Series 2 > Origins of the 'Forty-five

xxxii
INTRODUCTION
of Scotland. From this they concluded that a rising in
Scotland without foreign assistance would involve possible
failure and in any case a disastrous civil war, while, on the
other hand, the landing of a body of regular troops would
provide a rallying point for the insurgents. This force
should be equal to the number of troops generally quartered
about London and able to hold them, while the volunteer
royalists would march straight to the capital which was
ready to declare in their favour. They would then
acquire the magazines and arsenals at the seat of govern¬
ment, and almost all the treasures of England (‘ presque
toutes les richesses d’Angleterre ’). If at that juncture the
Scots would rise, the Hanoverians would be driven to
despair. No ally of the Elector, however powerful, would
venture to attack Great Britain reunited under her legiti¬
mate sovereign. The requirement of the English would be
10,000 to 12,000 regular troops sent from abroad ; with¬
out such a disciplined force the English Jacobites would
not risk a rising.1
Sempill was sent by the Chevalier to Paris to lay these
views before Cardinal Fleury. The Cardinal, peace lover
though he was, felt that it would be absurd to neglect the
assistance that the Jacobites might afford him in the
complications which were certain to arise when the death
of the Emperor Charles vi., then imminent, should occur.2
When the English views of requirement were presented
to him he received them sympathetically; said that the
King of France would willingly grant the help the English
Jacobites desired, but two things were absolutely neces¬
sary : he must have more exact information than had
been given him with regard to what royalist adherents
1 Abridged from a State Paper in the . French archives, of which portions
are printed in Capitaine J. Colin’s Louis X V. et les Jacobites: Paris, 1901.
2 The Emperor Charles VI. died on October 20th, 1740, and France interfered
in the War of the Austrian Succession the following August.