Jacobites by Jacqueline Riding review– the myths of Bonnie Prince Charlie

Over the last century the 1745 rebellion has excited Scottish nationalists of all stripes, including, bizarrely, left-leaning republicans with no investment in the claims of the exiled Stuarts. In the aftermath of the 2014 referendum result, activists on the losing pro-independence side were quick to exploit the potent numerical symbolism of a defeat by 45% to 55%. They set up a new campaigning group, “We are the 45”, which alluded to the dramatic Jacobite rising of 1745 during which the British state had appeared to totter. But over the centuries, Jacobitism has also kindled quiet conservative fantasies of a very different sort, in England as well as Scotland. For readers of popular romances, the 1745 represented an escapist alternative to the sooty realities of industrial Britain.

These divergent obsessions have guaranteed an eager market for books on Jacobites, but the results have been mixed: a steady drip of reliable scholarly work, but also a geyser of gushing romanticism and nationalist mythology. I approached Jacqueline Riding’s Jacobites with a huge measure of scepticism, anticipating at best a well-worn retelling of an all-too-familiar story, at worst yet another drenching in lachrymose sentiment or propaganda.

Riding has instead told the story of the rebellion from a fresh and historically convincing perspective, as an account of communications in the early modern world. Reliable information was hard to come by, and travelled no faster than wind-powered or horse-drawn transport. Disentangling fact from exaggeration and hearsay added another layer of complexity to the process. The protagonists of Riding’s story are, on one side, the Young Pretender and Bonnie Prince, Charles Edward Stuart in Scotland, his father James Francis Stuart, the Old Pretender in Rome, and his cagily ambivalent French sponsors; on the other, Whig ministers in London, the Hanoverian king, George II, who summered on the Continent, and various military men and politicians scattered across Britain. They had almost as much trouble keeping in touch with their own colleagues and allies as in working out what their opponents were up to. In particular, the Royal Navy stood between Charles and his French backers, while James, the notional head of the House of Stuart, was based at a further remove still across the Alps.

It is this absence of anything resembling a functioning command-and-control system, certainly on the Jacobite side, that allows Riding to produce such an enthralling narrative. She shows us a developing crisis from the multiple perspectives of a large ensemble cast, with the reader able to view the unfolding situation as Jacobite courtiers or Hanoverian generals saw it, through the fog of slow communication, misunderstanding and rumour.

These hindrances are aligned with another kind of problem, the difficulty of compelling observance of parental wishes in the face of youthful insubordination. On the Hanoverian side, George II was largely estranged from his heir, Frederick, the Prince of Wales, whose household had become a magnet for opposition politicians in England, including, incredible as it might seem for a Hanoverian prince, Jacobite sympathisers. Much more popular, and widely liked by all who worked with him, was Frederick’s younger brother, William, the Duke of Cumberland, who is today reviled in nationalist demonology as “the Butcher” of Culloden and its Highlands aftermath. Riding reminds us that the much-vilified Cumberland (b 1721) was the same age as the Young Pretender (b 1720), whose mistakes in 1745-6, whether tactical or political, are, in sharp contrast, indulgently ascribed to youth’s hotheadedness and naivety. Indeed, a generation gap also existed on the Jacobite side during the 1740s, between the cannily cautious leadership in Rome of the Old Pretender (b 1688) and the desperation of young Prince Charlie to play the part of rainmaker.

As Riding makes clear, the political weather for an attempted Jacobite restoration had seemed most propitious not – as posterity now assumes – in 1745, but a couple of years before, in 1743-4. The continent-wide war of the Austrian succession, which saw the Hanoverians and the French ranged on different sides, provided a window of opportunity for Jacobites. In 1743, leading English Jacobites encouraged the idea of a Stuart restoration, with the prospect of French backing, as such an undertaking would divert Hanoverian forces from the main theatres of war. But presentation was tricky. A simple French invasion would meet staunch resistance, but, it was assumed, the English would welcome a genuine Stuart restoration attempt were Prince Charles there carrying a manifesto from his father. What happened next remains murky, but somehow Charles was lured to Paris in early 1744. The French invasion fleet was, however, battered by spring storms, and the planned invasion of England was eventually called off. Charles was now a frustrated figure on the fringes of the French scene but bent on organising his own small-scale mission to Scotland.

While conceding that he was not the man on the spot, James wrote to Charles warning against “any faint attempt upon Scotland alone”, fearing the “melancholy” prospect of “an unfortunate expedition and the ruin of a number of our friends”. The headstrong Charles went ahead in the summer of 1745, without the blessing of his father or the ostensible support of the French, though Charles was able – with some measure of French connivance – to assemble a force of two ships and 700 French-Irish troops in the port towns of the Loire-Brittany coast.

Accident begat improvisation begat further improvisation. En route to the Western Isles, the main ship carrying the regular troops and their supplies was intercepted off the south-west of England and forced back to France. Undeterred and unwilling to accept the wary counsel of his advisers, Charles, in the other vessel, persisted in an increasingly futile venture. When he got to the Highlands, he received the same advice from the chiefs of the Jacobite clans: without French troops, the game was up.

Yet the young royal was able to bend his subjects to his will, to cajole reluctant but presumably embarrassed Highland loyalists into taking up arms on his behalf. Soon he had a small but viable army of his own, which won some early successes. In a world of slow communications the British government was unsure what exactly was happening in Scotland. Panic spread as slowly as accurate information.

Bonnie Prince Charles was no Scottish nationalist. Instead of consolidating his hold on Scotland, he ventured into England in the hope that by attracting Jacobite supporters in the north-west and Midlands his army would snowball. Then he would be in a position to march on London – always the ultimate Jacobite goal, modern-day misapprehensions notwithstanding. But passive Jacobite sympathies for the rightful Stuart line were rarely converted into active military commitments. English Jacobitism was the dog that did not bark. As Riding notes, the successes of the Jacobite army, which moved about more rapidly than British regulars, constituted little more than “a frustration and an embarrassment” to the Hanoverian forces. Their real worry concerned the danger of a coordinated French assault on southern England. But with no signs of a popular uprising or imminent French invasion, at Derby Charles’s advisers forced their reluctant, bad-tempered prince to turn back for Scotland.

Accidents and tactical mistakes accompanied Charles’s eventual defeat at Culloden in 1746, which, as Riding suggests, was not quite an inevitability. However, the Hanoverian regime had survived the squall, and retribution was to follow for leading Jacobites. The escapade confirmed the worst anxieties of the Old Pretender, the official leader of a movement temporarily usurped by its provisional wing. Notwithstanding a few false notes, this is a work of penetrating insight and dispassionate balance, which is captivating from start to finish.