Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart (31 December 1720 – 31 January 1788), commonly known in Britain during his lifetime as
The Young Pretender and
The Young Chevalier, and often known in retrospective accounts as
Bonnie Prince Charlie, was the second
Jacobite pretender to the thrones of
England,
Scotland,
France and
Ireland (as
Charles III) from the death of his father in 1766. This claim was as the eldest son of
James Francis Edward Stuart, himself the son of
James VII and II. Charles is perhaps best known as the instigator of the unsuccessful
Jacobite uprising of 1745, in which he led an insurrection to restore his family to the throne of
Great Britain, which ended in defeat at the
Battle of Culloden that effectively ended the Jacobite cause. Jacobites supported the Stuart claim due to hopes for religious toleration for
Roman Catholics and a belief in the
divine right of kings. Charles's flight from Scotland after the uprising has rendered him a romantic figure of heroic failure in some later representations. In 1759 he was involved in a
French plan to invade Britain which was abandoned following British naval victories.