Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) by McLynn Frank

Author:McLynn, Frank [McLynn, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781446449394
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

24

A New Mistress

(March–August 1748)

THE POLITICAL SITUATION in early 1748 could hardly have been less promising for the prince. It was now certain that a general peace would soon bring the War of Austrian Succession to an end. Charles Edward was still locked in stubborn conflict with France. All hope of a descent on England was laid aside. The prince’s best efforts with the comte d’Argenson were devoted to finding lucrative positions for his followers; Lord Ogilvy finally obtained a French regiment.1 But the War Minister’s personal animus towards Lally – after Kelly the Jacobite personally closest to the prince – meant that, though Charles’s personal choice, he was unable to take over Lochiel’s regiment when the gallant Cameron chief died of meningitis later that year.2

All the senior Jacobite officers of the ’45, except Lord George Murray, were now settled in France with places or pensions.3 Charles Edward himself still officially refused to accept the French pension, but the French had hit on a scheme to force his hand. They refused to pay anything for the relief of the starving Jacobite ‘other ranks’ on the grounds that the monthly sum paid to the prince was ‘global’ and included an element for the subsistence of his needy followers. Henceforth the prince would be paid 11,000 livres a month (8,000 livres for himself and 3,000 for his followers).4 Charles Edward was thus forced into a choice between seeing Highlanders die and accepting the French pension. He found an ingenious compromise. The ministers would pay the pension money to the banker Monmartel, who in turn would pay it to Lally.5 It would then be distributed as needed, but the prince could still maintain the fiction that he had accepted nothing from Louis XV. When James wrote to say how glad he was that his son had finally accepted the French pension, Charles Edward angrily denied that this was the case.6

The prince continued as uncompromising in all other political areas. He rejected brusquely a proposal to make him the next king of Poland:

A throne in itself, I assure you, is not the object of my ambition. I see that a private man may be happier than any sovereign, but I think I owe myself to my country. No other throne in the universe but that of Great Britain would engage my desires.7

It is not surprising, given his inflexible attitude to Louis XV and his ministers, that he should have been drawn into a social circle that was far from uncritical of the Ancien Régime. Anne-Charlotte de Crussol-Florensac, duchesse d’Aiguillon, was the hostess of the most brilliant salon in Paris. Every Saturday she gave a magnificent supper, to which were invited notable foreigners, ministers in office, former ministers, and men of letters. She adopted a deliberate policy of mixing ranks. Among her circle could be found the future Foreign Minister duc de Choiseul, president Hénault, Abbé (later Cardinal) Bernis, Maupertuis the polar explorer, and the philosophes Voltaire and Montesquieu.8

The duchesse d’Aiguillon lived an eccentric life even by the standards of Ancien Régime France.

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