Odd Bits of History Part 1

Odd Bits of History.

by Henry W. Wolff.

PREFACE.

The chapters composing this book appeared originally in the shape of review articles. I owe acknowledgments to the Editors of _Blackwood's Magazine_, the _National Review_ and the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for the permission kindly accorded me to republish them.

To my regret I find, on receiving the clean sheets, that pressure of time and a rather troublesome nervous affection of one eye have led me to overlook a few printer's errors, such as: p. 70, _occa.s.sion_ for _occasion_; p. 137, _Fuensaldana_ for _Fuensaldana_; p. 253, _Nicephoras Phorcas_ for _Nicephorus Phocas_; p. 267, _Polydore Virgil_ for _Polydore Vergil_. The misprints will in every instance, I believe, explain themselves.

H. W. W.

I.--THE PRETENDER AT BAR-LE-DUC.[1]

"The Pretender Charles Edward resided here three years in a house which is still pointed out." So you may read in "Murray," under the head of "Bar-le-Duc." The information, which is apt to suggest inquiry to those who, like myself, are fond of picking up a little bit of neglected history on their travels, is, as it happens, not altogether accurate. For, in the first place, the "Pretender" who "resided" at Bar was not "Charles Edward"

at all--_could_ not have been "Charles Edward," who was not born till five years after the Pretender who _did_ reside there had left. In the second, so little is "the house still pointed out" that, on my first visit to Bar, in August, 1890, I could actually not find a soul to give me even the vaguest information as to its whereabouts. Even mine hostess of the "Cygne," in whose stables, I afterwards discovered, some of the Pretender's horses had been put up, had never heard of our political exile. "_Cela doit etre dans la Haute Ville_"--"_Cela doit etre dans la Ba.s.se Ville_"--"_Eh bien, moi je n'en sais rien_." Why should they know about the Pretender? There were no thanks, surely, due to him. While in the town, he had given himself intolerable airs, had put the town to no end of expense and all manner of trouble, and in the end had slunk away without so much as a word of thanks or farewell, leaving a heavy score of debts to be paid--and, up in a cottage perched on the very brow of the picturesque hill--for which some one else had to pay the rent--one pretty little Barisienne disconsolate, betrayed, disgraced. There was, in fact, but one man belonging to the town who had taken the trouble to trace the house from the description given in the local archives--a description, indeed, exact enough--M. Vladimir Konarski, and he was away on his holiday. There was nothing, then, for me to do, but to go home with an empty note-book, _quoad_ Bar, and return in 1891 to resume my inquiry.

Even to us Englishmen the first Pretender is not a particularly attractive personage. But he is a historical character. And about his doings at Bar thus far very little has been made known. With the help of M. Konarski's notes, of the local archives, freely placed at my disposal by the kindness of M. A. Jacob, of the ma.n.u.scripts in the _Archives Nationales_, in the Archives of Nancy and in the Foreign Office at Paris, of the Stuart MSS.

in London, and of other neglected sources of information, as well as some rather minute local research, I have managed to gather together sufficient historical crumbs to make up a fairly substantial loaf--all the information on the subject, I suppose, that is to be got. And, at any rate, as a secondary side-chapter to our national history at an important epoch, perhaps the account which within the limits of a magazine article I shall be able to give, may prove of pa.s.sing interest to more besides those staunch surviving Jacobites who still from time to time "play at treason"

in out-of-the-way places.

What sent the Pretender to Bar every schoolboy knows. We had fought with France and were, in 1713, about to conclude peace. Our court had, as a Stuart MS. in Paris puts it, showed itself extremely "_chatouilleuse et susceptible_" with respect to the countenance given at Versailles to James, and to his residence in France--where he seemed to us perpetually on the spring for mischief. Louis XIV., we were aware, had expressed his desire to render to the Pretender's family "_de plus grands et plus heureux services_" than he had yet been able to give. And so, very naturally, before engaging to suspend hostilities, we insisted that James should be turned out of France. Once we were about it, we might as well have asked a little more, and pressed for his removal to a farther distance from our sh.o.r.es. Considering all the commotion which afterwards arose upon this point, how Queen Anne was periodically pestered with addresses calling upon her to demand his removal, one might have thought that so much forethought might have been exercised. However, the idea seems never to have suggested itself to our wise statesmen at the proper time. On the contrary, the one thing which in 1712 and 1713 they appeared eager for was, that James should _not_ be allowed to settle in "papistical" Italy--the very country into which afterwards, just _because_ it was papistical, so M. de Robethon's official letters admit in the plainest terms, the Court of Hanover was extremely anxious to see its enemy decoyed. If he would but go to Rome, that would be best of all. For it would do for him entirely at home, M. de Robethon thinks. However, in 1713 we took a different view, and, as Lorraine lay particularly handy and convenient, from the French point of view--being near, and though nominally an independent duchy, entirely under French influence--to Lorraine James was sent. There was some talk of his going to Nancy. He himself did not at first fancy Bar-le-Duc. He feared that he might find it slow. The French king believed that in a large town like Nancy, which had still some poor remnants of its once famous fortifications left, he would be safer. And when Duke Leopold had gone to all the trouble of putting the half-dilapidated chateau of Bar into habitable order, taking to it the pick of his own furniture from the palace at Nancy, and embarking in additional large purchases--in order to make James thoroughly comfortable, as Louis had told him that he must--he not unnaturally became, as the French envoy M. d'Audriffet reports, "_fort agite_," on being unexpectedly advised that after all the Chevalier was to go elsewhere. "Very well,"

said he in high dudgeon, "I will take back all my furniture. But I wash my hands of the whole business. At Bar I could have answered for the Chevalier's safety within reasonable limits. At Nancy the king will have to see to it himself. That is a 'neutral' town, and every dangerous character from any part of Europe--cut-throat, a.s.sa.s.sin, Hanoverian emissary--has access to it. You will have to watch every stranger, to keep the exile perpetually under lock and key, to give him a large escort every time he leaves the town. To mark my refusal of all responsibility, I shall at once withdraw my little garrison of a company of guards from the place"--a brilliant little troop, decked out gaily in scarlet-and-silver.

