This book was perfect, because it skimmed lightly over things I already know a lot about (the course of the '45, and the Highland clans and their relationship to Jacobitism), and focused on things I didn't. Here's a summary of parts I found interesting (ask if you want more on anything).
It starts with a brief summary of the historiography and various positions different historians have taken. There's a general bit about British society, then an account of the 1688 revolution and the war in Scotland and Ireland. I didn't know much about the war in Ireland, so that was interesting. It looks like James II did not make the most of his Irish Catholic support there. More than anything else the failure of the Jacobite army in 1690–1 is ascribable to a failure of political will. James II and VII does not seem to have taken to his Old Irish subjects.³⁸ They, in turn, were soon disillusioned with him and his inner coterie of advisers, none of whom were Old Irish.³⁹ Also he was not great as a military commander.
It then goes into how the Jacobites communicated within themselves (slooowly and uncertainly, because of the large distances, which made it hard to plot), and the various factions and internal ideological struggles within Jacobitism, and what the formal declarations of the Stuarts actually said. This is the main new thing I learned from the book, and it's very interesting! ...it is interesting to observe in this context the gathering radicalism of the Jacobites’ political agenda. For all the traditionalist evocation of rightful monarchy at the exiled court and the innate social and political conservatism of many of its hard-core supporters in the British Isles, as a political movement Jacobitism was impelled towards greater and greater political radicalism as time went on (see documents 3, 4, 15).
Which makes sense! There's always a struggle over power between the monarch and the parliament (and other power bases), and if the king is actually in exile and not on the throne, he's in a uniquely bad bargaining position. He's dependent on his supporters to get the throne back, and pretty much has to agree to what they want.
This shift begins already in the 1690's. James II's first communications are uncompromising. The Irish Parliament he called in 1689 basically wanted the Catholic majority to be in charge of the country, but they were to lose out in 1693 when the English Protestant faction among the Jacobites won out over the English Catholic one: Parliament was assigned a constitutional position very similar to that already prevailing in England in the 1690s, the religious settlement was to be left virtually untouched (specifically, the privileged position of the Church of England was to be maintained) and there was to be a complete indemnity for all supporters of the Revolution and their heirs. James also found himself caught between the English Jacobite and Irish Jacobite agendas, in that he had to agree to leave the settlement of Ireland to the tender mercies of the first post-restoration English Parliament (see document 3).¹³ In sum, the Jacobite government-in-exile committed itself to leaving the new, post-Revolution political, religious and social order in England (and English ascendancy in the British Isles) virtually intact in the event of a restoration.¹⁴ Must have been bitter for James II...
Then, in 1708, we get the much more radical proclamation of James III, as a consequence of what the Scottish Jacobites wanted. James III promised such things as three-year terms for parliament, all ministers and judges appointed by parliament, religious toleration (but no Catholics in office), the king could not set foreign policy on his own, etc. And they agreed that if the king broke these agreements, then parliament could kick him out. No doubt if any of these kings had actually ended up on the throne, they would've tried to get power back, like William III did after the Glorious Revolution, disappointing the radical Whigs, but they'd be starting from a bad bargaining position.
The exiled Stuarts’ identification with the Scottish national cause and their acceptance of the Juncto’s radical agenda, moreover, boosted the trend towards the adoption of more and more radical commitments by the exiled Stuarts. Their natural allies were the politically alienated and dispossessed, and so they accumulated more and more commitments to alter the status quo in the event of a restoration. The most important and momentous of these was the pledge by the Jacobite government-in-exile (repeated again and again in public statements and propaganda) that as soon as the exiled dynasty was restored it would hold a ‘Free Parliament’. This had been a radical nostrum since the 1650s, produced political revolutions in 1660 and 1688, and was bound to appeal to anyone who felt they had been unjustly treated by the existing order.²⁵ Likewise the Stuarts’ promise from 1715 onwards to institute a complete religious toleration (including full civil rights for religious minorities) augured no less a political and social earthquake.²⁶ To appreciate the potential upset implicit within this proposal it is only necessary to reflect that this was an issue very, very few conventional politicians would touch before the 1770s, that it convulsed British politics in 1780, 1799–1800 and 1825–9, and brought down at least two governments before it was finally passed. In the same vein, from the mid-1720s James promised to roll back the systematic disfranchisement of plebeian Londoners by Walpolean legislation designed to boost the powers of the oligarchical court of Aldermen. This would in effect have given back control of the city to ordinary Londoners and transformed the politics of the English/British capital. And London’s politics were nothing less than crucial on a national scale. The denouement of this process came in the 1750s, when Charles Edward added to these commitments pledges to institute biennial or triennial Parliaments, disband the standing army, cut the number of placemen in Parliament to no more than fifty, and enact legal guarantees of the liberty of the press and the right of the people to resist tyrannical governments (see document 15). It was an agenda a great many late eighteenth-century radicals and revolutionaries would have enthusiastically endorsed.
I also note that "document 15", written by BPC, also mentions his conversion to the Anglican Church, so that's another primary source for that.
Then the book goes through the various attempts at coups and up until the '15, as well as shifts of opinion within England and Scotland. It goes into the '15 in some detail, which makes sense as the author has written a separate book on that. It seems it wasn't as spontaneous as I'd thought before, since it was preceded by plotting between James III, Tory conspirators in England and Jacobites in Scotland. James III explicitly promised to break the 1707 union. The reason the rebellion failed seems the same one I've read before: that Mar was a very bad military commander, and that the English Jacobites didn't rise. But actually he never claimed to be one, he was waiting on James and Berwick (an Irish military commander in French service) to arrive and take over. But the French government forbade Berwick to take part, and James arrived too late to make a difference to the outcome.
I'd thought the government's punishments after the '15 were milder than after the '45, and it seems that they were to the extent that ordinary soldiers in Scotland were not punished. But in other respects they were as harsh. There was plenty of executions of the leaders, the confiscation of estates for all involved, and systematic looting and burning in the Highlands with no separation of guilty and innocent (says nothing about outright killing as after the '45, though). The confiscation of estates did sort of fail in that the Scots Whigs were alienated by the harshness of the treatment of the Highlands, and the whole judiciary establishment in Scotland obstructed the confiscation of estates. The government took 1,000 prisoners in Preston and the majority of the ordinary soldiers were to be transported to the Caribbean, which was basically a death sentence. But that too went awry since most of them were skilled workers and the entrepreneurs who bought the prisoners from the government instead sold them to North America since that paid better.
Then we get developments in England, Scotland and Ireland after the '15, and what the Jacobite court was up to. The most interesting bit for me here was Ireland. Ireland never rose after the 1690's, but that was not for lack of Jacobitism. Even if they'd been disillusioned by James II back then, they really had nowhere else to turn. England was very aware of their discontent, since the Gaelic and Catholic majority basically had no power, and all the power was held by the Protestant and English minority. Because of that awareness, there were plenty of garrisons to keep them down and they were not allowed to have arms. But Ireland contributed in another way: the "Wild Geese" who followed James to the continent in the 1690's formed Irish brigades in France and in Spain that evolved into crack military units. The effect of this on Irish Jacobite morale at home was great: there was a whole culture of songs and stories about it, relating the exploits of these soldiers to old mythical heroes, and illegal recruiting networks that ensured that the units actually remained Irish over time. Also, the commanders of these units had the ears of the kings/ministers in the respective countries. Jacobitism actually clung on the longest in Ireland, into the 1780's, and the transition to Jacobinism seems to have been pretty easy in the sense that both these movements were about trying to get help from the continent to overthrow their English Protestant overlords.
