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Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart ( December 31, 1720 – January 31, 1788), was the exiled claimant to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie". Charles was the son of James Francis Edward Stuart, the "Old Pretender", who was in turn the son of King James II of England, Scotland and Ireland, who had been deposed in 1688. The Jacobite movement tried to restore the family to the throne. Charles's mother was James's Polish-born wife, Maria Clementina Sobieski ( 1702– 1735). After his father's death Charles styled himself as "King Charles III", and was referred to in England as "The Young Pretender".
Despite his strong associations with ScotlandScotland or in Scottish Gaelic, Alba is a country and former independent kingdom of northwest Europe, and one of the four nations comprising the United Kingdom. Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. Scotland took part in a p, Charles was born in RomeRome ( Italian and Latin Roma is the capital city of Italy, and of its Lazio region. It is located on the lower Tiber river, near the Mediterranean Sea, at 41°50'N, 12°15'E. The Vatican City State, a sovereign enclave within Rome, is the seat of the Roman, ItalyThe Italian Republic or Italy ( Italian: Italia is a country in the south of Europe, consisting mainly of a boot-shaped peninsula together with two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea: Sicily and Sardinia. To the north, where it borders France, Switzer, and brought up there with his father who was in exile having failed to regain the thrones of the Great Britain and Ireland from which his own father, King James II of England, had been deposed in 1688. In 1743Events February 14 Henry Pelham becomes British Prime Minister February 21 - The premiere in London of George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Samson''. September 13 Treaty of Worms (1743) a treaty between Great Britain, Austria and Sardinia Battle of Dettinge, Charles fought at the Battle of DettingenThe Battle of Dettingen took place on June 16 (some sources, no doubt using a different calendar, say June 27), 1743 at Dettingen in Bavaria during the War of the Austrian Succession. It was the last time that a reigning King of Great Britain ( George II), where the British army was led by his chief rival, King George IIGeorge II (George Augustus) ( 10 November 1683 25 October 1760) was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg (Hanover) and Archtreasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death. He was the second. Two years later, the French invited him from Rome where he was living with his father to take part in an invasion of Britain and to lead a Jacobite rising on behalf of his father. The fleet was badly damaged by storms and the invasion abandoned, but Charles raised funds to fit out two ships one of which successfully landed him with seven companions at Eriskay on July 23, 1745.
The Jacobite cause was still supported by many Highland Clans, both Catholic and Episcopalian, and the Catholic Charles hoped for a warm welcome from these clans to start an insurgency by Jacobites throughout Britain, but there was no immediate response. Charles raised his father's standard at Glenfinnan and there raised a large enough force to enable him to march on the City of Edinburgh, which quickly surrendered. In September he defeated the only government army in Scotland at the Battle of Prestonpans, and by November was marching south at the head of around 6,000 men. Having taken Carlisle and progressed as far as Derby, he found himself beset by conflicting advice and agreed to turn back. Now he was pursued by the king's son, the Duke of Cumberland, who caught up with him at the Battle of Culloden on January 17, 1746, and inflicted a heavy defeat on the half-starved and demoralised Jacobite army.
Bonnie Prince Charlie's subsequent flight has become the stuff of legend, and is commemorated in the popular folk song " The Skye Boat Song" (lyrics 1884, tune traditional). Assisted by loyal supporters such as Flora Macdonald, he escaped the country, arriving back in France in September. The remainder of his life was spent in drunken idleness and debauchery.
In 1766 Charles's father James III and VIII died. Until his death James had been recognised as King of England and Scotland by the pope. But Clement XIII decided not to give the same recognition to Charles.
In 1772 Charles married Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern . They lived first at Rome, but in 1774 moved to Florence where Charles first began to use the title "Count of Albany" as an alias. This title is frequently used for him in European publications; his wife Louise is almost always called "Countess of Albany". In 1780 Louise left Charles. Her claim that Charles had physically abused her is probably accurate, but she had also previously started an adulterous relationship with the Italian poet, Count Vittorio Alfieri.
In 1783 Charles signed an act of legitimation for his illegitimate daughter Charlotte , his child born in 1753 to Clementina Walkinshaw (later known as Countess von Alberstrof). Charles also gave Charlotte the title "Duchess of Albany" in the peerage of Scotland and the style "Her Royal Highness". But these honours did not give Charlotte any right to the succession to the throne. Charlotte lived with her father at Florence and Rome for the next five years.
Charles died in Rome, January 31, 1788. He was first buried in the Cathedral of Frascati where his brother Henry Benedict Stuart was bishop. At Henry's death in 1807, Charles's remains were moved to the crypt of Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican where they were laid to rest next to those of his brother and father.
Charles's daughter Charlotte, who died in 1789, never married but she did have two daughters and a son by her lover, Prince Ferdinand de Rohan . Raised in strictest secrecy, their identities concealed by a variety of alias and ruses, all three children were thought to have left no issue, but it has been discovered that one of them did.
According to a well-reviewed and scrupulously footnoted book, "The Stuarts' Last Secret" by Peter Pininski (Tuckwell Press, 2001), Charlotte's younger daughter, Marie Victoire de Rohan, demoiselle de Thorigny , married Paul Anthony Louis Bertrand de Nikorowicz , a Polish nobleman. Their granddaughter, Julia de Nikorowicz , married Count Leonard Pininski and became author Peter Pininski's great-great-grandmother.
There is a public house named after the Bonnie Prince in Chellaston, Derby.