James, who was at the time at Chalons, awaiting the king's pleasure--waiting also for a pa.s.sport and safe conduct (a most important requisite in those days)--and waiting, not least, for money, of which he was chronically, and at that moment most acutely, in want--his mother says that he had none at all--did not relish the idea of so much restraint and danger. So he begged Louis to change his mind back again, and to allow him after all to go to Bar. And Louis, having put poor Leopold to more trouble--for he had at once set eighty men at work at Nancy, turning his palace, "_pille, degrade, neglige_" that it was, to rights--coolly has Leopold informed that his first choice is again to hold good, with not a word of regret added to sweeten the pill, except it be, that all the trouble incurred "_sera bientost repare_." Later, James found the air at Bar "_trop vif_" and accordingly thought of moving to Saint Mihiel. After that, his courtiers hoped that he would prevail upon the Duke to lend him his rather magnificent palace of Einville, near Luneville. And in one of the despatches it is shown that their suspicion that Lord Middleton was opposing this proposal was one of the reasons why they so very much disliked him. But, after all, with the interruptions caused by very frequent, and often prolonged, visits to Luneville, to Commercy, and to Nancy--as well as to Plombieres, and one or two sly expeditions to Paris and St Germains--in the interesting and picturesque little capital of the Barrois, washed by the foaming Ornain, did the Chevalier remain, hatching schemes, writing despatches to the Pope, _qua_ king, moreover making love to his nameless fair one, and beguiling the time with the games of the period, until the _Fata Morgana_ of rather hoped for than antic.i.p.ated success lured him on that unhappy expedition into Scotland.

James tries to make a serious hardship of his "exile" at Bar. But he might, without much trouble, have fixed upon a very much worse spot. Bar was not in his day the important town that it had been. The resident dukes, with their courts and knighthood, their tourneys and banquets, and all the pageantry of the days of early chivalry, had pa.s.sed away. The famous University of de Tholozan, highly praised by Jodocus Sincerus, had likewise disappeared. Nor was the town anything like as accessible as it is now. There was no railway leading to it, no Rhine-Marne Ca.n.a.l--beautifying the scene wherever it pa.s.ses--to carry life and business into the place. The roads were simply execrable. The surrounding woods swarmed with brigands, outlaws, and other bad characters, whom special _cha.s.se-coquins_ were retained to keep in awe. Whenever "His Majesty" moved from one place to another, the forest-roads had to be literally lined with troops to ensure his safety. But all this was no drawback peculiar to Bar. The entire duchy of Lorraine was suffering from the same trouble--the after-effect of French ravages and French occupation. Leave that out of account, and Bar must have been attractive enough. Its situation is remarkably picturesque. The castle-hill rises up steeply, all but isolated from the surrounding heights, above the smiling valley of the Ornain, with delightfully green and tempting side-valleys curling around it, like natural fosses, on either side. The view of the long, bright green stretch of meadows bordering the river; the laughing gardens, full of flowers and shrubs; the luxuriant fruit-trees and hedges; the half-archaic-looking streets, venerable with their churches and monasteries, and the eleven old turreted gates, as they were then; the soft, rounded _cotes_, covered with cl.u.s.tering vines, but looking at a distance as if carpeted with velvety lawn; the picturesque range of hills on the opposite bank, contoured into a telling sky-line; the dark forests of richly varied foliage, and the charming "hangers" which drop down gracefully here and there, with pleasingly effective irregularity, into the plain; the pretty little cottage plots, bright with flowers, shady with overhanging trees, which then as now lined that useful _Ca.n.a.l Urbain_; and the peculiarly engaging perspective of the landscape spreading out right and left--all this combines to form a truly fascinating picture. The view of the castle-hill from below is no less pleasing. In James's day the hill was still crowned with the old historic castle, built in the tenth century, but embodying in its masonry the remains of the much more ancient structure in which Childeric I. had, like the Stuart prince, found a welcome refuge--the castle in which Francis of Guise was born, who drove us out of Calais--the castle in which Mary Queen of Scots, bright with youthful beauty, and radiant with happiness, delighted with her cheering presence the gay Court of her cousin and playmate, Charles III., fresh to his ducal coronet, as she was to the second crown which decked her head--for she was newly married to Francis II., newly crowned Queen of France at Rheims. The daughter of Marie de Lorraine, brought up in Lorrain Conde, she reckoned herself a Lorraine princess, and as a Lorraine princess the Lorrains have ever regarded, and idolised, her. To the memory of this unhappy queen, round which time had gathered a bright halo of romance, not least was due that hearty welcome which the Lorrains readily extended to her exiled kinsman. Most picturesque must the castle have been in olden days, when those seventeen medieval towers (removed by order of Louis XIV. in 1670) still stood round about it like st.u.r.dy sentries, each laden with historic memories. Even now the view of the hill is pleasing enough--with its winding roads, its steep steps, its antique clock-tower, its terraced gardens and rambling lanes, with that rather imposing convent-school raising its walls perpendicularly many storeys high, the quaint church of St Peter[2] topping the southern summit with its tower flattened to resist the wind, with those delightfully green and shady Paquis just beyond, densely wooded with trees, including the two largest elms in France--the Paquis which, with their _paslemaile_, formed the favourite resort of James while at Bar, and in the shady seclusion of which he spun his web of deceiving flattery round the guileless heart of the girl whom he betrayed. Only to please him, we read in the archives, it was that the town council put up benches in that shade, which cost the town nine livres.

At James's time Bar was still a rather considerable provincial capital, the _chef-lieu_ of the largest _bailliage_ in Lorraine. And in that little "West End" of the _Haute Ville_, where a cl.u.s.ter of Louis-Quatorze houses still stand in decayed grandeur, to recall past fashionableness, the n.o.bility of the little Barrois, locally always a powerful and influential body--the Ba.s.sompierres, the Haraucourts, the Lenoncourts, the Stainvilles, the Romecourts--had their town houses, and there also dwelt the pick of the bureaucracy, all ready to pay their court to the Stuart "king," to whom even the French envoy reckoned it "an honour" to be introduced. The town had its own munic.i.p.al government--at one time with its own _clerge_, _n.o.blesse_, and _tiers etat_; in James's day still with its _syndic_, to represent the Crown, its elected _mayeur_, _Maitre des Comptes_, so many _eschargeots_, _esvardeurs_, _gouverneurs de carrefours_, and so on. It had a wall all round with no fewer than eleven gates. When James was there, Bar was famed throughout France and Lorraine for its peculiarly "elegant" _poignees d'epee_ (sword-hilts) and other cutlery. Corneille tells us that the whole street of Entre Deux Ponts was full of cutlers' shops, and no visitor ever came to the place but he must carry off at least one sword-hilt as a keepsake. The town already manufactured its famous _dragees_ and _confitures_, and pressed that same sour wine which "Murray" will have it--on what ground I know not--"resembles champagne," and which then was appreciated as a delicacy.

