Prince Charles

“ Yet no man has, in disguises of his person, been more successful. We may grant ‘the grand air’ to Charles, but we must admit that he could successfully dissemble it.
About 1743, when a number of miniatures of the Prince were done in Italy for presentation to adherents, Charles’s boyish mirth, as seen in these works of art, has become somewhat petulant, if not arrogant, but he is still ‘a lad with the bloom of a lass.’ A shade of aspiring melancholy marks a portrait done in France, just before the expedition to Scotland. ”

“ Prince Charles's mother, the wife of Charles the First, was a French princess. Her name was Henrietta Maria. She was unaccomplished, beautiful, and very spirited woman. She was a Catholic, and the English people, who were very decided in their hostility to the Catholic faith, were extremely jealous of her. They watched all her movements with the utmost suspicion. They were very unwilling that an heir to the crown should arise in her family. ”

“ The King induced the Chancellor to converse, and asked him if his exile were owing to the English monarch personally, or to some parliamentary intrigue.
"King Charles," replied his lordship, "is a prince to gauge whose character requires long study. Apparently, he is the very soul of candour, but no one is more deceitful than he. He fawns and smiles upon you when in his heart of hearts he despises and loathe you. ”

“ Nothing, or nothing but the expulsion of Prince Charles from every secular State, had been actually settled. Nobody was really satisfied with the Peace. The populace, in France as in England, was discontented. Princes were merely resting and looking round for new combinations of forces. The various Courts, from St. Petersburg to Dresden, from London to Vienna, were so many tables where the great game of national faro was being played, over the heads of the people, by kings, queens, abbés, soldiers, diplomatists, and pretty women. ”

“ An English lady who saw Prince Charles at Rome in 1770, describes him thus:—“The Pretender is naturally above the middle size, but stoops excessively; he appears bloated and red in the face, his countenance heavy and sleepy, which is attributed to his having given in to excess of drinking, but when a young man he must have been esteemed handsome. His complexion is of the fair tint, his eyes blue, his hair light brown, and the contour of his face a long oval; he is by no means thin, has a noble person and a graceful manner. ”

“ Charles, the prince royal, is twenty-six years of age; he is the king's third son, and is beloved by all who approach him. His figure is said to be noble, and his face most pleasing in expression; his manners are mild, and he is very accessible; he wins all hearts to love him. ”

“ Prince Charles rejoined [Pg 269] his father at Mickenhau on the 30th of July, and he became one of his aides-de-camp; he was always to be found at the outposts, and in the midst of danger was remarkably cool and courageous. His father constantly speaks of him with a pride that he cannot conceal: “Charles is splendid under fire; I cannot restrain his ardour, he has such presence of mind, such spirits and animation, that he encourages every one. ”

“ To understand Pickle’s career, the reluctant reader must endure a certain amount of actual history in minute details of date and place. Every one is acquainted with the brilliant hour of Prince Charles: his landing in Moidart accompanied by only seven men, his march on Edinburgh, his success at Prestonpans, the race to Derby, the retreat to Scotland, the gleam of victory at Falkirk, the ruin of Culloden, the long months of wanderings and distress, the return to France in 1746. ”

“ Her father, being brother of the late king, and uncle of the present one, was made lieutenant general of the kingdom, having thus the second place, that is, the place next to the queen, in the management of the affairs of the realm. Thus the little king commenced his reign by having in his court his mother as queen regent, his uncle lieutenant general, and his aunt, an exiled queen from a sister realm, his guest. He had also in his household his brother Philip, younger than himself, his cousin the young Duchess of Montpensier, and his cousin the Prince Charles. ”

“ As a Sobieski by his mother’s side, the son of the exiled James (who himself had years before been asked to stand as a candidate for the kingdom of Poland) , Charles was expected by politicians to make for Warsaw when he fled from Avignon. It is said, on the authority of a Polish manuscript, ‘communicated by Baron de Rondeau,’ that there was a conspiracy in Poland to unseat Augustus III. and give the crown to Prince Charles. [46b] In 1719, Charles’s maternal grandfather had declined a Russian proposal to make a dash for the crown, so the chivalrous Wogan narrates. ”

