Pickle the Spy; Or, the Incognito of Prince Charles. Lang Andrew
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 naissance
Aux lieux par la Saxe envahis,
Lui donnèrent pour récompense
Le 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
Published by the Duc de Broglie, in
Browne, iv. 36–38.
There are letters of Bulkeley’s to Montesquieu as early as 1728.
In his work on Madame de Pompadour (p. 109), M. Capefigue avers that he discovered, in the archives of the French Police, traces of an English plot to assassinate Prince Charles; the Jacobites believed in such attempts, not without reason, as we shall prove.
Walton. S. P. Tuscany. No. 55.