While the Kirk was vainly striving to assuage the tempers of Mr Erskine
and his friends, the Jacobites were preparing to fish in troubled waters.
In 1739 Walpole was forced to declare war against Spain, and Walpole
had previously sounded James as to his own chances of being trusted
by that exiled prince. James thought that Walpole was merely angling
for information. Meanwhile Jacobite affairs were managed by two
rivals, Macgregor (calling himself Drummond) of Balhaldy and Murray
of Broughton. The sanguine Balhaldy induced France to suppose
that the Jacobites in England and Scotland were much more united, powerful,
and ready for action than they really were, when Argyll left office
in 1742, while Walpole fell from power, Carteret and the Duke of Newcastle
succeeding. In 1743 Murray found that France, though now at war
with England over the Spanish Succession, was holding aloof from the
Jacobite cause, though plied with flourishing and fabulous reports from
Balhaldy and the Jacobite Lord Sempill. But, in December 1743,
on the strength of alleged Jacobite energy in England, Balhaldy obtained
leave from France to visit Rome and bring Prince Charles. The
Prince had kept himself in training for war and was eager. Taking
leave of his father for the last time, Charles drove out of Rome on
January 9, 1744; evaded, in disguise, every trap that was set for him,
and landed at Antibes, reaching Paris on February 10. Louis did
not receive him openly, if he received him at all; the Prince lurked
at Gravelines in disguise, with the Earl Marischal, while winds and
waves half ruined, and the approach of a British fleet drove into port,
a French fleet of invasion under Roqueville (March 6, 7, 1744).
The Prince wrote to Sempill that he was ready and willing to sail
for Scotland in an open boat. In July 1744 he told Murray that
he would come next summer “if he had no other companion than his
valet.” He nearly kept his word; nor did Murray resolutely
oppose his will. At the end of May 1745 Murray's servant
brought a letter from the Prince; “fall back, fall edge,”
he would land in the Highlands in July. Lochiel regretted the
decision, but said that, as a man of honour, he would join his Prince
if he arrived.
On July 2 the Prince left Nantes in the Dutillet (usually
styled La Doutelle). He brought some money (he had pawned
the Sobieski rubies), some arms, Tullibardine, his Governor Sheridan,
Parson Kelly, the titular Duke of Atholl, Sir John Macdonald, a banker,
Sullivan, and one Buchanan-the Seven Men of Moidart.
On July 20 his consort, The Elizabeth, fought The Lion
(Captain Brett) off the Lizard; both antagonists were crippled.
On [July 22/August 2] Charles passed the night on the little isle of
Eriskay; appealed vainly to Macleod and Macdonald of Sleat; was urged,
at Kinlochmoidart, by the Macdonalds, to return to France, but swept
them off their feet by his resolution; and with Lochiel and the Macdonalds
raised the standard at the head of Glenfinnan on August [19/30].
The English Government had already offered £30,000 for the
Prince's head. The clans had nothing to gain; they held
that they had honour to preserve; they remembered Montrose; they put
it to the touch, and followed Prince Charlie.
The strength of the Prince's force was, first, the Macdonalds.
On August 16 Keppoch had cut off two companies of the Royal Scots near
Loch Lochy. But the chief of Glengarry was old and wavering; young
Glengarry, captured on his way from France, could not be with his clan;
his young brother Æneas led till his accidental death after the
battle of Falkirk.
Of the Camerons it is enough to say that their leader was the gentle
Lochiel, and that they were worthy of their chief. The Macphersons
came in rather late, under Cluny. The Frazers were held back by
the crafty Lovat, whose double-dealing, with the abstention of Macleod
(who was sworn to the cause) and of Macdonald of Sleat, ruined the enterprise.
Clan Chattan was headed by the beautiful Lady Mackintosh, whose husband
adhered to King George. Of the dispossessed Macleans, some 250
were gathered (under Maclean of Drimnin), and of that resolute band
some fifty survived Culloden. These western clans (including 220
Stewarts of Appin under Ardshiel) were the steel point of Charles's
weapon; to them should be added the Macgregors under James Mor, son
of Rob Roy, a shifty character but a hero in fight.
To resist these clans, the earliest to join, Sir John Cope, commanding
in Scotland, had about an equal force of all arms, say 2500 to 3000
men, scattered in all quarters, and with very few field-pieces.
Tweeddale, holding the revived office of Secretary for Scotland, was
on the worst terms, as leader of the Squadrone, with his Argathelian
rival, Islay, now (through the recent death of his brother, Red Ian
of the Battles) Duke of Argyll. Scottish Whigs were not encouraged
to arm.
