Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (7 page)

Every well-bred man should cultivate politeness, Chesterfield wrote, avoiding the English propensity to be either shamefaced or impudent and behaving in an easy and natural way, attempting to please yet never pressing himself on others in an irritating fashion. The politeness of an elegant man puts others at their ease, is comfortable rather than tense, and is above all unobtrusive.

Indeed unobtrusiveness is a primary virtue in a genuinely polite man, according to Chesterfield. He ought never to call attention to his own social superiority, particularly with servants, and he ought to avoid talking about himself as much as possible. In fact, he ought not to talk very much at all, for to be reserved while appearing candid is the first lesson of diplomacy.

On the potentially treacherous arena of politics, Chesterfield had a good deal to say. It would be naive, he counseled, not to assume that every man involved in politics is out to gain his own ends; indeed one ought to be suspicious of anyone who feigns disinterest. It would be equally naive to expect logic and rationality to prevail over irrationality and subjectivity in the dealings of power-seeking men; they are fallible, emotional, excitable, and can often be swayed by judicious flattery or by the influence of their mistresses. Flattery is particularly effective, though it requires tact, for the more important the personage you wish to flatter, the more careful and indirect your flattery has to be.

Chesterfield's advice about sex was worldly and practical. He advised the polished young man to seek out the erotic company of well=mannered women, for they could be useful to him in advancing himself as they often had the ear of important men. Seduction, like dancing and music, was a necessary accomplishment for a man of the world. Chesterfield's view of women in general, though, was unflattering. He thought them weak-minded and inconstant, like overgrown children, incapable of solid reasoning or good sense.

One wonders just what instruction Charles was given in manners and conversation, and on the subtler points of manipulating and influencing others without becoming manipulated by them. He had ample opportunity to learn by doing, for when still a child he was taken to Carnival balls where reportedly he "bore his part ... as if he were already a man."
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He met the guests at the Palazzo Muti with a graciousness that greatly impressed them, and showed no awkwardness as he approached adolescence. His childish prettiness became youthful princeliness, and his strong arms and legs were becoming manly. Portrait painters now portrayed him as a self-possessed, statesmanlike youth, determined and ready to carry on his father's cause and to make it his own.

If he was to begin to do this, he needed to make a military reputation, for as Murray pointed out, he ''had no fortune in the world but what he must gain by the point of his sword." His opportunity came in the summer of 1734, when he was thirteen.

The army of Spain, accompanied by the nineteen-year-old Don Carlos, heir to the Spanish throne, was besieging the fortified town of Gaeta on the coast midway between Naples and Rome. The siege was an episode in the prolonged confrontation between the forces of the emperor Charles VI, who ruled Naples and Sicily, and Philip V of Spain, Don Carlos's stepfather, who sought to seize the territories. With the help of the French, the Spanish armies under the command of the Duke of Montemar were slowly winning over the imperialists, and by July of 1734 they were advancing toward Naples. Calling himself "King of Naples," Don Carlos anticipated victory and expected that the emperor's soldiers, who had taken their stand at Gaeta, would not be able to hold out for long.

One of those intending to take part in the siege was Charles's cousin the Duke of Liria, who had recently become Duke of Berwick on his father's death. He proposed to James that Charles be allowed to join the besieging forces and after some hesitation James agreed. Charles was eager to go—as was Henry, only nine years old but burning to be off on campaign with his brother, and mortified when James told him he would have to stay home. After a farewell visit to the pope, who blessed him and sent him on his way with a large coffer of coins, Charles left for the wars, taking Murray, Sheridan, a half-dozen servants and two friars with him. The day after his departure James wrote his son a letter, and sent it off together with a scabbard which, he said, "may be of use to you." "Remember and practice all I said to you yesterday," he reminded Charles, "and then you will I hope be one day both a great and a good man, which I pray God to make you, and that I may have good accounts of you, which will be the greatest comfort I can have during your absence."
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The group arrived at Gaeta to find that the siege was in its final stages. Nevertheless Berwick took Charles immediately to where Don Carlos was holding court and there Charles was greeted as Prince of Wales and shown every formal courtesy. According to Murray, who sent a detailed account of events in Gaeta to James in Rome, Charles was grateful for these honors but asked that he be shown no special distinction as he was under his father's orders to remain incognito. When the king arrived, Murray went on, Charles went to meet him and talked to him "very prettily" and without the least display of awkwardness or embarrassment. Indeed he talked to Don Carlos "with the same ease as he used to do to any of the Cardinals at Rome," introducing Murray and Sheridan to him and keeping up a gracious flow of conversation. It was noticeably more gracious than that of Don Carlos, who was, according to Murray, ''of a bashful temper" and inclined to be brittle in his manner.
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The following morning Charles returned to the court and dined there, after which Don Carlos, who conferred on him the honorary rank of general of artillery, took him by boat to the vicinity of the military camp, to a house from which he was accustomed to watching the fighting. The king's advisers told him the house was the officers' command post, Murray wrote, but in fact officers only went there while Don Carlos was there, to lend credibility to this fiction. The house was of no significance whatever, and was perfectly safe from the enemy's guns. Everyone but Don Carlos himself seemed to know the truth, and the soldiers laughed at him behind his back, the thing being "a joke to the whole army,"

