[4] We must mention that from this point in the story we make use of the copious material contained in the bundle of official documents recently discovered.
Upon a hint of the princess the two councillors placed at her service the court courier; and we hear that this personage left for Vienna that same night as the bearer of two letters from the princess—one to her sister, mother of Charles VI., the other to the emperor himself—as well as of a minute protocol in which the privy councillors detailed the occurrences of this eventful day.
The Pretender, it seems, must have awaited the party from Ohlau near the Austrian-Italian frontier, for on the 9th of October, six days after their arrival at Innsbruck, a Scotch nobleman appears on the scene. According to the declaration of the postmaster-general of Tyrol, Count Taxis, this gentleman had travelled with the greatest despatch the night through from Trent to Innsbruck. At Innsbruck he seems suddenly to have lost the desire to continue his journey, for after stopping two days in the town, during which time he was seen conversing with a person in the suite of Princess Sobiesky, he was about to start for Italy, whence he had come, when the privy councillors, whose suspicion had been aroused by his strange conduct, had him arrested and brought before them. On being asked for his passport, he maintained that he had none, and declared himself "to be a Scotch nobleman, his name Robert Seiberg [sic], thirty-six years of age, and travelling for his amusement." When pressed to give further information, he told them that he had been on the Continent for the last two years, that he had been travelling in France and Italy, and that he was on his way to Vienna when he accidentally met a friend and countryman of his named La Haye, who was travelling in the suite of Princess Sobiesky. More pressure being brought to bear upon him, he produced a passport which he said he had received from the Irish Capuchin monks at Prague, and which bore the name of Count John Wirmann. He was then asked if he possessed any letters or documents bearing upon the Pretender or the Sobiesky family. He declined to answer this question; and when force was threatened he requested a private interview with the president of the council. To him he ultimately acknowledged that "he was a servant of King James of England." He was then asked to produce the letters and documents in his possession. Amongst them was found a letter in English, but without address, heading or signature. It was a communication from the Princess Clementina to her affianced, and in it she informed him of the misfortune that had befallen them, and warned him not to entrust any letters to couriers or messengers. She told him that her mother had written to her sister and to the emperor, but that she feared their efforts would be in vain. The closing sentence of the letter is: "We receive much honor and politeness. Adieu."
This letter, with the rest of the papers found upon Fremont,[5] was sent to the emperor, and the bearer himself was taken to a second-class hostelry. Here he was closely watched, and although he had given his word of honor not to escape, he was not allowed even to go out alone.
[5] We learn from a letter from that nobleman to a friend in Paris, which is amongst the papers in the imperial archives at Vienna, that this was his real name.
To the mortification of the privy council, the emperor discountenanced their rigorous proceeding, for the next courier from Vienna brought an imperial order commanding them to set the "Stuart messenger" at liberty, and forthwith to provide suitable lodgings in a private house, as befitted their rank, for the two illustrious ladies and their suite. The emperor had at first intended to place the imperial palace at their disposal, but he subsequently ordered "that a more respectable private house in or out of the town" should be prepared for the ladies, adding "that he did not wish the noble ladies to know that this was done by his order, but rather that it should seem an act of politeness on the part of the privy council."
Baron Greiffen, a member of that body, seems to have been the only one that took the hint to heart; for we find that the two princesses and their suite removed their domicil to the "palatial building"—in reality a quiet and by no means very magnificent house—of which the above-named nobleman was owner. The princely party entered upon their new residence, which was situated in the new town just outside the town-walls, on the 23d and 24th of October. Trained servants were now added to the princely household by the cautious privy councillors. Amongst these, however, as we see by the minutes sent to the emperor, were a couple of "trusty personages"—in other words, court spies. A handsome offering of choice game, fish and wine, the usual form of paying homage to distinguished guests, was presented to the princesses.
