October came and with it the signing of the treaty. Louis had given the prince a lot of rope, but it was clear that he was not going to allow him to defy the might of the French state. France was in danger of becoming the laughing-stock of Europe. It was time for Louis to deploy more formidable forces over a wider front.
One obvious tactic was to bring pressure on the prince through the numerous Jacobite émigrés in the service of France, men who owed their pensions, careers and futures to the patronage and generosity of Versailles. But Louis overrated their influence with the prince. Charles Edward had long operated on the principle that whoever was not with him was against him. Since most of the émigrés were either James’s men – and had already been used unsuccessfully by him to attempt to moderate the prince’s behaviour – or were French careerists first and Jacobites second, there was little leverage they could exert. The fate of General Francis Bulkeley’s attempt at mediation showed how little could be expected from this tactic. Bulkeley penned a most adroit letter of compliance as from the prince to Louis XV. Charles refused to send it on. In a most striking clue to his state of mind, he rejected Bulkeley’s efforts with these words, echoing Pilate: ‘Quod dixi, dixi, et quod scripsi, scripsi.’ (‘What I have said, I have said, and what I have written, I have written.’)16
A more promising line of approach seemed to be to muzzle those ministers most obviously opposed to Charles Edward, like Puysieux and Maurepas, and bring in those courtiers with a proven record of being able to get on with the prince. Immediately after signing the ratification of the treaty on 18 October, Louis sent the duc de Gesvres, governor of Paris and first gentleman of the Royal Chamber, to reason with the prince.17 Gesvres was an old favourite of Charles Edward’s, even though he was described unkindly by one Jacobite as having no more brains than a sparrow.18 The interview was cordial but abortive. ‘Do you like the king of England so much as to give him so much pleasure?’ Gesvres asked, insisting that Louis XV would arrest the prince if pushed to the limit.19
The prince struck back vigorously. ‘What crime have I committed that I should be arrested?’ he asked. He warned that he would rather die than submit to the laws of Hanover.20 De Gesvres stayed with him for more than an hour, explaining the situation.21 He also read him a long letter from Louis XV, a mixture of threat and cajolery.22 It was left that the prince would come to see Gesvres at 8.30 p.m. next day to give a definite answer. But Charles Edward’s reply was a severe disappointment to the French. He simply reiterated the sentiments he had expressed to Puysieux in August. Although the letter was courteously written, the pith of it was that the prince regretted that he was unable on this occasion to do Louis’s bidding.23
At about the same time Louis XV wrote to James to ask him to put pressure on his son.24 James wrote to Charles about his ‘singular’ behaviour and warned him that he was on a collision course.25 He did not, however, explicitly ask him to desist from his actions: as he explained to Tencin, given the prince’s history of ignoring him, such a command would be counterproductive and might push his son into open revolt.26
James’s lack of firm action over the prince’s intransigence in the autumn of 1748 has sometimes been considered odd, but his correspondence with Tencin reveals the reasons.27 One of the factors that constrained him was a fear of deepening the rift between himself and his son. James was convinced that many ostensible Jacobites like Kelly were either Hanoverian double agents or had their own sinister reasons for wanting to widen the breach between Stuart father and son. Besides, James was shrewd enough to see that summoning Charles Edward back to Rome meant conceding that all Jacobite hopes were in vain. And since the prince would not go to Switzerland – Friburg had by this time withdrawn its invitation – James was practically powerless.28
Matters had now reached a desperate pass. The eyes of all Europe were on Louis XV and the prince, waiting to see which would crack first. Frederick of Prussia, who had earlier claimed that France’s sloughing off of Charles Edward illustrated the cynicism of the times, changed his tune by the end of November. He said he could not understand how a sane man could so depart from reason as to want to stand ‘Knut-like’ against the tide.29 By the beginning of December he was bored with the long-running saga and rebuked his minister in France Chambrier for wasting too much time on it in his dispatches.30
Benedict XIV was another incredulous observer. He claimed that Louis XV had done everything possible to get the prince out of France without violence. The Pope’s main concern was to make sure Charles Edward did not return to Rome. He was convinced that the shock would kill James.31
In England the crisis was watched with a mixture of exasperation and incredulity.32 Some saw the prince’s obstinacy as a colossal blunder, ruining his reputation and destroying the Jacobite cause more completely than Culloden.33 Others perceived it as a brilliant propaganda stroke. According to this version, the prince’s elaborate charade was devised for English consumption. He was showing the English nation that he was his own man, the exact opposite of a French puppet.34 The same strategy had been adopted by Charles II: humiliated by France, then restored to England. Some even wilder rumours were gaining currency, to the effect that the dauphin and the French queen were using Charles Edward as a weapon in their struggle to smash the influence of Madame de Pompadour.35
What was happening meanwhile at Versailles? From being an irritant and an embarrassment before the final signature of the Aix-la-Chapelle treaty, ‘l’affaire Prince Edouard’ was now a major crisis. The credibility of the king and his ministers was at stake. The only question for the council was how to resolve the crisis. Forlorn Jacobites like Lady Clifford, who feared for their own future if the House of Stuart became a dirty word in France, hopefully intimated that it was all a question of money.36 If the right financial incentives were offered to the prince, he would be prepared to depart. Puysieux, rightly, was sceptical. He thought the issue was greater than mere lucre. In any case, he alleged, Louis XV was already so angry that it was doubtful he would agree to a pacific solution at this late hour.37