If he were not to be laughed at, Charles would have to get a great deal closer to the action than this, yet, as Murray realized, the Spaniards would be "mortified extremely" if Charles were seen to display more courage than Don Carlos, who was six years his senior. Military etiquette too had to be considered, and permission given from the commander Montemar. These issues were apparently resolved, for Berwick took his young cousin into the trenches, where ''he showed not the least concern at the enemy's fire, even when the balls were hissing about his ears."

The following day Berwick had suddenly to leave the house where he was staying, when five of the siege guns began firing on it at once, making gaping holes in the walls. The duke got out, but Charles, who arrived on the scene only moments later, insisted on going into the house despite the evident danger, and stayed there "a very considerable time with an undisturbed countenance."
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Berwick, apprehensive not only for his cousin's safety but because he had promised James he would be responsible for the boy, tried to take Charles into the trenches only at times when the enemy guns were customarily silent, so that he would run "little or no risk." And Murray wrote, a little cynically, that by visiting the trenches at a safe hour Charles was gaining "in a few days a great reputation at a very cheap rate."
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Still, Charles was obstreperous and eager to show how brave he was, and insisted on going back several times to the house where the cannon had breached the walls, enjoying the fact that he was tempting fate.

He must also have enjoyed the stir he was creating with his charm and liveliness. Possibly because he was such a contrast to the diffident Don Carlos, the Spaniards were delighted with him. He was "adored by the officers and soldiers," Berwick wrote, for "his manner and conversation are really bewitching."
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He mingled with the men, asking each one how he carried out his particular duties, talking with sappers and engineers and experts in artillery as if exceptionally concerned with their individual branch of siege craft. On one occasion he visited a group of men engaged in building earthworks, and began talking with them. "They were struck with wonder and astonishment," a witness wrote later, "when they heard this young Prince speaking to each of them in their own language. To the Walloon he spoke French, Spanish to the Spaniards, and to the Italians Italian, being perfect master of these three languages. The soldiers flocked about him and disputed among themselves who should have the honor of speaking a word to him."
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Word of Charles's bravery went out via the Spaniards to Spain, and via the French to French diplomats throughout Europe. Unfortunately, it was also widely publicized that he had brought two friars along in his retinue—a faux pas which was certain to be published to his detriment in the newspapers in Protestant Holland and England. It was "one of those minor things which could lose a kingdom," Murray was told by Don Carlos's Italian physician, a cultivated man who had the Stuarts' interests at heart.

To counterbalance this there were the reports of Charles's winning manners, his success in gaining the genuine liking of Don Carlos, and his evident civility. He dined frequently with the king and with the officers, and spent time conversing with "some pretty gentlemen" Berwick knew. He never went to court, according to Murray, without saying something memorable while there; people remarked "that he was already a man," though still a boy in years. "Today at court," Murray wrote, "his cockade fell from his hat and Mr. de St. Estevan took it up and the hat in order to put it on, but was placing it wrong, upon which the King put it right." Charles immediately remarked "that he would keep that cockade as long as he lived because His Majesty had done him the honor to touch it."
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It was flattery of the kind Chesterfield would have commended.

