The New Student's Reference Work/Charles Edward

Charles Edward (the Young Pretender), the son of James Stuart, the first Pretender, was born at Rome, Dec. 31, 1720. Unlike his father and grandfather, he was talented and firm of purpose. As a boy he served in the Spanish army against Austria. On the breaking out of war between France and England in 1744, the French furnished him with a powerful fleet and an army under the command of Marshal Saxe, the greatest soldier of the time, with which to secure the throne of the Stuarts, but the expedition was driven back by storms. The French refusing to let him try again, he managed to collect enough funds to fit out two small vessels. One was driven off by a British cruiser, but the second bore Charles to Scotland, where an army of Highlanders slowly gathered about him. He destroyed an English army sent against him at Prestonpans, eight miles east of Edinburgh, which gave him such a reputation that he marched through England to within 100 miles of London, which he could have captured, but the Highlanders becoming alarmed, forced him to retreat. After winning the battle of Falkirk (Jan. 17, 1746), his Highland chiefs forced him again to retreat to the Highlands, where the disastrous defeat of Culloden ruined his cause. He might have won this battle, too, though his army was smaller than that of the English and, besides was worn out by long marches and hunger, had not the MacDonald clan on the left wing refused to charge, sulking because they had always had the honor of holding the right since the battle of Bannockburn. After months of wandering and adventure, the Pretender escaped from the country. He never took the title of king, but lived thenceforward in Europe as the Count of Albany, until his death at Rome in 1768.