Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (13 page)

"To go single, unless you are invited by the principal peers both for credit and good sense, would be forever the destruction of the Cause," Marischal told Charles. To Charles the advice sounded like an insult, and he complained, in letters to his father, of the earl's pessimism and deliberate undermining of French support. He had "discouraged" the French "to the last degree," Charles claimed. He had even gone behind Charles's back and talked the French out of letting him serve in the army in Flanders. The earl "tells them," Charles wrote, "that my serving in the army in Flanders, it [
sic
] would disgust entirely the English, by serving in the same army that is to fight against them, and so forth. He has done all this without telling me anything of the matter or consulting me about it."
⁵

If he could not fight with the French in Flanders, perhaps he could go to Scotland with the Scots and Irish serving in the French army, Charles suggested, but no one at the French court heeded the suggestion. The days passed, the soldiers left the Channel ports. Charles could not help but be disheartened, though he tried to maintain a stoic detachment. "I have learned from you," he wrote to his father on March 26, "to bear with disappointments, and I see it is the only way, which is to submit oneself entirely to the will of God, and never to be discouraged."

He was in limbo, caught between the temptation to give in to despair and his own ever resilient hopes. His physical energy demanded an outlet, yet everyone around him seemed to be conspiring to prevent him from acting.

"The situation I am in," he wrote to James on April 3, "is very particular, for nobody knows where I am or what is become of me, so that I am entirely buried as to the public, and can't but say but [
sic
] that it is a very great constraint upon me, for I am obliged very often not to stir out of my room, for fear of somebody's knowing my face. I very often think," he went on, "that you would laugh very heartily if you saw me going about with a single servant buying fish and other things and squabbling for a penny more or less."
⁶

At times even this harmless diversion was impossible, and Charles stayed in his room, reading, writing letters, no doubt brooding on his future. He was learning to discipline himself, to force himself to do disagreeable things. In the past the task of writing even one letter had been almost unendurable for him; now he forced himself to write for hours at a time. "I have every day large packets to answer," he told James, "without anybody to help me but Malloch [i.e., Balhaldie, one of whose code names was Malloch]. Yesterday I had one that cost me seven hours and a half." Marischal wrote him very long letters—they seemed to Charles to be "almost books"— and he dutifully answered them point for point. He was taking on the role James had played for so many years in Rome, that of being chief secretary to the Stuart cause. He was receiving letters of advice, letters of encouragement, letters counseling caution and others urging him to undertake wild adventures. Information came to him from many sources, information that required sifting and thoughtful consideration. The burden of acknowledging the letters alone was a sizable one, and beyond this their contents had to be weighed mentally. Each new letter meant more hours of confinement, more entrapment in the sticky web of intrigue and less action. In April, desperate for "company and diversions" and apparently convinced that there was no point in remaining at Gravelines any longer, Charles moved to Paris. There he found lodging in a charming small house near Montmartre with a good view of the city. Compared with the Palazzo Muti, these were cramped quarters, but Charles's household was very small—and, for the moment, very modest. (He had "but twelve forks, spoons and knives," and the furnishings must have been correspondingly spare.) In Paris he was joined by his old tutor Sheridan, whom he had sent for earlier in the year. Sheridan was by this time well over seventy, and so frail and ill that he was frequently subject to slight strokes. On his way from Rome to Paris he suffered another of these strokes, and soon after he joined Charles's household he began to complain of another of his chronic ailments: deep depression.
⁷
Sheridan's health problems ranged from fainting fits to headaches to digestive troubles which kept him on a strict diet. "Poor Sheridan," James wrote, "is not fit to exert himself very greatly."

Still, he was fit enough to send James news of a personal nature about his son, ''I found him in very good health," Sheridan wrote early in June of 1744, ''and he seemed to me both taller and broader than when I saw him last. He is certainly increased in bulk, but for his height, when I seemed surprised at it, he let me into the secret. He showed me the heels of his shoes which he wears now of the usual size, whereas before he wore them remarkably lower than other people. In fine," he concluded, "he has altogether a much more manly air than he had when he began his travels."
⁸

A stouter, taller, and more manly young man who had begun to wear the high heels then in fashion: this was Charles in the summer of 1744. He was away from his father for the first time, and feeling his own strength. His political fortunes might be uncertain, but his faith in himself was glowing more brightly than ever, and this despite a host of major and minor annoyances.

