Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (23 page)

The prince’s plans were now progressing more favourably than he had dared hope. Not a word of what was really afoot was breathed to those outside the inner circle: James, Tencin, O’Brien, Marischal, Sempill and Balhaldy were all expressly excluded.
⁶⁶
The French had not the slightest idea of what was going on.
⁶⁷

As the prospect of a voyage to Scotland ascended the scale of probability, from dream to vague project to strong possibility, the prince distracted himself at Navarre by hunting stags in the great forest there. Now he had to decide whom he could take with him.

The Irish trio of Kelly, Sheridan and O’Sullivan had to be taken, since they had been in on the secret from the very beginning. O’Sullivan further commended himself by some slight (though much-exaggerated) military experience in Italy.
⁶⁸
The decision to take the old and ailing Sheridan was controversial, but Sheridan had used all his prima donna wiles on the prince: begging, weeping, cajoling.
⁶⁹
James never forgave the old tutor for this. The man he had sent into France to restrain the prince’s excesses had ended, as he saw it, by throwing in his lot with a madcap adventure. Underlying James’s feelings for Sheridan was a resentment that Charles Edward preferred this substitute father, who had never disciplined his charge like a good and dutiful parent, but merely indulged him shamelessly.

The motive in taking Sheridan along was certainly in part a desire on Charles’s part to snub his father. And no other explanation is possible in the case of Francis Strickland, the fourth Irishman to make the trip to Scotland. Strickland, an old hunting crony of the prince’s, his brother Henry’s ex-tutor, and friend of Dunbar, was dismissed from James’s service early in 1745. He promptly sought out the prince in France and was taken into his entourage. This
further
enraged James and incidentally finished off Dunbar’s already faltering career at the Palazzo Muti.
⁷⁰

With four Irishmen in his party, but outward bound for Scotland, the prince felt the need to ‘balance the ticket’. He had already decided to take the marquis of Tullibardine (the ‘duke of Atholl’ in Jacobite eyes) as a pretender to the key Atholl holdings in and around Blair Castle.
⁷¹
Aeneas MacDonald, who had contacts in the Clanranald country, was prepared to go along to protect his investment.
⁷²
Finally, the prince chose Sir John MacDonald, a bibulous, cross-grained ex-soldier with contacts among the ship-owning fraternity, to accompany him on the basis of personal liking.
⁷³
These four Irishmen and three Scots made up the far from magnificent ‘Seven Men of Moidart’ of later legend.

The prince also had to decide his strategy. This had been the subject of a veritable essay-writing contest between Scottish Jacobites in France and their counterparts in the Highlands. Old Lochiel, chief of the Camerons, had originally proposed making landfall at Inverlochy, but this was considered too far away from the main population centres.
⁷⁴
Sir James Campbell of Auchinbreck, another of the many Jacobites by bankruptcy, proposed landing at Loch Fine, three days’ march from Glasgow.
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Lord Lovat had favoured a simultaneous seizure of Inverlochy and Fort Augustus.
⁷⁶

But Charles Edward had been greatly impressed with Sir Hector Maclean, who was in France during the winter of 1744–5.
⁷⁷
Sending Maclean on ahead to prepare his clan, the prince made plans to land on the island of Mull.
⁷⁸
In addition to the Macleans, the prince hoped to have under his standard within weeks the combined forces of Cameron of Lochiel and Cluny MacPherson, plus the MacGregors, Appin Stewarts, and MacDonalds of Glengarry, Glencoe and Clanranald.
⁷⁹
The immediate target would be all the castles and forts in Scotland garrisoned by Hanoverian troops.
⁸⁰
Unfortunately, the plan to land on Mull aborted when Sir Hector Maclean was taken prisoner soon after reaching Scotland and incarcerated in Edinburgh Castle.
⁸¹

Last minute preparations were now made. The prince had given letters for Perth and Murray of Broughton to Sir Hector Maclean, but sent on separate messages for them in the changed circumstances, plus his manifestoes and Commission of Regency, with instructions that both be published together.
⁸²
He next sent Sir John MacDonald secretly to Nantes to co-ordinate the shipping with Walsh.
⁸³

Immediately a major snag was uncovered. The
Elisabeth
, though having received her commission to cruise in Scottish waters, was being detained in Brest by the Marine Commissary, pending further
orders
about the future uses of the Brest fleet. Walsh knew what to do in such a situation. A bribe of 1,500 livres was paid over; the
Elisabeth
was released.
⁸⁴
Ruttlidge weighed anchor to take the warship to the rendezvous at Belle-Isle.

