The Love of a Prince: Bonnie Prince Charlie in France, 1744-1748

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright and librettist and author of the
children’s books Magic and What’s in a Name?

During a perusal of the Stuart papers in Windsor, England, L.L. Bongie came across love letters written in the 1740s by Louise, wife of the Duc de Montbazon, to her cousin Charles Edward Stuart, commonly remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie and less commonly known as a direct descendant of Polish royalty. The affair came to a bad end and the child born of the liaison lived less than six months.

This book is not a romantic novel, as the cover might suggest, but a historical account of Prince Charlie’s frustrating years in France immediately before and after his unsuccessful invasion of England in 1745. The writing is smooth and clear but the political intrigues and historical details sometimes make for difficult reading. An additional hurdle for the general reader is the number of quotes in French which are not translated. (Louise’s letters are presented in an appendix in both French and English.)

Two themes of interest emerge apart from the sad love story. One is the extraordinary and complicated manoeuvring over the marital arrangements for Louise from the time she was ten years old. The other theme is the development of Prince Charles’s character, from the idealistic, chaste and charming young man who sets off for Scotland with high hopes to the disappointed warrior who returns to France after the battle of Culloden and becomes an impossible lover and a political has-been.