Marshal Saxe had said to Louis XV., "Sire, peace is in Mæstricht." The place was invested on the 9th of April, 1748, before the thirty-five thousand Russians promised to England by the Czarina Elizabeth had time to arrive. The Dutch were alarmed, and vigorously insisted on peace. Philip V. was dead. His successor, Ferdinand VI., who was less faithful to the House of Bourbon, made overtures to England. For a long time the prime minister, Henry Pelham, was disposed to peace. His brother, the Duke of Newcastle, opposed it out of servile deference to the king. Lord Chesterfield, lately become a member of the cabinet, and who was intelligent and sagacious in spite of his worldly unconcern, being dissatisfied with the conduct of the court towards him, had just given in his resignation. Notwithstanding her successes, France was, like her adversaries, weary. Marshal Saxe himself made pacific proposals. The preliminaries of the peace were signed on the 30th of April. Austria and Spain were not slow in giving their adhesion to it. On the 18th of October the final treaty was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle. After so much blood spilt and treasure squandered, France gained from the war no other advantage than the guarantee of the duchies of Parma and Plaisance to the infant Don Philip, son-in-law of Louis XV. England yielded to France Cape Breton and the colony of Louisburg, the only territory that she had preserved after her numerous expeditions against our colonies, and the immense injury she had done our commerce. This clause excited much ill-feeling among the English people. Hostages had been promised. Prince Charles Edward was in Paris when they arrived. He was seized with an access of patriotic anger. "If ever I remount the throne of my fathers," he exclaimed, "Europe will witness my constant endeavors to oblige France in turn to send hostages to England."
Prince Charles Edward was himself an inconvenient and compromising hostage whom France engaged in expelling from her territory. Vainly, since his return from Scotland, the young Pretender had obstinately sought to rekindle a flame which was forever extinguished. "If I had received only half of the money that your Majesty sent me," he wrote to Louis XV. on the 10th of November, 1746, "I would have fought the Duke of Cumberland with equal numbers, and I would have certainly defeated him, since with four thousand men against twelve thousand I held victory in the balance for a long time. These disasters can yet be repaired if your Majesty is willing to intrust me with a body of from eighteen to twenty thousand men. The number of warlike subjects has never failed me in Scotland. I have needed at once money, provisions, and a handful of regular troops. With one of these three aids alone I would still be to-day master of Scotland, and probably of all England." Louis XV. had remained deaf to this appeal, which no longer found an echo in Spain. The Duke of York, second son of the Chevalier de St. George, had just taken orders. The Court of Rome had forthwith made him a cardinal, to the violent indignation of his brother. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle removed from the unfortunate Stuarts that asylum which France had with so much pomp lately offered them. Charles Edward refused to understand the notice which the ministers of Louis XV. had conveyed to him. "The king is bound to my cause by his honor, which is worth all treaties," said he. In vain had his father counselled him to yield to necessity and not to provoke a monarch who could be useful to him. The prince was determined to remain in France, and at Paris. On the 11th of December, as he arrived at the opera, his carriage was surrounded by police agents. M. de Vaudreuil, major in the guards, presented himself before the prince. "I arrest you in the name of the king, my master," said he. "The manner is a little cavalier," coolly replied the young man. When the major asked for his arms, "Let them take them," said he, freeing himself from the hands of the police officers. They bound his hands with silken cords, the last sign of respect accorded to the heir of a house forever fallen, and he was conducted from stage to stage as far as the frontier. He would never see France again. Twice he reappeared secretly in England: in 1753, on the occasion of a projected surprise on the person of George II., which he himself deemed impossible; and in 1761, amid the festivities at the coronation of George III. Twice the kings of the House of Hanover were not ignorant of the presence of their enemy in the capital; they made no effort to seize him, and wisely allowed him to set out again for an exile, the long weariness of which had mortally affected his mind as well as his heart. Deprived by his faults of the pure joys of family life, he had lowered himself so far as to seek forgetfulness in drunkenness. He was old and almost forgotten when he died at Rome in 1788. Only the inscription on a tomb recalls the name of the last three Stuarts, and it was King George IV. who caused it to be engraved as a souvenir of extinct passions: "To James III., son of James II., King of England; to Charles Edward, and to Henry, Cardinal of York, last scion of the House of Stuart, 1819."
Arrest Of Charles Edward.
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had, with good reason, excited more discontent in France than in England. We alone had gained brilliant victories and made great conquests. We alone preserved no increase of territory. The great Frederick kept Silesia, and the King of Sardinia the domains already ceded by Austria. Humorous lampoons were sung in the streets of Paris, and "Bête comme le paix," was a customary expression.
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had a graver defect than that of barrenness; it was not and could not be lasting. England had proved her power on the sea. She had battled against our ruined navy, and against enfeebled Spain. Holland, her ally after having been her rival, could no longer dispute the sovereign empire with her. She became daily more eager for the conquest of the distant colonies that we did not know how to defend. The peace had left in suspense disputed points which would soon serve as a pretext for new aggressions. In proportion as the ancient influence of Richelieu and Louis XIV. on European politics grew weaker, English influence, based on the growing power of a free country and government, was strengthening. Without any other allies than Spain, who was herself shaken in her fidelity, we stood exposed to the enterprises of England, henceforth freed from the phantom of the Stuarts. "The peace concluded between England and France in 1748 was only a truce," said Lord Macaulay; "it was not even a truce on other parts of the globe." It was there that the two nations were about to measure themselves, and that the burden of its government's shortcomings would cause France to lose that empire of the Indies and those Canadian colonies which had been founded and so long sustained by eminent men, one after another, victims to their patriotic devotion which was as hopeless as it was without results.