Tea at Trianon: Bonnie Prince Charlie's Disastrous Cumbrian Friend

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Bonnie Prince Charlie's Disastrous Cumbrian Friend

From Hidden Cumbrian Histories:

By the side of one of Scotland’s most beautiful sea lochs lies a pile of stones. It marks the place where the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, landed in July 1745 with a tiny and already somewhat battered and disunited group of seven supporters. The inscription on the memorial records that one of the prince’s party was: “Francis Strickland an English gentleman from Westmorland”.
Together, these seven launched the Jacobite Rebellion, the most formidable and daring attempt by the exiled Stuart dynasty to regain the British throne.
Although he came ashore with only this absurdly small band of followers, Charles Edward Stewart’s timing was good because the bulk of the British army was away fighting in mainland Europe. He gained slightly equivocal support from thousands of Highland warriors and within weeks was the master of Scotland and victor of the battle of Prestonpans near Edinburgh. In that fight he annihilated the only semblance of an army the English had at a time when the London government could hardly muster enough troops on hand to guard the royal palaces, let alone fight an invasion.
He was disappointed when his English supporters failed to rise and even more downcast when the French delayed launching their promised invasion until it was too late. Even so, the speed and tactical nous of Charles’s forces wrong-footed the defenders of a succession of English cities. The Jacobites captured Carlisle and penetrated as far south as Derby. This unprecedented success by an invading army threatened to destabilise the British state. Yet the intense squabbling and internal distrust that had grown among his commanders led to the conviction they would not win and they retreated against Charles’s wishes. This allowed the English to regroup and led to the Jacobite army being crushed at the Battle of Culloden with 1,250 rebel deaths. (Read more.)