THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART
The royal families of Europe are widely known, yet not all of them areequally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparativelyyoung, stands out to the mind with a sort of barbaric power, morevividly than the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which is the oldestreigning family in Europe, tracing its beginnings backward untilthey are lost in the Dark Ages. The Hohenzollerns of Prussia arecomparatively modern, so far as concerns their royalty. The offshoots ofthe Bourbons carry on a very proud tradition in the person of the Kingof Spain, although France, which has been ruled by so many members ofthe family, will probably never again behold a Bourbon king. The deposedBraganzas bear a name which is ancient, but which has a somewhat tinselsound.
The Bonapartes, of course, are merely parvenus, and they have had thegood taste to pretend to no antiquity of birth. The first Napoleon,dining at a table full of monarchs, when he heard one of themdeferentially alluding to the Bonaparte family as being very old andnoble, exclaimed:
"Pish! My nobility dates from the day of Marengo!"
And the third Napoleon, in announcing his coming marriage with Mlle. deMontijo, used the very word "parvenu" in speaking of himself and of hisfamily. His frankness won the hearts of the French people and helped toreconcile them to a marriage in which the bride was barely noble.
In English history there are two great names to conjure by, at leastto the imaginative. One is Plantagenet, which seems to contain withinitself the very essence of all that is patrician, magnificent, androyal. It calls to memory at once the lion-hearted Richard, whose shortreign was replete with romance in England and France and Austria and theHoly Land.
But perhaps a name of greater influence is that which links the royalfamily of Britain today with the traditions of the past, and whichsummons up legend and story and great deeds of history. This is the nameof Stuart, about which a whole volume might be written to recall itssuggestions and its reminiscences.
The first Stuart (then Stewart) of whom anything is known got his namefrom the title of "Steward of Scotland," which remained in the familyfor generations, until the sixth of the line, by marriage with PrincessMarjory Bruce, acquired the Scottish crown. That was in the early yearsof the fourteenth century; and finally, after the death of Elizabethof England, her rival's son, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England,united under one crown two kingdoms that had so long been at almostconstant war.
It is almost characteristic of the Scot that, having small territory,little wealth, and a seat among his peers that is almost ostentatiouslyhumble, he should bit by bit absorb the possessions of all the rest andbecome their master. Surely, the proud Tudors, whose line ended withElizabeth, must have despised the "Stewards," whose kingdom was smalland bleak and cold, and who could not control their own vassals.
One can imagine also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of theEnglish court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedantand bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that ofElizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was veryfar from being a fool.
In his appearance James was not unlike Abraham Lincoln--an unkinglyfigure; and yet, like Lincoln, when occasion required it he could riseto the dignity which makes one feel the presence of a king. He was theonly Stuart who lacked anything in form or feature or external grace.His son, Charles I., was perhaps one of the worst rulers that Englandhas ever had; yet his uprightness of life, his melancholy yet handsomeface, his graceful bearing, and the strong religious element in hischaracter, together with the fact that he was put to death after beingtreacherously surrendered to his enemies--all these have combined tomake almost a saint of him. There are Englishmen to-day who speak of himas "the martyr king," and who, on certain days of the year, say prayersthat beg the Lord's forgiveness because of Charles's execution.
The members of the so-called League of the White Rose, founded toperpetuate English allegiance to the direct line of Stuarts, do manythings that are quite absurd. They refuse to pray for the present Kingof England and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria is thetrue ruler of Great Britain. All this represents that trace of sentimentwhich lingers among the English to-day. They feel that the Stuarts werethe last kings of England to rule by the grace of God rather than by thegrace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, the present reigning familyin England is glad to derive its ancient strain of royal blood through aStuart--descended on the distaff side from James I., and winding its waythrough Hanover.
This sentiment for the Stuarts is a thing entirely apart from reason andbelongs to the realm of poetry and romance; yet so strong is it thatit has shown itself in the most inconsistent fashion. For instance, SirWalter Scott was a devoted adherent of the house of Hanover. When GeorgeIV. visited Edinburgh, Scott was completely carried away by his loyalenthusiasm. He could not see that the man before him was a drunkard andbraggart. He viewed him as an incarnation of all the noble traits thatought to hedge about a king. He snatched up a wine-glass from whichGeorge had just been drinking and carried it away to be an object ofreverence for ever after. Nevertheless, in his heart, and often in hisspeech, Scott seemed to be a high Tory, and even a Jacobite.