The sanitary arrangements were not perfect. The _Ca.n.a.l Urbain_ occasionally overflowed its banks and swamped the entire Rue des Tanneurs, in which the Pretender's house was situated. And, together with the rest of Bar and Lorraine, the town was still a little bit dest.i.tute after the havoc wrought by French and Swedes, Croats and Germans, _Cravates_ (local brigands) and Champenois peasants, and all that "omnium bipedum sceleratissima colluvies," which had again and again overrun the duchy, robbing, burning, pillaging, violating, desecrating, torturing, exacting, and sucking the country dry to the very bone. Of all the world "only Jerusalem" had experienced worse horrors, so a pious Lorrain chronicler affirms. Oh, how the Lorrains of that day--and long after--hated and detested the French! When in November, 1714, those habitual invaders at length evacuated Nancy, the mob dressed up a straw figure in a French uniform, and led it forth amid jeers and execrations to an _auto-da-fe_.

Even after annexation, a Nancy housewife declared herself most grossly "insulted" by a French officer, who simply explained the benefits which he thought that annexation must bring with it, and in anger she threw the _friture_, just frizzling in her pan, straight in his face.

Lorraine had been sadly afflicted indeed with long years of warfare. But in 1713 things were beginning to mend. Leopold, restored by the Treaty of Ryswick to his duchy--in which, as duke, his father had never set foot--had been on the throne getting on for sixteen years. And what with the excellent counsels of that best of Chancellors, Irish Earl Carlingford, and his own intuitive judgment and enlightened and paternal despotism, Lorraine was becoming populous and prosperous, happy and contented, once more. Leopold earned himself a name for a shrewd and prudent ruler. His brother-in-law, Philip of Orleans (the Regent), said of him, that of all rulers of Europe he did not know one who was his superior "_en experience, en sagesse, et en politique_." And Voltaire has immortalised his virtues by saying: "_Il est a souhaiter que la derniere posterite apprenne qu'un des plus pet.i.ts souverains de l'Europe a ete celui qui fit le plus de bien a son peuple_." In fact, he was the very ruler whom Lorraine at that juncture wanted. Autocratic he was, and vain, and self-important, notwithstanding the homely _bourgeoisie_ of his manner. But he knew exactly where the shoe pinched, and how to devise a remedy. He it was who first conceived the idea, which has helped to make France prosperous, of a wide network of ca.n.a.ls. He it was, who, in 1724, set Europe an example, which at the time made him famous, of covering his country with a network of model roads. And though he again and again proposed, for the benefit of his own family, to "swap" poor little Lorraine--for the Milanais, for a bit of the Low Countries, or for other valuable possessions--while he was duke, he managed to make himself popular, and he was resolved to do his duty. "_Je quitterais demain ma souverainete si je ne pouvais faire du bien_," so he said. Under his father, that brilliant general, Charles V., he had given proof of his pluck and prowess at Temeswar, of his military ability before Ebersburg.

But in Lorraine, he knew, the one thing needful was peace. And with a dogged determination which was bound to overcome all difficulties, though the stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against him, that peace he managed to maintain, in the midst of a raging sea of war all round, which had drawn all neighbouring countries into its whirl. He did it--it is worth recording, because it materially affected James's position at his Court--by as adroit balancing between the two great belligerent Powers of the Continent as ever diplomatist managed to achieve. Born and bred in Austria, allied to the Imperial family by the closest ties of blood--his mother was an archd.u.c.h.ess--trained in Austrian etiquette, an officer in the Austrian army, beholden to Austria for many past favours--and keenly alive to the fact that for any favours which might yet be to come he must look exclusively to the Court of Vienna--in his leanings and prepossessions he was entirely Austrian. But under his father and great-uncle history had taught his country the severe lesson, that without observing the best, though they be the most obsequious, relations towards France, at whose mercy the country lay, no Lorraine was possible.

Accordingly, almost Leopold's very first act as Duke was to send M. de Couvange to Paris, to solicit on his behalf the hand of "Mademoiselle,"

the Princess of Orleans. Her hand was gladly accorded. There was a tradition--with a very obvious object--at Paris in favour of Lorrain marriages. This was the thirty-third, and there remained a thirty-fourth to conclude--the ill-starred marriage of Marie Antoinette. King James II.

and his Queen attended the wedding at Fontainebleau, and Elizabeth Charlotte became one of the best of wives, and best and most popular of Lorraine d.u.c.h.esses, bearing her husband no less than fourteen children.

Balancing between Austria and France, maintaining his private relations with the one, giving way in everything to the other, was Leopold's prudent maxim throughout his reign. So long as he adhered to that he felt himself safe. Whenever he departed from it, he found himself getting into mischief.

Leopold has been much abused by our writers and politicians, as if he had been a deliberate anti-English plotter and Jacobite accomplice. It is but fair to him to explain why he afforded our Pretender such liberal hospitality. The real fact is, that he could not help himself. He was bound to. France demanded it, and he _could not_ refuse--nor yet refuse to make his hospitality generous and lavish. There was the additional attraction, indeed, of a show of importance, of a little implication in diplomatic negotiations and playing a part in European high politics, which to Leopold must have been strongly seductive. A good deal is also said about religious motives, the suggestion of which must have helped Leopold equally with the Curia and the Imperial Court, with both of whom he was anxious to stand well. The Pope--it is true, under pressure from James--subsequently thanked Leopold in a special brief, "_ample et bien exprime_," for the proof of attachment which he had rendered to the Church by his reception of the English Pretender, the emblem to all Europe of the Church of Rome under persecution. Leopold was an exceptionally devout Roman Catholic. He heard ma.s.s religiously every day, spent an hour in prayer after dinner, and "adored the Sacrament" every evening. He had revived Charles III.'s stringent provisions against Protestants, interdicting all public worship and, in theory at any rate, declaring Protestantism a crime deserving of hanging. In his excessive zeal he would not even allow the Cistercian monks of Beaupre to retain in their service a Protestant shepherd, though they pleaded hard that he was the best shepherd whom they had ever had. So zealous a believer was of course a man after the very heart of the widow and son of that "_fort bon homme_," as Archbishop Le Tellier scoffingly termed James II., who had "sacrificed three kingdoms for a ma.s.s." To himself, on the other hand, it seemed something of a sacred act to open his house to the "Woman persecuted by the dragon." However, all this was but as dust in the balance by the side of the compelling necessity of French dictation, doubly compelling at that particular period. For Leopold had of late been playing his own little game. Things had gone against France in the field, and he had put his money on the other horse. He was always after a fashion a gambling and speculative ruler, willing to stake almost his very existence on the _roulette_ of high politics. At that moment he was flattering himself with hopes that the Congress of Utrecht would do something for him. Both Austria and England had privately promised--at least some of their statesmen had--that he was to have a seat at the Congress table. That would add immensely to his dignity and prestige. Then he was to have a slice of the Low Countries. To ensure this result, he was "casting his bread upon the waters" with a vengeance--spending money wholesale, bribing English, and Dutch, and Austrian statesmen with the most profuse generosity--more particularly Marlborough, in whom he appears to have retained a belief throughout, who most faithlessly "sold" him, and who cost him a fortune. At the very time here spoken of our great general had been favoured with a fresh mark of favour from Leopold--a magnificent _carosse_, horsed with six splendid dapple-greys (Leopold was a great horse-fancier), hung with most costly trappings. All this--which proved in the event to have been entirely thrown away--very naturally gave umbrage to France. And Louis XIV. had not missed his opportunity of letting Leopold know that a score was being marked up against him at Versailles.

