The Road to Culloden Moor Read online

  However, in January 1735, following Charles’s return from Gaeta, domestic tragedy struck. Clementina died aged only thirty-three, weakened by her excessive fasting. The pretty lively young girl who had escaped the clutches of the Emperor had become a wasted religious recluse, obsessed with self-mortification and pursued by phantom pregnancies and a craving for canonisation. Her death devastated James and her sons wept uncontrollably. Her body lay in state, embalmed and in the habit of a Dominican nun. Afterwards her body — minus her heart which was sent to the church of Santi Apostoli — was laid to rest in the crypt of St Peter’s until such time as James was restored to his throne and she could be buried in Westminster Abbey.

  James became even more melancholy and worried about Charles who seemed ‘wonderfully thoughtless for one of his age’ as well as ‘very innocent, and extreme backward in some respects for his age’. Perhaps this was a hint about a lack of sexual maturity. Charles’s sexual aloofness was certainly to exercise a powerful fascination for the Jacobite ladies who thronged around him during his Scottish adventure. Walton, mistaken as usual, passed on a report from agents in Rome that Charles was strongly attracted to women. Dunbar does not seem to have taken the advice of the dissolute Duke of Wharton to ‘not only train the Prince for glory, but likewise give him a polite taste for pleasurable vice’. But there was no psychologist in those days to explain that Charles’s reticence with women may have had deeper origins in guilt about his parents’ failed marriage, his disrupted relationship with Clementina and perhaps in a suspicion that his parents loved Henry more than him.

  Like many fathers of the age James decided that Charles would benefit from making the grand tour. It turned into another public relations success, thrilling the Jacobites and annoying the Whig camp in Britain. Charles set off with Dunbar, Sheridan and a small entourage in 1737 to visit the cities of northern Italy, this time under the alias of the Count of Albany. Although he was supposed to be travelling incognito he was fêted everywhere. In Bologna he attended a public ball given in his honour by the Marquis of Tibbia. In Parma he was lionised by the elderly and toothless Dowager Duchess Dorothea who gave him a diamond encrusted snuff-box and entertained him royally.

  Apart from anything else he was a good-looking young man —‘tall, above the common stature, his limbs are cast in the most exact mould, his complexion has in it something of an uncommon delicacy; all his features are perfectly regular and well turned, and his eyes the finest I ever saw’. Even allowing for Jacobite hyperbole he was clearly both handsome and charismatic. He was also vain, amassing great wardrobes of clothes and delighting in such garments as tartan jackets trimmed with ermine tails and gold braid. He was an avid user of curling papers but worried about being spotted in them. Whatever his coiffeur, by the time he got to Venice he was openly treated as royalty. The idea that he was incognito was laughable and a number of events were stage-managed to show him off and annoy the British. The Doge was particularly gracious, bowing to him when they met during the spectacular ceremony of the Doge’s marriage with the sea. There were supposedly accidental encounters with the Elector and Electress of Bavaria on board a Venetian galley when all were masked, followed by a longer encounter in the library of St George’s convent before an audience of about two hundred. Venetian high society welcomed ‘the Prince of Wales’ with open arms and he danced till dawn to the anguish of his tutors. The Venice visit was such a diplomatic coup that a furious British Government gave the Venetian Resident in London, Businello, three days to quit England.

  Their rage was a measure of Charles’s success and he was exhilarated by it. Walton moaned that it was not so much the attentions being shown to Charles that was displeasing to the Hanoverian court as ‘the manner in which the Prince receives them’. Poor Dunbar wrote to James that: ‘As H.R.H. cannot enjoy the diversion of dancing with moderation, but overheats himself monstrously, I have refused a ball the publick here intended to give him tomorrow night, and have writ … that he would accept of a Conversazione … The later he comes home and the more [need] he has of sleep, he will sit the longer at supper, so that it is not possible to get him to bed of an opera night till near three in the morning tho’ he be home soon after one.’ He was already showing signs of the stamina that would amaze the Highlanders during the ’45.

