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Editor says, what if Bonnie Prince Charlie had overruled his commanders on Swarkestone Bridge? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the August 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1745, on this day the twenty-five year Stuart pretender "Bonnie Prince Charlie" stepped ashore at Moidart in the Outer Hebrides, his tiny invasion force disembarked and the second Jacobite rebellion began in earnest.
The Forty-Five BeginsThe audacious Jacobite plan was to gather both momentum and support as they marched south to link up with an invading French army. And fortune was on their side from the outset. One hundred miles off Lizard Point in Cornwall, the Doutelle and Elisabeth had been intercepted by the 64-gun warship HMS Lion. But because the Admiralty was unsure of Charles' planned landing the Royal Naval Officers had mistakenly assumed that the two French ships were bound for North America.
The Jacobite standard was raised by a gathering of Highland clansmen at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands. Victories then followed at Prestonpans near Edinburgh and then across the border at Carlisle. By December, the Jacobite Army had reached the east midlands town of Derby, just one hundred miles from the capital city of London. By the time that they crossed the Swarkestone Bridge on December 6th, British divisions were finally being recalled from Flanders, but the Hanoverian Royal Family had already made up their own minds. Because George II was already packing his bags and planning to flee to the Continent. Incredibly, many of Charles' commanders wanted to quit as well. They had chosen this historic moment to call for a retreat back to to Scotland, but fortunately the Young Pretender chose to ignore them and the rest is history.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: Wikipedia Labels: Jacobite, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Hanover, 1745, Forty-five. Editor says, in this article we repurpose content from Scotland.com, Wikipedia, Jacqueline Riding's article "Charlie will come again" published in the April 2011 Edition of History Today Magazine and Jeff Provine's article Prince Charlie Crosses Swarkestone Bridge.
~ You KNOW I gotta love it...since I wrote my own AH romantic novel "Hard Man" for Extasy Books...all about the Bonnie Prince's staunchest supporter, the Irish rebel Felix O'Neill, and how they fare when the Bonnie Prince wins. That has always been a popular AH topic, including an older novel called "Prince Charlie's Bluff," where he conquers America.
~ A Stuart restoration would have hinged on the Stuarts accepting Protestantism..."London is worth the Book of Common Prayer." With _that_ out of the way, and probably Prince Henry either told, on the QT, that no, he is _not_ going to accept a Cardinal's hat, or quietly put out of the way, they'd have a much easier time. Most Englishmen at that time were seriously paranoid about Catholicism.
~ The Bonnie Prince DID convert to the Anglican faith, although it happened after the '45 when it was probably too late. During the rebellion, he once told a Scottish follower what religion the rulers of Europe had: "little or none." That was obviously his tradition, too.
~ What does this do to relations with the American colonies? With a different monarch on the throne in the 1750s, 1760s and 1770s, and inevitably a diferent Parliament, what happens to measures such as the Stamp and Tea Acts? For that matter, what aboout relations with France, given the French role in this Stuart restoration? Does the Seven Years' War (AKA the French and Indian war) still happen, and if so, does it still involve a young George Washington and end with French Canada in British hands?
~ If BPC swears on the honor of the Stuart line and on the Holy Scriptures to overturn the 1707 Act of Union, he would have perhaps gained the neutrality (by and large) of the Covenanters and Protestants in Scotland, if not their support. A united Scotland could easily have been held for King James, even if the invasion of England went sour.
~ With a French-supported Stuart on the throne, perhaps Britain and France could get their territorial issues cleared up without participating in the Seven Years War. No war, no need for taxes to provoke Americans to revolt.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
