Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/268

 178 WORKMEN AND HEROES James ll. t but the nickname of Pretender still sticks, though Bosvvell tells us that George III. particularly disliked an appellation which "may be parliamen- tary, but is not gentlemanly." James III., or the Chevalier de St. George, was taken up by Louis XIV. on the death of James II., in France. He is said to have displayed courage in several battles in Flanders, but his at- tempt to assert his rights in 1715 was a melan- choly failure. James showed melancholy and want of confidence ; he soon left Scotland for the Con- tinent, and the best that can be said for his con- duct is, that he endeavored to compensate the peasants whose houses were destroyed in the mil- itary operations of " the Fifteen." Unable to re- side in France, he retired to Rome, a pensioner of the Pope, and entertained with royal honors. In 1719 he married Clementina Sobieski, a grand- daughter of the famous John Sobieski, who de- livered Europe from the Turks. Their eldest son, Prince Charles, appears to have inherited the spirit and daring of his Polish ancestors, which animated him throughout his youth, and were extinguished less by Culloden than by the treatment which he received from the French court, by his imprisonment in Vincennes in 1 748, and by the unrelenting animosity of the English Government, which made him a homeless exile living mysteriously in hiding on the Continent. Heart-broken by these misfortunes and by other disappointments, Charles developed an unreason- ing and sullen obstinacy, which alienated his adherents, while the habit of heavy drinking, learned in his Highland distresses, ruined his head and heart, and con- verted the most gallant, gay, and promising of princes into a brutal dipsoma- niac. The education of Charles was casual and interrupted. Now he was in the hands of Protestants, now of Catholic governors and tutors, as the advice of English adherents, or the wishes of his devout mother, chanced to prevail There were frequent quarrels between James and his wife, turning partly on the question of education, more on the jealousy which the queen conceived of the Countess of Inverness. The Pope sided with the queen in these melancholy broils, and James's private life (which was not faultless) was much more subject to criticism and interference than that of his at least equally lax rival on the Eng- lish throne. A second son, Henry Benedict, Duke of York, was born in 1725, and, at one time, was regarded as of more martial disposition than Prince Charles. As the elder, Charles was first under fire,, and at the siege of Gaeta, in 1734, while a mere boy, he displayed coolness, daring, and contempt of danger. Young Henry, aged nine, " was so much discontented at being refused the part- nership of that glory and that danger, that he would not put on his sword till his father threatened to take away his garter too," says Murray of Broughton, in a