List of Jacobite Rebellions
- Williamite War in Ireland and 1689 Rising
- The '15
- The '19
- The '45
- The '79 [1]
- The '10 [2]
- The '48 [3]
- The '66 [4]
- The '40 [5]
[1] - Charles Edward Stuart had been rarely thought of for decades by the time of the birth of his son, James Edgar Stuart, in 1779 - although the boy was widely rumoured to have been fathered by the poet, Count Alfieri. The birth of a new heir to the Stuart claim attracted the attention of the French government, which added the elderly, gouty Charles 'III' to the complement of its expedition against the Isle of Wight as a distraction from the American Revolutionary War. A combined Franco-Spanish fleet descended on the island in August, with the intention of going on to cross the Solent and take the key naval base of Portsmouth. However, the Royal Navy was effective in harrying the supply lines of the invasion force and the allied force was beset with administrative bungles. Charles held court in Ryde for three weeks before the expedition returned to Le Havre in disgrace.
[2] - As the level of interest in the House of Stuart amongst the British populace was essentially zilch, that was where matters should have rested - but in 1809, Napoleon summoned the Young Pretender's widow to his court and asked her whether the man had any legitimate heirs. The putative Queen Mother replied that her son was then resident in Rome and was, furthermore, listed in all reputable editions of the Almanach de Gotha, at which point Napoleon did some basic research and found that she was indeed correct. The Younger Pretender was duly dispatched in a Dutch fishing vessel which sank in high seas off the coast of Arbroath.
[3] - James Edgar Stuart had, before his untimely death, had a son of his own with a member of a minor branch of the Malaspina family, who was now propelled into the limelight as Charles IV of England, Scotland and Ireland. The child was made unwelcome in the courts of Europe after the Congress of Vienna - both because of his links with the Napoleonic experiment and because the British were now one of the guarantors of peace on the Continent. After a stay in St Petersburg, Charles Henry Stuart settled in a villa in the northern end of Lazio, where he established himself as one of the foremost entomologists of the period. However, the duty of the House of Stuart called to him in the febrile year of 1848, when an uprising in Ireland seemed to indicate the creation of an independent Catholic state in Britain. However, it was not to be, and the largely liberal and republican Young Irelanders viewed the reactionary foreign interloper with suspicion when he arrived with several dozen antique muskets and proposals for uniforms based on those of the Papal Zouaves. Charles Henry Stuart escaped from the 'Battle' of Callan by hiding up an oak-apple tree, before scurrying out of the country.
[4] - Charles Henry Stuart's Irish adventure was not a complete wash-out, however - he gained a glimmer of military experience which he built upon in the service of the royalist forces of the Two Sicilies during the Risorgimento, and he also gained some contacts in the Irish nationalist movement. During a scientific trip to the USA, the Even Younger Pretender noted an outbreak of sectarian warfare to the north, and crossed the border at Niagara to take command of a Fenian force. The rebels, supported by American officers, initially held the inititiative against the unprepared militiamen ranged against them, but many lost heart when the King of Canada (as he called himself) was killed by a stray bullet at the Battle of Fort Erie.
[5] - The final scion of the House of Stuart, a descendant of Charles Henry by a Sicilian wife, was James Francis Robert Stuart. James was not so much a soldier of fortune as a soldier of principle, fighting for the Whites in the Russian Civil War, the Nationalists (specifically the Carlists) in the Spanish Civil War, the Cristeros in Mexico and even the Ethiopians against the Fascist Italians, whom he considered to be dangerously socialistic and irreligious. It was, however, his fate to compromise his ideals in pursuit of his ambition. He acted as a puppet figurehead for the German-occupied parts of Southern England from 1940 until his death in 1943, killed by a Resistance bomb in his capital of Winchester. The legitimate descendants of James II became extinct with his demise, and Elizabeth II was restored after the conclusion of the War, until of course the young Queen was deposed by the Democratic Bloc in 1947.