The Prince marched south, while Cope, who had concentrated at Stirling,
marched north to intercept him. At Dalnacardoch he learned that
Charles was advancing to meet him in Corryarrick Pass (here came in
Ardshiel, Glencoe, and a Glengarry reinforcement). At Dalwhinnie,
Cope found that the clans held the pass, which is very defensible.
He dared not face them, and moved by Ruthven in Badenoch to Inverness,
where he vainly expected to be met by the great Whig clans of the north.
Joined now by Cluny, Charles moved on that old base of Montrose,
the Castle of Blair of Atholl, where the exiled duke (commonly called
Marquis of Tullibardine) was received with enthusiasm. In the
mid-region between Highland and Lowland, the ladies, Lady Lude and the
rest, simply forced their sons, brothers, and lovers into arms.
While Charles danced and made friends, and tasted his first pine-apple
at Blair, James Mor took the fort of Inversnaid. At Perth (September
4-10) Charles was joined by the Duke of Perth, the Ogilvys under Lord
Ogilvy, some Drummonds under Lord Strathallan, the Oliphants of Gask,
and 200 Robertsons of Struan. Lord George Murray, brother of the
Duke of Atholl, who had been out in 1715, out in 1719, and later was
un reconcilié, came in, and with him came Discord.
He had dealt as a friend and ally with Cope at Crieff; his loyalty to
either side was thus not unnaturally dubious; he was suspected by Murray
of Broughton; envied by Sullivan, a soldier of some experience; and
though he was loyal to the last,-the best organiser, and the most
daring leader,-Charles never trusted him, and his temper was always
crossing that of the Prince.
The race for Edinburgh now began, Cope bringing his troops by sea
from Aberdeen, and Charles doing what Mar, in 1715, had never ventured.
He crossed the Forth by the fords of Frew, six miles above Stirling,
passed within gunshot of the castle, and now there was no force between
him and Edinburgh save the demoralised dragoons of Colonel Gardiner.
The sole use of the dragoons was, wherever they came, to let the world
know that the clans were at their heels. On September 16 Charles
reached Corstorphine, and Gardiner's dragoons fell back on Coltbridge.
On the previous day the town had been terribly perturbed. The
old walls, never sound, were dilapidated, and commanded by houses on
the outside. Volunteers were scarce, and knew not how to load
a musket. On Sunday, September 15, during sermon-time, “The
bells were rung backwards, the drums they were beat,” the volunteers,
being told to march against the clans, listened to the voices of mothers
and aunts and of their own hearts, and melted like a mist. Hamilton's
dragoons and ninety of the late Porteous's Town Guard sallied
forth, joining Gardiner's men at Coltbridge. A few of the
mounted Jacobite gentry, such as Lord Elcho, eldest son of the Earl
of Wemyss, trotted up to inspect the dragoons, who fled and drew bridle
only at Musselburgh, six miles east of Edinburgh.
The magistrates treated through a caddie or street-messenger with
the Prince. He demanded surrender, the bailies went and came,
in a hackney coach, between Charles's quarters, Gray's Mill,
and Edinburgh, but on their return about 3 A.M. Lochiel with the Camerons
rushed in when the Nether Bow gate was opened to admit the cab of the
magistrates. Murray had guided the clan round by Merchiston.
At noon Charles entered “that unhappy palace of his race,”
Holyrood; and King James was proclaimed at Edinburgh Cross, while the
beautiful Mrs Murray, mounted, distributed white cockades. Edinburgh
provided but few volunteers, though the ladies tried to “force
them out.”
Meanwhile Cope was landing his men at Dunbar; from Mr John Home (author
of ‘Douglas, a Tragedy') he learnt that Charles's
force was under 2000 strong. He himself had, counting the dragoons,
an almost equal strength, with six field-pieces manned by sailors.
On September 20 Cope advanced from Haddington, while Charles, with
all the carriages he could collect for ambulance duty, set forth from
his camp at Duddingston Loch, under Arthur's Seat. Cope
took the low road near the sea, while Charles took the high road, holding
the ridge, till from Birsley brae he beheld Cope on the low level plain,
between Seaton and Prestonpans. The manœuvres of the clans
forced Cope to change his front, but wherever he went, his men were
more or less cooped up and confined to the defensive, with the park
wall on their rear.