France had never stood on much ceremony with Lorraine, from Henry II.

downward. Louis XIV., more particularly, had done his best to equal his grandfather's notorious and most capricious hostility. In 1702, in the teeth of international law and of Leopold's protests, as well as Elizabeth Charlotte's prayers, he had marched his troops into Lorraine. They were still there, indeed, in larger numbers than before. When 1709 brought its "_grand hiver_"--still remembered as a time of grievous tribulation--when the crops froze in the fields, the vines in the vineyards, the children in the nursery, the sacramental wine in the chalice, the water by the fire, when Dearth and Famine once more laid their grim hand upon all Lorraine--Louis XIV. had given Leopold a little additional cut with his tyrant's whip, seizing some of the provisions providently laid up for the relief of his subjects, and appropriating them to the use of his own armies, which moreover, he reinforced by a fresh contingent of 20,000 men, sent with orders to live "_a discretion_." Louis was quite ready to do something of the same sort again. Therefore, when Louis said: Receive James, Leopold had no choice but to receive him. His letters and despatches make this perfectly clear. There is a good deal of talk about the Pretender's "estimable qualities," how the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess admire him, how happy they are that he has not gone to Aix-la-Chapelle. And no doubt the two managed to be for a time excellent friends. But every now and then, through all this polite buncombe, out comes the frank admission that all is done "to please the king." And we know how promptly and unhesitatingly Leopold's hospitality was withdrawn, once French pressure ceased, in 1716. To ourselves, by receiving an exiled Pretender into his neutral realm, as we have received many such, Leopold never dreamt that he was giving cause for legitimate umbrage. No one could be more surprised than he seems to have been when our Parliament took up the matter as a grievance.

And, to be fair, he never appears to have afforded to James the slightest encouragement for a forcible a.s.sertion of his claims. His counsel was all the other way. It was the French, it was the Pretender's own followers at home, it was Roman Cardinal Gualterio, who countenanced, and occasionally urged, warlike measures. Cardinal Gualterio, more in particular, prodded the Catholic prince very vigorously, in the interest of his Church, arguing that "_il falloit hazarder quelque chose et meme affronter le sort, ce qui ne se fait pas sans risque_." Leopold, on the other hand, was all dissuasion. He wanted James to keep _near_ England, in order to be handy in the event of his being recalled--which he seems to have thought a likely contingency. When James began to talk of armaments and invasions, Leopold dwelt upon the difficulties, the all-but-hopelessness of such a move. When, in June, 1714, shortly before Queen Anne's death, James wrote from Plombieres, that he _must_ go into England, since he learnt that his rival, the Electoral Prince of Hanover, had gone there, Leopold, who was admirably informed from Hanover, through his brother, the Elector-Archbishop of Treves, sent a message back post-haste with the trustworthy tidings that George was neither gone nor going. The reasons which led George's father to forbid his visit read a little strange at the present day. In the first place, there was that Hanoverian economy--which, it is true, was ostensibly disclaimed. In the second, the Prince was not to be received in England as heir-presumptive--so that he would not really better his chances by going. Moreover, the Elector, "_connoissant l'humeur brusque et fort emportee de son fils, apprehendoit beaucoup qu'il ne se rendit odieux aux anglais_." Lastly, and mainly, he was afraid of dropping between two stools, if he were to stake his son's chances too decidedly on the English succession. It was quite on the cards, he thought, that "_par un effet des resolutions que l'inconstance de la nation y a rendues si ordinaire_," the British nation would _cha.s.ser_ its next sovereign as it had _cha.s.se_ its last-but-one. And then, where would his son be? For if his son went to England, it was much to be feared that his brother, who had been not quite rightfully excluded from the succession, might make good his claim to Hanover. And there would George be, out in the cold! So his father was resolved to play a waiting game.

The first difficulty which James found himself confronted with, and which Leopold had to overcome for him--for French good offices were obviously out of the question--was the procuring of a pa.s.sport. Such credential was at the time indispensable, for Europe was swarming with bad characters.

Besides, there was nominally war still; and public roads and even walled towns were altogether insecure. In the Foreign Office papers we come across correspondence relating to the robbing of the public coach running between Stra.s.sburg and Paris, at Benameny, in Lorrain territory, by Palatine soldiers, who had come over from Caub. And even in carefully locked and watched Bar-le-Duc, Leopold advises King Louis that, with "a fourth company of his regiment of guards" added to the local force, besides twenty-five _chevaux-legers_ and twenty-five _gardes-du-corps_ to act as escort, he can answer for the Pretender's safety only against attacking parties of not more than fifty or a hundred at the outside, which, he says, ought to be borne in mind, "_si armees se mettoient en campagne_." Queen Mary only expresses what everyone felt when she says that it is to be apprehended "_que quelque mechant en se servissent de l'occasion pour faire un mechant coup_." She accordingly begs the "_commnote_" of Chaillot to pray for "the king's" safety.

In 1714 the Emperor, who was the princ.i.p.al sovereign to be pet.i.tioned, would not make out a pa.s.sport for James, to enable him to move into Germany--though professedly willing to give the Stuart his niece in marriage, and avowedly not a little put out with England, but yet desirous of avoiding offence to King George. In 1713 he raised no difficulty.

Indeed, at Leopold's instance he was obliging enough to supplement his pa.s.sport with a special letter of commendation very kindly worded. And he carefully avoided treading on corns either way by not naming James in the doc.u.ment--for all of which Leopold takes great credit. But it appears that plenty more potentates besides the Emperor had to be solicited. And the two Electors, of Hanover and of Brandenburg, were obdurate in their refusal--in agreement for once. It was a ticklish matter; for without their safe-conduct James could scarcely be counted secure. On the other hand, if their safe-conducts were to be waited for, the Emperor would of a surety take offence, as if his own pa.s.sport were judged insufficient.

