florence banker, they learned that the king had indeed left a verbal order to pay Charles Edward 50,000 French livres a year for life, but had declined to put the order in writing! When the prince’s accountants applied to Vergennes, it transpired that Gustav had not tied up the French end of things either.111 Fortunately, perhaps, for the prince, he was too ill fully to take in the implications of Gustav’s double-dealing. He was saved by illness from knowledge of this last in a long line of betrayals.

  Yet at least the knot binding Charles Edward and Louise was severed. She was free to pursue an itinerant life with Alfieri. Her ‘special relationship’ with Henry, already in abeyance after the 1783 Alfieri revelations, gradually ground to a halt. The adulterous relationship with the poet totally changed Henry’s view of her.112 She continued to write to him as if to a friend,113 but his reply was cold. He used his intense irritation about the divorce settlement to mask his hostility towards her. ‘It is a piece of insolence … on my brother’s part, this disposing of money which is mine, as though it were his own, and without my knowledge.’114 He ended by asking her not to write to him again, as her marital business adversely affected his health.