Why did Charles Edward Stuart become one of the great romantic figures of history, a familiar name even to those who know nothing of his curious career? His ambitious project was frustrated, his accomplishment nil. The whole adventure lasted fourteen months from 1745 to 1746, and was followed by forty years of restless exile and degeneration, during which Charles wandered from one Continental place of exile to another. He is the prime example of a hero of a lost cause, a personality virtually created by Scottish nostalgia for a kingdom that had vanished, for a past that had been romanticized, for a leader to re-establish a nationalist sense of identity, unity and power.