Meanwhile Mr Anderson of Whitburgh, a local sportsman who had shot
ducks in the morass on Cope's left, brought to Charles news of
a practicable path through that marsh. Even so, the path was wet
as high as the knee, says Ker of Graden, who had reconnoitred the British
under fire. He was a Roxburghshire laird, and there was with the
Prince no better officer.
In the grey dawn the clans waded through the marsh and leaped the
ditch; Charles was forced to come with the second line fifty yards behind
the first. The Macdonalds held the right, as they said they had
done at Bannockburn; the Camerons and Macgregors were on the left they
“cast their plaids, drew their blades,” and, after enduring
an irregular fire, swept the red-coat ranks away; “they ran like
rabets,” wrote Charles in a genuine letter to James. Gardiner
was cut down, his entire troop having fled, while he was directing a
small force of foot which stood its ground. Charles stated his
losses at a hundred killed and wounded, all by gunshot. Only two
of the six field-pieces were discharged, by Colonel Whitefoord, who
was captured. Friends and foes agree in saying that the Prince
devoted himself to the care of the wounded of both sides. Lord
George Murray states Cope's losses, killed, wounded, and taken,
at 3000, Murray, at under 1000.
The Prince would fain have marched on England, but his force was
thinned by desertions, and English reinforcements would have been landed
in his rear. For a month he had to hold court in Edinburgh, adored
by the ladies to whom he behaved with a coldness of which Charles II.
would not have approved. “These are my beauties,”
he said, pointing to a burly-bearded Highland sentry. He “requisitioned”
public money, and such horses and fodder as he could procure; but to
spare the townsfolk from the guns of the castle he was obliged to withdraw
his blockade. He sent messengers to France, asking for aid, but
received little, though the Marquis Boyer d'Eguilles was granted
as a kind of representative of Louis XV. His envoys to Sleat and
Macleod sped ill, and Lovat only dallied, France only hesitated, while
Dutch and English regiments landed in the Thames and marched to join
General Wade at Newcastle. Charles himself received reinforcements
amounting to some 1500 men, under Lord Ogilvy, old Lord Pitsligo, the
Master of Strathallan (Drummond), the brave Lord Balmerino, and the
Viscount Dundee. A treaty of alliance with France, made at Fontainebleau,
neutralised, under the Treaty of Tournay, 6000 Dutch who might not,
by that treaty, fight against the ally of France.
The Prince entertained no illusions. Without French forces,
he told D'Eguilles, “I cannot resist English, Dutch, Hessians,
and Swiss.” On October [15/26] he wrote his last extant
letter from Scotland to King James. He puts his force at 8000
(more truly 6000), with 300 horse. “With these, as matters
stand, I shal have one decisive stroke for't, but iff the French”
(do not?) “land, perhaps none. . . . As matters stand I
must either conquer or perish in a little while.”
Defeated in the heart of England, and with a prize of £30,000
offered for his head, he could not hope to escape. A victory for
him would mean a landing of French troops, and his invasion of England
had for its aim to force the hand of France. Her troops, with
Prince Henry among them, dallied at Dunkirk till Christmas, and were
then dispersed, while the Duke of Cumberland arrived in England from
Flanders on October 19.
On October 30 the Prince held a council of war. French supplies
and guns had been landed at Stonehaven, and news came that 6000 French
were ready at Dunkirk: at Dunkirk they were, but they never were ready.
The news probably decided Charles to cross the Border; while it appears
that his men preferred to be content with simply making Scotland again
an independent kingdom, with a Catholic king. But to do this,
with French aid, was to return to the state of things under Mary of
Guise!
The Prince, judging correctly, wished to deal his “decisive
stroke” near home, at the old and now futile Wade in Northumberland.
A victory would have disheartened England, and left Newcastle open to
France. If Charles were defeated, his own escape by sea, in a
country where he had many well-wishers, was possible, and the clans
would have retreated through the Cheviots. Lord George Murray
insisted on a march by the western road, Lancashire being expected to
rise and join the Prince. But this plan left Wade, with a superior
force, on Charles's flank! The one difficulty, that of holding
a bridge, say Kelso Bridge, over Tweed, was not insuperable. Rivers
could not stop the Highlanders. Macdonald of Morar thought Charles
the best general in the army, and to the layman, considering the necessity
for an instant stroke, and the advantages of the east, as regards
France, the Prince's strategy appears better than Lord George's.
But Lord George had his way.