Skipping over the '45, nothing new. Then we get an interesting chapter first motivating why the Jacobites were so tempting to other countries: it gives examples of other countries being taken out of commission by civil wars and how great a way it was of breaking the military deadlock. He goes through various countries one by one and their diplomatic contacts with the Jacobites over time and reasons for why the countries acted as they did. Then there's a last chapter on the Jacobite diaspora.
This is fascinating, thank you! Much of it was new to me.
It seems it wasn't as spontaneous as I'd thought before
Oh, good lord, no. No matter whose side you were on, everyone knew the Hanover succession was going to happen, and everyone was making their plans well in advance. How much the specific details of the '15 were worked out in advance, I don't know, but the part where the Jacobites knew there were going to be protests at the Hanoverian accession and planned to take advantage was understood for years was kind of inevitable. Kind of like how everyone knew starting in about 1661 that the War of the Spanish Succession was going to happen, and planned for it until it finally happened in 1701; and everyone knew the Medici line was dying out by the 1720s, so they were laying their plans until 1737...Military and political details obviously had to respond to current events and couldn't be planned 40 years in advance, but if a succession crisis could be anticipated years in advance by anyone with half a brain, it was, and the maneuvering via correspondence, diplomatic negotiations, and treaties would go on.
Berwick (an Irish military commander in French service)
For cahn, not just any Irish military commander in French service, but James II's illegitimate son, and thus James III's half-brother! Berwick had already proven himself a very capable commander in the War of the Spanish Succession, and Philip V basically owed his throne to him (that and the fact that most of the Spaniards were fine with keeping Philip and reluctant to support the Habsburg claimants).
Prior to this, Berwick had fought for his father, James II, in Ireland, as he tried to get his throne back. He was present at the Battle of the Boyne, and he stayed in Ireland even after James had fled to France. (I'm not sure how much Berwick is himself "Irish", but he definitely had commanded troops in Ireland, and since he ended up going from there to France, he may have been called "Irish" because he had arrived as the head of Irish troops. He was born to English parents in France and raised in France, though.)
As we've pointed out before (luzula, you weren't here for this), Berwick's mother was Arabella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough. Horowski, predictably, makes a lot out of the tight family connections on both sides of the War of the Spanish Succession.
But the French government forbade Berwick to take part
The timing is critical here. The War of the Spanish Succession has just ended. The Peace of Utrecht has just forced France to recognize the Protestant Succession and banish James III from France.
Per Wikipedia (pay attention to the dates I've bolded):
Believing the great general Marlborough would join him, on 23 August James wrote to the Duke of Berwick, his illegitimate brother and Marlborough's nephew, that; "I think it is now more than ever Now or Never".
27 August: The Earl of Mar holds the first council of war, in Scotland.
September 1: Louis XIV dies. Philippe d'Orleans becomes regent.
6 September: The Earl of Mar raises the standard of James III/VIII.
This means that by the time Berwick needs permission to leave France, the big Jacobite supporter and personal friend of James II Louis XIV is dead. The new regent is Philippe d'Orleans, son of gay Philippe. If anything should happen to child Louis XV, Philippe d'Orleans is next in line to the throne. Except that Philip V of Spain, who had renounced the throne of France, is making it pretty clear that promise wasn't worth the paper it was written on. If anything happens to Louis XV, he's invading with his Spanish army and claiming the throne. The two Philip(pe)s are thus complete enemies.
It's also becoming increasingly clear that Philip V is going to try to get back the lost Spanish territory he just signed away. So Philippe the Regent needs an ally to try to force Spain to adhere to the terms of the Peace of Utrecht. The ally he wants is England. (This is why Rottembourg and Whitworth are working together in Berlin.) This will lead to the 1716-1731 Anglo-French alliance, in which they will fight on the same side against Spain in 1718-1720, which will thus lead Spain to try to put James III on the throne in 1719.
So up until September 1, 1715, the sympathies of the French monarch were with the Jacobites. Post September 1, the French regent has every reason to support George I against the Jacobites. Hence Berwick being refused permission. (Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Berwick will eventually die at the Battle of Philippsburg, getting his head ripped off after a "Do you know who I am??!!" exchange with the guards who tried to save him from himself. See my write-up here.
it gives examples of other countries being taken out of commission by civil wars and how great a way it was of breaking the military deadlock.
I would love to see these examples.
He goes through various countries one by one and their diplomatic contacts with the Jacobites over time and reasons for why the countries acted as they did.
Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Berwick will eventually die at the Battle of Philippsburg, getting his head ripped off after a "Do you know who I am??!!" exchange with the guards who tried to save him from himself.
Me: Oh, that Berwick! That's me: remembers funny anecdotes; does not remember other things... I also don't think I knew anything about James II, so would never have been able to keep in mind that Berwick was James II's illegitimate son. Now that I do know a lot more about James II, I hopefully will be able to rememebr Berwick as well :D
(Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Aw man. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy about that either :(
Edited (nouns are used instead of pronouns for a reason) 2021-11-21 04:57 (UTC)
I know nothing about Mar except as a name connected with the Jacobite rising I barely studied, so I can't comment on Grundy's assessment of his personality.
Lol Wikipedia:
Mar married his second wife Lady Frances Pierrepont, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. The match was a success in that it finally provided Mar with the funds to begin to clear his inherited debts. Lady Frances went mad in 1728 due to the stress of his exile in France.
That's a hell of a segue. "The match was a success in that the husband got money! The wife went mad."
Just to play Horowski‘s game of showing how interconnected and related the nobility is:
So, Lady Mary‘s brother in law (to her great regret, she oculdn‘t stand him) was the Earl of Mar, instigator of the 15. Her son in law was the Earl of Bute, educator and first PM to G3, bete noire of Fritz for cutting his subsidies in the last year of the 7 Years War. Lord Bute‘s younger brother is also the guy who was Barbarina‘s lover and temporary fiance when Fritz had her dragged to Prussia from Venice. And given Lady Mary‘s pining for Algarotti, this means we can connect all the early Jacobites within six steps to Algarotti, too, even without using the brothers Keith (who of course have the closest connection, due to sitting at the same table with him).
I think my head is exploding a little! That is... really interconnected :) (It's also kind of amazing that I generally speaking know who these people are now! :P )
Let's see what Bruce Lenman says about him (a consistently snarky historian, you should see him snark on the topic of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat--it's epic).
Mar had been a very active champion of the Act of Union. After raising the standard of rebellion he had to try to talk this episode away but it was in fact typical, for Mar was a government man through and through. He loved office, revelled in the deference which a minister of the King could extract from his contemporaries, and appreciated the salary. Political principles were never Mar's strong suit. (from "The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689-1746")
It goes on to describe how he was one of those Tories brought down when Queen Anne died. I enjoy this sort of snark, but at the same time wonder how the author feels able to judge people's character like that! I mean, maybe he had read lots of the guy's letters or something, but...
