Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (34 page)

While Daniel O'Brien, Charles's "'confidential valet," looked on to prevent breakage and theft, the soldiers searched the house and locked up the contents, including furnishings, plate, silver, papers, swords and guns (twenty-five muskets and thirty-four pistols—an arsenal indeed). In the process they turned out five miscellaneous persons who had been enjoying Charles's hospitality: three indigent Britons, one a refugee from the rebellion, a manservant and sometime wigmaker, and a fifteen-year-old Scottish boy whom Charles had taken in out of kindness. The horses and dogs were left in the care of twenty guardsmen, except for one little dog. Chariot, a gift from Charles to his friend Lady Clifford, which was taken home for safekeeping by the commander of the guard.

Clearly the French had no desire to punish Charles. His possessions were handled scrupulously, his personal papers left untouched. In the prison he was housed in two rooms, one of them large, with five fireplaces that were kept burning brightly. Excellent meals were served to him there, with the best Burgundy wine. O'Brien was even allowed to bring a number of Charles's fine suits of clothing to the prison so that he could dress as his rank deserved. Cheered somewhat by these comforts, he made the best of the situation, his anger subsiding. 'Tell all my friends that I am well," he wrote to Bulkeley on December 16. "My head has never left my shoulders. It is still there."
⁹

Finally on December 23, Charles was escorted to the Swiss border at Beauvoisin by a French officer. He had given his word not to make any more trouble, if only he were allowed to leave quietly with his servants and officers. Just before crossing the border, he sent his formal respects to the royal family, having assured the escorting

Frenchman several times that he would not reenter France or try to take refuge in the papal enclave of Avignon. His party moved on into Swiss territory, and the Frenchman breathed a sigh of relief. He had discharged his duty. He sent word to Maurepas that Charles was gone at last, adding that he, for one, was persuaded that he would never return.

Chapter 21

George II officially proclaimed the peace late in April of 1749, and ordered a week-long series of celebrations to inaugurate it. At night buildings were hung with hundreds of lanterns, their windows lit from within, their rooftops crowned with ornamental displays outlined in strings of lights. During the day, London was as congested as a bustling country fair, the streets full of coaches arriving from all parts of the kingdom, the squares lively with hurrying servants, the shops crammed with goods demanded by an enlivened populace come to spend a holiday in the capital. Scaffolds were erected around the park, where the fireworks spectacle was to be held, and guards patrolled the vicinity of St. James's to keep the milling crowds in order and prevent their excitement from turning to riot.

At Ranelagh, the vast pleasure gardens recently rebuilt at enormous cost, a "jubilee-masquerade in the Venetian manner" was held for the entertainment of what the newspapers of the time called "'people of fashion." The huge amphitheater was illuminated, and inside its arches were booths where masked shopkeepers sold crockery and trinkets and sweets. Two thousand people were accommodated, with room for more; they disported themselves at gaming tables, drank tea and wine, and danced to the music of masked musicians.

In the center of the huge open space was an artificial bower constructed of tall fir trees growing in tubs, their limbs festooned with flowers, and beneath these were rows of orange trees with small lamps inside each orange. Near the bower ran a narrow canal, where a gondola floated, gaily decorated with colored flags and streamers, and filled with musicians. Scattered here and there around the grounds were still more musicians, some playing country tunes on tabor and pipe, others dressed like huntsmen and playing hunting horns, still others disguised as Harlequins and Scaramouches. The joyous cacophony continued until late in the evening, the fashionable two thousand thronging from one masquerade scene to another, careful both to see and be seen, showing off their own rich costumes to impress one another.
¹

On the following night fireworks lit up the sky, the rockets shooting upward in a blazing display, the pinwheels spinning in place on a large "machine" erected to mount them. Pall Mall had been railed off and provided with seating for the nobility and Members of the House of Commons and their guests; King George, his favorite son Cumberland and his daughter Emily watched the spectacle from a nearby building. The Prince of Wales, no less at odds with his father than he had ever been, had not been invited to join the rest of the royal family and observed the fireworks from a separate vantage point. Despite a week of feverish preparations, the fireworks turned out to be something of a disappointment; the skyrockets were breathtaking but the squibs sputtered and fizzled and created a poor impression—and then, just when the show was well under way, one of the illuminated pavilions caught fire and burned to the ground.