On October 31, Charles, reinforced by Cluny with 400 Macphersons,
concentrated at Dalkeith. On November 1, the less trusted part
of his force, under Tullibardine, with the Atholl men, moved south by
Peebles and Moffat to Lockerbie, menacing Carlisle; while the Prince,
Lord George, and the fighting clans marched to Kelso-a feint to
deceive Wade. The main body then moved by Jedburgh, up Rule Water
and down through Liddesdale, joining hands with Tullibardine on November
9, and bivouacking within two miles of Carlisle. On the 10th the
Atholl men went to work at the trenches; on the 11th the army moved
seven miles towards Newcastle, hoping to discuss Wade at Brampton on
hilly ground. But Wade did not gratify them by arriving.
On the 13th the Atholl men were kept at their spade-work, and Lord
George in dudgeon resigned his command (November 14), but at night Carlisle
surrendered, Murray and Perth negotiating. Lord George expressed
his anger and jealousy to his brother, Tullibardine, but Perth resigned
his command to pacify his rival. Wade feebly tried to cross country,
failed, and went back to Newcastle. On November 10, with some
4500 men (there had been many desertions), the march through Lancashire
was decreed. Save for Mr Townley and two Vaughans, the Catholics
did not stir. Charles marched on foot in the van; he was a trained
pedestrian; the townspeople stared at him and his Highlanders, but only
at Manchester (November 29-30) had he a welcome, enlisting about 150
doomed men. On November 27 Cumberland took over command at Lichfield;
his foot were distributed between Tamworth and Stafford; his cavalry
was at Newcastle-under-Lyme. Lord George was moving on Derby,
but learning Cumberland's dispositions he led a column to Congleton,
inducing Cumberland to concentrate at Lichfield, while he himself, by
way of Leek and Ashburn, joined the Prince at Derby.
The army was in the highest spirits. The Duke of Richmond on
the other side wrote from Lichfield (December 5), “If the enemy
please to cut us off from the main army, they may; and also, if they
please to give us the slip and march to London, I fear they may, before
even this avant garde can come up with them; . . . there is no
pass to defend, . . . the camp at Finchley is confined to paper plans”-and
Wales was ready to join the Prince! Lord George did not know what
Richmond knew. Despite the entreaties of the Prince, his Council
decided to retreat. On December 6 the clans, uttering cries of
rage, were set with their faces to the north.
The Prince was now an altered man. Full of distrust, he marched
not with Lord George in the rear, he rode in the van.
Meanwhile Lord John Drummond, who, on November 22, had landed at
Montrose with 800 French soldiers, was ordered by Charles to advance
with large Highland levies now collected and meet him as he moved north.
Lord John disobeyed orders (received about December 18). Expecting
his advance, Charles most unhappily left the Manchester men and others
to hold Carlisle, to which he would return. Cumberland took them
all,-many were hanged.
In the north, Lord Lewis Gordon routed Macleod at Inverurie (December
23), and defeated his effort to secure Aberdeen. Admirably commanded
by Lord George, and behaving admirably for an irregular retreating force,
the army reached Penrith on December 18, and at Clifton, Lord George
and Cluny defeated Cumberland's dragoons in a rearguard action.
On December 19 Carlisle was reached, and, as we saw, a force was
left to guard the castle; all were taken. On December 20 the army
forded the flooded Esk; the ladies, of whom several had been with them,
rode it on their horses: the men waded breast-high, as, had there been
need, they would have forded Tweed if the eastern route had been chosen,
and if retreat had been necessary. Cumberland returned to London
on January 5, and Horace Walpole no longer dreaded “a rebellion
that runs away.” By different routes Charles and Lord George
met (December 26) at Hamilton Palace. Charles stayed a night at
Dumfries. Dumfries was hostile, and was fined; Glasgow was also
disaffected, the ladies were unfriendly. At Glasgow, Charles heard
that Seaforth, chief of the Mackenzies, was aiding the Hanoverians in
the north, combining with the great Whig clans, with Macleod, the Munroes,
Lord Loudoun commanding some 2000 men, and the Mackays of Sutherland
and Caithness.
Meanwhile Lord John Drummond, Strathallan, and Lord Lewis Gordon,
with Lord Macleod, were concentrating to meet the Prince at Stirling,
the purpose being the hopeless one of capturing the castle, the key
of the north. With weak artillery, and a futile and foolish French
engineer officer to direct the siege, they had no chance of success.
The Prince, in bad health, stayed (January 4-10) at Sir Hugh Paterson's
place, Bannockburn House.