Leopold, being great on etiquette, took the last-named to be the more serious danger, and advised running the risk--more particularly since he had been advised by his envoy in London, Baron Forstner, that Queen Anne had privately granted what amounted to a pa.s.sport to her brother for going into Lorraine. That was taken to settle the matter, and James put himself _en route_.

It was on the 22d of February, 1713, that he reached Bar, closely guarded and travelling _incognito_, on which account an official reception in Bar was dispensed with, though the French artillery at Toul had fired a salute. The council were under strict injunctions to omit nothing which might conduce to their visitor's safety, or minister to his comfort, or that was conventionally due to a crowned head. Accordingly, we find them in their next sitting, on the 25th February, pa.s.sing a whole string of votes and resolutions having reference to his arrival and his safety in the town. The police and _cha.s.se-coquins_ are forthwith put on the alert, sentries are placed at all corners, and, to accommodate them, a whole number of new sentry-boxes are put up. The authorities are directed to question every stranger coming into the town carefully, and, if there should appear to be anything suspicious about any one, rigorously to detain him and report the case at once by express courier to Luneville.

Iron _grilles_ are put up. All the postern-gates are walled up, so is one of the princ.i.p.al entrances, and so is--in spite of sanitary considerations--a main sewer pa.s.sing through the wall. Soldiers were a good deal less squeamish in those days than they are now, and sewers had served for many a surprise in the Thirty Years' War. The remaining ten gates are to be carefully watched, and never opened before 5 A.M., nor left open after 8 P.M. Billets are issued for the overflow of James's suite, which appears to have been numerous, and stable-room is bespoken for his horses. James evidently was an inconvenient visitor to house. For he would have all his large apparatus of Court and Household close to him--chamberlains, kitchen, kennel, and all. Mrs Strickland praises his habitual economy. His doings in Lorraine do not bear out that praise. From the Nairne MSS. in the British Museum (which give a full list) we know that in 1709 and 1710 his household comprised above 120 persons, from the secretaries down to the grooms' helper, drawing salaries of from 12 to 675 livres _per mensem_. There was the Comptroller, Mr. Bous, who retailed the anecdotes of the Court to Lady Middleton; a clerk of the green cloth, a yeoman baker, a yeoman confectioner, a yeoman of the chaundry, Jeremiah Browne, "Esq.," master-cook, a water-carrier, and a scourer. There were yeomen's scullery a.s.sistants, confessors and chaplains, a doctor, a "chyrurgien," and an apothecary, a "rideing purveyor," and a "chaiseman,"

"Lady Maclane, laundress," pursuivants, and necessary women--all that belongs to a royal household. And the whole establishment cost "19,412 lstrs. _per mensem_." All these people did not go to Bar, but a good many did. And there were a crowd more, for whom the town had to provide. For we read in the Macpherson Papers that all "Peac.o.c.k's family"--_i.e._, all Protestant refugees who had been at "Stanley," _i.e._, at St.

Germains--had followed the Chevalier to Bar. There was not one of them left. So writes the Queen. And the Duke states, quite independently of this, that the Pretender is surrounded with Protestant exiles. Altogether James's Court ran up a goodly bill, which it was disappointing to the town afterwards to find that, though incurred by express order of the Duke, the burgesses were expected to meet out of their own funds. To enable them to do so, Leopold allowed the council to appropriate the _deniers_ of the _octroi_ to their involuntary hospitality.

The more or less Protestant colouring given to the refugee establishment was scarcely palatable to the very orthodox population of Bar. But James was playing, not to the Bar pit, but to the English gallery. "Downs or Leslie should at once go there," so we find O'Rourke writing to Middleton early in 1713. Leslie did go soon after, and the Chevalier, as his advocates take credit, prevailed upon the Duke to relax his rigid rule in one instance, and allow Protestant service in an upper room in James's house. That was in the "Rue Neve." The upper room, which, we read, was just over James's own apartment, cannot have been large. So it is to be feared that the service was not over well attended. But it was enough to save appearances, and to give the Jacobites of England a shadow of reason for declaring, as they did, that James really was a Protestant. James himself spoke a very different language. "He would rather abandon all than act against his conscience and his honour." He protested over and over again that "all the crowns in the world would not make him change his religion."

Thanks to King Louis's perpetual ordering and countermanding, when James got to Bar, the chateau was once more as bare and uninhabitable as ever it had been, and for a few days the Pretender had to be content with the same rather humble house which he was destined subsequently to occupy for a considerable time, in the "Rue des Tanneurs"--Number 22, Rue Neve, it is now--a plain, square, three-storeyed building (counting the upper range of rooms, which is very low, as a storey). This is described as at the time "the princ.i.p.al house" in the town, the property of one of the most distinguished residents, Councillor of State M. Marchal. It has eight windows frontage, facing severally the Rue Neve and the Rue des Pressoirs, and ab.u.t.ting width-ways on the very narrow pa.s.sage Rue St. Antoine. A few days later, however, we find the Pretender safely established in the chateau, and there on the 9th of March he receives the Duke of Lorraine and his brother Francois, Abbe of Stavelot, with an amount of circ.u.mstance and scrupulous weighing of precedences which is described with rather amusing minuteness in the 'Gazette de France.' Not to hurt James's feelings--to whom royal honours could not be openly shown, out of consideration for Queen Anne--Leopold ordered that he himself should not be received with the usual ceremonial, troops under arms, and councillors presenting addresses. But the Lorrains were a devotedly loyal population.

They would not be forbidden. The whole population of the town and of all the surrounding district crowded into the streets, to receive the ruler of the land with shouts of welcome. James, being the resident, played the host at Bar. There was, a dinner, a supper, and a long private talk in the chateau, with the result, we read, that the two princes at once became fast friends. James, we know, though wanting in most of the qualities which are regarded as specifically manly, was a good-looking and agreeable fellow enough. As for Leopold, with his experience of Courts, and his kind and considerate disposition, he could not very well prove otherwise than a pleasant companion and a kind patron. We have plenty of portraits of him left, limned both with pen and with brush. Short and stumpy, round-bellied, red-faced, with a free allowance of pimples, and, moreover, with those abnormally stout legs which remained his most striking outward characteristic to his dying day, he must have looked a veritable _Jacques Bonhomme_ put into a full-bottomed wig and court-dress. There is a tale to those legs. Leopold came into the world about two months before his time, _very_ sickly and _very_ delicate. More particularly his legs were very spindles. Under a special treatment designed to remedy this defect, they grew just as much too big as previously they had been too thin. Terrible stickler for etiquette that Leopold was, and intent upon lavish display, when occasion seemed to demand it, both himself and his wife were simplicity itself when such occasion was withdrawn. They could talk to a peasant in the peasant's brogue about his _ouettes_ and his hemp. One of the princesses thought nothing of accepting a lift home in a market-cart, and, as the driver commendingly related, showed herself "_bien sage_."

