Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (62 page)

In the summer of 1747 the prince’s depression was remarked on by all observers.
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Suddenly there was a remarkable change both in his fortunes and attitude. A letter of congratulation to Louis XV on
Saxe’s
great victories secured an invitation to Versailles in early October. There at last the prince secured for Lochiel the regiment which he had promised as collateral for the security the Cameron chief had taken in Lochaber in August 1745 and for which Charles had lobbied assiduously ever since. The regiment, once obtained, was worth three times the annual income from Lochiel’s holdings at Achnacarry.
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At the end of September, too, signs of the old compassionate prince were once more in evidence. Writing to James about the capitulation of Bergen-en-Zoom (he never wrote now on any but public subjects and never mentioned Henry), he said he was very glad, as the surrender had saved the lives of many ‘honest men’.
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After the low point of his mid-summer depression, the prince seemed to have experienced a spiritual rebirth. What had happened? The truth was that Charles had experienced the first sustained love affair of his life. In passionate intensity it was certainly his most significant relationship ever with a woman.

Marie Louise-Henriette-Jeanne de la Tour d’Auvergne was the daughter of the duc de Bouillon. By marriage she was duchesse de Montbazon and Princesse de Rohan. She was also Charles Edward’s first cousin, since her mother was Clementina Sobieska’s sister, Marie Charlotte.
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At the time of her affair with Charles Edward, she was twenty-two and married to the Prince of Rohan-Guémène, one year her junior, with whom she had had a son in 1745. The couple had been married in 1743 in a dynastic union between two Jacobite families, the Bouillons and the Rohans.
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The Rohan-Guémènes were staunch supporters of the Stuart prince. When Richard Warren announced his rescue attempt of the prince in summer 1746, his projected exploit brought him an immediate interview with Louise (duchesse de Montbazon) and her formidable mother-in-law the Princesse de Guémène.
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But although Charles Edward had met Louise before (their first meeting was in early 1745 during his first period in France), it was not until late summer 1747 that romance blossomed.
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Exactly when and where the affair commenced – whether at Navarre in early September or at St Ouen shortly afterwards – cannot be determined. But it is clear that once the liaison did begin, it was passionate and erotic. Louise was obviously a highly-sexed woman and Charles Edward had already acquired a strong taste for carnal pleasure. The first phase of the relationship was easy and had an idyllic quality. Louise’s husband was away at the wars in Flanders. The lovers frequently spent nights together, either at the Guémène
residence
on the place Royale or at St Ouen, which Louise could visit under a plausible pretext, since her great uncle the comte d’Evreux had a summer place there, next door to the prince’s house.
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It was in October that Louise conceived the prince’s first child.
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But immediately afterwards difficulties in their liaison began. The ending of the summer season removed the pretext for Louise’s visits to St Ouen. Thenceforth the prince had to go clandestinely to the Guémène house for his nights of frenzied love-making. To keep the affair a secret, the lovers took elaborate precautions. A coach, heavily draped and guarded, took the prince at night to the rue Minimes in Paris. When the coast was clear, the prince got out and made his way by side entrances to the Guémène residence in place Royale (the rue Minimes ran parallel to the place).

Since the coach was soon observed threading its way along the country lanes of St Ouen at the same time each night, the Paris police were alerted. At first lieutenant of police Berryer thought there was an English assassination plot against the prince. Then Daniel O’Brien, the prince’s valet and the only man he ever really trusted, was stopped for questioning by the police, following an early-morning incident involving the coach. It became clear that the prince was involved in a clandestine affair of the heart. The name of the lady in question was not mentioned. Satisfied, Berryer called off his dogs.
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The tempestuous affair now absorbed most of the prince’s energies. He was besotted with Louise: physical desire was compounded by the feeling that she too, like him, was a rebel and an outsider. The prince even proposed to give up his claim to the Sobieski inheritance on her behalf, much to James’s irritation.
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He showed a wholly unwonted indifference to affairs of state. That there was an element of ‘
epater les Français
’ in his relationship is clear from the few moments in late 1747 when he was called upon to play a political role. He was at the duchesse d’Aiguillon’s house with the
philosophe
Montesquieu when news of Hawke’s victory at Cape Finisterre came in. Charles Edward at once spoke with pride of the skill of Hawke and Anson. Montesquieu protested: were these not victories by his enemies? ‘That’s true,’ the prince replied archly, ‘but it’s still my country’s fleet.’
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An even more pointed snub to France occurred one night when the prince was at supper with the duc de Gèsvres and some of the ministers of state. The English had just landed troops in Brittany for an extended raid. One of the ministers suggested that Louis XV should put the prince in command of the forces sent to expel them. The prince rejected the idea out of hand. On English soil he was
prepared
to fight those who resisted his claim to the throne but ‘I can never think of fighting Englishmen in any other cause’.
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The issue of how he would behave towards France if he were king of England was then brought up. The prince replied that he saw no necessary incompatibility between the interests of the two countries, but if this proved to be the case, naturally he would put English interests first.

Such moments were brief interludes only in the round of passion. For a time it seemed to the prince that he had found the meaning in life which had hitherto always eluded him. When Louise announced that she was pregnant, the delighted prince would lay his head down on her belly, listen to the unborn child and even talk to it.
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And still both lovers’ deep physical and emotional satisfaction persisted, even through the usual storms affecting all love affairs. On one occasion the prince had to leave Louise’s bedroom in great haste to avoid being discovered. On another, after a lovers’ quarrel and in a rage, the prince threatened to fire off both his pistols at dead of night in the place Royale.

