Charles answered in this submissive fashion:
Prince to Murray.
‘February 24.
‘Rien ne me flatterai plus que d’assurer de Bouche Mad. L. M. de P. de l’estime et de La Consideration La plus parfaitte. Vous scavez mes sentiments pour Elle, je Les ay aussy Expliqué a Le P. de Soubise, et je ne dessirres rien tant que trouver Les occasions de lui La prouver.’
He also tried to justify his past conduct to ‘Mr. Orry’ (his father), especially as regarded Lord George Murray. He declared that, in the futile attempt at a night surprise at Nairn, before Culloden, Clanranald’s regiment did encounter Cumberland’s sentries, and found that the attempt was feasible, had Lord George not retreated, contrary to his orders.
The obstinate self-will of Charles displayed itself in thwarting all arrangements attempted by the French for employing him in their projected invasion of England. They expected a diversion to be made in their favour by his adherents, but he persistently refused to be landed either in Scotland or Ireland. He was partly justified. The French (as d’Argenson admits) had no idea, even in 1745, of making him King of the Three Kingdoms. To establish him at Holyrood, or in Dublin, and so to create and perpetuate disunion in Great Britain, was their policy, as far as they had a policy. We may think that Charles was in no position to refuse any assistance, but his reply to Cardinal Tencin, ‘Point de partage; tout ou rien,’ was at least patriotic. The Dutch correspondent of the ‘Scots Magazine,’ writing on May 22, 1759, said that a French expedition for Scotland was ready, and that Charles was to sail with it, but the Prince would not lend himself to this scheme. All through the summer he had his agents, Elliot, Holker, and Clancarty, at Dunkirk, Rouen, and Boulogne. They reported on the French preparations, but, writes Charles on July 22, ‘I am not in their secret.’ He corresponded with the Duc de Choiseul and the Maréchal de Belleisle, but they confined themselves to general assurances of friendship. ‘It is impossible for the Duc de Choiseul to tell you the King’s secret, as you would not tell him yours,’ wrote an anonymous correspondent, apparently Alexander Murray.
Charles prepared manifestoes for the Press, and was urged, from England, to include certain arranged words in them, to be taken as a sign that he was actually landed. These words, of course, were to be kept a dead secret. The English Jacobites had no intention of appearing in arms to aid a French invading force, if Charles was not in the midst of it. Alexander Murray wrote suggestions for Charles’s Declaration. He was to be very strong on the Habeas Corpus Act, and Murray ruefully recalled his own long imprisonment by order of the House of Commons. He wished also to repudiate the National Debt, but Charles must not propose this. ‘A free Parliament’ must take the burden of the deed. ‘The landed interest can’t be made easy by any other method than by paying that prodigious load by a sponge.’ In a Dutch caricature of ‘Perkin’s Triumph’ (1745), Charles is represented driving in a coach over the bodies of holders of Consols. It is difficult now to believe that Repudiation was the chief aim of the honest squires who toasted ‘the King over the Water.’
In August, Murray reported that Choiseul said ‘nothing should be done except with and for the Prince.’
The manuscript letter-book of Andrew Lumisden, James’s secretary since Edgar’s death, and brother-in-law of Sir Robert Strange, the engraver, illustrates Charles’s intentions. [306] On August 12, 1759, Lumisden is in correspondence with Murray. The Prince, to Lumisden’s great delight, wants his company. Already, in 1759, Lumisden had been on secret expeditions to Paris, Germany, Austria, and Venice. Macallester informs us that Sullivan, who had been in Scotland with Charles in 1745, received a command in the French army mustering at Brest. He also tells a long dull story of Charles’s incognito in Paris at this time: how he lived over a butcher’s shop in the Rue de la Boucherie, seldom went out except at night, and was recognised at Mass by a woman who had attended Miss Walkinshaw’s daughter. Finally, the Prince went to Brest in disguise, ‘damning the Marshal’s old boots,’ the boots of the Maréchal de Belleisle, which, it seems, ‘were always stuffed full of projects.’ Barbier supposes, in his ‘Mémoires,’ that Charles was to go with Thurot, who was to attack Scotland, while Conflans invaded England. But Charles would not hear of leaving with Thurot and his tiny squadron, which committed some petty larcenies on the coast of the West Highlands.
The Prince was now warned against Clancarty of the one eye, who was bragging, and lying, and showing his letters in the taverns of Dunkirk. The old feud of Scotch and Irish Jacobites went merrily on. Macallester called Murray a card-sharper, and was himself lodged in prison on a lettre de cachet. Murray wrote, of the Irish, ‘their bulls and stupidity one can forgive, but the villainy and falsity of their hearts is unpardonable.’ Scotch and Irish bickerings, a great cause of the ruin in 1745, broke out again on the slightest gleam of hope.
Holker sent a curious account of the boats for embarking horses on the expedition. These he illustrated by a diagram on the back of the five of diamonds; a movable slip cut in the card gave an idea of the mechanism. The King of France, on August 27, sent friendly messages by Belleisle, but ‘could not be explicit.’ Elliot reported that Clancarty ‘would stick at no lyes to bring about his schemes.’ On September 5 came an anonymous warning against Murray, who ‘is not trusted by the French Ministry.’ On September 28, Laurence Oliphant of Gask sent verses in praise of Charles written by ‘Madame de Montagu,’ the lady who lent him 1,000l. years before. On October 8, Murray still reports the ‘attachment’ of Choiseul and Belleisle. He adds that neither his brother (Lord Elibank) nor any other Scotch Jacobite will stir if an invasion of Scotland is undertaken without a landing in England. On October 21 he declares that Conflans has orders to attack the English fleet lying off Havre. The sailing of Thurot is also announced: ‘I cannot comprehend the object of so small an embarkation.’ As late as October 26, Charles was still left in the dark as to the intentions of France.
Then, obviously while Charles was waiting for orders, came the fatal news in a hurried note. ‘Conflans beaten, his ship, the “Soleil Royal,” and the “Héros” stranded at Croisic. Seven ships are come in. Ten are flying at sea.’