Pickle the Spy; Or, the Incognito of Prince Charles

Charles, in fact, saw that, if he was to succeed in England, he could not have too little connection with Rome. D’Argenson describes his brother Henry as ‘Italian, superstitious, a rogue, avaricious, fond of ease, and jealous of the Prince.’ Cardinal Tencin, he says, and Lord and Lady Lismore, have been bribed by England to wheedle Henry into the cardinalate, ‘which England desires more than anything in the world.’ Charles expressed the same opinion in an epigram. Lady Lismore, for a short time believed to be the mistress of Louis XV., was deeply suspected. Whatever may be the truth of these charges, M. de Puysieux, an enemy of Charles, succeeded at the Foreign Office to d’Argenson, who had a queer sentimental liking for the Prince. Cardinal Tencin was insulted, and was hostile; the Lismores were absolutely estranged, if not treacherous; there was a quarrel between James and Henry in Rome, and Charles, in Paris. 37 Such was the state of affairs at the end of 1747, while Pickle was still a prisoner in the Tower of London, engaged, he tells us, in acts of charity towards his fellow-captives!

Meanwhile Charles’s private conduct demands a moment’s attention. Madame de Pompadour was all powerful at Court. 38 This was, therefore, a favourable moment for Charles, in a chivalrous affection for the injured French Queen (his dead mother’s kinswoman), to insult the reigning favourite. Madame de Pompadour sent him billets on that thick smooth vellum paper of hers, sealed with the arms of France. The Prince tossed them into the fire and made no answer; it is Pickle who gives us this information. Maria Theresa later stooped to call Madame de Pompadour her cousin. Charles was prouder or less politic; afterwards he stooped like Maria Theresa.

For his part, says d’Argenson, the Prince ‘now amused himself with love affairs. Madame de Guémené almost ravished him by force; they have quarrelled, after a ridiculous scene; he is living now with the Princesse de Talmond. He is full of fury, and wishes in everything to imitate Charles XII. of Sweden and stand a siege in his house like Charles XII. at Bender.’ This was in anticipation of arrest, after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in which his expulsion from France was one of the conditions. This Princesse de Talmond, as we shall see, was the unworthy Flora Macdonald of Charles in his later wanderings, his protectress, and, unlike Flora, his mistress. She was not young; Madame d’Aiguillon calls her vieille femme in a curious play, ‘La Prison du Prince Charles Edouard Stuart,’ written by d’Argenson in imitation of Shakespeare. 39 The Princesse, née Marie Jablonowski, a cousin of the Queen of France and of Charles, married Anne Charles Prince de Talmond, of the great house of La Trimouille, in 1730. She must have been nearly forty in 1749, and some ten years older than her lover.

We shall later, when Charles is concealed by the Princesse de Talmond, present the reader with her ‘portrait’ by the mordant pen of Madame du Deffand. Here Voltaire’s rhymed portrait may be cited:

Les dieux, en la donnant naissanceAux lieux par la Saxe envahis,Lui donnèrent pour récompenseLe goût qu’on ne trouve qu’en France,   Et l’esprit de tous les pays.

The Princesse, who frequented the Philosophes, appears to have encouraged Charles in free thinking and ostentatious indifference in religion.

‘He is a handsome Prince, and I should love him as much as my wife does,’ says poor M. de Talmond, in d’Argenson’s play, ‘but why is he not saintly, and ruled by the Congrégation de Saint Ignace, like his father? It is Madame de Talmond who preaches to him independence and incredulity. She is bringing the curse of God upon me. How old will she be before the conversion for which I pray daily to Saint François Xavier?’

Such was Madame de Talmond, an old mistress of a young man, flighty, philosophical, and sharp of tongue.

On July 18, 1748, Charles communicated to Louis XV. his protest against the article of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which drove him out of every secular state in Europe. Louis broke a solemn treaty by assenting to this article. Charles published his protest and sent it to Montesquieu. He complained that Montesquieu had not given him the new edition of his book on the Romans. ‘La confiance devroit être mieux établi entre les auteurs: j’espère que ma façon de penser pour vous m’attirera la continuation de votre bonne volonté pour moi.’ 40 Montesquieu praised Charles’s ‘simplicity, nobility, and eloquence’: ‘comme vous le dites très bien, vous estes un auteur.’ ‘Were you not so great a Prince, the Duchesse de Guillon’ (d’Aiguillon) ‘and I would secure you a place in the Academy.’

