Charles Edward Stuart

Charles Edward Stuart
"Charles III"
Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie"
Jacobite pretender
Pretendence	1 January 1766 – 31 January 1788
Predecessor	James III and VIII
Successor	Henry IX
Spouse	Louise of Stolberg-Gedern
Issue
Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany (illegitimate)
Full name
Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Silvester Severino Maria Stuart[1]
Father	James III
Mother	Maria Klementyna Sobieska
Born	31 December 1720(1720-12-31) Palazzo Muti, Rome
Died	31 January 1788(1788-01-31) (aged 67) Palazzo Muti, Rome
Burial	St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Religion	Roman Catholic

Prince Charles Edward Stuart (31 December 1720 – 31 January 1788) was the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He is commonly known to the English and the Scottish as Bonnie Prince Charlie. Another name given to him was the Young Chevalier. In Scottish Gaelic, his name was Teàrlach Eideard Stiùbhairt, while the Irish form is Séarlas Éadbhard Stiúbhart. After his father's death, Charles was recognised as Charles III by his supporters; his opponents referred to him as The Young Pretender.

Early life

Bonnie Prince Charlie

Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Silvester Severino Maria Stuart was born in Rome, Italy, on December 31, 1720, where his father had been given a residence by Pope Clement XI. He spent almost all his childhood in Rome and Bologna. Prince Charles Edward was the son of the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart, son of exiled Stuart King, James II and his second wife Mary of Modena. His father was called the 'Pretender' because many believed he was not the King's true son—to those who feared a Catholic dynasty in England, his birth had seemed too convenient and was viewed with great suspicion.^[2]

Perhaps strangely for a future "Scottish Hero," Prince Charles wasn't Scottish in the strictest sense. His mother, Maria Klementyna Sobieska, was a Polish noblewoman, the granddaughter of the Polish king John III Sobieski. His paternal grandmother, Maria of Modena, was Italian and his paternal great-grandmother, Henrietta Maria of France, was a French Princess, making the young Stuart an unlikely candidate as a claimant to the throne by Stuart lineage.

His childhood in Rome was one of privilege, being brought up Catholic in a loving but argumentative family. Being the last legitimate heirs of the House of Stuart, his family lived with a sense of pride and staunchly believed in the Divine Right of Kings. The talk of regaining the thrones of England and Scotland for the Stuarts was a constant topic of conversation in the household, principally reflected in his fathers' often morose and combative moods.^[2]

His grandfather, James II and VII of Scotland, had ruled the country from 1685-1689 at which time he was deposed by the Dutch Protestant, William III of Orange, in the Revolution of 1688. James II had aimed to bring England back into the Catholic fold and in the process had irritated and alarmed the powerful statesmen of the day. Since the exile of James II, the so-called 'Jacobite Cause' had striven to return the Stuarts to their rightful place as the rulers of England and Scotland (later Great Britain). Prince Charles Edward was to play a major part in this ultimate goal.

The young Prince was trained in the military arts from an early age. In 1734, he participated in the French and Spanish siege of Gaeta, his first exposure to battle. His father managed to obtain the support of the French government in 1744, and Charles Edward traveled to France with the sole purpose of commanding a French army, which he would lead in an invasion of England. The invasion never materialized, principally due to the fact that the French were afraid of the much stronger British army and, to a lesser extent, because of poor weather that prohibited sailing.^[2] Undeterred, Charles Edward was determined to carry on in his quest for reinstatement of the Stuarts regardless.

The 'Forty-Five'

Prince Charles Edward in the traditional Scottish attire

In December 1743, Charles's father named him Prince Regent, giving him authority to act in his name. Eighteen months later, he led a rising to restore his father to his thrones. Charles raised funds to fit out two ships: the Elisabeth, an old man-of-war of sixty-six guns, and a small frigate of sixteen guns named the Doutelle (le Du Teillay) which successfully landed him and seven companions at Eriskay on 23 July 1745. Charles had hoped for support from a French fleet, but this was badly damaged by storms, and he was left to raise an army in Scotland.