Here's his sister-in-law's biographer having a go at him right when he's introduced to the tale. The Sister-inlaw was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the bit about Paradise and Hell is what she, her sister Frances and their friends as young girls had invented as catagories for suitors - "Paradise" is the guy you want yourself, "Hell" is an unwanted guy your family makes you wed, and "Limbo" is a compromise guy who you don't love but think you can get along with for life. Lady Mary, btw, had married a limbo, but one she'd picked for herself.
Meanwhile the prospect of sister Frances's wedding crept closer. It was two years since Frances had confided to Philippa her misery at losing her Paradise and her belief that 'ev'ry living body shou'd fear hell above all other things'. Now her father had chosen for her a widower fifteen years her senior, father of a schoolboy son: John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. He was a Tory (though his family were Presbyterians), markedly Scottish in his speech. His portraits show him as handsome, though his body was said to be crooked. He claimed to have been long in love with Lady Frances. He was doing well under Queen Anne, as a Privy Counsellor and Secretary of State for Scotland (a post carrying a house in the Privy Garden, Whitehall), and a pension of 3.000 Pounds secured for him by Lord Oxford. But neither his circumstances nor his character would stand scrutiny. His rental income was only 261 Scottish Pounds (with odd shillings). His debts and his late father's came to over 150,000 in the same currency, though he gave assurances that they could not 'touch' his estate or the money he would receive from Lady Frances. Besides, as she was later to know too well, the rental from Scottish estates was by custom paid in arrears, and in kind. The initial arrears would be doubled by the haggling ncessary to convert kind to cash. And Mar's character: an associate later thought it 'impossible for him to even play a fair game, or to mean but one thing at once'. A historian calls his letters 'models of ineptitude and tergiversation'. For Lord Mar the beneffits of this marriage were clear: Lady Frances was a catch. Twelve years later he tried to justify his second marriage to his son by his first (who might 'repine' at the income he proposed to leave his second wife if he died). He insisted he had married to serve 'the good of the family'. He could hardly have been more open about his marrying for what he could get. On the other side, it was a strange marriage for a daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. Lady Mary thought Frances was pressured by Aunt Cheyne and a Mar relative. One of Dorchester's Whig circle wrote, 'there's a good Whig marr'd by taking a Scotch Jacobite for her Husband'. Did Dorchester miscalculate, seeing the high office and the estates, failing to note the debts? His 'design to marry himself' made it urgent for him to dispose of his remaining single daughter. But also, with Queen Anne's health in rapid decline and the succession uncertain, eminent Whigs were hedging their bets. Marlborough did this; Dorchester may have done so, too. If the Elector of Hanover succeeded to the throne, well and good; but if it should be James III. after all, a Scotch Jacobite son-in-law might be handy.
Oh, good lord, no. No matter whose side you were on, everyone knew the Hanover succession was going to happen, and everyone was making their plans well in advance.
Sure, makes sense! I think this is just me not having read enough about the '15 before. I'd mostly read about the Scottish side of it, which did not mention enough about the English plotting etc. It really can't have been easy to coordinate insurrections in various parts of Britain with help from France, with all the logistics and communications difficulties.
For cahn, not just any Irish military commander in French service, but James II's illegitimate son, and thus James III's half-brother!
For me, as well! : ) I knew basically nothing about Berwick as a person, so I'll check out the posts you link to. Ha, wow, that is some bad timing for the Jacobites in the '15, re: the French motivations...
I would love to see these examples.
This is not a long section in the book: European great power interest in the Jacobite card directly stemmed from the role of rebellion in international relations in the eighteenth century. For those continental great powers who considered allying with the Jacobites did not see them simply as cannon-fodder, but rather as a force which had the potential, literally, to destroy their British opponents.
These perceptions were firmly based on experience. All those involved in dealing with the Jacobites between 1716 and the 1760s were reared in the traditions of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century statecraft. And although statesmen always professed abhorrence of rebels and rebellion, the siren voices of religion and realpolitik nearly always overwhelmed their, doubtless genuine, repugnance. Thus Elizabeth I of England gave ill-tempered succour to Philip II of Spain’s Dutch rebels for the second half of her reign. Philip, despite his ostensible outrage at Elizabeth’s dirty tactics, showed little compunction about secretly supporting English Catholic plotters who planned to murder her and in sending what arms and monies he could spare to aid Hugh O’Neill in Ireland. In the same vein Cardinal Jules Mazarin overcame his disgust with the English Republicans who had overthrown and executed Charles I sufficiently well to ally with them against Spain 1656–60, and Louis XIV openly supported both the revolt of the Portuguese Braganzas against the Spanish Habsburgs and the rebellions raised by Imre Thököly and Ferenc Ráckózi against their Austrian cousins in Hungary.
What consistently lured the statesmen of seventeenth-century Europe into setting aside their scruples with regard to making use of domestic rebels was, more than anything else, the devastating effects on contemporary great powers of serious internecine strife. The ‘Time of Troubles’ (1598–1613) in Russia traumatised the Russian political nation and put the Muscovite state out of serious contention in the great power game for nearly half a century. The Great Civil War neutralised England between 1638 and 1653. The once mighty Polish empire was permanently weakened by the uprising led by Bohdan Chmielnicki in the 1650s. The decline of the Spanish Habsburg empire was directly attributable to its defeat at the hands of Dutch and Portuguese rebels and the exhausting, bitter struggle to reconquer Catalonia 1640–52. Most pertinently of all, the impressive military machine James II and VII had built up was brought low by an invasion assisted by a nationwide rebellion in England in 1688.
The strategic attractions of using domestic rebels to destabilise enemy polities were enhanced by the chronic stalemate in conventional military operations that set in in the late seventeenth century. [etc, more on that]
I'll put a pin in this: Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Ha, wow, that is some bad timing for the Jacobites in the '15, re: the French motivations...
Yeah. :) I mean, some of it is written with the benefit of hindsight, in that I'm talking about what Philippe/France was going to do in 1716 rather than what I can be sure they already had in mind in late 1715, but the point is that France very quickly moved into an alliance with England in the Regency period.
Would things have been different had Louis lived? Maybe, maybe not. His country was exhausted by the most recent war in a nonstop series of wars (anecdotally, he's supposed to have said on his deathbed, "I have loved war too well"), and he was being forced to make concessions to Britain in the peace negotiations. If he'd really wanted to support the Jacobites, the time was in 1714, when George ascended. Instead, one of my sources that I was reading today said he refused James III an audience and told the Jacobites not to expect any support.
But, Louis had been known to acknowledge the Protestant succession before (1697 Treaty of Ryswick) and then turn around and acknowledge James III on James II's deathbed (1701). Maybe he would have let Berwick go, maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe that would have changed things, maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe he would have been more inclined than Philippe to help once things got off the ground in late 1715, maybe not. Louis may have been a Jacobite at heart, but he was also not Charles XII and was capable of facing political realities.
But it's clear that on September 1, 1715, a monarch whose personal sympathies were with the Jacobites died, which didn't help their odds.
Most pertinently of all, the impressive military machine James II and VII had built up was brought low by an invasion assisted by a nationwide rebellion in England in 1688.