At Stirling, with his northern reinforcements, Charles may have had
some seven or eight thousand men wherewith to meet General Hawley (a
veteran of Sheriffmuir) advancing from Edinburgh. Hawley encamped
at Falkirk, and while the Atholl men were deserting by scores, Lord
George skilfully deceived him, arrived on the Falkirk moor unobserved,
and held the ridge above Hawley's position, while the General
was lunching with Lady Kilmarnock. In the first line of the Prince's
force the Macdonalds held the right wing, the Camerons (whom the great
Wolfe describes as the bravest of the brave) held the left; with Stewarts
of Appin, Frazers, and Macphersons in the centre. In the second
line were the Atholl men, Lord Lewis Gordon's levies, and Lord
Ogilvy's. The Lowland horse and Drummond's French
details were in the rear. The ground was made up of eminences
and ravines, so that in the second line the various bodies were invisible
to each other, as at Sheriffmuir-with similar results. When
Hawley found that he had been surprised he arrayed his thirteen battalions
of regulars and 1000 men of Argyll on the plain, with three regiments
of dragoons, by whose charge he expected to sweep away Charles's
right wing; behind his cavalry were the luckless militia of Glasgow
and the Lothians. In all, he had from 10,000 to 12,000 men against,
perhaps, 7000 at most, for 1200 of Charles's force were left to
contain Blakeney in Stirling Castle. Both sides, on account of
the heavy roads, failed to bring forward their guns.
Hawley then advanced his cavalry up hill: their left faced Keppoch's
Macdonalds; their right faced the Frazers, under the Master of Lovat,
in Charles's centre. Hawley then launched his cavalry, which
were met at close range by the reserved fire of the Macdonalds and Frazers.
Through the mist and rain the townsfolk, looking on, saw in five minutes
“the break in the battle.” Hamilton's and Ligonier's
cavalry turned and fled, Cobham's wheeled and rode across the
Highland left under fire, while the Macdonalds and Frazers pursuing
the cavalry found themselves among the Glasgow militia, whom they followed,
slaying. Lord George had no pipers to sound the recall; they had
flung their pipes to their gillies and gone in with the claymore.
Thus the Prince's right, far beyond his front, were lost in
the tempest; while his left had discharged their muskets at Cobham's
Horse, and could not load again, their powder being drenched with rain.
They received the fire of Hawley's right, and charged with the
claymore, but were outflanked and enfiladed by some battalions drawn
up en potence. Many of the second line had blindly followed
the first: the rest shunned the action; Hawley's officers led
away some regiments in an orderly retreat; night fell; no man knew what
had really occurred till young Gask and young Strathallan, with the
French and Atholl men, ventured into Falkirk, and found Hawley's
camp deserted. The darkness, the rain, the nature of the ground,
and the clans' want of discipline, prevented the annihilation
of Hawley's army; while the behaviour of his cavalry showed that
the Prince might have defeated Cumberland's advanced force beyond
Derby with the greatest ease, as the Duke of Richmond had anticipated.
Perhaps the right course now was to advance on Edinburgh, but the
hopeless siege of Stirling Castle was continued-Charles perhaps
hoping much from Hawley's captured guns.
The accidental shooting of young Æneas Macdonnell, second son
of Glengarry, by a Clanranald man, begat a kind of blood feud between
the clans, and the unhappy cause of the accident had to be shot.
Lochgarry, writing to young Glengarry after Culloden, says that “there
was a general desertion in the whole army,” and this was the view
of the chiefs, who, on news of Cumberland's approach, told Charles
(January 29) that the army was depleted and resistance impossible.
The chiefs were mistaken in point of fact: a review at Crieff later
showed that even then only 1000 men were missing. As at Derby,
and with right on his side, Charles insisted on meeting Cumberland.
He did well, his men were flushed with victory, had sufficient supplies,
were to encounter an army not yet encouraged by a refusal to face it,
and, if defeated had the gates of the hills open behind them.
In a very temperately written memorial Charles placed these ideas before
the chiefs. “Having told you my thoughts, I am too sensible
of what you have already ventured and done for me, not to yield to your
unanimous resolution if you persist.”
Lord George, Lovat, Lochgarry, Keppoch, Ardshiel, and Cluny did persist;
the fatal die was cast; and the men who-well fed and confident-might
have routed Cumberland, fled in confusion rather than retreated,-to
be ruined later, when, starving, out-wearied, and with many of their
best forces absent, they staggered his army at Culloden. Charles
had told the chiefs, “I can see nothing but ruin and destruction
to us in case we should retreat.”
This retreat embittered Charles's feelings against Lord George,
who may have been mistaken-who, indeed, at Crieff, seems to have
recognised his error (February 5); but he had taken his part, and during
the campaign, henceforth, as at Culloden, distinguished himself by every
virtue of a soldier.