"Bonnie Prince Charlie" by John Pettie, (1898)

The Bonnie Prince public house in Chellaston, Derby — near Swarkestone Bridge where Charles' army decided to turn back and return to Scotland

Battle of Culloden between the Jacobites and the 'Redcoats'

The Jacobite cause was still supported by many Highland clans, both Catholic and Protestant, and Charles hoped for a warm welcome from these clans to start an insurgency by Jacobites throughout Britain, but there was no immediate response. Charles raised his father's standard at Glenfinnan and raised a large enough force to enable him to march on Edinburgh, which quickly surrendered. On 21 September 1745, he defeated the only government army in Scotland at the Battle of Prestonpans, and by November, was marching south at the head of around 6,000 men. Having taken Carlisle, Charles's army progressed as far as Swarkestone Bridge in Derbyshire. Here, despite the objections of the Prince, the decision was made by his council to return to Scotland, largely because of the almost complete lack of support from English Jacobites that Charles had promised. By now, he was pursued by King George II's son, the Duke of Cumberland, who caught up with him at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746.

Ignoring the advice of his best commander, Lord George Murray, Charles chose to fight on flat, open, marshy ground where his forces would be exposed to superior government firepower. Charles commanded his army from a position behind his lines, where he could not see what was happening. Hoping Cumberland's army would attack first, he had his men stand exposed to Hanoverian artillery for twenty minutes before finally ordering an attack. The Jacobite attack, charging into the teeth of musket fire and grapeshot fired from the cannons, was uncoordinated and met little success.

The Jacobites broke through the bayonets of the redcoats in one place but were shot down by a second line of soldiers, and the survivors fled. Cumberland's troops committed numerous atrocities as they hunted for the defeated Jacobite soldiers, earning him the title "the Butcher" from the Highlanders. Murray managed to lead a group of Jacobites to Ruthven, intending to continue the fight. However Charles decided to abandon the Jacobite cause. James, the Chevalier de Johnstone, acted as Murray's Aide de Camp during the campaign and for a brief spell, the Young Pretender. He gives a first hand account of these events in his "Memoir of the Rebellion 1745-1746".

Bonnie Prince Charlie's subsequent flight has become the stuff of legend, and is commemorated in the popular folk song "The Skye Boat Song" (lyrics 1884, tune traditional) and also the old Irish song Mo Ghile Mear by Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill. Assisted by loyal supporters such as Flora MacDonald who helped him escape pursuers on the Isle of Skye by taking him in a small boat disguised as her Irish maid, "Betty Burke,"^[3][4] he evaded capture and left the country aboard the French frigate L'Heureux, arriving back in France in September. The cause of the Stuarts now lost, the remainder of his life was — with a brief exception — spent in exile.

Exile

Prince Charles Edward as the Jacobite Leader

Charles Edward Stuart as an old man

The Prince's estranged wife, Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern

Clementina Walkinshaw

Charlotte Stuart by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Marie-Victoire, Princess de Rohan—Charles's secret granddaughter

While back in France, Charles had numerous affairs; the one with his first cousin Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne, wife of Jules, Prince of Guéméné, resulted in a short-lived son Charles (1748–1749). He lived for several years in exile with his Scottish mistress, Clementina Walkinshaw, whom he met, and may have begun a relationship with, during the 1745 rebellion. In 1753, the couple had a daughter, Charlotte. Charles's inability to cope with the collapse of the cause led to his heavy drinking and mother and daughter left Charles with James' connivance. Charlotte went on to have three illegitimate children with Ferdinand, an ecclesiastical member of the Rohan family. She was suspected by many of Charles' supporters of being a spy, planted by the Hanoverian government of Britain.^[5]

After his defeat, Charles indicated to the remaining supporters of the Jacobite cause in England that, accepting the impossibility of his recovering the English and Scots crowns while he remained a Roman Catholic, he was willing to commit himself to reigning as a Protestant. Accordingly he visited London incognito in 1750 and conformed to the Protestant faith by receiving Anglican communion at the Church of St Mary-le-Strand, a noted centre of Anglican Jacobitism. On Charles's return to France he reverted to Catholic observance.

In 1759, at the height of the Seven Years War, Charles was summoned to a meeting in Paris with the French foreign minister, the Duc De Choiseul.^[6] Charles turned up at the meeting drunk, and proved to be irascible. Choisel was planning a full-scale invasion of England, involving upwards of 100,000 men^[7] - to which he hoped to add a number of Jacobites, led by Charles. However he was so unimpressed with Charles, he dismissed the prospect of Jacobite assistance.^[8] The French invasion, which was the last realistic chance of Charles to recover the British throne for the Stuart dynasty, was ultimately thwarted by naval defeats at Quiberon Bay and Lagos.

In 1766, Charles' father died. Until his death James had been recognised as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland by the Pope, as "James III and VIII". But Pope Clement XIII decided not to give the same recognition to Charles.