None of this was very serious. But in December a more formidable obstacle to the young lovers than Berryer’s police appeared. Louise’s husband Jules returned from the wars. To conceal the truth about the pregnancy, Louise had to allow a brief resumption of conjugal relations. Then the lovers had to decide how to deal with the much deteriorated situation. Louise suggested that it might be better if Charles did not come to her bedroom until half an hour after her husband had settled down for the night in his own apartment. This meant that their tryst could not commence until well after midnight. At that rate the prince would be returning to St Ouen in broad daylight. He solved the problem by moving to a house in the rue du Chemin du Rempart near Porte St Honoré. This was to be his last open abode in Paris.
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Yet his own psychological problems could not be so easily dealt with. The return of the young husband brought on towering fits of jealousy. This was almost predictable, given the prince’s fragile self-esteem. Once the masking of the pregnancy had been achieved, he made Louise swear to abstain from intercourse with her husband.
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The jealousy extended backwards in time as well. Perhaps Louise was more experienced than Charles thought, perhaps she had had other lovers before him? The prince’s insane possessiveness for another man’s wife can best be gauged from the fact that, despite perennial pleas of poverty to his supporters, he put Mlle Carteret, one of Louise’s confidantes, on a permanent pension in return for her
discovering
Louise’s true feelings for him.
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He need not have put himself to so much trouble. Mlle Carteret reported that Louise loved only him, that her passion for him was akin to madness, that she lived solely to be in his arms.

But there was a new serpent in paradise. The Princesse de Guémène, Louise’s mother-in-law, was a dominant matriarch. She now began to complain to Louise and Mlle Carteret of strange noises heard at night.
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Louise grew alarmed. She asked the prince to space his visits out more and to exercise even greater caution lest they be discovered
in flagrante
and her reputation ruined.

As Louis XV, James and a host of others could have testified, the one thing the prince would not tolerate was somebody trying to ‘give him laws’. He reacted to Louise’s suggestion with rage. It was a straight choice. She could put her security and reputation first, or she could choose him with all the attendant ‘inconveniences’. Which was it to be?
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Unfortunately for both of them, as it later turned out, Louise was essentially weak. She had no means of dealing with a dominant will like the prince’s. She threatened not to see him again if he did not behave less recklessly on his nocturnal visits, but spoiled her ultimatum by revealing her true emotions in the last line of the letter.

The prince knew how to deal with this sort of thing. He called her bluff in spectacular fashion and threatened to cause a public scandal in the Guémène household unless Louise did his bidding in every exact particular. More precisely, he threatened that if he was not allowed to spend the entire night in her bedroom when he felt like it, he would create a scene by skulking all night long in the place Royale below. Cowed and browbeaten, Louise gave in.
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But now came a dramatic new development. The Princesse de Guémène had just been waiting for her son to go to Marly before confronting her daughter-in-law. For the Princesse de Guémène, it now turned out, had long known about the affair. The reference to strange nocturnal noises had been in the nature of a wink and a nod. She had been hoping that the affair would burn itself out, but every day it seemed to be reviving. Now that her son was out of the house, the time had come for a showdown with Louise.

On Tuesday 23 January 1748 Louise was expecting her usual midnight visit from the prince. She sat in her room talking to Mlle Carteret about him. Unexpectedly, her father the duc de Bouillon arrived. Downstairs he and la Guémène conferred. At ten o’clock the two of them appeared at her door. Mlle Carteret was asked to leave. Then the princess began her indictment. She had known about the
affair
with the prince for a long time. The matter was now becoming a public scandal. The liaison must end at once. If Louise promised to write a letter to Charles Edward, ending the affair, all traces of her indiscretion would be covered up.
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Louise collapsed into hysterical screaming, followed by steady, uncontrollable sobbing. But she was no more a match for the strong-willed Princesse de Guémène than she had been for the prince. She was forced to write a letter to Charles at her father’s dictation, informing him that their sexual relationship had to come to an end. However, to avoid scandal, it was necessary that the prince continue to visit the Guémène residence on a social basis.

The prince did not at first know the reason for this sudden termination. It was a full five days later before Louise managed to smuggle out a tear-stained letter, explaining the dramatic events of the night of 23 January.
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The letter alone would probably have been enough to awaken his basically chivalrous instincts and enable him to resume the affair, despite the Bouillon/Guémène interdict. But the prince had already received an account of 23 January from Mlle Carteret that effectively destroyed the relationship.

Puzzled by the startling dénouement to his affair evinced by Louise’s dictated letter, the prince asked Mlle Carteret for an account of all recent events she had witnessed, omitting nothing. It was then that he learned of the highly critical remarks made about him by the duc de Bouillon during the highly emotional confrontation on the night of 23 January. In the hothouse atmosphere of Louise’s bedroom – where all three principals had at one time been in tears together – the duc de Bouillon had denounced the prince as an ingrate and snake-in-the-grass. Bouillon declared that he had always supported the prince through great difficulties and at great personal and political cost. The prince’s return for this, it seemed, was to dishonour his daughter in her own house.
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This charge upset the prince more than Mlle Carteret could ever have imagined, and, typically, his response was one of hostility to Louise for being weak enough to submit to her father’s authority.
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He failed to reply to her smuggled letter. Louise in desperation deluged him with further missives. Why had he forsaken her? What had happened to their great and undying love? How could the prince be so lacking in compassion? If he cared nothing for
her
, surely he cared about the fate of their unborn child?
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No answer came. At great risk, since all her servants were under orders from the Princesse de Guémène, Louise began to write to Daniel O’Brien and others of the prince’s servants. What had
happened
to the great and loving prince? If love had mysteriously evaporated, was there no pity left? O’Brien brought back fragments of rationalisation from the prince. Louise had been unfaithful to him, she had had other lovers, she had shown her letter to third parties. At this, Louise began to hint that she might take her own life and destroy the prince’s unborn child.