"_Cousine_," said the d.u.c.h.ess to the d.u.c.h.ess of Elboeuf, "_restez chez nous, nous avons un bon gigot_." This simplicity and familiarity with humble ways as a matter of course made the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess popular. But what helped them more than anything to gain their people's hearts was their remarkable readiness to enter into all those local _fetes_ which long custom had sanctioned as common to both high and low. The French occupation had made a long break in the observance of those _fetes_. How should the Lorrains "sing songs" in what had become to them practically "a strange land?" For something like thirty years their harps remained hung up upon the willow-trees. Great, however, was the joy when at the first _Fete de la Veille des Rois_--kept in commemoration of the brilliant victory achieved over Charles the Bold in 1476--and at the _Brandons_ or _Faschinottes_,[3] following that _fete_, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess appeared in person among the merry-makers, entering most good-humouredly and, indeed, jovially into all their doings. Of the many local customs which Lorraine boasts, the _Brandons_ was at that time still the particular favourite. It had been handed down from h.o.a.ry antiquity. Every couple married since the last _Brandons_ was expected to join. The husband had to provide himself with a f.a.ggot or log of wood, and carry it in procession through the town, accompanied by his wife, along a roundabout route prescribed by custom, to the Duke's palace, march three times past the Duke's window, and then deposit the piece of fuel on a huge pyramidal pyre built up in the ducal courtyard. Some couples went on foot, others rode on horseback. All were dressed in their best, and the procession must have looked exceedingly picturesque. Every lady was expected to wear some little ornament--generally made of silver--specially devised to indicate either her calling or her station in life: a coronet, or a sickle, or whatever it might be. The streets were lined with people, who freely expended their wit--a pretty ready one--in chaff pointed at the new victims to matrimony, who in their turn were expected to put on a most dejected look, as if seriously repenting the allegiance rashly entered into to Hymen. In the evening the pyre was lighted, and round this huge bonfire people made mildly merry with gambols and dances. Tables were spread, at the Duke's cost, richly laden with viands and native wine. In 1698, at the first revival of the _Brandons_ after a long pause, the file of matrimonial victims was, of course, quite exceptionally long. It was a delightful surprise to the crowd to see at its head the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess themselves, newly married as they were--the d.u.c.h.ess, being slightly _enceinte_ with her first-born, wearing at her girdle a little silver cradle. That was not all. In the evening Leopold mixed freely with the revellers, stopped at table after table, drank here and drank there, proposing a toast or responding to one,--with the result that the people went half-mad with enthusiasm. Not a tumbler had the Duke drunk out of, which was not religiously treasured as a relic. And long after the French had forced their yoke firmly home upon the shrinking neck of unwilling Lorraine, those tumblers were still shown to growing children as memorials of the "good old time." At the carnival, which followed the _Brandons_, Leopold and Elizabeth Charlotte were again to the fore. They did not mind figuring in public--even sometimes on an amateur stage. Leopold once appeared masked as Sultan--his consort, not quite appropriately, as an Odalisk; but the loyal Lorrains saw nothing incongruous in that dress.

The striking difference very apparent in the characters severally of host and guest in our little chapter of history, may have helped to draw them together all the more closely. James was in his ordinary mood anything but mirthful. References to him are frequent in the correspondence as being "terribly sad," or else "very pensive, which is his ordinary humour,"

"_tres serieux et reserve_," so much so that "_rien ne l'auoit pu tirer de la profonde melancolie ou il etoit_," and so on. Yet he could be merry, too, and more in particular he loved a dance. At one ball, given in the Palace at Luneville, we read that he managed particularly to ingratiate himself with the ladies who were past their first bloom, by an act of undoubted chivalry. They wanted badly to dance, but dared not, while the d.u.c.h.ess was sitting. And the d.u.c.h.ess considered herself too much of a matron to foot it with the young ones. James, however, made her. He would take no refusal. The dead room became reanimated once more, and many an aging heart in its night-thoughts blessed the gallant _pretendant_. James, we are told, was a prominent figure in the Nancy _Brandons_ and Carnival, kept with peculiar _eclat_ in 1715, after a fresh break of thirteen years, due to French occupation. Court chroniclers seem to consider that the presence of "_Le Roi d'Angleterre_" added peculiar l.u.s.tre to that performance.

Reporting himself after his visit to Bar, as in duty bound, to King Louis, Leopold declares himself "_charme de l'esprit, de la sagesse, de la douceur et des manieres gracieuses de M. le Chevalier de Saint Georges_."

The 'Journal de Verdun,' drawing its information, of course, from official sources, announces that after their first encounter the two princes "_se separerent extremement satisfaits l'un de l'autre_" in "_parfaite amitie bien cimentee_." Of James it will have it that he is "_d'un caractere si doux, si affable, et si populair, qu'il s'est bientot acquis, de tous ceux qui ont eu l'honneur de le voir, le respect et la veneration dus a sa vertu et a sa naissance_."