Oh huh, this is interesting to me -- I hadn't got the impression that James II was all that good at military stuff from The King's Touch (luzula, this is a novel I'm currently reading on selenak's recommendation about Charles II/James Duke of Monmouth, with James II as an important minor character, probably becoming more major later on but I haven't gotten there yet) but I guess I wouldn't know from what I've read so far, as he's not king yet :)
I hadn't got the impression that James II was all that good at military stuff from The King's Touch
To be fair: it's actually mentioned in The King's Touch at least twice (once by mother Henrietta Maria and once by Charles) that James spent the exile years distinguishing himself as a soldier before the Restoration even happens, and later there's the scene when young Jemmy - who is present - has to admit his uncle acts courageous mid naval battle when he nearly gets shot, showing complete sange froid. Said occasion, however, is also why Charles then forbids James to take part in a battle again (since James is the successor and hasn't sired a son yet, and while Charles has an increasing number of illegitimate kids, he doesn't have any with his wife), which James takes as an insult and Charles being envious of his military glory. However, I don't blame you for overlooking this on a first reading, because Henrietta Maria saying her son James has been distinguishing himself as a soldier is one sentence opposed to plenty of sentences about her favourite marriage project that doesn't happen (Louis XIV/Minette) and her ire that Charles doesn't listen to her during the same sequence.
Also, luzula, I want to welcome you to salon and signal my appreciation of your contributions by adding you to the salon word count generator!
User
Words
Comments
selenak
1,202,248
2,940
mildred
1,146,871
4,416
cahn
273,264
2,481
felis
88,284
367
prinzsorgenfrei
14,777
76
luzula
14,100
73
gambitten
13,116
36
Everyone else
7,931
67
Total
2,760,591
10,383
Numbers are not exact because html tags have to be stripped, and that's not an exact science. But it's approximately correct. And I'm a numbers person, so it makes me happy. :)
Ha ha, wow! Well, thanks for the welcome, and I'm surprised to see I've already written that much (although I bow down in awe before yours and Selena's wordcounts).
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Which makes sense! There's always a struggle over power between the monarch and the parliament (and other power bases), and if the king is actually in exile and not on the throne, he's in a uniquely bad bargaining position. He's dependent on his supporters to get the throne back, and pretty much has to agree to what they want.
This makes total sense, and is also totally not the sort of thing I would think of myself, not having at all the context to think about these things :) so I totally appreciate it!
But that too went awry since most of them were skilled workers and the entrepreneurs who bought the prisoners from the government instead sold them to North America since that paid better.
Oh, interesting. Would these have been indentured servants? Where did they end up in North America? (Trying to fit this into my understanding of Colonial America...)
And, also, nice to have another primary source for BPC's conversion!
What's the difference between Jacobitism and Jacobinism?
I second mildred_of_midgard on wanting to know about civil wars breaking the military deadlock!
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Oh, interesting. Would these have been indentured servants?
Yes, it seems so, and that they served their seven-year terms and then mostly stayed in America. Don't know where though!
What's the difference between Jacobitism and Jacobinism?
Hee! You should have seen me when I first ran across Jacobitism (which was in Naomi Mitchison's excellent novel The Bull Calves). Me: "...are Jacobites the same as Jacobins?"
No, no they were not. The Jacobins are the radical republicans in the French revolution. *g* They came to Ireland to help out in a rising there in 1798.
I second mildred_of_midgard on wanting to know about civil wars breaking the military deadlock!
I always roll my eyes when I'm reading a history book and the author confuses them, which happens far more than it should.
The Jacobins are the radical republicans in the French revolution. *g*
And this is why I found it so fascinating when you said that the Irish managed to transition naturally from Jacobitism to Jacobinism, because, cahn, Jacobitism started life as support for the dispossessed Stuarts. The Stuarts being the guys whose political philosophy was "I am a monarch by God-given divine right, and no rabble known as Parliament has the right to gainsay that."
And then apparently you get the Stuarts having to make concessions in exile (this I had either not learned, or more likely, forgotten, because I was far more into this for the military history than political or diplomatic history at the time), and then you end up with the Jacobins, whose political philosophy is, "We don't need no stinkin' king!"
Robespierre was a Jacobin. The Jacobins were the Reign of Terror guys. This is not what I would have expected from a party that started as the supporters of James II, Mister Absolute Monarchy!
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
So, like I was saying to luzula, I knew who the Jacobins were before salon (but not the Jacobites whom I hadn't really heard of except for luzula/salon mentioning them) and lol, when she brought them up this time I was like... OK, but they couldn't be those Jacobins because Reign of Terror != Irish supporters of the Stuarts?? (Hilariously, I even did a google search before asking who they were, which of course came up with, well, Jacobins, and I discarded it because it obviously couldn't be them :) )
And then apparently you get the Stuarts having to make concessions in exile (this I had either not learned, or more likely, forgotten, because I was far more into this for the military history than political or diplomatic history at the time), and then you end up with the Jacobins, whose political philosophy is, "We don't need no stinkin' king!"
I mean, despite the Stuarts making concessions and committing themselves to more radical politics, I don't think the Jacobite ideology transforms into the Jacobin one. More I guess that Ireland was a special case. Here's a paragraph from the book:
As we have seen, Irish Jacobitism had very deep roots in Irish-language culture. And thus it is not surprising to find that as late as the 1760s and 1780s peasant secret societies like the Whiteboys and Rightboys were still associating themselves with Jacobitism.³⁴ Because their attachment to the Stuarts stemmed from an oral, plebeian culture shared by the majority of the population, but separate from the ‘great tradition’ of their patrician counterparts, it was, moreover, naturally resistant to the forces of change, disillusionment and despair that destroyed Jacobitism elsewhere in the British Isles, and consequently may even have lingered into the 1790s.³⁵ Hence the oaths and rhetoric of the Defenders (a plebeian Catholic secret society that succeeded the Rightboys), who were recruited to fight for Ireland’s freedom by republican, Protestant, United Irishmen between 1796 and 1798, still contained references to the Stuarts.³⁶ Ireland’s special brand of sectarian oppression was, nevertheless, clearly already giving rise to enduring patterns of resentment and resistance that would make its social and political development unique within the British Isles. The hidden Ireland’s lingering affection for the Jacobite cause was a symptom rather than a cause of this. Hence the transition from monarchism to republicanism as the guiding light of this secret culture that took place at the end of the eighteenth century may have been relatively easy; both were means to an end – the overthrow of the ruling elite.³⁷
I suppose in England and Scotland people of all classes disaffected with the current government might naturally turn to Jacobitism in the first half of the 18th century. And then Jacobitism gradually faded away...and in the 1790's such people might instead naturally turn to Jacobinism, at least if they're from the lower or middle classes. But it doesn't mean the first evolved into the latter. Also, I guess this means the British elite was more unified in the 1790's and onward, than it was in the first half of the 18th century?
Ah! I did learn as a child about indentured servants in the colonies -- I think a bunch of the English colonies had them, e.g. I have dim memories of Virginia?
LOL I knew who the Jacobins were due to my lovely French teacher who gave me books on the French Revolution, but somehow I didn't know or forgot (probably didn't know) that they ever came to Ireland!
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Thank you very much for this write-up—absolutely fascinating stuff!
I'm intrigued by how the political position of the Jacobites in exile seems to have shaped their actual politics, more than their identity as a faction as such, and the tension between 'the Jacobites are about rightful absolute monarchy' and all these radical views. What would the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley have made of these Stuarts...! Perhaps there's a sort of inverted parallel here with how the Whigs talk so much about how they're the party of liberty and equal treatment and then cheerfully start brutally repressing everyone else once they're in power.