“ As the medal of gold here exhibited struck to commemorate the nativity of prince Charles, who became a great monarch, is finely preserved, and is, I presume, an unique, it is extremely valuable, for it probably was one of the very few issued, and those that were, it may be justly supposed, presented only to some few select: personages, for king Charles I. was never a rich sovereign; his majesty had always more taste than wealth. ”

“ In starting on his adventurous, not to say perilous, experiment, Prince Charles already possessed plenty of valuable capital to draw upon. In the first place, few princes to whose lot it has fallen to sway the destinies of a nation have received an early training so well adapted to their future vocation, or have been so auspiciously endowed by nature with qualities which in this instance may fairly be said to have been directly inherited from his parents. ”

“ Many will give their good wishes, but few will draw their swords. That is what I wish you to say to Prince Charles. Among gentlemen like myself the feeling of respect and loyalty to his father's house is as strong as ever, and we shall join him, however desperate, in our opinion, the chances of success may be; but he will see that the common people will stand aloof, and leave the battle to be fought out by the clansmen on our side and George's troops on the other. ”

“ Every person was desirous to see a prince who had the courage to brave the grand monarch in his own capital, and whenever Charles appeared upon the public walks, he was followed by the assembled multitudes. When he entered the theatre, all eyes were directed towards him, and the performance was allowed to pass off unheeded by the audience. Charles alone seemed to make light of his misfortunes, and evinced the gaiety of his spirits by talking in an easy, cheerful, and affable manner to the young noblemen, by whom, on these occasions, he was always surrounded. ”

“ Blewer looked sharply round upon us, saying, with that evil smile of his,—
"Why, that is but a sorry shout for a new-made King; but perchance your loyal hearts are too full yet of grief for our noble King Charles to give a right royal welcome to his successor!"
"Ay, sir," said my uncle; "that is the case with us. We can scarce yet rejoice in the thought that any other sits in the place of good King Charles, be he never so great and good a prince. Prosperous and peaceful has England been beneath his fatherly sway ”

“ Thus, though every thing in which royalty appeared before the public was conducted with great pomp and parade, this external magnificence was then, and always has been, an outside show, without any thing corresponding to it within. The great mass of the people of England saw only the outside. They gazed with admiration at the spectacle of magnificence and splendor which royalty always presented to their eyes, whenever they beheld it from the distant and humble points of view which their position afforded them. Prince [Pg 33] Charles, on the other hand, was behind the curtain. ”

“ Still he flatters himself with the hope that if the King his father should die, he should succeed him in the Throne of Poland.
Prince Charles is next; he is a fine youth about thirteen; his person is good, and he has great quickness of parts; but as he labours under the misfortune of having the same wretched education as his brothers have had, ’tis impossible to say how he will turn out; and here I must observe, that the scarcity of men of ability is so great in this country, that out of four governors employed in the education of these Princes, there is not one who is a Saxon. ”

“ Fastened to the inner sides of the boards are many relics of the pathetic experiences of Prince Charles during the interval between his defeat at Culloden and his escape to France. The documents were written and the mementoes gathered by Bishop Robert Forbes, an enthusiastic Jacobite. Under a scrap of tartan with a bit of red lining he has noted:—
The above are pieces of the outside and inside of that identical waistcoat which Macdonald of Kingsburgh gave to the Prince when he laid aside the woman’s clothes. ”

“ It is not only still ready, but greedy to receive more. This King Charles found in as many Instances as any Prince that ever reigned, because the Easiness of Access introducing the good Success of their first Request, they were the more encouraged to repeat those Importunities, which had been more effectually stopt in the Beginning by a short and resolute Denial. ”