Leopold gone, the time pa.s.sed, on the whole, quietly at Bar. There were occasional alarms, when some suspicious stranger had been seized. On one occasion, again, there is some talk of a "poisoned letter," sent in an ingenious fashion. To Louis, we find, the Duke appeared a little too forward in warning James of these dangers, as if he wanted to frighten his guest into quitting Lorraine. To vary the little episodes, there was the famous _coequre_, who so much amused Queen Mary Beatrice's companions with his odd manners and his "thou"-ing. "The Spirit had moved him," as we know, to inform James that he was to rule over England, in which country there were plenty of well-wishers to support him. Were money wanted, he said that his friends would readily combine to raise some millions. They did not, welcome as the money would have been to James, whom we find continually complaining of want of funds. In the cipher despatches the common burden is, that "Mr. Parton" will not "deliver the goods." There is another prophetic person to encourage the Pretender, a nun of the "Monastere de Sainte Marie del Roma," near Montevallo--accredited by her superior, who writes to the Marquis Spada that her prophecies have never failed to come true. If he escapes the many traps set for him in 1715, so the nun says, James will certainly become King of England. Occasionally also there are little tiffs between English visitors and Barisien residents. What English, Scotch, and Irish there were there, we do not know for certain, but there were a goodly number, and not all of the best manners. Noel, who is a good historian on Lorrain things, but a little at fault on English, will have it that among these people was "_Lord Chatham, qui devint plus tard si celebre_." Occasionally there was a visitor coming on the sly with news--such as the Duke of Berwick, whose visits were at one time frequent--or, towards the end of the sojourn, the banished Lord Bolingbroke, and "Le Comte de Peterborough" travelling under the pseudonym of "Schmit." Marlborough did not come himself, but he sent an aide-de-camp on a confidential mission to Luneville, overflowing with pleasant words, and through him be begged particularly to be well and promptly advised on the Chevalier's movements, since "_Le salut d'Angleterre_" might depend upon this. The Duke of Lorraine was not particularly impressed with James's followers, especially after Lord Middleton was gone. "_Ce ne sont que des gens d'un caractere fort mediocre_," he writes. They talk about things which affect their chief with the utmost freedom. In Mr Higgons, who had succeeded Lord Middleton, he could discern no merit whatever. As for Lord Middleton, he found him "_fort reserve et voulant dominer seul_."

He gives him credit for capacity and zeal, but censures him as being "_timide et irresolu_." All the rest, he says, are "_de jeunes gens qui ne pouuoint souffrir ce Milord, et qui auoint eu l'imprudence de dire a Luneville qu'il etoit si fort hay en Angleterre que les plus zelez partisans de leur Maitre auoint temoigne qu'ils ne feroint jamais rien pour ces interests tant qu'il l'auroit au-prez de luy_." All these men evidently have very little knowledge of what is going on at home, he says.

There is no one in whose judgment the Pretender might repose any faith except it be the Earl of Oxford or Lord Bolingbroke.

On the whole, the Pretender's life at Bar, though perhaps a little monotonous, can scarcely have been unpleasant. He made friends with the local _haute volee_, asking them to dinner, and being asked back--and borrowed money from them whenever he could. His especial friends were the Marquis de Ba.s.sompierre, from whom he borrowed 15,000 livres, which the Duke repaid in 1719, and M. de Rousselle. A good deal of time the Chevalier spent in his closet, with Nairne, or Higgons, or Middleton, concocting plans and dictating long memorials to the Pope, or else to Cardinal Gualterio, advocating the canonisation of Bellarmine, recommending _proteges_ for places which they never got, and insisting on his right to nominate bishops to Irish sees, the names of which he could not spell. At off-times he played _reversi_, _boston_, and _ombre_, and occasionally _pet.i.t palet_, which is an aristocratic form of chuck-farthing. Then there was the pleasure of the chase, of which we know from Father Leslie that James was a tolerably keen votary. In Lorraine the diversion of _venerie_ was held in high estimation, though reserved only for very great magnates, and guarded by a ring-fence of the strictest enactments against vulgar intrusion. Poaching accordingly came to be a very common offence. "Ground game," indeed--at any rate rabbits--it was open to all to shoot. "High game"--_i.e._, deer--on the other hand, was reserved within certain limits exclusively for the Duke. Within about eight miles of the Duke's palaces, in what were called the ducal _plaisirs_, not even n.o.bles of the highest rank were permitted to shoot or hunt. No dogs belonging to private persons were allowed in the fields near those _plaisirs_, on any pretence whatever, be the deer, and boars, and wolves, ever so troublesome. Even shepherds' dogs and watch-dogs must have their hamstrings cut, or else a log tied round their necks. And in some districts every Parish was required by law to provide a _louviere_ or wolf's pit, 20 feet deep, 18 feet wide at its bottom, and 12 at its opening. From "_le haut puissant messire_" Jean de Ligniville's most amusing disquisitions on "_La Meutte et Venerie_" we learn that the district about Bar was "_tres boise_" and well stocked with game of every description, which, local chroniclers tell us, James was frequently occupied in hunting. Lorrain and English hunting were not then as far apart in their general features as one might be tempted to a.s.sume. English kings had more than once sent presents of English hounds to Lorrain dukes--Charles III. received from James I. a present of eighty harriers at a time. And more than one Lorrain grandee came over to hunt and shoot here. Ligniville himself, the Duke's _Grand Veneur_ (under Charles IV.), had frequently hunted in England, and expressed himself especially delighted with the sport in which he had joined in Yorkshire. On the whole, he appears to have considered English hounds superior to French--less eager at first, but with more stay in them--and he was proud of having received presents of some from the Prince of Wales of his time (Charles I.), "Milord de Hee," and from "Milord Howard." But a cross between English and French hounds he seems to have regarded as the _ne plus ultra_ of excellence. "Puss" was very much persecuted in the valley of the Meuse, furnishing by its exceptional swiftness and skill in swimming almost too good sport, "_contre montant l'eaue tellement viste que les chiens ne les pouuoint pas aborder_." James's hunting sometimes led him into adventures, and on one occasion nearly saddled his host with a diplomatic difficulty. Riding hard, he once got to the little town of Ligny at nightfall, some eight miles from Bar, in a va.s.sal territory belonging, under the Duke of Lorraine, to Montmorency, Duke of Luxemburg.

The Duke of Luxemburg, being rather a big va.s.sal, was in consequence also a very troublesome one, and the Lorrain Court and his officers frequently found themselves at loggerheads. To James, coming from Bar, with fifty Lorrain _gens d'armes_, besides his own suite, the _maire_ resolutely refused to open the gates and furnish lodgings for the night, grounding his refusal upon a decision of the Parliament of Paris pa.s.sed in the year 1661. The Lorrains were quite prepared for a siege and an a.s.sault.

However, James deemed it wiser to leave things alone, and so the company rode half a mile further, to a little village called Velaine, where they spent a most uncomfortable night. Soon we have Montmorency complaining to King Louis of the a.s.sumed "_nouuelles entreprises de M. le Duc de Lorrain sur mon comte de Ligny_." Leopold revenged himself by imprisoning about a dozen _maires_ of the Ligny county, on the plea of their having failed to furnish the requisite waggons, and in the end bought Montmorency out with the sum of 2,600,000 francs.