The Duchesse d’Aiguillon, who later watched by Montesquieu’s death-bed, was a friend of Charles. She and Madame de Talmond literally ‘pull caps’ for him in d’Argenson’s play. But she was in favour of his going to Fribourg with a pension after the Peace: Madame de Talmond encouraged resistance. Louis’s minister, M. de Cousteille, applied to Fribourg for an asylum for Charles on June 24, 1748. On September 8, Burnaby wrote, for England, a long remonstrance to the ‘Laudable States of Fribourg,’ calling Charles ‘this young Italian!’ The States, in five lines, rebuked Burnaby’s impertinence, as ‘unconfined in its expressions and so unsuitable to a Sovereign State that we did not judge it proper to answer it.’ 41

To Fribourg Charles would not go. He braved the French Court in every way. He even insisted on a goldsmith’s preferring his order for a great service of plate to the King’s, and, having obtained the plate, he feasted the Princesse de Talmond, his friend and cousin, the Duc de Bouillon, and a crowd of other distinguished people. 42 In his demeanour Charles resolutely affronted the French Ministers. There were terrible scenes with Madame de Talmond, especially when Charles was forbidden the house by her husband. Charles was led away from her closed door by Bulkeley, the brother-in-law of Marshal Berwick, and a friend of Montesquieu’s. 43 Thus the violence which afterwards interrupted and ended Charles’s liaison with Madame de Talmond had already declared itself. One day, according to d’Argenson, the lady said, ‘You want to give me the second volume in your romance of compromising Madame de Montbazon [his cousin] with your two pistol-shots.’ No more is known of this adventure. But Charles was popular both in Court and town: his resistance to expulsion was applauded. De Gèvres was sent by the King to entreat Charles to leave France; ‘he received de Gèvres gallantly, his hand on his sword-hilt.’ D’Argenson saw him at the opera on December 3, 1748, ‘fort gai et fort beau, admiré de tout le public.’

On December 10, 1748, Charles was arrested at the door of the opera house, bound hand and foot, searched, and dragged to Vincennes. The deplorable scene is too familiar for repetition. One point has escaped notice. Charles (according to d’Argenson) had told de Gèvres that he would die by his own hand, if arrested. Two pistols were found on him; he had always carried them since his Scottish expedition. But a pair of compasses was also found. Now it was with a pair of compasses that his friend, Lally Tollendal, long afterwards attempted to commit suicide in prison. The pistols were carried in fear of assassination, but what does a man want with a pair of compasses at the opera? 44

After some days of detention at Vincennes, Charles was released, was conducted out of French territory, and made his way to Avignon, where he resided during January and February 1749. He had gained the sympathy of the mob, both in Paris and in London. Some of the French Court, including the Dauphin, were eager in his cause. Songs and poems were written against Louis XV, D’Argenson, as we know, being out of office, composed a play on Charles’s martyrdom. So much contempt for Louis was excited, that a nail was knocked into the coffin of French royalty. The King, at the dictation of England, had arrested, bound, imprisoned, and expelled his kinsman, his guest, and (by the Treaty of Fontainebleau) his ally.

Applause and pity from the fickle and forgetful the Prince had won, but his condition was now desperate. Refusing to accept a pension from France, he was poor; his jewels he had pawned for the Scottish expedition. He had disobeyed his father’s commands and mortally offended Louis by refusing to leave France. His adherents in Paris (as their letters to Rome prove) were in despair. His party, as has been shown, was broken up into hostile camps. Lochiel was dead. Lord George Murray had been insulted and estranged. The Earl Marischal had declined Charles’s invitation to manage his affairs (1747). Elcho was a persistent and infuriated dun. Clancarty was reviling Charles, James, Louis, England, and the world at large. Madame de Pompadour, Cardinal Tencin, and de Puysieux were all hostile. The English Jacobites, though loyal, were timid. Europe was hermetically sealed against the Prince. Refuge in Fribourg, where the English threatened the town, Charles had refused. Not a single shelter was open to him, for England’s policy was to drive him into the dominions of the Pope, where he would be distant and despised. Of advisers he had only such attached friends as Henry Goring, Bulkeley, Harrington, or such distrusted boon companions as Kelly – against whom the English Jacobites set all wheels in motion. Charles’s refuge at Avignon even was menaced by English threats directed at the Pope. The Prince tried to amuse himself; he went to dances, he introduced boxing matches, 45 just as years before he had brought golf into Italy. But his position was untenable, and he disappeared.