This was not quite true. Louis still hoped to avoid a damaging showdown. Again he sent Gesvres to see the prince and make a final effort to get him to see reason.38 In tandem with this, he wrote to James in strong terms, asking him to order his son from France.39
Gesvres’s second interview with the prince was a tearful affair. Charles stressed that he was personally and emotionally very attached to both Gesvres and Louis XV, but that had nothing to do with it. Gesvres warned that the prince had no choice: he could either depart peacefully for Switzerland or he would be arrested and shipped out to Rome.40 At this the prince became angry. If what Gesvres said was true, it indicated personal vindictiveness on Louis XV’s part. Would he really need to use so much force just to please George II?41 After his conversation with Gesvres, the prince made the following note:
I have always thought Louis was constrained by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and that he acted reluctantly. But after his sending Puysieux and Gesvres twice, I begin to think this is a personal thing, that Louis wishes to chase me from his kingdom for private reasons.42
It is easy to dismiss this as paranoia, but it may be too easy. Anything that forced Louis XV to reveal his hand clearly, without subterfuge or prevarication, was liable to provoke an angry backlash. At last the prince began to realise something of the slumbering ogre he had aroused by forcing Louis into the daylight. But he was too far sunk in his own project to back out now. As his trump card, he warned Gesvres that Louis’s troops would never take him alive. If they attempted to arrest him, they would have a suicide on their hands.43 Since the prince had made a point of receiving him with his hand on his sword-hilt, and the room in which they sat contained enough guns and swords for a long siege, Gesvres was convinced this was no bluff.44
Gesvres finally asked the prince in exasperation whether he seriously expected France to renege on its treaty obligations and go to war again just for him. Stung by this, the prince
replied haughtily that from then on he would discuss his position only with the French king himself.45
The court next made an effort to bring pressure to bear on the Princesse de Talmont. Madame d’Aiguillon had dropped out of the prince’s circle once she saw him in head-on collision with Louis, but la Talmont was still at his side.46 Some said she was encouraging him to fight to the bitter end; others claimed she was trying to turn Charles away from his desperate project. The truth was that she had originally encouraged the prince in his defiance. But once she saw how things were developing at Versailles and realised that she was on shifting sands herself, she changed tack and began to advocate bowing to the inevitable.47 Maurepas, Talmont’s chief contact at court, let it be known that when the prince was finally expelled, there would be a reckoning for those who had encouraged him to defy the king.
But this was not a good time to ask the Princesse de Talmont to exert influence. The hotel Talmont had still not been sold, and as part of the ‘civilised’ separation arranged by Maurepas, the Talmont couple took it in turn to live in the house. Unaware that it was the husband’s turn to be in residence, the prince one afternoon went in search of his mistress. To his great consternation, he found the way barred by Talmont’s butler and informed there was no one at home. Talmont had decided to heed Maurepas’s warning by denying the troublesome Charles Edward his house.48
Thinking that it was his mistress who was excluding him, the prince returned next morning with tools for forcing the doors of the hôtel. A major scandal was brewing when General Bulkeley hurried to the scene and persuaded the irate prince to desist.49
The context was thus not propitious for the Princesse de Talmont to exert a restraining influence. First she had to make abject apologies for her husband’s ‘mistake’. Then she had to query the wisdom of the prince’s posture towards Louis XV. The moment she chose was a dinner given by the Irish brigade officer Colonel Beauchair. She begged and implored the prince to see reason. Charles Edward’s response was typical. In a singularly brusque manner he cut across her words and changed the subject.50
The only hope for the French now, short of violence, was a direct order to the prince from his father. When James received Louis XV’s request, he agonised before complying. He told Tencin that it had cost him a lot to send the required order. The sole consideration that swayed him to act in concert with Louis XV was the thought of the fiasco that might ensue if the prince were returned to Rome under armed guard.51
Nevertheless, the letter James eventually sent could not have disappointed Versailles. After revealing that he had followed his son’s struggle with the French with mounting anxiety, James concluded:
I see you on the edge of a precipice about to fall in, and I would be an unnatural father if I did not do my best to save you. I therefore here and now order you, both as your father and your king, to obey without delay Louis XV’s order to you to leave his dominions.52
There are two things to note about this letter. In the first place, if James was sincere in his avowed intention of playing no further part in public affairs, he should not have written it. For one thing, it gave the French the opportunity to say that any action they took against the prince was being taken not on their own account but in the name of King James.53 Second, the prince was certain to regard this letter as the ultimate betrayal. By plotting to have Henry made a cardinal, James had already pushed his relations with Charles Edward dangerously near the limit. By writing this letter, in effect an act of collusion with Louis XV, James confirmed his status as evil genius in the prince’s mind. It was bad enough that Louis XV should break his word and act as the creature of the ‘Elector of Hanover’. But it was scarcely to be borne that the prince’s own father should abet him in his nefarious actions.