  By 1739 the Jacobites’ prospects were looking up — Britain’s overseas possessions were growing apace, heightening her rivalry with France and Spain. She was already at war with Spain. The following year saw the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession, with France and England squaring up on opposing sides and soon effectively, if not technically, at war with each other. Spies travelled feverishly across Europe exchanging coded letters in dusty back streets. A well-known Jacobite agent, William MacGregor of Balhaldy, came to Rome in 1739 to argue that the time was ripe for a rising. James had heard it all before but sent Balhaldy to Paris to lobby the French court, together with his representative there, Lord Sempill. Unlike most Highlanders, Balhaldy’s father had made money in business which meant that some Jacobites despised him. A contemporary, described him as ‘the descendant of a cobbler, himself a broken butter and cheese merchant, a sticks doctor, a Jack of all trades, a bankrupt indebted to all the world, the awkwardest Porter-like fellow alive, always in a passion, a mere bully, the most forbidding air imaginable, and master of as much bad French as to procure himself a whore and a dinner’. However, such was the kind of back-biting that went on all the time in Jacobite circles and it augured poorly for their future chances of acting in concert.

  Charles was in a fever of anticipation whipped up by Jacobite courtiers. The halls of the Palazzo Muti echoed with rumour and counter-rumour and passionate talk about shaking off ‘the yoke of Bondage and Slavery’ of the Hanoverians. The two crucial questions were whether James could look for tangible foreign aid, preferably from France, and whether the cause’s friends in England and Scotland would rise. It was a ‘catch 22’ situation — before acting France wanted to be assured that there would be support for James in Scotland and England. Conversely, the Scottish and English Jacobites wanted to be assured of substantial foreign help before committing themselves. However, the reports coming out of Scotland at least sounded positive and in 1741 an Association of Jacobite leaders — ‘the Concert’ — had been formed. In the same year Charles wrote enthusiastically to the clans: ‘I have received yours with a great deal of pleasure and see by the Plan which came with it the zeal and affection of those who propose it … I cannot without rashness say more but you may easily believe I long very much for the execution.’ There is a suspicion that he was ready to endorse anything.

  In 1743 the political balance tipped further in Charles’s favour. The ninety-year-old French First Minister Cardinal Fleury, a fierce anti-Jacobite, died. Although he was not replaced directly, the pro-Jacobite Cardinal Tencin was now able to gain greater influence with Louis XV. (He also seems to have had a great personal admiration for Charles — he shocked Dunbar by commenting that the young prince had ‘la plus belle … du monde’. Dunbar refused to specify which part of Charles the cardinal thought was so beautiful.) In June of the same year the British assisted Austrian and Hanoverian forces in defeating the French at Dettingen. The British forces were led by George II, the last occasion a reigning British monarch was to take to the battlefield. His portly young son, the Duke of Cumberland, was also actively engaged.

  This debacle fuelled a French desire for revenge and Louis XV was persuaded by Balhaldy to invite Charles to Paris. He might at least provide a useful diversion for the British. As a veteran of so many disappointments himself, the invitation posed a real dilemma for James. On the one hand he had promised to let Charles go if the French King made a firm offer of support. On the other his intuition warned him, quite rightly, that the chances of success were slim and that French motivation was dubious. He did not want to expose his beloved son to unnecessary danger. He had much less faith than Charles in the optimistic statements of Ba
lhaldy and other agents such as Lord Sempill. He was also wary of the promises of John Murray of Broughton, his impoverished twenty-eight-year-old secretary in Scotland — ‘all his life a violent Jacobite’ — about the strength of feeling there.

  However, according to one account Charles ‘never left teazing his Father … till he obtain’d his consent’. Ever conscious of appearances, poor old Mr Melancholy issued an optimistic Declaration of Regency stating that as there was a ‘near Prospect of being restored to the Throne of our Ancestors’ he was appointing Charles sole regent of his kingdoms. Yet he still had grave misgivings. How would Charles evade the network of secret agents and reach France in safety? The situation was fraught with danger.