Chief among these was a lack of funds. The promised French pension was not paid, and the fragile Sheridan had to be dispatched to Flanders to make a personal appeal to King Louis. This proved unsuccessful, and Charles had no recourse but to go to moneylenders. The rent on the little house had to be paid, there were tradesmen's bills and servants' wages and the usual expenses of princely largesse, albeit on a small scale. The moneylenders were assured that they would be repaid once King Louis's minister of finance made good on what was owed to Charles, but while they waited they added interest at high rates, making the total owed mount astonishingly month by month.

Nearly as plaguing as the lack of funds was the lack of harmony among those pledged to the Stuart cause. Most of the prominent Jacobites were locked in conflict with each other, Sempill criticizing Sheridan, Murray of Broughton accusing Balhaldie and Sempill of petty crimes and general irresponsibility, Balhaldie attacking Murray. Faction fought faction, with Charles in the middle trying to keep his supporters united while feeling the seduction of faction more and more himself. The attempt to keep the peace left him weary, as did the constant effort to discover where the truth lay in all the petty squabbling. It was difficult at times to remember the common goal, that of organizing military resistance to George II. Of all the men in Charles's circle in 1744, only Murray of Broughton seemed to be vigorously pursuing that goal.

Murray came to Paris in July, and met with Charles in secret "at the great stables in the Tuileries." He was full of news from Scotland, where as he told Charles, the Scots were doubtful that any French help would ever be forthcoming. Though Charles insisted that he had "the strongest assurances" from King Louis and his ministers that the invasion would eventually take place, no later than harvest-time, Murray was equally adamant. According to Murray, Charles listened calmly, "acting with as much coolness, caution and circumspection, as the most experienced statesman." Yet beneath this judicious exterior Charles was much affected. Murray's arguments impressed him with their force. Instead of allowing himself to be taken in by the continual ruses of the French, Murray was actively enrolling Scottish Jacobites, persuading them to sign documents promising to fight for Charles should he come to Scotland, even if he came without French support. The course Murray was advocating seemed the one most likely to succeed.

Yet it was precisely the course James was warning him against. "Avoid precipitate and dangerous measures," James cautioned him sternly in his letters, "some rash or ill-conceived project, which would end in your ruin, and that of all those who would join with you in it." James, having resigned himself to the French abandonment of the invasion attempt, no longer dreamed of an imminent military opportunity for his son. The royal liveries he had ordered for his servants had long since been put away. It seemed to James, in fact, that Charles might as well return to Rome, so slim were his chances in Paris. Besides, Charles would soon be needed to take over James's own work there, for his energies were flagging. At fifty-six he was finding it harder and harder to concentrate for any length of time; when he attempted to read or write he was overcome by vertigo and the room began to spin around him. He referred to himself as "a useless old father," whose ills, though not mortal, were growing worse every day.
⁹
He needed to be able to pass on his responsibilities to his elder son.

In mid-November of 1744, Charles wrote to James in a tone of extreme exasperation. It was a private letter, intended for James's eyes alone and expressive of Charles's candid feelings. After assuring James that he was well aware of his obligations "before God and men," that he was attending to his public and private devotions and conducting himself dutifully, he began a
cri de coeur
.

"You may well imagine how out of humor I am, when for comfort I am plagued out of my life with
tracasseries
[petty bickering] from our own people, who as it would seem would rather sacrifice me and my affairs than fail in any private view." The quarrels were endless, and it did no good for Charles to remind the individuals involved that "whatever is said of our own people, though never so well grounded, was cutting our own throats." The bickering seemed to be getting worse as time passed, fomented by idleness and the increasing sense of futility that threatened to destroy the Jacobite party entirely. "The more I dwell on these matters, the more it makes me melancholy," Charles concluded.
¹⁰

It was a pessimistic letter, yet it held one bright sentence. "As long as there is life there is hope!" Charles exclaimed in the midst of his ill humor, and in fact he had begun to form one specific private hope, one that he did not share with his father. Murray of Broughton's assurances about the faithful Scots sworn to aid him once he landed in Scotland had strengthened his resolve and helped to sustain him amid his current troubles. Whatever else might happen, whether the French kept or broke their promises, whether or not the Jacobites in Paris destroyed themselves with infighting, Charles had a plan of his own. As Murray wrote later, Charles swore to him that "at all events, he was determined to come the following summer to Scotland, though with a single footman."

