The Jacobite Chronicles start in 1742 with Richard Cunningham returning home after his father’s death to discover that the inheritance he was expecting is only a dream, whilst his sister has been left a huge dowry, inaccessible to either of them unless she marries. His subsequent decision sets in train the events that occupy the Chronicles.
In the background to all this are the actions of the real-life Prince Charles, whose decisions were as life-changing for his followers as Richard’s were for Beth.
The prince had spent the years leading up to his twenty-first birthday building his physical prowess and endurance to Herculean levels, preparing for his destiny, on which he now focussed all his energies. He would spend whole days hunting in the densest part of the woodlands in all weathers, bringing himself to the peak of physical perfection. The only accomplishment he failed to master was swimming, probably because unlike in Britain, swimming was not popular in Italy. He was extremely robust, any illnesses invariably caused by stress.
On a more social level, he loved dancing, opera and the theatre. As for any romantic dalliances, in spite of his looks, personality and desirability, there is no evidence at all of the prince forming any attachments at all to the opposite sex at this time. He appears to have been so focussed on his life’s purpose that he would allow nothing, not even romance, to turn him from it. Indeed, later, when in Edinburgh, he is said to have announced to the infatuated throng of ladies, “I have now another Air to dance, and until that be finished I’ll dance no other”. He held to this until 1746.
In the meantime James continued to find fault with everything Charles did or said. His letters were littered with criticism, including attacks on Charles’ spelling and grammar. Quite understandably, Charles wrote to his father less frequently, whereupon he was chastised for not keeping up correspondence!
Prince Charles as a young man. By Allan Ramsey
As a result of this, Charles seems to have developed an antipathy to figures of authority, and took criticism badly – both traits which were to have catastrophic consequences later. As Frank McLynn says in his excellent biography of the prince, Charles was unable to find a middle path between rage and submission when faced with a crisis. This is a shame, because his powers of persuasion and diplomacy, when he chose to use them, were formidable. We all like to hear favourable reports of ourselves, and the prince was no exception to this. The problem was that he found it difficult to distinguish the truth from lies, especially when that truth was something he fervently wished to believe, such as Balhaldy’s assertions that the whole of Scotland and most of England merely required his presence in order to rise up against the usurper. He would not be the first royal prince to believe flattery, but in his case, his inability to distinguish between sycophancy and a hard truth caused him to make ill-advised decisions.
So, was the decision to invade Britain with only a handful of men ill-advised? With hindsight, yes, it was, but neither the prince nor his followers had the benefit of that, so his decisions must be looked at through what was happening at the time he made them.
In 1743 developments in France caused King Louis XV to finally consider an invasion of England to restore the Stuarts. Louis sent his master of horse on a fact-finding mission and the resulting information suggested that Jacobitism was still a powerful force in Britain. Louis began to assemble a force. As he intended to invade England without warning, the plans were kept very secret, but there was a problem; in order for it to be clear that Louis was invading purely to restore the Stuarts, Prince Charles would have to take part – but if he came to France, the British would be alerted. Louis sent Balhaldy to James with a letter, but carefully arranged it so that Charles would only arrive in Paris after the French had captured London. Charles would then be sent to England to claim the throne for his father.
King Louis XV. By Maurice Quentin de la Tour
The plan backfired, as Charles wheedled the information out of Balhaldy and rode secretly hell-for-leather to Paris (see The Mask Revealed), arriving exhausted on 8th February 1744. In March he rode on to Gravelines, where the invasion fleet was assembled, awaiting news from the English pilots (for the farcical situation there, see The Gathering Storm, Chapter One). In the meantime the invasion plans had been leaked to the British, and George II issued a call to arms on 25th February.
Just as the British and French naval forces were about to engage in battle on 7th March, a great storm came, causing huge damage to the French fleet. The invasion was abandoned and it soon became clear that Louis had no intention of launching a further one, although, being Louis, he did not say this. Instead he played a duplicitous game with the frustrated prince, leading him on and then letting him down for the whole of 1744, while his followers Balhaldy and Sempill assured him that 20,000 Highlanders were ready and waiting to rise for him if he landed in Scotland.
Once more having been thwarted by an older man, Charles began to pin all his hopes on a Scottish expedition, and in spite of Murray of Broughton’s far more realistic reports of the situation in Scotland, he started to plan in earnest.
His reasoning was sound; the Jacobite cause had been dormant for twenty-six years, and all James’ attempts at diplomacy had failed – yet there was still considerable support for the Stuarts in Britain. Either the Stuarts had to give up their claim to the British throne, or take decisive action. Charles knew that he needed to make an attempt soon, but also that he needed French support to succeed, which Louis was prevaricating about. There were a reasonable number of Jacobite clans willing to rise for Charles, not least because they wished to break the hated Union with England. Therefore if he were to mount an expedition to Scotland, raise the clans and show Louis that he meant business, the French king would be bound to send an army, it being to his advantage to have a sympathetic king on the British throne. Once this happened the English Jacobites and Scottish waverers would rise too.
There seemed little to lose, and a lot to gain by making this gesture. King George II was not a popular monarch on a personal level, and if Charles could allay the fears of the British regarding a return to popery (Charles was relatively indifferent to religion) he had a good chance of swaying a large portion of the population in his favour. It was the perfect task for a man of his birth and abilities to attempt.
Prince Charles is often accused of having sacrificed the lives of thousands of men and destroyed the whole way of life of the Highlanders on an insane impulse. This is grossly unfair. After the failure of the previous Jacobite risings in ’15 and ’19, in the main the defeated warriors had been allowed to go home and continue their lives. Neither Charles nor his followers could possibly have known what would happen after Culloden. It seemed to be a campaign that could be won without much bloodshed, and in fact the ease with which Scotland was subsequently taken bore that out.
Eriskay, where Prince Charles landed in 1745. (Attribution; By Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0,)
Accordingly, he set sail for Scotland on the Du Teillay but he did not sail with only seven men, as is popularly believed – in fact he brought with him another ship, the Elisabeth which in addition to arms, carried 700 soldiers. Unfortunately the ships were seen by a British ship, HMS Lion, and a fight ensued in which the Elisabeth was badly crippled and had to return to France, leaving the Du Teillay to carry on to Eriskay, where the prince and his much diminished band landed on 23rd July 1745.
In my next post I’ll look at the role the prince played in the actual campaign.
5 Comments
Thanks Julia it was interesting to read this
Thanks Julia. It’s so interesting to read this. Charles was a prince in every sense of the word. His intentions were good; if only he were patient enough and waited until Louis made his move as was originally intended… who knows what the fate of the clans would be.
True. But Louis already had made a move to invade in 1744, which had failed and from Charles’ point of view (and very reasonable the viewpoint was, in my opinion), would be unlikely to attempt another invasion unless pushed into it – Louis was a master at prevaricating; there were several times when, if Louis had seized the moment, history would have been changed. Hence Charles’ gesture of sailing to Scotland anyway. More of that in blog 3!
I didn’t know how much I would be Soooo interested about reading the life of the Highlanders . Thank you so much for writing about this !!
My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it!