From the gossip of d’Argenson we have learned that Charles was no longer the same man as the gallant leader of the race to Derby, or the gay and resourceful young Ascanius who won the hearts of the Highlanders by his cheerful courage and contented endurance. He was now embittered by defeat; by suspicions of treachery which the Irish about him kindled and fanned, by the broken promises of Louis XV., by the indifference of Spain. He had become ‘a wild man,’ as his father’s secretary, Edgar, calls him – ‘Our dear wild man.’ He spelled the name ‘L’ome sauvage.’ He was, in brief, a desperate, a soured, and a homeless outcast. His chief French friends were ladies – Madame de Vassé, Madame de Talmond, and others. Montesquieu, living in their society, and sending wine from his estate to the Jacobite Lord Elibank; rejoicing, too, in an Irish Jacobite housekeeper, ‘Mlle. Betti,’ was well disposed, like Voltaire, in an indifferent well-bred way. Most of these people were, later, protecting and patronising the Prince when concealed from the view of Europe, but theirs was a vague and futile alliance. Charles and his case were desperate.

In this mood, and in this situation at Avignon, he carried into practice the counsel which d’Argenson had elaborated in a written memoir. ‘I gave them’ (Charles and Henry) ‘the best possible advice,’ says La Bête. ‘My “Mémoire” I entrusted to O’Brien at Antwerp. Therein I suggested that the two princes should never return to Italy, but that for some years they should lead a hidden and wandering life between France and Spain. Charles might be given a pension and the vicariat of Navarre. This should only be allowed to slip out by degrees, while England would grow accustomed to the notion that they were not in Rome, and would be reduced to mere doubts as to their place of residence. Now they would be in Spain, now in France, finally in some town of Navarre, where their authority would, by slow degrees, be admitted. Peace once firmly established, it would not be broken over this question. They would be in a Huguenot country, and able to pass suddenly into Great Britain.’ 46

This was d’Argenson’s advice before Henry fled Rome to be made a cardinal, and before the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, closing Europe against Charles, was concluded. The object of d’Argenson is plain; he wished to keep Charles out of the Pope’s domains, as England wanted to drive the Prince into the centre of ‘Popery.’ If he resided in Rome, Protestant England would always suspect Charles; moreover, he would be remote from the scene of action. To the Pope’s domains, therefore, Charles would not go. But the scheme of skulking in France, Spain, and Navarre had ceased to be possible. He, therefore, adopted ‘the fugitive and hidden life’ recommended by d’Argenson; he secretly withdrew from Avignon, and for many months his places of residence were unknown.

‘Charles,’ says Voltaire, ‘hid himself from the whole world.’ We propose to reveal his hiding-places.

CHAPTER III

THE PRINCE IN FAIRYLAND FEBRUARY 1749-SEPTEMBER 1750 – I. WHAT THE WORLD SAID

Europe after Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle – A vast gambling establishment – Charles excluded – Possible chance in Poland – Supposed to have gone thither – ‘Henry Goring’s letter’ – Romantic adventures attributed to Charles – Obvious blunders – Talk of a marriage – Count Brühl’s opinion – Proposal to kidnap Charles – To rob a priest – The King of Poland’s ideas – Lord Hyndford on Frederick the Great – Lord Hyndford’s mare’s nest – Charles at Berlin – ‘Send him to Siberia’ – The theory contradicted – Mischievous glee of Frederick – Charles discountenances plots to kill Cumberland – Father Myles Macdonnell to James – London conspiracy – Reported from Rome – The Bloody Butcher Club – Guesses of Sir Horace Mann – Charles and a strike – Charles reported to be very ill – Really on the point of visiting England – September 1750.

Europe, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, was like a vast political gambling establishment. 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. Projects of new alliances were shuffled and cut, like the actual cards which were seldom out of the hands of the players, when Casanova or Barry Lyndon held the bank, and challenged all comers. It was the age of adventurers, from the mendacious Casanova to the mysterious Saint-Germain, from the Chevalier d’Eon to Charles Edward Stuart. That royal player was warned off the turf, as it were, ruled out of the game. Where among all these attractive tables was one on which Prince Charles, in 1749, might put down his slender stake, his name, his sword, the lives of a few thousand Highlanders, the fortunes of some faithful gentlemen? Who would accept Charles’s empty alliance, which promised little but a royal title and a desperate venture? The Prince had wildly offered his hand to the Czarina; he was to offer that hand, vainly stretched after a flying crown, to a Princess of Prussia, and probably to a lady of Poland.

