What sent the Pretender to Bar every schoolboy knows. We had fought with France and were, in 1713, about to conclude peace. Our court had, as a Stuart MS. in Paris puts it, showed itself extremely "_chatouilleuse et susceptible_" with respect to the countenance given at Versailles to James, and to his residence in France--where he seemed to us perpetually on the spring for mischief. Louis XIV., we were aware, had expressed his desire to render to the Pretender's family "_de plus grands et plus heureux services_" than he had yet been able to give. And so, very naturally, before engaging to suspend hostilities, we insisted that James should be turned out of France. Once we were about it, we might as well have asked a little more, and pressed for his removal to a farther distance from our shores. Considering all the commotion which afterwards arose upon this point, how Queen Anne was periodically pestered with addresses calling upon her to demand his removal, one might have thought that so much forethought might have been exercised. However, the idea seems never to have suggested itself to our wise statesmen at the proper time. On the contrary, the one thing which in 1712 and 1713 they appeared eager for was, that James should _not_ be allowed to settle in "papistical" Italy--the very country into which afterwards, just _because_ it was papistical, so M. de Robethon's official letters admit in the plainest terms, the Court of Hanover was extremely anxious to see its enemy decoyed. If he would but go to Rome, that would be best of all. For it would do for him entirely at home, M. de Robethon thinks. However, in 1713 we took a different view, and, as Lorraine lay particularly handy and convenient, from the French point of view--being near, and though nominally an independent duchy, entirely under French influence--to Lorraine James was sent. There was some talk of his going to Nancy. He himself did not at first fancy Bar-le-Duc. He feared that he might find it slow. The French king believed that in a large town like Nancy, which had still some poor remnants of its once famous fortifications left, he would be safer. And when Duke Leopold had gone to all the trouble of putting the half-dilapidated château of Bar into habitable order, taking to it the pick of his own furniture from the palace at Nancy, and embarking in additional large purchases--in order to make James thoroughly comfortable, as Louis had told him that he must--he not unnaturally became, as the French envoy M. d'Audriffet reports, "_fort agité_," on being unexpectedly advised that after all the Chevalier was to go elsewhere. "Very well," said he in high dudgeon, "I will take back all my furniture. But I wash my hands of the whole business. At Bar I could have answered for the Chevalier's safety within reasonable limits. At Nancy the king will have to see to it himself. That is a 'neutral' town, and every dangerous character from any part of Europe--cut-throat, assassin, Hanoverian