Sidenote: 1735--"Bonnie Prince Charlie"]

The war has one point of peculiar and romantic interest for Englishmen.
Charles Edward Stuart, the "bonnie Prince Charlie" of a later date, the
hero and darling of so much devotion, poetry, and romance, received his
baptism of fire in the Italian campaign under Don Carlos. Charles
Edward was then a mere boy. He was born in the later days of 1720, and
was now about the age to serve some picturesque princess as her page.
He was sent as a volunteer to the siege of Gaeta, and was received with
every mark of honor by Don Carlos. The English Court heard rumors that
Don Carlos had gone out of his way to pay homage to the Stuart prince,
and had even acted in a manner to give the impression that he
identified himself with the cause of the exiled family. There were
demands {30} for explanation made by the English minister at the
Spanish Court, and explanations were given and excuses offered. It was
all merely because of a request made by the Duke of Berwick's son, the
Spanish prime-minister said. The Duke of Berwick's son asked
permission to bring his cousin Charles Edward to serve as a volunteer,
and the Court of Spain consented, not seeing the slightest objection to
such a request; but there was not the faintest idea of receiving the
boy as a king's son. King George and Queen Caroline were both very
angry, but Walpole wisely told them that they must either resent the
offence thoroughly, and by war, or accept the explanations and pretend
to be satisfied with them. Walpole's advice prevailed, and the boy
prince fleshed his maiden sword without giving occasion to George the
Second to seek the ensanguined laurels for which he told Walpole he had
long been thirsting. The Hanoverian kings were, to do them justice,
generally rather magnanimous in their way of treating the pretensions
of the exiled family. We may fairly assume that the conduct of the
Spanish prince in this instance did somewhat exceed legitimate bounds.
George was wise, however, in consenting to accept the explanations, and
to make as little of the incident as the Court of Spain professed to do.

[Sidenote: 1735--Success of Walpole's policy]

Incidents such as this, and the interchange of explanations which had
to follow them, naturally tended to stretch out the negotiations for
peace which England was still carrying on. Again and again it seemed
as if the attempts to bring about a settlement of the controversy must