  James tried to instil some commonsense into the proceedings. As Dunbar commented, he ‘realised the difficulties much more fully than the Prince’. There were many hazards to be overcome: ‘The various vicissitudes of the war; the restrictions imposed by the plague … the great number of all sorts of vessels which traverse the Mediterranean; Rome itself infinitely inquisitive and ever-lastingly talkative’. It was entirely in character that, if anything, these dangers made the expedition all the more attractive to Charles who ‘alone refused to be daunted and was ready to undertake it at any risk’.

  In fact Charles’s departure from Italy was carefully planned. It was also full of melodrama that fed the image of the dashing young Prince setting off to reclaim his own. The message was not lost in England. When his flight became known there a detractor observed sourly that it was ‘entirely in the Italian strain …’

  Father and son parted in the pre-dawn hours of a bitter January day. Charles’s supposed words to his father are part of Jacobite folklore: ‘I go, Sire, in search of three crowns, which I doubt not but to have the honour and happiness of laying at Your Majesty’s feet. If I fail in the attempt, your next sight of me shall be the coffin.’ James’s response was ‘Heaven forbid that all the crowns of the world should rob me of my son. Be careful of yourself, my dear Prince, for my sake, and I hope, for the sake of millions.’ In fact, James was never to see his son again, dead or alive, although both were to survive for many more years. Charles rode out to seek his destiny with as little thought of failure as any young would-be hero.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘A MAD PROJECT …’

  This was the beginning of the adventure for which Charles had yearned. His body was certainly ‘formed for war’ since he had spent his boyhood years ‘hunting, shooting, walking stockingless, all to harden himself for the campaigns that lay before his imagination’. The plot was cunningly designed to throw the spies off the scent — as early as 1741 Walton had warned that plans were afoot for Charles to ‘play an important role shortly upon the world’s theatre’ and his every move was anxiously watched. Charles was to pretend that he was setting out on a hunting expedition to the estate of the Duke of Gaetano at Cisterna.

  Only a few key players were in on the secret. Not even his brother Henry knew that it was all a sham as their little group trotted out into the snow. Everything had been arranged as normal with the usual hunting gear sent on ahead as well as the ‘musical instruments for diversion in the evenings’, indispensable in polite society. The night before Charles played cards, concentrating with admirable coolness, curbing the ‘extraordinary joy’ he was feeling inside. If anything he played with too much attention since he ‘generally played quite carelessly and with a noble disregard for his losses, suitable to his high rank’.

  The scheme was that Sheridan should pretend to have a fall and that Charles should slip away in the commotion. Everything was planned to the last detail, including Charles’s black horse to help him blend into the darkness. It went like clockwork and as the others crowded around Sheridan, in his seventies and surely a bit old for such heroics, Charles removed his wig, slipped on a mask covering everything but his eyes and swathed himself in a dark cloak. A message was sent to Cisterna that he had met with a riding accident and was recovering at Albano. It was some days before the truth was out.

  Charles doubled back northwards and made for the port of Massa which he reached safely, though it was not an easy journey. The roads at that season were treacherous with snow and ice and the horses he rode fell several times. From Massa he went by barque to Genoa and from there to Savona. Here something went wrong and he was detained. He was either put into quarantine against the plague or the savage weather conditions delayed him. Whatever the case the delay of six or so days was pretty galling to Charles ‘after such a hasty dash from Rome to Genoa’.

  Eventually he managed to board a felucca which slipped through the British fleet lurking in wait for him between Monaco and Antibes. From Antibes he went at break-neck speed to Paris, taking only five days and neither sleeping nor changing his clothes. His companions were exhausted but Charles, convinced he was on the threshold of great things, was bursting with vitality. ‘If I had had to go much further I should have been obliged to get them ty’d behind the chaise with my Portmanteau …’ he wrote home in jubilation. The situation looked promising and it was not surprising that ‘a young Prince, naturally brave, should readily lay hold of it’ and expect others to stay the pace.