The practical difficulties of communicating and plotting over large distances is also an interesting point—when writing about the period I'm often trying to remember to keep in mind the realities of communication and travel (how bad the roads were, how slow even the best travel possible with period technology could be).
Interesting also to see the tensions between the different countries, with Jacobites in Ireland, Scotland and England all having their own ideas and influences (does the book say anything in particular about Wales? I was just reading in the preface to Fight for a Throne that Duffy thinks the Welsh Jacobites are a promising area for further study!). Especially to see the political influences of the English Jacobites, when so much of their contribution to the big Jacobite events seems to involve them not doing anything! And the background in Ireland—I've read very little about this bit of Irish history until it appears at the centre of British politics as the Irish Question in the late nineteenth century, so I like seeing how the same themes fit into my other favourite historical period.
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Yeah, there's definitely something interesting in how political position shapes action and influences ideology.
What would the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley have made of these Stuarts...!
Well, but they still aren't radical in the sense that they want to empower poor people and do away with economic inequality, like Winstanley wanted (if I understand him correctly--I have still to read that Christopher Hill book). But neither were the Whigs, of course.
There is that interesting hint about William Mackintosh of Borlum (a Jacobite commander in the '15, for others reading along) expressing sympathy for the Galloway Levellers in the 1720's, though. I should finish reading his book...
Nope, there isn't much about Wales as a separate region; some of the English Jacobites he mentions are actually from Wales, I think, so I guess he just subsumes Wales into England.
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Well, but they still aren't radical in the sense that they want to empower poor people and do away with economic inequality, like Winstanley wanted
True!
Mackintosh of Borlum's fictional son as written by Naomi Mitchison is pretty sympathetic to the Quakers, isn't he—that's a potentially interesting thing (um, in Mitchison's imagination if not in real history), considering the seventeenth-century connections between the Quakers and the Levellers. Hmm, I want to read that book, though it looks as though it's still not available anywhere that allows download of the whole thing.
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Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
It starts with a brief summary of the historiography and various positions different historians have taken. There's a general bit about British society, then an account of the 1688 revolution and the war in Scotland and Ireland. I didn't know much about the war in Ireland, so that was interesting. It looks like James II did not make the most of his Irish Catholic support there. More than anything else the failure of the Jacobite army in 1690–1 is ascribable to a failure of political will. James II and VII does not seem to have taken to his Old Irish subjects.³⁸ They, in turn, were soon disillusioned with him and his inner coterie of advisers, none of whom were Old Irish.³⁹ Also he was not great as a military commander.
It then goes into how the Jacobites communicated within themselves (slooowly and uncertainly, because of the large distances, which made it hard to plot), and the various factions and internal ideological struggles within Jacobitism, and what the formal declarations of the Stuarts actually said. This is the main new thing I learned from the book, and it's very interesting! ...it is interesting to observe in this context the gathering radicalism of the Jacobites’ political agenda. For all the traditionalist evocation of rightful monarchy at the exiled court and the innate social and political conservatism of many of its hard-core supporters in the British Isles, as a political movement Jacobitism was impelled towards greater and greater political radicalism as time went on (see documents 3, 4, 15).
Which makes sense! There's always a struggle over power between the monarch and the parliament (and other power bases), and if the king is actually in exile and not on the throne, he's in a uniquely bad bargaining position. He's dependent on his supporters to get the throne back, and pretty much has to agree to what they want.
This shift begins already in the 1690's. James II's first communications are uncompromising. The Irish Parliament he called in 1689 basically wanted the Catholic majority to be in charge of the country, but they were to lose out in 1693 when the English Protestant faction among the Jacobites won out over the English Catholic one: Parliament was assigned a constitutional position very similar to that already prevailing in England in the 1690s, the religious settlement was to be left virtually untouched (specifically, the privileged position of the Church of England was to be maintained) and there was to be a complete indemnity for all supporters of the Revolution and their heirs. James also found himself caught between the English Jacobite and Irish Jacobite agendas, in that he had to agree to leave the settlement of Ireland to the tender mercies of the first post-restoration English Parliament (see document 3).¹³ In sum, the Jacobite government-in-exile committed itself to leaving the new, post-Revolution political, religious and social order in England (and English ascendancy in the British Isles) virtually intact in the event of a restoration.¹⁴ Must have been bitter for James II...
Then, in 1708, we get the much more radical proclamation of James III, as a consequence of what the Scottish Jacobites wanted. James III promised such things as three-year terms for parliament, all ministers and judges appointed by parliament, religious toleration (but no Catholics in office), the king could not set foreign policy on his own, etc. And they agreed that if the king broke these agreements, then parliament could kick him out. No doubt if any of these kings had actually ended up on the throne, they would've tried to get power back, like William III did after the Glorious Revolution, disappointing the radical Whigs, but they'd be starting from a bad bargaining position.
The exiled Stuarts’ identification with the Scottish national cause and their acceptance of the Juncto’s radical agenda, moreover, boosted the trend towards the adoption of more and more radical commitments by the exiled Stuarts. Their natural allies were the politically alienated and dispossessed, and so they accumulated more and more commitments to alter the status quo in the event of a restoration. The most important and momentous of these was the pledge by the Jacobite government-in-exile (repeated again and again in public statements and propaganda) that as soon as the exiled dynasty was restored it would hold a ‘Free Parliament’. This had been a radical nostrum since the 1650s, produced political revolutions in 1660 and 1688, and was bound to appeal to anyone who felt they had been unjustly treated by the existing order.²⁵ Likewise the Stuarts’ promise from 1715 onwards to institute a complete religious toleration (including full civil rights for religious minorities) augured no less a political and social earthquake.²⁶ To appreciate the potential upset implicit within this proposal it is only necessary to reflect that this was an issue very, very few conventional politicians would touch before the 1770s, that it convulsed British politics in 1780, 1799–1800 and 1825–9, and brought down at least two governments before it was finally passed. In the same vein, from the mid-1720s James promised to roll back the systematic disfranchisement of plebeian Londoners by Walpolean legislation designed to boost the powers of the oligarchical court of Aldermen. This would in effect have given back control of the city to ordinary Londoners and transformed the politics of the English/British capital. And London’s politics were nothing less than crucial on a national scale. The denouement of this process came in the 1750s, when Charles Edward added to these commitments pledges to institute biennial or triennial Parliaments, disband the standing army, cut the number of placemen in Parliament to no more than fifty, and enact legal guarantees of the liberty of the press and the right of the people to resist tyrannical governments (see document 15). It was an agenda a great many late eighteenth-century radicals and revolutionaries would have enthusiastically endorsed.
I also note that "document 15", written by BPC, also mentions his conversion to the Anglican Church, so that's another primary source for that.
Then the book goes through the various attempts at coups and up until the '15, as well as shifts of opinion within England and Scotland. It goes into the '15 in some detail, which makes sense as the author has written a separate book on that. It seems it wasn't as spontaneous as I'd thought before, since it was preceded by plotting between James III, Tory conspirators in England and Jacobites in Scotland. James III explicitly promised to break the 1707 union. The reason the rebellion failed seems the same one I've read before: that Mar was a very bad military commander, and that the English Jacobites didn't rise. But actually he never claimed to be one, he was waiting on James and Berwick (an Irish military commander in French service) to arrive and take over. But the French government forbade Berwick to take part, and James arrived too late to make a difference to the outcome.