Chapter 8

Charles was finding his life in Paris intolerable. He felt stifled there, "imprisoned," as he put it, by the strong hand of the French court, prevented from living as he chose and forced to endure inaction. He tried to escape his quarrelsome advisers by going to the opera, but James forbade this. He could not go hunting, as the weather was too severe. He tried to tell himself that, sooner or later, the French invasion plan would be revived, but as winter closed in with its gales and frosts he recalled the bitter experience of the previous February and March and realized that no invasion would be launched until spring at the earliest.

He tried to be patient. "Whatever I may suffer," he wrote to James early in the new year 1745, "I shall not regret in the least as long as I think it of service for our great object. I would put myself in a tub, like Diogenes, if necessary."
¹
He nourished his dream of journeying to Scotland, but did not yet see how it could be done.

He had just written to the French foreign minister complaining that he had been living in Paris for eight months, waiting for the government to fulfill its promise that within six months at most a new invasion would be launched. This promise had not been honored, nor had his modest pension been augmented as he had been told it would be. He had been forced to borrow between thirty and thirty-five thousand
ecus
and was having to borrow more each month. He was about to leave Paris for the château of Fitzjames, a house which had been lent to him by his cousin the Duke of Fitzjames, younger brother of the Duke of Berwick. The house was in Picardy, situated along the Paris-Calais road, and the grounds offered excellent hunting—which he hoped to take advantage of if the weather improved. The prospect of leaving the stifling environment of Paris was exhilarating, but he could not leave until his debts were paid. It was an emergency.

Charles's remonstrances were noted in a minute at the French foreign office, where he had by no means been forgotten. To judge from what happened over the next few months, the French ministers had every intention of profiting from Charles's presence in France and from his pent-up energies and boundless ambition, but they intended to do this in their own time and in their own way. The war minister Argenson authorized payment of Charles's debts up to a limit of thirty thousand crowns—which in fact fell short of the total—and informed the controller general that no further sums were to be given to him.
²

Housing in Paris had become an acute problem. The stay in the house in Montmartre had not lasted long. From there, to save money, Charles had gone to stay for a time with a Scots banker, Aeneas MacDonald, assuring MacDonald that he would not be a guest for very long as the finance minister Orry had promised to secure a house for him. Orry had disappointed him, however, and so he had decided to rent the least expensive lodgings he could find. "I was forced to take a few rooms in town," he wrote, "which is but a hole, for to be less suspected, and also for want of money."
³
He was still living in this '"hole," with only Sheridan and another companion, George Kelly, for company when he decided to leave Paris for the château.

In contrast to the frail, fatherly Sheridan Kelly was a tough and doughty warrior, a man of immense willpower and determination who had spent his life in the service of the Stuarts. No one had made greater personal sacrifices than Kelly for the sake of restoring the Stuarts to the British throne. An active Jacobite plotter in the 1720s, he had been captured by the English—holding his captors off just long enough to destroy important papers which would have jeopardized others. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, he managed to survive its disease and damp for fourteen years, and finally escaped. He made his way to the continent, where he served as secretary to the Duke of Ormonde at Avignon. From there he came to Paris and Charles, who no doubt admired Kelly's toughness and indomitability, drew him into his circle. (Kelly, a Protestant and a parson, was a relative of Charles's Catholic confessor, a bibulous man also named Kelly.) Wit, courage, intelligence and discretion—all qualities Kelly had in abundance—were in short supply among the Jacobites of Paris, and it was no wonder Charles made a particular friend of Kelly.