The Gaeta campaign whetted Charles's appetite for the military life, and after the capitulation of the fortress he went on to Naples at the invitation of Don Carlos. He wanted to accompany the Spanish army into Sicily, but James ordered him home. Despite the good reports he had received, he was dissatisfied with Charles for writing him so infrequently and so perfunctorily. (One of Charles's letters to his father read, in its entirety, "I am very glad that you are contented with me. I have been very good and hope with the Grace of God to continue so and humbly ask your Blessing. Charles P[rince]."
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Beyond this, James was worried about his son's eating habits, even though Murray had written him that the boy ate twice as much at Gaeta as he did at home. "I earnestly recommend to you," James wrote to Charles, "to have a particular care of your diet, for it would be a foolish and vexatious thing should you fall sick there, by eating trash, and so not be able to do and see what is fit for you."
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The food in Naples was bad enough, but that of Sicily would be impossible. Prince Charles must come home. So, laden with jewels, looking "rich and opulent," and no doubt shining with the praise and attention he had received, Charles returned to Rome with his retinue.

His reputation had preceded him. Von Stosch, who had dismissed the idea of sending a mere boy to the scene of fighting as a showy and meaningless gesture, was impressed with what he had heard about Charles. "Everybody says that he will be in time a far more dangerous enemy to the present establishment of the Government of England than ever his father was," he wrote. And while this was not saying much, given James's dismal record as a would-be conqueror, still it attested to the extent and degree of favorable comment that was making the rounds of the European courts.

While Charles was advancing his reputation Clementina, who had sent him off to Gaeta with her blessing and her prayers, was pursuing the austere regimen which had prematurely aged her. She was no longer, in her own mind, Mme. de St. Georges, she would never be Queen of England, nor would she survive to see her charming Carlusu become king. Her asthma prostrated her, her prolonged fasting weakened her and left her hollow-eyed and pasty-faced. Beyond her children, nothing gave her satisfaction but her endless devotions. She did not dine with James and his guests any longer, and was rarely seen outside the Palazzo Muti. She stayed secluded in her darkened apartments, growing weaker and yet continuing to fast until her body was wasted and her gums bled from scurvy. Spies ill the household reported all this to the English agents, who drew the unkind conclusion that Clementina was trying to mortify her flesh past endurance so that through her early death she could earn canonization. If she could not be Queen of England she could at least be Saint Clementina, a martyr to her faith.

Charles and Henry were summoned to their dying mother's bedside. Her final wish was for them never to renounce their faith, no matter what political pressure might be placed on them, not "for all the kingdoms in the world, none of which could ever be compared to the Kingdom of Heaven." With her sorrowful sons and husband near her she died in January of 1735, and her thin embalmed body was dressed in queenly purple for the funeral. Thousands of wax tapers surrounded her bier in the Santi Apostoli church adjacent to the Palazzo Muti where the funeral was held. James was so distraught, Murray reported, that he nearly fainted, while the two boys were "almost sick with weeping and want of sleep, and on all sides there was nothing but lamentation." Huge crowds assembled to watch as the funeral procession went on its way to St. Peter's. Clementina was indeed venerated, and mourned. In accordance with her wishes the purple robe was laid aside and she was buried in the habit of a Dominican nun. Her heart was placed in an urn in the Santi Apostoli church. It was not long before people began to claim that miracles were being performed at her tomb.

Afterward, James developed the habit of praying for an hour each morning in Santi Apostoli. It may have been a sort of penance for his shortcomings as a husband, or it may have been a simple tribute to Clementina's memory, performed by an exceptionally methodical and conscientious man. Certainly James changed, no longer playing the hearty Englishman but subsiding more and more into a semi-reclusive life. He continued to hold court for visitors in the mornings, and invited them to stay to dinner afterward, but he did not put forth the effort to be an effusive host, and he spoke little during the meal. As soon as he sat down at the table his sons approached him and knelt down, asking him to bless them. This ritual completed, the servants came in with the meal. There was a good deal of strained silence as the food was served, and much consternation was caused by the fact that, as James did not drink any wine, the guests had to refuse it also, for to drink before their royal host did would have been the height of bad manners. To the relief of the thirsty company, James did not linger at the table but retired immediately after he finished his meal. In the evenings James occasionally went with his sons to social gatherings, but only stayed an hour or so. His health troubled him, his physicians sometimes prescribing goat's milk to improve his digestion along with "a course of steel."
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