There are precedents for this. The Empress Eugenie used often to saywith a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial courtof France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness andfrivolity. No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous,and she was not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None the less,after listening to the skirling of the bagpipes and to the romanticballads which were sung in Scotland she is said to have remarked with asort of sigh:
"Whenever I hear those ballads I feel that England belongs really to theStuarts!"
Before Queen Victoria was born, when all the sons of George III. werechildless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have afamily to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he saidmany things, and among them this was the most striking:
"Why don't you call the Stuarts back to England? They couldn't possiblymake a worse mess of it than our fellows have!"
But he yielded to persuasion and married. From this marriage cameVictoria, who had the sacred drop of Stuart blood which gave Englandto the Hanoverians; and she was to redeem the blunders and tyrannies ofboth houses.
The fascination of the Stuarts, which has been carried overseas toAmerica and the British dominions, probably began with the strikinghistory of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty,and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intensewomanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any oneobserved in her. So, too, with Charles I., romantic figure and knightlygentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though hisexecution was necessary to the growth of freedom.
Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II., that very differenttype, with his gaiety, his good-fellowship, and his easy-going ways. Itis not surprising that his people, most of whom never saw him, were veryfond of him, and did not know that he was selfish, a loose liver, andalmost a vassal of the king of France.
So it is not strange that the Stuarts, with all their arts and graces,were very hard to displace. James II., with the aid of the French,fought hard before the British troops in Ireland broke the backs ofboth his armies and sent him into exile. Again in 1715--an episodeperpetuated in Thackeray's dramatic story of Henry Esmond--came the sonof James to take advantage of the vacancy caused by the death of QueenAnne. But it is perhaps to this claimant's son, the last of the militantStuarts, that more chivalrous feeling has been given than to any other.
To his followers he was the Young Chevalier, the true Prince of Wales;to his enemies, the Whigs and the Hanoverians, he was "the Pretender."One of the most romantic chapters of history is the one which tellsof that last brilliant dash which he made upon the coast of Scotland,landing with but a few attendants and rejecting the support of a Frencharmy.
"It is not with f
oreigners," he said, "but with my own loyal subjects,that I wish to regain the kingdom for my father."
It was a daring deed, and the spectacular side of it has been oftencommemorated, especially in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. There we seethe gallant prince moving through a sort of military panorama. Most ofthe British troops were absent in Flanders, and the few regiments thatcould be mustered to meet him were appalled by the ferocity and recklesscourage of the Highlanders, who leaped down like wildcats from theirhills and flung themselves with dirk and sword upon the British cannon.
We see Sir John Cope retiring at Falkirk, and the astonishing victory ofPrestonpans, where disciplined British troops fled in dismay through themorning mist, leaving artillery and supplies behind them. It is Scottagain who shows us the prince, master of Edinburgh for a time, while thewhite rose of Stuart royalty held once more the ancient keep above theScottish capital. Then we see the Chevalier pressing southward intoEngland, where he hoped to raise an English army to support his own.But his Highlanders cared nothing for England, and the English--even theCatholic gentry--would not rise to support his cause.
Personally, he had every gift that could win allegiance. Handsome,high-tempered, and brave, he could also control his fiery spirit andlisten to advice, however unpalatable it might be.
The time was favorable. The British troops had been defeated on theContinent by Marshal Saxe, of whom I have already written, and byMarshal d'Estrees. George II. was a king whom few respected. He couldscarcely speak anything but German. He grossly ill-treated his wife. Itis said that on one occasion, in a fit of temper, he actually kicked theprime minister. Not many felt any personal loyalty to him, and he spentmost of his time away from England in his other domain of Hanover.
But precisely here was a reason why Englishmen were willing to put upwith him. As between him and the brilliant Stuart there would have beenno hesitation had the choice been merely one of men; but it was believedthat the return of the Stuarts meant the return of something likeabsolute government, of taxation without sanction of law, and ofreligious persecution. Under the Hanoverian George the English peoplehad begun to exercise a considerable measure of self-government. Sharpopposition in Parliament compelled him time and again to yield; and whenhe was in Hanover the English were left to work out the problem of freegovernment.