All this, however, was not enough excitement for James. In one of his letters he plaintively calls Bar his "Todis"--by which of course he means "Tomis." "Tomis," by a natural train of thought suggested--besides the _tristia_, of which we have plenty--the _ars amatoria_. And to it the Chevalier devoted not a few of his unoccupied hours. If local tradition speaks true, he differed very materially in his prosecution of this art from his father, of whom Catherine Sedley said that on what principle he selected the ladies of his heart she could never make out. None of them were good-looking, and if any of them had wit, he had not the wit to find it out. And Mary of Modena, his wife, added that, although he was willing to give up his crown for his faith, he could never muster sufficient resolution to discard a mistress. His son was in both respects far more of a man of the world.

It was in the green bosquets of those Paquis, his favourite lounging-place, that James first discovered his human jewel. To house her suitably, he took--at somebody else's cost--a cottage on the brow of the hill, where the view is delightful and the air magnificent. You can still approximately trace the site, high up in the Rue de l'Horloge, above the Rue St. Jean, a little below the neglected terrace in the Rue Chavee--which is well worth visiting for its prospect. As the house stood with its back to the hill and facing only the open s.p.a.ce, there must have been absolute privacy. But, after moving down to the Lower Town, James found the ascent by those _Quatre-vingt Degres_--which Oudinot rode up on horseback--a trifle laborious. The steps lead almost straight up from his house to the cottage, describing just enough of an angle to take in the humble building, now marked by a tablet, in which Marshal Oudinot was born. A more convenient arrangement could scarcely have been desired. But the steps were sadly "_sales et delabres_." Not to inconvenience James in his amours, the town council readily voted the requisite sum for putting them into proper repair.

When September came on, James found the air on the castle-hill "_trop vif_." Although his mother generally reports that "_il se porte bien_," it is to be feared that his const.i.tution was none of the strongest. We read in one of D'Audriffet's despatches, "_que sa sante estoit toujours fort delicate_." He has had a "_fluxion_" in the eye. He has "weak lungs." "He is evidently very poorly," writes D'Audriffet to Louis. He finds himself "_altere par l'intemperie du tems_." He takes the waters of Plombieres four times "for his health," and wants to take those of Aix-la-Chapelle.

He talks of going to a warmer climate--Spain or Italy, or, more specifically, Venice. But he can now obtain no fresh pa.s.sport from the Emperor. Then he goes to have a look at Saint Mihiel, likewise in the Barrois, only a few miles from Koeurs, in which another Prince of Wales, young Edward--the same whom Edward IV. meanly struck with his gauntlet, and Richard of Gloucester despatched with a stab, to stop his "sprawling"--spent his young years of exile in company with his mother, Queen Margaret, from 1464 to 1471. But he does not like the idea of living in the Benedictine Abbey. So the Duke orders the town council to get ready once more M. Marchal's convenient house below, to which the Chevalier insists that a second house adjoining shall be added, belonging to M. de Romecourt, besides a portion of one belonging to M. Lepaige, with a kitchen specially built, and a "gardemanger," a new door, and sundry other conveniences, to say nothing of the hiring of further accommodation for his horses, his kennel, his _gens de venerie_, his guards, some of his suite--all of whom and all of which he wants very near him, and all of which consequently, costs the town a good deal of money. M. de Romecourt's house is a complete match to M. Marchal's, but smaller, bringing up the frontage to thirteen windows.

However, James was not always at Bar, nor yet always, when away, at Plombieres. Duke Leopold was constantly inviting him to Luneville, and sometimes to Nancy, and arranging most magnificent _fetes_ in his honour.

Leopold could do things handsomely when he chose. Even when James stayed three whole weeks, there was something new provided every day to amuse him--"_les plaisirs de la Cour etoint entremele de repas, de collations, de bals, de concerts, de Comedie, de promenades, de cha.s.se, de feux d'artifice, etc., mais chaque jour tout etoit nouveau_." Leopold's palace at Luneville--the same in allusion to which Louis XV. said to King Stanislas, "_Mon pere, vous etes mieux loge que moi_"--was specially laid out for the gaiety and the varied succession of amus.e.m.e.nts for which the Lorrain Court was famous. It was at the Lorrain Court that the _cotillon_, that universal favourite on the Continent, was first invented. And in Leopold's theatre it was that Adrienne Lecouvreur made her first appearance.

To give James a right royal reception, Leopold spared neither pains nor money. He always made a point of going to meet his guest--to Batelemont, to Houdemont, or to Gondrecourt. To enable the Court to enter with proper spirit into all the magnificence prepared, we read in the official despatches, that in April, 1713, on the occasion of James's first visit, the Duke directed that two quarters' salaries, in arrear since 1711, should be paid to the officers of his household. D'Audriffet makes merry over this. But in France things were no better. The Court of Versailles, we know, was always behindhand in its payments to Queen Mary. Mrs Strickland makes this a matter of reproach to Desmarets, as if purely the result of his negligence. But the Court had not got the money. In 1715 we have D'Audriffet himself sending in his little account, which shows five years' salary to be owing, in addition to 24,800 livres of disburs.e.m.e.nts, the whole debt amounting to 84,800 livres.

Even more brilliant than the _fetes_ given at Luneville, were those to which James was invited at the Chateau of Commercy, the seat of the Prince de Vaudemont. Vaudemont was rich and generous. He had occupied high positions in the army and the administrative services both of Austria and of Spain. He was a man pre-eminently prudent in council. Our William III.

had discovered that, and had frequently sought his opinion, more particularly while the Treaty of Ryswick was under consideration. To James the Prince became a most valuable friend and confidant--more especially at that critical juncture when the Pretender's great aim was to get away un.o.bserved form Lorraine. In his splendid castle of Commercy, set off by magnificent cent gardens and sheets of water throwing Versailles into the shade, the "Damoiseau" of Commercy gave _fetes_ the description of which baffled Court chroniclers of the period, and after which, in the words of the "Gazette de Hollande," James found himself constrained to go back to Bar in self-defence, "_pour s'y dela.s.ser, pour ainsi dire, de la fatigue des plaisirs continuels_." There was such a _fete_ in June, 1713, arranged on a peculiarly lordly scale, in which a chorus of _Pelerins de Saint Jacques_ were brought in--appropriately hailing from "L'Isle de Cythere,"

and provided with pa.s.sports from the G.o.ddess Venus--whose special object seems to be to say pretty things to James:--

"Vous gagnez tous les coeurs, tout le monde gemit De voir un Roy d'une bonte si rare, Et brillant de l'eclat de toutes les vertus Loin des Etats qui lui sont dus Mais nous verrons un jour cette triple couronne Qu'ont porte si longtems vos Ill.u.s.tres Ayeux, Sur votre chef tomber des Cieux.