Such an unambiguous and clear-cut order to the prince to leave French territory might have seemed the end of the affair for Charles. How could he deny his father, the source of his own legitimacy? But the prince had prepared for this eventuality. He had it bruited about that James had written to him secretly, warning him that he might have to indite a formal letter in such terms for reasons of diplomatic protocol, but advising him to ignore all such instructions issued under duress.54
The French ministers were determined to provide the prince with no loophole. The duc de Gesvres was sent on his third mission to Charles Edward, bearing a copy of James’s letter. He also took Louis XV’s ultimatum: the prince had three days to leave Paris and nine to quit France.55
True to his resolution to speak to nobody but Louis XV, the prince refused to see Gesvres. The governor of Paris was reduced to taking an affidavit from the prince’s followers (Kelly, Graeme and Oxburgh) that they had received both the letter from James and the orders from Louis XV.56
The trio then reported to the prince. Kelly began to read out James’s long letter. When he came to the words ‘I order you as your father and king’ the prince walked away and would not listen to any more.57
The next move in the battle of wits was for the French to publish James’s letter in the newspapers and gazettes so that the people of Paris might know the true situation.58 This seemed a trump card, but the prince was equal to this development too. James had copied the letter to his son in French for Louis XV’s consumption and it was this version that was published. This gave the prince his opportunity. He declared that the letter was a forgery. The proof of this was twofold. In the first place, no king of England would ever write to the Prince of Wales in French, but in English. Second, the alleged letter had been delivered by Gesvres and had not arrived through the proper channels.59 Naturally, the prince concluded, if the letter really was genuine, he would obey it; but he was certain it was a piece of imposture.
The prince followed this up with a piece of effrontery. He sent a message to Louis XV, asking for time to write to Rome to verify that the letter did proceed from his father. Charles claimed to be convinced that the letter was forged – either that or his father had been imposed on.60 The clinching proof of this, the prince argued to Louis, was that his father had not withdrawn the commission of Regency. This was a nuance that a forger would not have been aware of. If it was really James who had written the letter, the very first thing he would have done was to revoke the powers of Regent.
Charles’s stalling tactics served only to make the king still more angry. His rage moved up another notch when the prince once again raised the stakes. Two could play at the game of publishing confidential documents, Charles decided. He let it be known that he had private letters from Louis XV, couched in unambiguous terms and guaranteeing him life-time asylum in France.61
It was now clear to the French ministers that all normal measures had been exhausted. They either had to acquiesce in the prince’s remaining in France, in full defiance of the king’s orders, or they had to use force against him. After Louis XV’s ultimatum delivered by Gesvres, anything other than the use of force would involve too great a loss of face by the French crown. The question then became, how exactly to proceed.
Divided counsels in the king’s council (conseil d’en haut) were nothing new, but this time the differences over how to proceed were particularly pointed. The comte d’Argenson was against all violence, fearing the damage it could do the king’s reputation.62 The duc de Noailles agreed that the prince should be arrested, but felt that this should be a ‘kid-gloves’ affair.63 Cardinal Tencin’s position was the most ambivalent. As James’s confidant, he had no particular liking for Charles Edward, who hated him. He was aware that he was being blamed in the council for the disastrous consequences of five years of pro-Jacobite policies, and wanted to distance himself from the prince so as to safeguard his own position as minister of state. At the same time, he realised that his position with James would be jeopardised if Charles Edward was treated humiliatingly. As Tencin saw it, the prince had pushed Louis XV into a corner.64 The only way out was some eleventh-hour initiative from Charles’s friends Richelieu and Belle-Isle. The trouble was that neit
her of these sat on the council of state.
But there can be no doubt that the two hardliners on the council were Puysieux and Maurepas. Puysieux had loathed the prince with incandescent intensity ever since the intellectual drubbing he had taken from him in August.65 Noting the depth of his rancour, Maurepas cunningly tried to evade responsibility for the prince’s arrest by suggesting that Puysieux was the man with the right credentials for the job. This was too obvious a ploy even for a man of Puysieux’s limited abilities to miss. He was adamant. Paris was Maurepas’s responsibility as director of the city’s police; it was therefore Maurepas who had to carry out the arrest.66
The devious and subtle Maurepas devoted much thought to the delicate task laid upon him. Foreign ambassadors were consulted. They opined that Louis XV was within his rights to arrest and expel Charles Edward, provided he was treated with respect.67 But Maurepas’s real problem was how to avoid the risk that the prince might make good his threat to kill himself. The course he favoured was to arrest Charles in his own house rather than in the open. A large body of old and reliable musketeers should surround the house and effect entry at 7 a.m. All other occupants of the house would be allowed to leave, but no one would be permitted to enter, by formal interdict which prescribed the Bastille as the penalty for non-co-operation. When the prince was left alone in the house with the musketeers, he would then be escorted to the prison at the Chateau de Vincennes.68
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Page 47