I'd thought the government's punishments after the '15 were milder than after the '45, and it seems that they were to the extent that ordinary soldiers in Scotland were not punished. But in other respects they were as harsh. There was plenty of executions of the leaders, the confiscation of estates for all involved, and systematic looting and burning in the Highlands with no separation of guilty and innocent (says nothing about outright killing as after the '45, though). The confiscation of estates did sort of fail in that the Scots Whigs were alienated by the harshness of the treatment of the Highlands, and the whole judiciary establishment in Scotland obstructed the confiscation of estates. The government took 1,000 prisoners in Preston and the majority of the ordinary soldiers were to be transported to the Caribbean, which was basically a death sentence. But that too went awry since most of them were skilled workers and the entrepreneurs who bought the prisoners from the government instead sold them to North America since that paid better.
Then we get developments in England, Scotland and Ireland after the '15, and what the Jacobite court was up to. The most interesting bit for me here was Ireland. Ireland never rose after the 1690's, but that was not for lack of Jacobitism. Even if they'd been disillusioned by James II back then, they really had nowhere else to turn. England was very aware of their discontent, since the Gaelic and Catholic majority basically had no power, and all the power was held by the Protestant and English minority. Because of that awareness, there were plenty of garrisons to keep them down and they were not allowed to have arms. But Ireland contributed in another way: the "Wild Geese" who followed James to the continent in the 1690's formed Irish brigades in France and in Spain that evolved into crack military units. The effect of this on Irish Jacobite morale at home was great: there was a whole culture of songs and stories about it, relating the exploits of these soldiers to old mythical heroes, and illegal recruiting networks that ensured that the units actually remained Irish over time. Also, the commanders of these units had the ears of the kings/ministers in the respective countries. Jacobitism actually clung on the longest in Ireland, into the 1780's, and the transition to Jacobinism seems to have been pretty easy in the sense that both these movements were about trying to get help from the continent to overthrow their English Protestant overlords.
Skipping over the '45, nothing new. Then we get an interesting chapter first motivating why the Jacobites were so tempting to other countries: it gives examples of other countries being taken out of commission by civil wars and how great a way it was of breaking the military deadlock. He goes through various countries one by one and their diplomatic contacts with the Jacobites over time and reasons for why the countries acted as they did. Then there's a last chapter on the Jacobite diaspora.
Duke of Berwick
It seems it wasn't as spontaneous as I'd thought before
Oh, good lord, no. No matter whose side you were on, everyone knew the Hanover succession was going to happen, and everyone was making their plans well in advance. How much the specific details of the '15 were worked out in advance, I don't know, but the part where the Jacobites knew there were going to be protests at the Hanoverian accession and planned to take advantage was understood for years was kind of inevitable. Kind of like how everyone knew starting in about 1661 that the War of the Spanish Succession was going to happen, and planned for it until it finally happened in 1701; and everyone knew the Medici line was dying out by the 1720s, so they were laying their plans until 1737...Military and political details obviously had to respond to current events and couldn't be planned 40 years in advance, but if a succession crisis could be anticipated years in advance by anyone with half a brain, it was, and the maneuvering via correspondence, diplomatic negotiations, and treaties would go on.
Berwick (an Irish military commander in French service)
For
Prior to this, Berwick had fought for his father, James II, in Ireland, as he tried to get his throne back. He was present at the Battle of the Boyne, and he stayed in Ireland even after James had fled to France. (I'm not sure how much Berwick is himself "Irish", but he definitely had commanded troops in Ireland, and since he ended up going from there to France, he may have been called "Irish" because he had arrived as the head of Irish troops. He was born to English parents in France and raised in France, though.)
As we've pointed out before (
But the French government forbade Berwick to take part
The timing is critical here. The War of the Spanish Succession has just ended. The Peace of Utrecht has just forced France to recognize the Protestant Succession and banish James III from France.
Per Wikipedia (pay attention to the dates I've bolded):
Believing the great general Marlborough would join him, on 23 August James wrote to the Duke of Berwick, his illegitimate brother and Marlborough's nephew, that; "I think it is now more than ever Now or Never".
27 August: The Earl of Mar holds the first council of war, in Scotland.
September 1: Louis XIV dies. Philippe d'Orleans becomes regent.
6 September: The Earl of Mar raises the standard of James III/VIII.
This means that by the time Berwick needs permission to leave France, the big Jacobite supporter and personal friend of James II Louis XIV is dead. The new regent is Philippe d'Orleans, son of gay Philippe. If anything should happen to child Louis XV, Philippe d'Orleans is next in line to the throne. Except that Philip V of Spain, who had renounced the throne of France, is making it pretty clear that promise wasn't worth the paper it was written on. If anything happens to Louis XV, he's invading with his Spanish army and claiming the throne. The two Philip(pe)s are thus complete enemies.
It's also becoming increasingly clear that Philip V is going to try to get back the lost Spanish territory he just signed away. So Philippe the Regent needs an ally to try to force Spain to adhere to the terms of the Peace of Utrecht. The ally he wants is England. (This is why Rottembourg and Whitworth are working together in Berlin.) This will lead to the 1716-1731 Anglo-French alliance, in which they will fight on the same side against Spain in 1718-1720, which will thus lead Spain to try to put James III on the throne in 1719.
So up until September 1, 1715, the sympathies of the French monarch were with the Jacobites. Post September 1, the French regent has every reason to support George I against the Jacobites. Hence Berwick being refused permission. (Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Berwick will eventually die at the Battle of Philippsburg, getting his head ripped off after a "Do you know who I am??!!" exchange with the guards who tried to save him from himself. See my write-up here.
it gives examples of other countries being taken out of commission by civil wars and how great a way it was of breaking the military deadlock.
I would love to see these examples.
He goes through various countries one by one and their diplomatic contacts with the Jacobites over time and reasons for why the countries acted as they did.
Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Re: Duke of Berwick
Me: Oh, that Berwick! That's me: remembers funny anecdotes; does not remember other things... I also don't think I knew anything about James II, so would never have been able to keep in mind that Berwick was James II's illegitimate son. Now that I do know a lot more about James II, I hopefully will be able to rememebr Berwick as well :D
(Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Aw man. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy about that either :(
Earl of Mar
BTW, am I misrenembering or was this the guy who married Lady Mary's sister Frances, and in Isabel Grundy's biography of Lady Mary is described as an utter pig?
Re: Earl of Mar
I know nothing about Mar except as a name connected with the Jacobite rising I barely studied, so I can't comment on Grundy's assessment of his personality.
Lol Wikipedia:
Mar married his second wife Lady Frances Pierrepont, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. The match was a success in that it finally provided Mar with the funds to begin to clear his inherited debts. Lady Frances went mad in 1728 due to the stress of his exile in France.
That's a hell of a segue. "The match was a success in that the husband got money! The wife went mad."
Re: Earl of Mar
So, Lady Mary‘s brother in law (to her great regret, she oculdn‘t stand him) was the Earl of Mar, instigator of the 15. Her son in law was the Earl of Bute, educator and first PM to G3, bete noire of Fritz for cutting his subsidies in the last year of the 7 Years War. Lord Bute‘s younger brother is also the guy who was Barbarina‘s lover and temporary fiance when Fritz had her dragged to Prussia from Venice. And given Lady Mary‘s pining for Algarotti, this means we can connect all the early Jacobites within six steps to Algarotti, too, even without using the brothers Keith (who of course have the closest connection, due to sitting at the same table with him).