In 1772, Charles married Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern. They lived first in Rome, but, in 1774, moved to Florence where Charles first began to use the title "Count of Albany" as an alias. This title is frequently used for him in European publications; his wife Louise is almost always called "Countess of Albany".

In 1780, Louise left Charles. She claimed that Charles had physically abused her; this claim was generally believed by contemporaries in spite of the fact that Louise was already involved in an adulterous relationship with the Italian poet, Count Vittorio Alfieri, before she left Charles.

The claims by two nineteenth century charlatans, Charles and John Allen alias John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, that their father Thomas Allen was a legitimate son of Charles and Louise, are without foundation.

In 1783, Charles signed an act of legitimation for his illegitimate daughter Charlotte, his child born in 1753 to Clementina Walkinshaw (later known as Countess von Alberstrof). Charles also gave Charlotte the title "Duchess of Albany" in the peerage of Scotland and the style "Her Royal Highness". But these honours did not give Charlotte any right to the succession to the throne. Charlotte lived with her father in Florence and Rome for the next five years.

Charles died in Rome on 31 January 1788. He was first buried in the Cathedral of Frascati, where his brother Henry Benedict Stuart was bishop. At Henry's death in 1807, Charles's remains were moved to the crypt of Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican where they were laid to rest next to those of his brother and father. His mother is also buried in Saint Peter's Basilica.

When the body of Charles Stuart was transferred to the Saint Peter's Basilica, his "praecordia" were left in Frascati Cathedral: a small urn encloses the heart of Charles, placed beneath the floor below the funerary monument.

Arms

During his pretence as Prince of Wales, Charles claimed a coat of arms consisting of those of the kingdom, differenced by a label argent of three points.^[9]

In popular culture

A miniature of the Young Pretender

Bonnie Prince Charlie Statue in Derby commemorating the prince's visit in December 1745.

Two biographical films have been made about Bonnie Prince Charlie. In 1923 a British silent film, Bonnie Prince Charlie, featured Ivor Novello in the title role. In 1948 another eponymous film was made with David Niven playing the role.

Peter Watkins' 1964 Culloden, with Olivier Espitalier-Noel as the Prince, presents the battle through the eyes of a documentary crew as though they were actually present. The film utilises a number of other dramatic devices to create a tense realistic interpretation of the event. Similarly, the 1994 film Chasing the Deer depicts the 1745 Jacobite rebellion from the point of view of the commoners caught in the struggle. The Prince, played by Dominique Carrara, makes a brief appearance in the movie, and is never actually seen by any of the commoners fighting for his cause.

A 1970 drama-documentary about the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, Upon this Rock, featured Dirk Bogarde as the older Prince.

Scottish author Sir Walter Scott featured Bonnie Prince Charlie and the 1745 Jacobite uprising in his popular 1814 novel Waverley. Author Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series depicts the Bonnie Prince in three of her six novels. D.K. Broster's Jacobite Trilogy, beginning with The Flight of the Heron (1920), also depicts the uprising.

The Maiden, Volume 8 of The Morland Dynasty, a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, covers this period of history, seen through the eyes of the fictional Morland family.

Musician Will Oldham, who has recorded some albums under the name Bonnie "Prince" Billy, cites Bonnie Prince Charlie as one of multiple sources for this moniker: "Bonnie Prince Charlie has such a beautiful ring to it, and I was very conscious of appropriating that mellifluous sound."^[10]

See also

• Charles Edward Stuart's Flight
• Monument to the Royal Stuarts
• Óró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile (Irish supporters' song)
• Prince Charlie's Targe
• Touch pieces

Ancestry

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Chidsey, Donald Barr. Bonnie Prince Charlie. London: Williams & Norgate, 1928.
• Daiches, David. Charles Edward Stuart: The Life and Ttimes of Bonnie Prince Charlie. London: Thames & Hudson, 1973.
• Douglas, Hugh. Charles Edward Stuart. London: Hale, 1975.
• Kybett, Susan M. Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography of Charles Edward Stuart. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1988.
• McLynn, Frank. 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World. London: Pimlico, 2005
• McLynn, Frank. Charles Edward Stuart: A Tragedy in Many Acts. London: Routledge, 1988.

External links

• McFerran, Noel S. Charles III
• Charles Edward Stuart, 1720-1788
• Ascanius; or, the Young Adventurer
• National Gallery of Scotland, Portrait of Charles Edward Stuart
• Oró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile video A song for the second Jacobite rising