  What mattered now, though, was the reception he got from that beribboned, bejewelled and powdered demi-god at Versailles on whom his hopes depended. Louis XV’s welcome was cordial enough, but he could not formally receive Charles while he was incognito which probably suited Louis’s ambiguous motives well enough. However, the young Prince was happy at first, reporting to James that: ‘I have met with all that could be expected from the King of France, who expresses great tenderness, and will be careful of all my concerns.’ Yet young Lord Elcho who sought Charles out in Paris described a different scene. He found him all alone drinking tea at Lord Sempill’s where he ‘seemed very uneasy. He told me that the King of France had made him come, and had promised to send into England an army of ten thousand men, commanded by Marshal Saxe, who was to assemble and embark them at Dunkirk.’ James, watching anxiously from Rome, was afraid that the French were thinking of reneging. He complained to Sempill. ‘The promises of France are not to be reconciled with her negligent and indifferent behaviour to the Prince.’

  The political situation was still very sensitive. France and England were not yet formally at war, despite supporting opposing sides in the war over the Austrian Succession. Reports about Charles flew furiously across the Channel. In the midst of the diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing the Hanoverian spymaster, Horace Mann, sent a description of the young Stuart to the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle, which pictures a young man ‘above the middle height and very thin. He wears a light bagwig; his face is rather long, the compexion clear, but borders on paleness; the forehead very broad, the eyes fairly large, blue [in fact they were brown] but without sparkle; the mouth large, with the lips slightly curled; and the chin more sharp than rounded.’ This inaccurate and unflattering portrait was a measure of the concern about the young adventurer. It was also a measure of their concern that the British prepared themselves to face an invasion, assembling a fleet in the Straits of Dover under Sir John Norris.

  The French invasion force Charles had described to Elcho did indeed appear to be mustering at last. Charles hurried to Gravelines, a small port about twelve miles west of Dunkirk, in readiness. He travelled under the name of the Chevalier Douglas and his only companion was the graceless Balhaldy, speaker of that dubious French. However, that did not matter — it seemed that his moment had come. Some seven thousand troops marched onto the French transports and Charles embarked with them. They carried the usual sort of proclamation for such a foreign intervention, eloquent about their wish to come in peace, shake off the yoke of a cruel foreign tyrant and restore the rightful dynasty.

  However, as Sir Charles Petrie put it, ‘as usual when a Stuart was about to put to sea, the elements took a hand in the game’. A violent rainstorm and high winds — ‘Protestant winds’ as some called them — put paid
to the invasion. Those ships still in Dunkirk harbour were either smashed to pieces or thrown up on the shore. Most of the vessels which had already sailed sank with all hands. It was only by a seeming miracle that Charles and Marshal Saxe made it safely back to dry land. Meanwhile the French and English fleets had clashed at sea and the French had come off the losers.

  That, as far as the French were concerned, was that. However, Charles did not realise this at first. He was too full of the sense of his own destiny to allow a freak of the weather to dull his optimism. Just a few days later he was writing to James that ‘The little difficulties and small dangirs I may have run, are nothing, when for the service and Glory of a Father who is so tender and kind for me, and for the service of a countrey who is so dire to him. Thank God I am in perfect good health, and every thing goes well ….’ Fine positive sentiments if misspelt in places. He was genuinely still quite cheerful: ‘How severely soever he might feel it, he did not seem dejected; on the contrary, he was in appearance cheerful and easy; encouraged such of his friends as seemed most deeply affected, telling them Providence would furnish him with other occasions of delivering his father’s subjects and making them happy.’ Such infectious optimism was to be one of the chief weapons in Charles’s armoury.

  The hopeful young Prince continued to haunt the narrow streets of Gravelines though Louis was urging him back to Paris. Charles was still convinced that the expedition would proceed but his hopes were dashed in March when France at last declared war on England. This meant that the focus of French attention was now on defeating the English in Flanders. Marshal Saxe was despatched to the Low Countries and Charles was left alone to brood. In his bitterness wild schemes began to take shape — of sailing to Scotland alone or of fighting the Hanoverians with the French. He was talked out of these but was still desperate for action. Ignoring James’s suggestion that he return to Rome, he went back to Paris to work out his next move. He was to spend more than a year trying to read the political tea leaves.