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Mar had been a very active champion of the Act of Union. After raising the standard of rebellion he had to try to talk this episode away but it was in fact typical, for Mar was a government man through and through. He loved office, revelled in the deference which a minister of the King could extract from his contemporaries, and appreciated the salary. Political principles were never Mar's strong suit. (from "The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689-1746")
It goes on to describe how he was one of those Tories brought down when Queen Anne died. I enjoy this sort of snark, but at the same time wonder how the author feels able to judge people's character like that! I mean, maybe he had read lots of the guy's letters or something, but...
Re: Earl of Mar
Meanwhile the prospect of sister Frances's wedding crept closer. It was two years since Frances had confided to Philippa her misery at losing her Paradise and her belief that 'ev'ry living body shou'd fear hell above all other things'. Now her father had chosen for her a widower fifteen years her senior, father of a schoolboy son: John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. He was a Tory (though his family were Presbyterians), markedly Scottish in his speech. His portraits show him as handsome, though his body was said to be crooked. He claimed to have been long in love with Lady Frances. He was doing well under Queen Anne, as a Privy Counsellor and Secretary of State for Scotland (a post carrying a house in the Privy Garden, Whitehall), and a pension of 3.000 Pounds secured for him by Lord Oxford.
But neither his circumstances nor his character would stand scrutiny. His rental income was only 261 Scottish Pounds (with odd shillings). His debts and his late father's came to over 150,000 in the same currency, though he gave assurances that they could not 'touch' his estate or the money he would receive from Lady Frances. Besides, as she was later to know too well, the rental from Scottish estates was by custom paid in arrears, and in kind. The initial arrears would be doubled by the haggling ncessary to convert kind to cash. And Mar's character: an associate later thought it 'impossible for him to even play a fair game, or to mean but one thing at once'. A historian calls his letters 'models of ineptitude and tergiversation'.
For Lord Mar the beneffits of this marriage were clear: Lady Frances was a catch. Twelve years later he tried to justify his second marriage to his son by his first (who might 'repine' at the income he proposed to leave his second wife if he died). He insisted he had married to serve 'the good of the family'. He could hardly have been more open about his marrying for what he could get.
On the other side, it was a strange marriage for a daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. Lady Mary thought Frances was pressured by Aunt Cheyne and a Mar relative. One of Dorchester's Whig circle wrote, 'there's a good Whig marr'd by taking a Scotch Jacobite for her Husband'. Did Dorchester miscalculate, seeing the high office and the estates, failing to note the debts? His 'design to marry himself' made it urgent for him to dispose of his remaining single daughter. But also, with Queen Anne's health in rapid decline and the succession uncertain, eminent Whigs were hedging their bets. Marlborough did this; Dorchester may have done so, too. If the Elector of Hanover succeeded to the throne, well and good; but if it should be James III. after all, a Scotch Jacobite son-in-law might be handy.
Re: Earl of Mar
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Edward Wortley-Montagu: The Limbo
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Re: Duke of Berwick
Sure, makes sense! I think this is just me not having read enough about the '15 before. I'd mostly read about the Scottish side of it, which did not mention enough about the English plotting etc. It really can't have been easy to coordinate insurrections in various parts of Britain with help from France, with all the logistics and communications difficulties.
For
For me, as well! : ) I knew basically nothing about Berwick as a person, so I'll check out the posts you link to. Ha, wow, that is some bad timing for the Jacobites in the '15, re: the French motivations...
I would love to see these examples.
This is not a long section in the book: European great power interest in the Jacobite card directly stemmed from the role of rebellion in international relations in the eighteenth century. For those continental great powers who considered allying with the Jacobites did not see them simply as cannon-fodder, but rather as a force which had the potential, literally, to destroy their British opponents.
These perceptions were firmly based on experience. All those involved in dealing with the Jacobites between 1716 and the 1760s were reared in the traditions of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century statecraft. And although statesmen always professed abhorrence of rebels and rebellion, the siren voices of religion and realpolitik nearly always overwhelmed their, doubtless genuine, repugnance. Thus Elizabeth I of England gave ill-tempered succour to Philip II of Spain’s Dutch rebels for the second half of her reign. Philip, despite his ostensible outrage at Elizabeth’s dirty tactics, showed little compunction about secretly supporting English Catholic plotters who planned to murder her and in sending what arms and monies he could spare to aid Hugh O’Neill in Ireland. In the same vein Cardinal Jules Mazarin overcame his disgust with the English Republicans who had overthrown and executed Charles I sufficiently well to ally with them against Spain 1656–60, and Louis XIV openly supported both the revolt of the Portuguese Braganzas against the Spanish Habsburgs and the rebellions raised by Imre Thököly and Ferenc Ráckózi against their Austrian cousins in Hungary.
What consistently lured the statesmen of seventeenth-century Europe into setting aside their scruples with regard to making use of domestic rebels was, more than anything else, the devastating effects on contemporary great powers of serious internecine strife. The ‘Time of Troubles’ (1598–1613) in Russia traumatised the Russian political nation and put the Muscovite state out of serious contention in the great power game for nearly half a century. The Great Civil War neutralised England between 1638 and 1653. The once mighty Polish empire was permanently weakened by the uprising led by Bohdan Chmielnicki in the 1650s. The decline of the Spanish Habsburg empire was directly attributable to its defeat at the hands of Dutch and Portuguese rebels and the exhausting, bitter struggle to reconquer Catalonia 1640–52. Most pertinently of all, the impressive military machine James II and VII had built up was brought low by an invasion assisted by a nationwide rebellion in England in 1688.
The strategic attractions of using domestic rebels to destabilise enemy polities were enhanced by the chronic stalemate in conventional military operations that set in in the late seventeenth century. [etc, more on that]
I'll put a pin in this: Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Re: Duke of Berwick
Yeah. :) I mean, some of it is written with the benefit of hindsight, in that I'm talking about what Philippe/France was going to do in 1716 rather than what I can be sure they already had in mind in late 1715, but the point is that France very quickly moved into an alliance with England in the Regency period.
Would things have been different had Louis lived? Maybe, maybe not. His country was exhausted by the most recent war in a nonstop series of wars (anecdotally, he's supposed to have said on his deathbed, "I have loved war too well"), and he was being forced to make concessions to Britain in the peace negotiations. If he'd really wanted to support the Jacobites, the time was in 1714, when George ascended. Instead, one of my sources that I was reading today said he refused James III an audience and told the Jacobites not to expect any support.
But, Louis had been known to acknowledge the Protestant succession before (1697 Treaty of Ryswick) and then turn around and acknowledge James III on James II's deathbed (1701). Maybe he would have let Berwick go, maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe that would have changed things, maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe he would have been more inclined than Philippe to help once things got off the ground in late 1715, maybe not. Louis may have been a Jacobite at heart, but he was also not Charles XII and was capable of facing political realities.
But it's clear that on September 1, 1715, a monarch whose personal sympathies were with the Jacobites died, which didn't help their odds.
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Oh huh, this is interesting to me -- I hadn't got the impression that James II was all that good at military stuff from The King's Touch (
But anyway, that's fascinating, thank you!