The spectators were reasonably well behaved, however. There was little criminal mischief, and though two people were killed, this was thought to be a modest loss. (In similar celebrations of the peace held in Paris, forty people had been killed and nearly three hundred wounded, as a result of a violent dispute that broke out between the French and Italians who were jointly managing the fireworks display; each sought to be the first to light the fires, both lit theirs at once, and the entire battery went up in a huge explosion.)

Two further events rounded out the week's festivities. One was a "serenata" at the opera house called “Peace in Europe," the other a masked ball. The ball was by far the greater success, with all the notables of court and society attending dressed as Elizabethans and literary characters and figures from antiquity. One beauty was dressed—or rather undressed—as Iphigenia ready to be sacrificed. She was ''so naked," wrote a wit who attended the ball, "that the high-priest might easily inspect the entrails of the victim."
²

King George attended the ball "disguised in an old English habit," and very well disguised too, for another guest, not recognizing who he was, came up to him and asked him to hold his teacup while he danced. At this the king was reportedly "much pleased." Cumberland was similarly dressed, though his enormous bulk made him less easy to camouflage. He looked like a grotesque clown in a pantomime, pot-bellied and round-bottomed, his pudgy face ridiculous beneath an outmoded high curly wig.

George II was in his sixty-sixth year in 1749. For twenty-two of those years he had been king, a stiff, correct, often irascible figure who harassed his ministers and strode about restlessly when he had nothing to do. His vendetta with his son, his suffering with hemorrhoids and his intermittent struggles with his ministers, especially Newcastle whom he privately referred to as "an ass," preoccupied him, but not exclusively; he found time to go to the opera, review his troops and preside over the tame and stuffy evening entertainments that were held in his drawing rooms. In profile George's double-chinned face had become rather froglike, the heavy-lidded eyes protruding and the mouth drawn widely back in a half grimace under a large, slightly hooked nose. Aristocratic ladies, forced to listen to his ponderous monologues, found the king tedious, but in general his subjects complained about him less than they ever had. "George is Magnanimous," they sang in a new verse written after the defeat of the Jacobites,

"Subjects unanimous;

Peace to us bring:

His fame is glorious.

Reign meritorious,

God save the King!”

With George the Magnanimous more secure than ever on his throne, and the French danger put to rest, the fate of Charles Stuart was not of paramount interest to the English in this year of the peace. English diplomats were always eager for news of him, however, and took note of the rumors in Paris that he was in Venice, or in a Bolognese monastery, or possibly in Poland. The Parisians, who had come to look on Charles as their own particular celebrity, continued to lament his forced departure and to berate their king for engineering it. At their most histrionic they told one another that Charles was dead.

The French ministers were certain he was alive, but couldn't find him, despite extensive searching. They had reason to believe that he was somewhere in France, and probably not far from Paris, as his Parisian banker Waters was supplying him with money and forwarding his mail. Puisieux, furious at Charles for impudently ignoring his promises to stay out of the country, summoned Waters to Versailles and threatened him with execution if he didn't confess Charles's whereabouts. But Waters insisted that he was as ignorant as Puisieux himself; others took Charles his messages, Waters said, and only these others knew where to take them.
³

In fact, after a brief stay in Avignon, where he enjoyed the hospitality of his former governor Lord Dunbar and Dunbar's sister Lady Inverness, Charles and his companion Henry Goring left for parts unknown, deliberately keeping their destination secret from nearly everyone. Charles's dilemma was acute. Under the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle he could not be harbored in any European state, save the anomalous spiritual domain of the pope. But even the pope was subject to pressure from the secular authorities. Three-quarters of the revenues received by the See of Rome were from France, and could at any time be cut off by the French king. And the British navy in the Mediterranean was in a position to harass papal territories by sea, as in fact the Hanoverian government threatened to do when they learned that Charles was in Avignon.