At this moment the Polish crown was worn by Augustus of Saxony, who was reckoned ‘a bad life.’ The Polish throne, the Polish alliance, had been, after various unlucky adventures since the days of Henri III. and the Duc d’Alençon, practically abandoned by France. But Louis XV. was beginning to contemplate that extraordinary intrigue in which Conti aimed at the crown of Poland, and the Comte de Broglie was employed (1752) to undermine and counteract the schemes of Louis’s official representatives. 47 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. 48 In 1719, Charles’s maternal grandfather had declined a Russian proposal to make a dash for the crown, so the chivalrous Wogan narrates. In 1747 (June 6), Chambrier had reported to Frederick the Great that Cardinal Tencin was opposed to the ambition of the Saxon family, which desired to make the elective crown of Poland hereditary in its house. The Cardinal said that, in his opinion, there was a Prince who would figure well in Poland, le jeune Edouard (Prince Charles), who had just made himself known, and in whom there was the stuff of a man. 49 But Frederick the Great declined to interfere in Polish matters, and Tencin was only trying to get rid of Charles without a rupture. In May 1748, Frederick refused to see Graeme, a Jacobite who was sent to demand a refuge for the Prince in Prussia. 50 Without Frederick and without Sweden, Charles in 1749 could do nothing serious in Poland.

The distracted politics of Poland, however, naturally drew the attention of Europe to that country when Charles, on February 28, vanished out of Avignon ‘into fairyland,’ like Frederick after Molwitz. Every Court in Europe was vainly searched for ‘the boy that cannot be found.’ The newsletters naturally sent him to Poland, so did Jacobite myth.

The purpose of this chapter is to record the guesses made by diplomatists at Charles’s movements, and the expedients by which they vainly endeavoured to discover him. We shall next lift, as far as possible, the veil which has concealed for a century and a half adventures in themselves unimportant enough. In spite of disappointments and dark hours of desertion, Charles, who was much of a boy, probably enjoyed the mystery which he now successfully created. If he could not startle Europe by a brilliant appearance on any stage, he could keep it talking and guessing by a disappearance. He obviously relished secrecy, pass-words, disguises, the ‘properties’ of the conspirator, in the spirit of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He came of an evasive race. His grandfather, as Duke of York, had fled from England disguised as a girl. His father had worn many disguises in many adventures. He had been ‘Betty Burke.’

Though it is certain that, in March 1749 (the only month when he almost evades us), Charles could not have visited Berlin, Livadia, Stockholm, the reader may care to be reminded of a contemporary Jacobite romance in which he is made to do all these things. A glance should be cast on the pamphlet called ‘A Letter from H. G – g, Esq.’ (London, 1750). The editor announces that the letter has been left in his lodgings by a mistake; it has not been claimed, as the person for whom it was meant has gone abroad, and so the editor feels free to gratify ‘the curiosity of the town.’ The piece, in truth, is a Jacobite tract, meant to keep up the spirits of the faithful, and it is probable that the author really had some information, though he is often either mistaken, or fables by way of a ‘blind.’ About February 11, says the scribe (nominally Henry Goring, Charles’s equerry, an ex-officer of the Queen of Hungary), a mysterious stranger, the ‘Chevalier de la Luze,’ came to Avignon, and was received by the Prince ‘with extraordinary marks of distinction.’ ‘He understood not one word of English,’ which destroys, if true, the theory that the Earl Marischal, or Marshal Keith, is intended. French and Italian he spoke well, but with a foreign accent. Kelly ventured to question the Prince about the stranger, but was rebuffed. One day, probably February 24, the stranger received despatches, and vanished as he had come. The Prince gave a supper (d’Argenson’s ‘ball’), and, when his guests had retired, summoned Goring into his study. He told Goring that ‘there were spies about him’ (the Earl Marischal, we know, distrusted Kelly); he rallied him on a love-affair, and said that Goring only should be his confidant. Next morning, very early, they two started for Lyons, disguised as French officers. As far as Lyons, indeed, the French police actually traced them. 51 But, according to the pamphlet, they did not stop in Lyons; they rested at a small town two leagues further on, whence the Prince sent dispatches to Kelly at Avignon. Engaging a new valet, Charles pushed to Strasbourg, where he again met La Luze, now described as ‘a person whose extraordinary talents had gained him the confidence one of the wisest Princes in Europe,’ obviously pointing to Frederick of Prussia, the master of Marshal Keith, and the friend and host of his brother, the Earl Marischal. At Strasbourg, Charles rescued a pretty young lady from a fire; she lost her heart at once to the ‘Comte d’Espoir’ (his travelling title), but the Prince behaved like Scipio, not to mention a patriarch famous for his continence. ‘I am no stoic,’ said His Royal Highness to La Luze, ‘but I have always been taught that pleasures, how pardonable soever in themselves, become highly criminal when indulged to the prejudice of another,’ adding many other noble and unimpeachable sentiments.