“ This tragic surrender of his great and devoted servant left an indelible stain upon the king’s character, and he lived to repent it bitterly. One of his last admonitions to the prince of Wales was “never to give way to the punishment of any for their faithful service to the crown.” It was regarded by Charles as the cause of his own subsequent misfortunes, and on the scaffold the remembrance of it disturbed his own last moments. ”

“ After spending a few days at Fontainebleau, the whole party returned to Paris, and Queen Henrietta and the prince took up their abode again in the Palace Royal, or, as it is now more commonly called, the Palais Royal. Charles was much impressed with the pomp and splendor of the French court, so different from the rough mode of life to which he had been accustomed in his campaigns and wanderings in England. The etiquette and formality, however, were extreme, every thing, even the minutest motions, being regulated by nice rules, which made social intercourse and enjoyment one perpetual ceremony. ”

“ Against 30,000 men what could 5,000 avail? He had no faith in a French invasion, he was convinced that nothing was to be looked for from the English Jacobites. 'Rather than go back, I would I were twenty feet underground,' Charles cried in passionate disappointment. He argued, he commanded, he implored; the chiefs were inexorable, and it was decided that the retreat should begin next morning before daybreak. This decision broke the Prince's heart and quenched his spirit; never again did his buoyant courage put life into his whole army. ”

“ James himself, in youth, had not been a pattern of strict sobriety, but later middle age found him almost ascetic.
We have sketched a character endowed with many fine qualities, and capable of winning devoted affection. We now examine the rapid decline of a nature originally noble.
Returned from Scotland in 1746, Prince Charles brought with him a head full of indigested romance, a heart rich in chimerical expectations. He now prided himself on being a plain hardy mountaineer. He took a line of his own; he concealed his measures from the spy-ridden Court of his father in Rome ”

“ You will keep your lives and your goods, as we have done. For otherwise we should all be lost. We do not regret our submission. Our only grief is that we delayed so long. You will be right glad to follow our example; for King Charles is a prince of greater discretion, understanding and valour than any who for many a long year have arisen in the noble house of France." [1456]
Friar Richard went to find the Maid. ”

“ All sorts of people come and go round the Chevalier and round Prince Charles. Every Scotch or Irish vagabond who has made his native country too hot to hold him, come to them and pretend that they are martyrs to their loyalty to the Stuarts ”

“ The Dutch correspondent of the ‘Scots Magazine,’ writing on May 22, 1759, said that a French expedition for Scotland was ready, and that Charles was to sail with it, but the Prince would not lend himself to this scheme. All through the summer he had his agents, Elliot, Holker, and Clancarty, at Dunkirk, Rouen, and Boulogne. They reported on the French preparations, but, writes Charles on July 22, ‘I am not in their secret.’ He corresponded with the Duc de Choiseul and the Maréchal de Belleisle, but they confined themselves to general assurances of friendship. ”

“ On November 22, 1749, Charles, from Lunéville, wrote a long letter to a lady, speaking of himself in the third person. All approaches to Avignon are guarded, to prevent his return thither. ‘Despite the Guards, they assure me that he is in France, and not far from the capital. The Lieutenant of Police has been heard to say, by a person who informed me, that he knew for certain the Prince had come in secret to Paris, and had been at the house of Monsieur Lally. The King winks at all this, but it is said that M. de Puysieux and the Mistress (Madame de Pompadour) are as ill disposed as ever. ”

“ When Charles came into the World he had a Brother living who was born of the Arch-Duchess Mary-Maximilian, Emanuel's first Wife. This young Prince who all Europe expected wou'd be the Successor of Charles II. King of Spain, dying at Brussels the 6th of February, 1699, Charles thereby became the Electoral Prince: He was bred up at Munich with four of his Brothers, but both he and his Brothers surrender'd Prisoners to the Emperor Joseph after the Battle of Hochstet, which subjected all Bavaria to his Imperial Majesty. ”