The MS has been corrected throughout by Voltaire. It is almost identical to the print edition, except for l.21-27. Here, multiple versions have been crossed out and written over so extensively that only incomplete sentences are legible.

Verses composed at the time of the arrest of Prince Charles Edward, Jacobite pretender to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in November 1748. Prince Charles Edward had fled England and taken refuge on France, unaware of the secret clauses of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) under which the King of France was committed to expelling his cousin. The poem criticises Louis XV for shamefully abandoning the cause of the Stuarts.