While the princesses are installing themselves in their new prison, we will turn for a moment to the Pretender, who had arrived on the 8th of October at Bologna, where he was to await the coming of the princess and her daughter. For seven days he remained without news, a prey to anxiety. On the 15th of October he received the first intimation of the fate that had befallen his bride, and the very next day he despatched two letters to the mother and daughter at Innsbruck.[6] From the answer to these missives we learn that the princesses had by no means given up the project of effecting their flight to Italy. The long, dreary winter evenings and the absence of all society in dull Innsbruck left them full time and opportunity to plan the best means of escape; and though they were surrounded by watchful spies and guarded by a morbidly cautious government, they yet found ways and means to communicate two or three times with their friends in the North and the South. Strange to say, the councillors themselves afforded them on one occasion the means of intercourse with the Pretender. Under the pretence that bills of exchange were awaiting her at Venice, Princess Sobiesky obtained permission to send her gentleman-in-waiting, La Haye, to the latter town to arrange "these necessary money-matters."
[6] These letters must have fallen into the hands of the councillors, for we find that exact copies of them, together with a copy of Princess Clementina's answer, were sent to the emperor, and are still preserved in the private imperial court archives at Vienna.
After the departure of the princess from Ohlau the English government concentrated its attention upon the unfortunate father of the bride, for it was obvious that as long as the head of the family continued to advocate the marriage, all efforts to dissolve the betrothal would prove abortive. He was therefore made the object of countless intrigues on the part of England's staunch ally the emperor. A special commissioner, Count Praschma, then governor of Silesia, was sent by the imperial court to Ohlau. On the 14th of October he met Prince Sobiesky, but, though the interview lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon till a late hour of the night, the count did not succeed in bringing Sobiesky to more reasonable views. Sobiesky refused to give him then and there a definite answer, and begged him to come again the next day. "The matter," he said, "was of too vital importance for him to give a decisive answer that day." The result of the next day's interview was that Count Praschma set down in writing, at the prince's dictation, two separate minutes—the one addressed to the emperor personally, the other also nominally addressed to him, but specially prepared for the scrutiny of the English ambassador at Vienna. Did we not know that the courier who left for Vienna the same evening with these two documents was also the bearer of a third, a private letter from Praschma to the emperor, we should naturally wonder at the count's willingness to comply with this whim of Sobiesky—a proceeding which would have been fraught with some danger for the imperial commissioner. These documents are not without interest, for they give us a picture of the political intrigues forming such unstable links between the courts of St. James and Vienna. The limited space of this paper, however, compels us to confine ourselves to a brief résumé of their contents. In the first, addressed to the emperor personally, Prince Sobiesky lays great stress upon "the certainty that the marriage with the Pretender would prove to be a source of great political advantage to Austria"—an argument which, we must confess, was well adapted to find favor in the eyes of Charles VI., the last male descendant of a house in the history of which marriage had played such a momentous rôle. He pointed out to the emperor that "His British Majesty" would find in the annulment of the betrothal no help in suppressing rebellion in his kingdom; and, moreover, that it would be quite impossible for the king by any means to prevent the Pretender's marrying. "It is well known," he goes on to say, "that the English"—meaning the rebels—"wait only for the marriage of the Pretender, and not for an alliance with a foreign power." He begs his imperial kinsman not to shut his eyes to the obvious precariousness of King George's tenure of the throne, nor to the well-known fact that dire necessity alone had impelled the king to come to his aid by sending the English fleet to Naples. The emperor is warned that the king of England would assuredly break off his alliance with him the moment he had no longer cause to dread the Pretender; and he is reminded that while the former was at best a cold and crafty ally, he would find the prince a staunch and powerful confederate. "It is therefore," he continues, "for Your Majesty's interest to bring about a marriage, and not to allow the royal house of Stuart to become extinct. And even, taking the worst for granted, if the Pretender did not succeed in realizing his pretensions to the British throne, it would be only fair on the part of Your Majesty to remind King George that the marriage would detract nothing from, and have no influence whatever upon, the alliance between him and Your Majesty." Sobiesky closes his letter by assuring the emperor how deeply he regretted his displeasure, and by declaring that he had acted in good faith to the emperor; "for," said he, "I would never have advocated this match without the consent of Your Majesty had I not received the written assurance of Her Majesty the empress Eleonora (the emperor's mother) that she had spoken to Your Majesty on this matter. To me this was sufficient; for, considering the course of European politics, I dared not hope to receive open signs of Your Majesty's approbation."