ODD BITS OF HISTORY.

ODD BITS OF HISTORY
BEING
SHORT CHAPTERS INTENDED TO FILL SOME BLANKS

BY
HENRY W. WOLFF

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co.
AND NEW-YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1894.

(All rights reserved.)

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, occassion for occasion; p. 137, Fuensaldana for Fuensaldaña; 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.

CONTENTS.

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 être dans la Haute Ville"—"Cela doit être dans la Basse 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 manuscripts 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 passing 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 shores. 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 château 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 agité," 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, assassin, 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 Châlons, awaiting the king's pleasure—waiting also for a passport 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, "pillé, dégradé, négligé" 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 reparé." 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 Lunéville. 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 Lunéville, to Commercy, and to Nancy—as well as to Plombières, 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, quâ 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 anticipated 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 passed 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 Canal—beautifying the scene wherever it passes—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 chasse-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 côtes, covered with clustering 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 Canal 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 Childéric 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 Condé, 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