The only solution was to go into hiding, and this Charles did, showing the same skill and resourcefulness in evading the English spies and the French security forces as he had shown in evading Cumberland's forces in Scotland in 1746. He was adept at disguising himself, altering his clothes, his wig, his voice—perhaps even masquerading as a woman as he had on Skye. He had a repertoire of aliases—student, servant, clergyman, traveling Englishman. What Goring's skills may have been we can only guess. What is certain is that the two fugitives, relying chiefly on their wits, as money was scarce, managed to travel with remarkable freedom through France over the following three years, despite the guards that waited for them along the roads and in the larger towns, watching for anyone who bore a resemblance to Charles.

Catching him became something of an obsession with the French police; they distributed posters with his likeness throughout the country, and conducted random searches in Paris and elsewhere in hopes of flushing him out. But though they had good reason to believe he was there, virtually underfoot, they never found him, and his cleverness in evading capture vexed them almost as much as his earlier refusal to leave Paris had vexed the king.

Shortly before Charles and Goring left Avignon, the son Louise de Rohan-Guéméné had borne the previous July died. He was less than seven months old, and had been given the name Charles Godefroi. Louise's relatives honored him as one of their own, burying him in the family crypt at the convent of the Feuillants and never betraying a hint of doubt as to his paternity. When and how Charles learned of the infant's death is unknown, as he never wrote a word about him that has survived—and perhaps he did not like to think about him either.

Though Charles spent the following years in a sort of internal exile in France, he did not really live a vagabond life. He had Waters's bank as his
pied-à-terre
in Paris, and Mme. de Talmont's estate at Luneville in Lorraine as his second hidden home. From 1750 on he had a third secret residence: the Convent of St. Joseph in Paris, where the Princesse de Talmont kept an apartment for herself and where two of her friends, the Comtesse de Vasse and Elizabeth Ferrand, also lived. The countess and Mile. Ferrand were both staunch admirers of Charles and were committed to helping him and his cause; however, they came to find his quarrels with the princess irritating and his presence, perhaps predictably, led to jealousy among the three women. Still, he managed to rotate his residences often enough to prevent both discovery by the French authorities and excessive tedium to himself and others and occasional visits to Strasbourg, Venice (where he was soon expelled) and elsewhere gave added variety.

In the summer of 1750 Horace Mann, the waspish English envoy in Florence, was more frustrated than ever in his futile effort to locate Charles. He had heard that he was in Lorraine—but where?—and also that he was in a Bolognese convent. There were rumors that he had gone to Poland, or Hungary, and it not infrequently happened that Mann received reports of his having been seen in three or four places at once. In August Mann learned from his English counterpart in Paris that Charles had been very ill, "at the point of death for many days," and that he had been forced to reveal his identity to the physician he called to treat him in order to impress on the man how important it was that he survive.
⁴

Adding to Mann's vexation was the fact that he could get no useful information from Rome. Charles continued his practice of writing periodically to his father—never to his brother—and sending news of his health. The letters were brief and perfunctory, bearing no dates and containing no clues as to their geographical origins. They were carried by various travelers, and arrived at unpredictable intervals. James was in despair at not knowing more, and Mann too despaired, for his informers relied on James and Henry for their information.

In July of 1750 James received an unexpected request from his elder son. Charles asked that his father renew his Commission of Regency—an almost certain precursor of renewed political activity. James complied, no doubt wishing that he could be privy to Charles's plans, and calling him "a continual heartbreak." He also sent him two likenesses of himself carved on gemstones.

New plans were indeed afoot. Charles was very active that summer, gathering funds and depositing them with Waters, ordering his representative in Antwerp to buy a costly shipload of arms (including muskets to the remarkable number of twenty-six thousand) and arranging for a ship to transport them. There were references in the ever-cryptic Jacobite correspondence to "'the great affair of L."
⁵
It seems probable that "L" was London, and the "great affair" an anticipated Jacobite coup.