At Navarre the prince laid down a smokescreen to cover his tracks. He informed O’Brien that he was going on a sightseeing excursion to the monastery of La Trappe, where his grandfather James II spent his last pious years; from there he and his party would stop over at Paris.
⁸⁵
The departure of his entourage would not then occasion any surprise. He then sent Sir Thomas Geraldin to Spain to lobby for support. Letters explaining his actions were sent to his father and other Jacobites in Rome. The courier had instructions to make a leisurely journey and tarry awhile at Avignon, seeking support from Ormonde and Marischal, before proceeding to Rome, so that there could be no possibility of James’s recalling them.
⁸⁶

The prince and his companions sped to Nantes, each taking a different route to conceal the design. When they arrived they lodged in different hotels and pretended to meet by accident.
⁸⁷
The prince went down to the quayside in disguise. All ‘Seven Men of Moidart’ went under assumed names.
⁸⁸
Joining up with Walsh and MacDonald, they left the city in two boats and proceeded down the Loire to St Nazaire.
⁸⁹

After a night spent at an inn, they embarked next morning (22 June OS; 3 July NS) in fine weather on the
Doutelle
(sometimes known as
Du Teillay
), a 16-gun frigate.
⁹⁰
Contrary winds held them up at the mouth of the Loire, but eventually they stood away for Belle-Isle.
⁹¹
The prince was not a good sailor. Even on the short leg to Belle-Isle he suffered from sea-sickness.
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There were other matters to make them all nervous. Two French ships, inbound for Nantes, crossed their track and recognised Walsh’s colours. This increased fears among the nervous (Sheridan especially) that their secret would be out before they were properly seaborne.
⁹³

They made rendezvous with the
Elisabeth
on 12 July.
⁹⁴
The
Elisabeth
was a 64-gun man o’ war. Ruttlidge had done a superb job of fitting her out. In addition to the arms cache, 700 men from Clare’s regiment (from the Irish brigade in the service of France) were on board as volunteers for an ostensible privateering mission.
⁹⁵
The contemporary practice of taking ships out of regular commission into privateering and back again extended to men like those in Clare’s, who on this occasion were to be used as marines.
⁹⁶

Ruttlidge was sent back to Paris with the prince’s letters of explanation for Louis XV and the ministers of state.
⁹⁷
With Walsh as
captain
, Charles Edward’s party on the
Doutelle
settled into their quarters. Apart from the ‘Seven Men’, they included the prince’s chaplain Abbé Butler, his valet Michele Vezzozi, Donald Cameron (one of old Lochiel’s retainers) who was to act as pilot in Scottish waters, and Aeneas MacDonald’s clerk Duncan Buchanan. On 16 July the two ships stood away into the open Atlantic.

What was in Charles Edward’s mind as the shores of Belle-Isle merged with the horizon? What did he think he was doing? Why did he conceal his mission from his father and the French? Was his enterprise a rational one, or was it a mad, quixotic, juvenile scheme worthy only of a Polish blockhead?

We must look first at his own account of his motivation. The most extended version of this is in the long letter Charles sent his father from Navarre on 12 June, in which he revealed for the first time the true reason he wanted his jewels pawned. After complaining of the ‘scandalous usage’ he had had from the French for the past eighteen months, he went on to make the obvious and telling point that Versailles would never make the first move towards a Stuart restoration. Even when they seriously intended to invade England, they had merely wanted to use the Jacobites for their own ends. So the choice before the prince was clear. He could remain in misery in France, in permanent limbo; he could admit defeat and return to Rome; or he could force the French to act by giving them an opportunity too good to miss.
⁹⁸
Only the last choice was a feasible one for the hero:

I cannot but mention a parable here which is: a horse that is to be sold, if spurred does not skip or show some signs of life, nobody would care to have him for nothing; just so my friends would care very little to have me, if after such usage, which all the world is sensible of, I should not show that I have life in me.
⁹⁹