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I really hope that slash in your comment is not meant in the fannish sense! : P
Re: Duke of Berwick
To be fair: it's actually mentioned in The King's Touch at least twice (once by mother Henrietta Maria and once by Charles) that James spent the exile years distinguishing himself as a soldier before the Restoration even happens, and later there's the scene when young Jemmy - who is present - has to admit his uncle acts courageous mid naval battle when he nearly gets shot, showing complete sange froid. Said occasion, however, is also why Charles then forbids James to take part in a battle again (since James is the successor and hasn't sired a son yet, and while Charles has an increasing number of illegitimate kids, he doesn't have any with his wife), which James takes as an insult and Charles being envious of his military glory. However, I don't blame you for overlooking this on a first reading, because Henrietta Maria saying her son James has been distinguishing himself as a soldier is one sentence opposed to plenty of sentences about her favourite marriage project that doesn't happen (Louis XIV/Minette) and her ire that Charles doesn't listen to her during the same sequence.
Re: Duke of Berwick
Word count
Numbers are not exact because html tags have to be stripped, and that's not an exact science. But it's approximately correct. And I'm a numbers person, so it makes me happy. :)
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Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Which makes sense! There's always a struggle over power between the monarch and the parliament (and other power bases), and if the king is actually in exile and not on the throne, he's in a uniquely bad bargaining position. He's dependent on his supporters to get the throne back, and pretty much has to agree to what they want.
This makes total sense, and is also totally not the sort of thing I would think of myself, not having at all the context to think about these things :) so I totally appreciate it!
But that too went awry since most of them were skilled workers and the entrepreneurs who bought the prisoners from the government instead sold them to North America since that paid better.
Oh, interesting. Would these have been indentured servants? Where did they end up in North America? (Trying to fit this into my understanding of Colonial America...)
And, also, nice to have another primary source for BPC's conversion!
What's the difference between Jacobitism and Jacobinism?
I second
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Yes, it seems so, and that they served their seven-year terms and then mostly stayed in America. Don't know where though!
What's the difference between Jacobitism and Jacobinism?
Hee! You should have seen me when I first ran across Jacobitism (which was in Naomi Mitchison's excellent novel The Bull Calves). Me: "...are Jacobites the same as Jacobins?"
No, no they were not. The Jacobins are the radical republicans in the French revolution. *g* They came to Ireland to help out in a rising there in 1798.
I second
ETA: Check out this comment.
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
I always roll my eyes when I'm reading a history book and the author confuses them, which happens far more than it should.
The Jacobins are the radical republicans in the French revolution. *g*
And this is why I found it so fascinating when you said that the Irish managed to transition naturally from Jacobitism to Jacobinism, because,
And then apparently you get the Stuarts having to make concessions in exile (this I had either not learned, or more likely, forgotten, because I was far more into this for the military history than political or diplomatic history at the time), and then you end up with the Jacobins, whose political philosophy is, "We don't need no stinkin' king!"
Robespierre was a Jacobin. The Jacobins were the Reign of Terror guys. This is not what I would have expected from a party that started as the supporters of James II, Mister Absolute Monarchy!
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
I mean, despite the Stuarts making concessions and committing themselves to more radical politics, I don't think the Jacobite ideology transforms into the Jacobin one. More I guess that Ireland was a special case. Here's a paragraph from the book:
As we have seen, Irish Jacobitism had very deep roots in Irish-language culture. And thus it is not surprising to find that as late as the 1760s and 1780s peasant secret societies like the Whiteboys and Rightboys were still associating themselves with Jacobitism.³⁴ Because their attachment to the Stuarts stemmed from an oral, plebeian culture shared by the majority of the population, but separate from the ‘great tradition’ of their patrician counterparts, it was, moreover, naturally resistant to the forces of change, disillusionment and despair that destroyed Jacobitism elsewhere in the British Isles, and consequently may even have lingered into the 1790s.³⁵ Hence the oaths and rhetoric of the Defenders (a plebeian Catholic secret society that succeeded the Rightboys), who were recruited to fight for Ireland’s freedom by republican, Protestant, United Irishmen between 1796 and 1798, still contained references to the Stuarts.³⁶ Ireland’s special brand of sectarian oppression was, nevertheless, clearly already giving rise to enduring patterns of resentment and resistance that would make its social and political development unique within the British Isles. The hidden Ireland’s lingering affection for the Jacobite cause was a symptom rather than a cause of this. Hence the transition from monarchism to republicanism as the guiding light of this secret culture that took place at the end of the eighteenth century may have been relatively easy; both were means to an end – the overthrow of the ruling elite.³⁷
I suppose in England and Scotland people of all classes disaffected with the current government might naturally turn to Jacobitism in the first half of the 18th century. And then Jacobitism gradually faded away...and in the 1790's such people might instead naturally turn to Jacobinism, at least if they're from the lower or middle classes. But it doesn't mean the first evolved into the latter. Also, I guess this means the British elite was more unified in the 1790's and onward, than it was in the first half of the 18th century?
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
LOL I knew who the Jacobins were due to my lovely French teacher who gave me books on the French Revolution, but somehow I didn't know or forgot (probably didn't know) that they ever came to Ireland!
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
I'm intrigued by how the political position of the Jacobites in exile seems to have shaped their actual politics, more than their identity as a faction as such, and the tension between 'the Jacobites are about rightful absolute monarchy' and all these radical views. What would the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley have made of these Stuarts...! Perhaps there's a sort of inverted parallel here with how the Whigs talk so much about how they're the party of liberty and equal treatment and then cheerfully start brutally repressing everyone else once they're in power.
The practical difficulties of communicating and plotting over large distances is also an interesting point—when writing about the period I'm often trying to remember to keep in mind the realities of communication and travel (how bad the roads were, how slow even the best travel possible with period technology could be).
Interesting also to see the tensions between the different countries, with Jacobites in Ireland, Scotland and England all having their own ideas and influences (does the book say anything in particular about Wales? I was just reading in the preface to Fight for a Throne that Duffy thinks the Welsh Jacobites are a promising area for further study!). Especially to see the political influences of the English Jacobites, when so much of their contribution to the big Jacobite events seems to involve them not doing anything! And the background in Ireland—I've read very little about this bit of Irish history until it appears at the centre of British politics as the Irish Question in the late nineteenth century, so I like seeing how the same themes fit into my other favourite historical period.
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
What would the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley have made of these Stuarts...!
Well, but they still aren't radical in the sense that they want to empower poor people and do away with economic inequality, like Winstanley wanted (if I understand him correctly--I have still to read that Christopher Hill book). But neither were the Whigs, of course.
There is that interesting hint about William Mackintosh of Borlum (a Jacobite commander in the '15, for others reading along) expressing sympathy for the Galloway Levellers in the 1720's, though. I should finish reading his book...
Nope, there isn't much about Wales as a separate region; some of the English Jacobites he mentions are actually from Wales, I think, so I guess he just subsumes Wales into England.
Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)
True!
Mackintosh of Borlum's fictional son as written by Naomi Mitchison is pretty sympathetic to the Quakers, isn't he—that's a potentially interesting thing (um, in Mitchison's imagination if not in real history), considering the seventeenth-century connections between the Quakers and the Levellers. Hmm, I want to read that book, though it looks as though it's still not available anywhere that allows download of the whole thing.