Hence, although Prince Charles Edward fascinated all who met him, andalthough a small army was raised for his support, still the unromantic,common-sense Englishmen felt that things were better than in the daysgone by, and most of them refused to take up arms for the cause whichsentimentally they favored. Therefore, although the Chevalier stirredall England and sent a thrill through the officers of state in London,his soldiers gradually deserted, and the Scots insisted on returningto their own country. Although the Stuart troops reached a point as farsouth as Derby, they were soon pushed backward into Scotland, pursued byan army of about nine thousand men under the Duke of Cumberland, son ofGeorge II.
Cumberland was no soldier; he had been soundly beaten by the Frenchon the famous field of Fontenoy. Yet he had firmness and a sort ofovermastering brutality, which, with disciplined troops and abundantartillery, were sufficient to win a victory over the untrainedHighlanders.
When the battle came five thousand of these mountaineers went roaringalong the English lines, with the Chevalier himself at their head. Fora moment there was surprise. The Duke of Cumberland had been drinkingso heavily that he could give no verbal orders. One of his officers,however, is said to have come to him in his tent, where he was trying toplay cards.
"What disposition shall we make of the prisoners?" asked the officer.
The duke tried to reply, but his utterance was very thick.
"No quarter!" he was believed to say.
The officer objected and begged that such an order as that shouldbe given in writing. The duke rolled over and seized a sheaf ofplaying-cards. Pulling one out, he scrawled the necessary order, andthat was taken to the commanders in the field.
The Highlanders could not stand the cannon fire, and the English won.Then the fury of the common soldiery broke loose upon the country.
There was a reign of fantastic and fiendish brutality. One provostof the town was violently kicked for a mild remonstrance about thedestruction of the Episcopalian meeting-house; another was condemnedto clean out dirty stables. Men and women were whipped and tortured onslight suspicion or to extract information. Cumberland frankly professedhis contempt and hatred of the people among whom he found himself, buthe savagely punished robberies committed by private soldiers for theirown profit.
"Mild measures will not do," he wrote to Newcastle.
When leaving the North in July, he said:
"All the good we have done is but a little blood-letting, which has onlyweakened the madness, but not at all cured it; and I tremble to fearthat this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of ourfamily."
Such was the famous battle of Culloden, fought in 1746, and putting afinal end to the hopes of all the Stuarts. As to Cumberland's order for"No quarter," if any apology can be made for such brutality, it must befound in the fact that the Highland chiefs had on their side agreed tospare no captured enemy.
The battle has also left a name commonly given to the nine of diamonds,which is called "the curse of Scotland," because it is said that on thatcard Cumberland wrote his bloodthirsty order.
Such, in brief, was the story of Prince Charlie's gallant attempt torestore the kingdom of his ancestors. Even when defeated, he would notat once leave Scotland. A French squadron appeared off the coast nearEdinburgh. It had been sent to bring him troops and a large supplyof money, but he turned his back upon it and made his way into theHighlands on foot, closely pursued by English soldiers and Lowlandspies.
This part of his career is in reality the most romantic of all. He washunted closely, almost as by hounds. For weeks he had only such sleepas he could snatch during short periods of safety, and there were timeswhen his pursuers came within an inch of capturing him. But never in hislife were his spirits so high.
It was a sort of life that he had never seen before, climbing the mightyrocks, and listening to the thunder of the cataracts, among which heoften slept, with only one faithful follower to guard him. The storyof his escape is almost incredible, but he laughed and drank and rolledupon the grass when he was free from care. He hobnobbed with the mostsuspicious-looking caterans, with whom he drank the smoky brew of theNorth, and lived as he might on fish and onions and bacon and wild fowl,with an appetite such as he had never known at the luxurious court ofVersailles or St.-Germain.
After the battle of Culloden the prince would have been captured had nota Scottish girl named Flora Macdonald met him, caused him to be dressedin the clothes of her waiting-maid, and thus got him off to the Isle ofSkye.