After a romantic adventure with English or Scottish assassins, in which His Royal Highness shot a few of them, the travellers arrived at Leipzig. La Luze now assumed his real name, and carried Charles, by cross roads, to ‘a certain Court,’ where he spent ten days with much satisfaction. He stayed at the house of La Luze (Berlin and the Earl Marischal appear to be hinted at, but the Marischal told Pickle that he had never seen Charles at Berlin), secret business was done, and then, through territories friendly or hostile, ‘a certain port’ was reached. They sailed (from Dantzig?), were driven into a hostile port (Riga?), escaped and made another port (Stockholm?) where they met Lochgarry, ‘whom the Prince thought had been one of those that fell at Culloden.’

This is nonsense. Lochgarry had been with Charles after Culloden, and had proposed to waylay Cumberland, which the Prince forbade. Murray of Broughton, in his examination, and Bishop Forbes agree on this point, and James, we know, sent, by Edgar, a message to Lochgarry on Christmas Eve, 1748. 52 Charles, therefore, knew excellently well that Lochgarry did not die at Culloden. After royal, but very secret entertainment ‘in this kingdom’ (Sweden?), Charles went into Lithuania, where old friends of his maternal ancestors, the Sobieskis, welcomed him. He resumed a gaiety which he had lost ever since his arrest at the opera in Paris, and had ‘an interview with a most illustrious and firm friend to his person and interest.’ Though his marriage, says the pamphleteer, had been much talked of, ‘he has always declined making any applications of that nature himself. It was his fixed determination to beget no royal beggars.’ D’Argenson reports Charles’s remark that he will never marry till the Restoration, and, no doubt, he was occasionally this mood, among others. 53 The pamphleteer vows that the Prince ‘loves and is loved,’ but will not marry ‘till his affairs take a more favourable turn.’ The lady is ‘of consummate beauty, yet is that beauty the least of her perfections.’

The pamphlet concludes with vague enigmatic hopes and promises, and certainly leaves its readers little wiser than they were before. In the opinion of the Messrs. ‘Sobieski Stuart’ (who called themselves his grandsons), Charles really did visit Sweden, and his jewel, as Grand Master of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Stockholm, is still preserved there. 54 The castle where he resided in Lithuania, it is said, is that of Radzivil. 55 The affectionate and beautiful lady is the Princess Radzivil, to whom the newspapers were busy marrying Charles at this time. The authors of ‘Tales of the Century,’ relying on some vague Polish traditions, think that a party was being made to raise the Prince to the Polish crown. In fact, there is not a word of truth in ‘Henry Goring’s letter.’

We now study the perplexities of Courts and diplomatists. Pickle was not yet at hand with accurate intelligence, and, even after he began to be employed, the English Government left their agents abroad to send in baffled surmises. From Paris, on March 8, Colonel Joseph Yorke (whom d’Argenson calls by many ill names) wrote, ‘I am told for certain that he [the Prince] is now returned to Avignon.’ 56 Mann, in Florence, hears (March 7) that the Prince has sent a Mr. Lockhart to James to ask for money, but that was really done on December 31, 1748. 57 On March 11, Yorke learned from Puysieux that the Prince had been recognised by postboys as he drove through Lyons towards Metz; probably, Puysieux thought, on ‘an affair of gallantry.’ Others, says Yorke, ‘have sent him to Poland or Sweden,’ which, even in 1746, had been getting ready troops to assist Charles in Scotland. 58 On March 20, Yorke hints that Charles may be in or near Paris, as he probably was. Berlin was suggested as his destination by Horace Mann (April 4). Again, he has been seen in disguise, walking into a gate of Paris (April 11). 59 On April 14, Walton, from Florence, writes that James has had news of his son, is much excited, and is sending Fitzmorris to join him. The Pope knows and is sure to blab. 60 On May 3, Yorke mentions a rumour, often revived, that the Prince is dead. On May 9, the Jacobites in Paris show a letter from Oxford inviting Charles to the opening of the Radcliffe, ‘where they assure him of better reception than the University has had at Court lately.’ 61 Mann (May 2) mentions the Radzivil marriage, arranged, in a self-denying way, by the Princesse de Talmond. On May 17, Yorke hears from Puysieux that the French ambassador in Saxony avers that Charles is in Poland, and that Sir Charles Williams has remonstrated with Count Brühl. On May 1, 1749, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote from Leipzig to the Duke of Newcastle. He suspects that Charles is one of several persons who have just passed through Leipzig on the way to Poland; Count Brühl is ‘almost certain’ of it. 62 On May 5 (when Charles was really in or near Venice), Hanbury Williams sends a copy of his remonstrance with Brühl.