At this time it is that James addresses to his friend Cardinal Gualterio at Rome a curious "Mémoire sur un Lit," which seems worth recording. He begs Gualterio to purchase, at once, as if for himself, "un grand bois de lit à la francoise propre à coucher deux personnes, avec un dossier, mais point des pilliers. Le fond du lit de bon coutil—renforcé avec sangles." Also, "deux bons mattelas de bonne laine d'Angre. proportionnés à la grandeur du lit." His Eminence, James adds, will easily guess the purpose for which the bed is designed—a purpose depending upon "un certain cas qu'on espere pouuoir arriver bientôt, mais qui doit etre tres secret jusqu'a ce qu'il soit asseuré." He adds that he wants "ni couuertures, ni tour de lit, ni ciel de lit, parcequ'on a tout cela ici." The whole thing reminds one of that famous musical armchair which was ordered on behalf of Napoleon III., to be delivered at Berlin in 1870.
The final escape of James was, on the whole, managed with secresy and some skill, though things went a little untowardly. Stair, who was sparing no pains to keep the Pretender watched to his every step, was a little deceived, partly by that false information which Bolingbroke says that he purposely gave him, partly by the equivocal bearing of the Regent and Torcy, who were both secretly befriending the Chevalier. Certainly Stair got his correct intelligence too late to be of much use, and so sent to Château Thierry to have James seized after the bird had flown. Cadogan in Brussels was better informed. He had stationed a "gentleman from Mecklenburgh," M. de Pless, at Nancy, ostensibly to attend the Academy, really to play the spy upon the Pretender. A letter from the Regent to D'Audriffet shows that the object of his mission was perfectly understood in the French capital. The news of the Chevalier's departure comes out through the indiscretion of some one in the secret arriving from Commercy—and immediately Pless takes formal leave of the Duke, and hurries without a moment's delay off to Brussels, where Cadogan has a courier ready, who, but for provokingly prolonged contrary winds, would have reached England in excellent time.
Finding the Chevalier's mind made up, Leopold, wishing to be kind to the last, sends his protégé as a parting gift, along with an affectionate valedictory letter, the acceptable present of 27,000 louis in gold, which James at once stows away in his private strong-box. This, we read, he was in the habit of always carrying about with him, placing it under his bed at night, and allowing no one to come near it. How he managed to transport it when riding on horseback from St Malo to Dunkirk, we are not told.
It is well known that James started from Commercy on the 28th of October, 1715, in disguise. But the precise manner of his escape is not generally quite correctly related. It explains why, for a full fortnight after James's disappearance, newspapers still go on reporting his supposed doings in Lorraine. The escape was of course abetted by the Prince de Vaudémont, who, to make it possible, invited a large company to Commercy for the day appointed, to hunt in his forests. James went out to hunt, and James apparently came back in the evening. But the James who returned was not the James who had gone out with the Pretender, but a follower of his, who bore a striking resemblance to his master, and had more than once been mistaken for him. Who this gentleman was I have not been able to trace. With this man James had exchanged clothes, unseen by any one, out in the forest. And so, as the Duc de Villeroy writes to Madame de Maintenon (the letter is in the Paris MSS), "Il partit misterieusement de Commerci en chaise roulante, vestu du violet en Ecclesiastique, avec un petit colet, malgré la vigilance des Espions, sans qu'ils ayent pû auoir ni vent ni nouvelles de son depart, que deux ou trois jours après sa sortie." The Pretender pursued his journey, carefully avoiding highroads, reaching Peterhead safely in the end, though only after much travelling backwards and forwards, taking pains to elude Stair's spies, who were placed at all important points. At Nonancourt he narrowly missed being caught, as we know, by Captain Douglas and two other emissaries, evidently what Bunyan calls "ill-favoured ones." For the impression became general in France—over which the editor of 'The Annals of the Earls of Stair,' Mr Murray Graham, grows exceedingly indignant—that these men were assassins retained to destroy the Pretender by Lord Stair, whose passports they carried, and who promptly came to their rescue when they were brought before the Grand Prévôt de la Haute Normandie. Very probably they looked cut-throats. One of them was armed. And as cut-throats, not spies, the maîtresse de la poste cautioned James against them, helping him off, to save his life, in a disguise and with a guide provided by herself. As supposed cut-throats they were seized by the police, and as cut-throats they were brought before the judge. Stair's interference probably it was that saved their lives. But all his explanations and all his protestations could not for a long time remove from the mind of the French people the impression that the men were assassins. The Regent, we hear, released them without inquiry, simply to avoid scandal.