There for a time it was impossible to follow him; and there the twolived almost alone together. Such a proximity could not fail to stir theromantic feeling of one who was both a youth and a prince. On the otherhand, no thought of love-making seems to have entered Flora's mind.If, however, we read Campbell's narrative very closely we can see thatPrince Charles made every advance consistent with a delicate remembranceof her sex and services.
It seems to have been his thought that if she cared for him, then thetwo might well love; and he gave her every chance to show him favor. Theyouth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together in thelong, tufted grass or lay in the sunshine and looked out over the sea.The prince would rest his head in her lap, and she would tumble hisgolden hair with her slender fingers and sometimes clip off tresseswhich she preserved to give to friends of hers as love-locks. But tothe last he was either too high or too low for her, according to her ownmodest thought. He was a royal prince, the heir to a throne, or else hewas a boy with whom she might play quite fancy-free. A lover he couldnot be--so pure and beautiful was her thought of him.
These were perhaps the most delightful days of all his life, as theywere a beautifu
l memory in hers. In time he returned to France andresumed his place amid the intrigues that surrounded that other Stuartprince who styled himself James III., and still kept up the appearanceof a king in exile. As he watched the artifice and the plotting ofthese make-believe courtiers he may well have thought of his innocentcompanion of the Highland wilds.
As for Flora, she was arrested and imprisoned for five months on Englishvessels of war. After her release she was married, in 1750; and she andher husband sailed for the American colonies just before the Revolution.In that war Macdonald became a British officer and served against hisadopted countrymen. Perhaps because of this reason Flora returned aloneto Scotland, where she died at the age of sixty-eight.
The royal prince who would have given her his easy love lived a life offar less dignity in the years that followed his return to France. Therewas no more hope of recovering the English throne. For him there wereleft only the idle and licentious diversions of such a court as that inwhich his father lived.
At the death of James III., even this court was disintegrated, andPrince Charles led a roving life under the title of Earl of Albany. Inhis wanderings he met Louise Marie, the daughter of a German prince,Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg. She was only nineteen years of age whenshe first felt the fascination that he still possessed; but it was anunhappy marriage for the girl when she discovered that her husband was aconfirmed drunkard.
Not long after, in fact, she found her life with him so utterlyintolerable that she persuaded the Pope to allow her a formalseparation. The pontiff intrusted her to her husband's brother, CardinalYork, who placed her in a convent and presently removed her to his ownresidence in Rome.
Here begins another romance. She was often visited by Vittorio Alfieri,the great Italian poet and dramatist. Alfieri was a man of wealth. Inearly years he divided his time into alternate periods during whichhe either studied hard in civil and canonical law, or was a constantattendant upon the race-course, or rushed aimlessly all over Europewithout any object except to wear out the post-horses which he used inrelays over hundreds of miles of road. His life, indeed, was eccentricalmost to insanity; but when he had met the beautiful and lonelyCountess of Albany there came over him a striking change. She influencedhim for all that was good, and he used to say that he owed her all thatwas best in his dramatic works.
Sixteen years after her marriage her royal husband died, a worn-out,bloated wreck of one who had been as a youth a model of knightliness andmanhood. During his final years he had fallen to utter destitution, andthere was either a touch of half contempt or a feeling of remote kinshipin the act of George III., who bestowed upon the prince an annualpension of four thousand pounds. It showed most plainly that England wasnow consolidated under Hanoverian rule.
When Cardinal York died, in 1807, there was no Stuart left in the maleline; and the countess was the last to bear the royal Scottish name ofAlbany.
After the prince's death his widow is said to have been married toAlfieri, and for the rest of her life she lived in Florence, thoughAlfieri died nearly twenty-one years before her.
Here we have seen a part of the romance which attaches itself to thename of Stuart--in the chivalrous young prince, leading his Highlandersagainst the bayonets of the British, lolling idly among the Hebrides,or fallen, at the last, to be a drunkard and the husband of an unwillingconsort, who in her turn loved a famous poet. But it is this Stuart,after all, of whom we think when we hear the bagpipes skirling "Over theWater to Charlie" or "Wha'll be King but Charlie?"
END OF VOLUME ONE