Did he pay the money back, though? And yeah, I also got the bit where diverting RN from the Baltic is what C12 really cared about here.
Oh, and you might appreciate this hilarious bit from the same book:
The last encounter between the Jacobites and Sweden, in 1784, was motivated, however, not by any desire to restore Charles Edward (by then Charles ‘III’) to his putative thrones, but by Gustav III’s obsession with the notion of gaining control of Europe’s network of Freemasons. Swedish Masonic mythology ascribed to Charles Edward the secret headship of the ‘Templar’ Masonic order. Gustav correspondingly believed Charles could supply him with the authority to command the allegiance of these lodges from one end of the Continent to the other. Charles Edward, who knew of the legend and that it was bogus but was running short of drinking money, duly milked him of some ready cash and required Gustav to arrange a financial separation with Charles Edward’s estranged wife, Louise von Stolberg. Gustav successfully accomplished this, then persuaded Charles to transfer his ‘authority’ and promptly decamped, leaving Charles Edward waiting in vain for the lucrative payments he had been led to expect.²²
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Re: Charles XII and the Jacobites
Date: 2021-11-18 05:57 pm (UTC)Oh, and you might appreciate this hilarious bit from the same book:
The last encounter between the Jacobites and Sweden, in 1784, was motivated, however, not by any desire to restore Charles Edward (by then Charles ‘III’) to his putative thrones, but by Gustav III’s obsession with the notion of gaining control of Europe’s network of Freemasons. Swedish Masonic mythology ascribed to Charles Edward the secret headship of the ‘Templar’ Masonic order. Gustav correspondingly believed Charles could supply him with the authority to command the allegiance of these lodges from one end of the Continent to the other. Charles Edward, who knew of the legend and that it was bogus but was running short of drinking money, duly milked him of some ready cash and required Gustav to arrange a financial separation with Charles Edward’s estranged wife, Louise von Stolberg. Gustav successfully accomplished this, then persuaded Charles to transfer his ‘authority’ and promptly decamped, leaving Charles Edward waiting in vain for the lucrative payments he had been led to expect.²²