How the Pretender's enterprise ended we all know. He does not appear to have been particularly attentive to his late host, the Duke of Lorraine. On the 24th of October he sent him a formal farewell; but on the 7th November we have the Duke stating as a grievance that he is without news. During November we find people in Paris growing remarkably confident. On the 2d of December Lord Stair complains that "les plus sages à la Cour" are just again beginning to treat the Chevalier as Pretender. Until two days before he was "King of England" to every one in Paris, "et tout le monde avoit levé le masque." There was not a single Frenchman, having any connection with the Court, who so much as set foot in Stair's house. Everybody thought that the Stuart cause was about to triumph. But the 11th of January, 1716, saw James back at Gravelines, "d'où il repassa en Lorraine," say the MSS. in the Archives Nationales. Mrs Strickland will have it that he went to Paris, where Bollingbroke advised him to go straight into Lorraine, without first asking leave of the Duke—which advice he did not follow. Independent Lorrain sources state that he passed through Lorraine, "courant la poste a 9 chevaux." As he had left all his goods and chattels at Bar-le-Duc, that seems the more likely version. Before his departure Duke Leopold had assured the Pretender that his dominions would always be open to him, and that he "pourroit compter sur luy en tout ce qui en pourroit dependre." In March, however, under altered circumstances, we find him advising Queen Mary Beatrice "for the second time," that he cannot again receive her son into his duchy. The Pretender himself seems to have taken the first warning. For we read in the 'Gazette de Hollande' that his Domestiques et Equipages were removed from Bar to Paris in February. According to M. Konarski (I have not verified the entry in the archives, but it is doubtless correct) James left Bar on the 9th of February, "sans adresser ses remerciments et ses adieux au duc Leopold," says Noel; "comme un escroc vulgaire," says M. Konarski. "Ne se contentant pas de largent que Léopold lui donnait il emprunta des sommes assez fortes aux seigneurs et partit sans les rembourser." The sum of 15,000 francs paid to his friend M. de Bassompierre, which appears in the official accounts, is only one such debt. "Cette ingratitude de la part du Chevalier de Saint Georges," adds Noel, "indignait toute la Cour." People spoke to Leopold about it. "Gentlemen," said the Duke, "you forget that this Prince is in misfortune, and that he was a king." On another occasion he remarked to M. Bardin:—"He has done me justice; he has thought that I have simply performed my duty in assisting an unfortunate."
If the direct benefits which the hospitality extended to James brought to Lorraine were less than nil, the indirect were scarcely more valuable. No doubt, the Pretender having set the example, not a few Roman Catholics from the United Kingdom, so Noel relates, sought the same hospitable refuge. Others came—among them both Noel and Marchal name the elder Pitt—to take advantage of the new Academy opened by Leopold, and rapidly blossoming into greatness under such distinguished masters as Duval and Vayringe. Some of these men brought plenty of money with them, and their liberal fees went to swell acceptably the new professors' receipts. But the number of impecunious persons, more particularly Irish, who flowed to the Lorrain Court to prey upon Leopold's generosity, seems to have been even larger. "Nous regorgeons d'Irlandais," writes the Duke's friend Bardin in 1719—Irlandais who evidently boasted but little money and less gratitude. Bardin complains of an exceptionally bad case of the latter sort. Leopold mildly replies. "I helped him, not for his sake, but for my own."
In 1749, when the Duc fainéant, Stanislas Leszinski, "simple gentilhomme lithuanien," was holding his gay little Court at Lunéville, with Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet to lend brilliancy to it, and Madame de Boufflers to preside as elderly Venus, we read that the whole company were deeply touched when the great French writer, as was his wont, read out aloud his just completed chapter on the Stuarts, in the 'Siècle de Louis XV.' Everybody had a regret for the hardly used dynasty. Scarcely had Voltaire closed his book, when in rushed a messenger, bringing the tidings that James's son, Charles Edward, doubly an exile after the failure of his rebellion of 1745, had, on the demand of the English Government, been seized at Paris on leaving the Opera. "Oh heaven!" exclaimed Voltaire, "is it possible that the king can suffer such an indignity, and that his glory can have been tarnished by a stain which all the water of the Seine will not wash away!" The whole company was moved. Voltaire retired gloomily into his own room, threw down his MS. into a corner, and did not take the work up again till he found himself amid the more prosaic surroundings of Berlin. Very shortly after Charles Edward himself knocked at Stanislas' door. What he did during the nearly three years that he was a refugee at Lunéville, it seems impossible to ascertain. The French State Papers are silent—at Lunéville not a tradition has survived. His doings evidently were not considered worth recording. The drama of Stuart kingship was played out. The dream had come to an end. And so Courts grew cold.
A fate not so very dissimilar—except for one brilliant saving incident—awaited those very Dukes who had shown hospitality so freely to the Stuarts. The Stuart Pretendership and the Lorrain Dukedom came to an end at pretty nearly the same time. Hanover elbowed out the one, France the other. The Stuarts went down for good. The Lorrains found themselves transplanted to Vienna, and crowned with the Imperial diadem. They brought their new country good qualities and manners insuring popularity. But they brought it no luck. For once the old Austrian distich spoke wrong:—