That underling was
to be d'Eon.
In 1755 Louis wished to renew relations, long interrupted, with
Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, the lady whom Prince Charlie wanted to
marry, and from whose offered hand the brave James Keith fled as fast
as horses could carry him. Elizabeth, in 1755, was an ally of England,
but was known to be French in her personal sympathies, though she was
difficult of access. As a messenger, Louis chose a Scot, described by
Captain Buchan Telfer as a Mackenzie, a Jesuit, calling himself the
Chevalier Douglas, and a Jacobite exile. He is not to be found in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_. A Sir James and a Sir John
Douglas--if both were not the same man--were employed as political
agents between the English and Scottish Jacobites in 1746, and, in
1749, between the Prince and the Landgrave of Hesse. Whatever the true
name of the Douglas of Louis XV., I suspect that he was one or the
other of these dim Jacobites of the Douglas clan. In June 1755 this
Chevalier Douglas was sent by Louis to deal with Elizabeth. He was
certainly understood by Louis to be a real Douglas, a fugitive
Jacobite, and he was to use in ciphered despatches precisely the same
silly sort of veiled language about the fur trade as Prince Charles's
envoys had just been using about 'the timber trade' with Sweden.
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