As for James’s trust in patient diplomacy, this was a forlorn hope. Twenty-six years had gone by since the last Jacobite rising. All that time Jacobite diplomacy had beaten in vain against the cliff-face of the powers’ self-interest. Spain, Austria, Russia, France, all had been courted with great skill and punctiliousness, and all with no result. Even now, when France was at war with England, the combination of Louis XV’s fecklessness and the divisions among ministers of state meant that no firm, spontaneous decision to support the Stuarts would ever be made. The prince poured scorn on his father’s hopes of Tencin: the cardinal was both useless and powerless; Louis XV
despised
and disliked him but, characteristically, was too lazy to replace him.

Finally, the prince pointed out, reasonably enough, that if he had alerted either Versailles or the Palazzo Muti to what he intended, he would have been prevented. The French would have taken particular delight in currying favour with the Hanoverians (with whom they intermittently contemplated peace) and in presenting themselves to James as statesmanlike in having scotched such a rash adventure.

In other correspondence the prince revealed the things he could not say to James. Here he laid bare his disenchantment with his father as well as with France.
¹⁰⁰
There would have been problems even if France or Spain had sincerely wanted to help him. Because of his anomalous position as leader of the Jacobite movement but not its official head (in Bagehot’s terms its efficient but not dignified aspect), he would have been compelled to go to Rome to get his father to sign a formal treaty. In the meantime the summer of 1745 would have slipped away while diplomats in Versailles and Madrid dickered and wrangled over the fine print. The opportunity would be lost. By the time all was ready, the power (or powers) could plead the advent of winter as an excuse to pull out from the enterprise.

Already we can see here the resentment against his father’s seniority and the hatred of French supineness that the prince was eventually to conflate as one single oppressive authority. Yet the prince’s reasons were cogent enough and, given his own premises of action or death, unassailable. The prince was driven onwards out of France by one set of powerful forces and drawn towards Scotland by another.
¹⁰¹

Jame’s reaction, when he eventually read his son’s apologia, was one of shocked horror. To the public world he put up a show of bravado. The tenor of his correspondence to Louis XV and the French ministers was: the prince was wrong to go, but now that he has gone we must support him with all our power.
¹⁰²
But in private he inveighed against Sheridan, Strickland and Dunbar, and commented bitterly on his son’s penchant for bad company, wild amusements, and above all, his over-fondness for wine.
¹⁰³
Those, like Benedict XIV, who saw him at really close quarters, were appalled at the physical and psychological deterioration in the Stuart monarch. Frantically, James asked the Pope for a loan of 100,000 crowns (£25,000 approx.) against the jewels in the Monte di Pietà.
¹⁰⁴
Feeling genuine compassion for a man who ‘bore his misfortunes like a saint’, Benedict authorised the loan, even though the market value of the jewels had declined and they were no longer worth that much.
¹⁰⁵

If on the basis of outer propulsion Charles Edward had a strong case, did he have a valid one in terms of Scotland’s own gravitational pull? One of the strongest indictments against Charles Edward Stuart has always been the charge that he sacrificed thousands of Scottish lives and destroyed an entire way of life on a mindless whim.
¹⁰⁶
The hidden premiss of this argument is that the 1745 rising was bound to fail. Either, then, Charles Edward was extremely stupid in that he failed to see what everyone else could perceive clearly, or he was morally vicious in that he too perceived it but pressed ahead none the less, driven by who knows what demon.

But it is abundantly clear that none of the actors in the drama of the 1745 rising saw it as bound to fail. Such a view is the extrapolation of the historian working with hindsight and, in many cases, worshipping the god of historical inevitability. The indictment against the prince can therefore be dealt with at two levels.

All revolutionaries, especially failed ones, are liable to the charge that in pursuing their aims they throw up unintended consequences. This view has usually been received with rapture by the conservative or counter-revolutionary persuasion.
¹⁰⁷
It has less often been seen that the argument leads logically to political quietism, in which any demand for change can be countered with the accusation that it may engender unintended consequences. It is strange how readily a political theory that amounts to a demand for guarantees for one’s future actions has been embraced by people who would never dream of demanding the same standard of proof in any other sphere of their lives.