Prince Charles Edward was himself an inconvenient and compromising hostage whom France engaged in expelling from her territory. Vainly, since his return from Scotland, the young Pretender had obstinately sought to rekindle a flame which was forever extinguished. "If I had received only half of the money that your Majesty sent me," he wrote to Louis XV. on the 10th of November, 1746, "I would have fought the Duke of Cumberland with equal numbers, and I would have certainly defeated him, since with four thousand men against twelve thousand I held victory in the balance for a long time. These disasters can yet be repaired if your Majesty is willing to intrust me with a body of from eighteen to twenty thousand men. The number of warlike subjects has never failed me in Scotland. I have needed at once money, provisions, and a handful of regular troops. With one of these three aids alone I would still be to-day master of Scotland, and probably of all England." Louis XV. had remained deaf to this appeal, which no longer found an echo in Spain. The Duke of York, second son of the Chevalier de St. George, had just taken orders. The Court of Rome had forthwith made him a cardinal, to the violent indignation of his brother. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle removed from the unfortunate Stuarts that asylum which France had with so much pomp lately offered them. Charles Edward refused to understand the notice which the ministers of Louis XV. had conveyed to him. "The king is bound to my cause by his honor, which is worth all treaties," said he. In vain had his father counselled him to yield to necessity and not to provoke a monarch who could be useful to him. The prince was determined to remain in France, and at Paris. {222} On the 11th of December, as he arrived at the opera, his carriage was surrounded by police agents. M. de Vaudreuil, major in the guards, presented himself before the prince. "I arrest you in the name of the king, my master," said he. "The manner is a little cavalier," coolly replied the young man. When the major asked for his arms, "Let them take them," said he, freeing himself from the hands of the police officers. They bound his hands with silken cords, the last sign of respect accorded to the heir of a house forever fallen, and he was conducted from stage to stage as far as the frontier. He would never see France again. Twice he reappeared secretly in England: in 1753, on the occasion of a projected surprise on the person of George II., which he himself deemed impossible; and in 1761, amid the festivities at the coronation of George III. Twice the kings of the House of Hanover were not ignorant of the presence of their enemy in the capital; they made no effort to seize him, and wisely allowed him to set out again for an exile, the long weariness of which had mortally affected his mind as well as his heart. Deprived by his faults of the pure joys of family life, he had lowered himself so far as to seek forgetfulness in drunkenness.