After the retreat Lord George moved on Aberdeen; Charles to Blair
in Atholl; thence to Moy, the house of Lady Mackintosh, where a blacksmith
and four or five men ingeniously scattered Loudoun and the Macleods,
advancing to take him by a night surprise. This was the famous
Rout of Moy.
Charles next (February 20) took Inverness Castle, and Loudoun was
driven into Sutherland, and cut off by Lord George's dispositions
from any chance of joining hands with Cumberland. The Duke had
now 5000 Hessian soldiers at his disposal: these he would not have commanded
had the Prince's army met him near Stirling.
Charles was now at or near Inverness: he lost, through illness, the
services of Murray, whose successor, Hay, was impotent as an officer
of Commissariat. A gallant movement of Lord George into Atholl,
where he surprised all Cumberland's posts, but was foiled by the
resistance of his brother's castle, was interrupted by a recall
to the north, and, on April 2, he retreated to the line of the Spey.
Forbes of Culloden and Macleod had been driven to take refuge in Skye;
but 1500 men of the Prince's best had been sent into Sutherland,
when Cumberland arrived at Nairn (April 14), and Charles concentrated
his starving forces on Culloden Moor. The Macphersons, the Frazers,
the 1500 Macdonalds, and others in Sutherland were absent on various
duties when “the wicked day of destiny” approached.
The men on Culloden Moor, a flat waste unsuited to the tactics of
the clans, had but one biscuit apiece on the eve of the battle.
Lord George “did not like the ground,” and proposed to surprise
by a night attack Cumberland's force at Nairn. The Prince
eagerly agreed, and, according to him, Clanranald's advanced men
were in touch with Cumberland's outposts before Lord George convinced
the Prince that retreat was necessary. The advance was lagging;
the way had been missed in the dark; dawn was at hand. There are
other versions: in any case the hungry men were so outworn that many
are said to have slept through next day's battle.
A great mistake was made next day, if Lochgarry, who commanded the
Macdonalds of Glengarry, and Maxwell of Kirkconnel are correct in saying
that Lord George insisted on placing his Atholl men on the right wing.
The Macdonalds had an old claim to the right wing, but as far as research
enlightens us, their failure on this fatal day was not due to jealous
anger. The battle might have been avoided, but to retreat was
to lose Inverness and all chance of supplies. On the Highland
right was the water of Nairn, and they were guarded by a wall which
the Campbells pulled down, enabling Cumberland's cavalry to take
them in flank. Cumberland had about 9000 men, including the Campbells.
Charles, according to his muster-master, had 5000; of horse he had but
a handful.
The battle began with an artillery duel, during which the clans lost
heavily, while their few guns were useless, and their right flank was
exposed by the breaking down of the protecting wall. After some
unexplained and dangerous delay, Lord George gave the word to charge,
in face of a blinding tempest of sleet, and himself went in, as did
Lochiel, claymore in hand. But though the order was conveyed by
Ker of Graden first to the Macdonalds on the left, as they had to charge
over a wider space of ground, the Camerons, Clan Chattan, and Macleans
came first to the shock. “Nothing could be more desperate
than their attack, or more properly received,” says Whitefoord.
The assailants were enfiladed by Wolfe's regiment, which moved
up and took position at right angles, like the fifty-second on the flank
of the last charge of the French Guard at Waterloo. The Highland
right broke through Barrel's regiment, swept over the guns, and
died on the bayonets of the second line. They had thrown down
their muskets after one fire, and, says Cumberland, stood “and
threw stones for at least a minute or two before their total rout began.”
Probably the fall of Lochiel, who was wounded and carried out of action,
determined the flight. Meanwhile the left, the Macdonalds, menaced
on the flank by cavalry, were plied at a hundred yards by grape.
They saw their leaders, the gallant Keppoch and Macdonnell of Scothouse,
with many others, fall under the grape-shot: they saw the right wing
broken, and they did not come to the shock. If we may believe
four sworn witnesses in a court of justice (July 24, 1752), whose testimony
was accepted as the basis of a judicial decreet (January 10, 1756),
{290} Keppoch was
wounded while giving his orders to some of his men not to outrun the
line in advancing, and was shot dead as a friend was supporting him.
When all retreated they passed the dead body of Keppoch.
The tradition constantly given in various forms that Keppoch charged
alone, “deserted by the children of his clan,” is worthless
if sworn evidence may be trusted.
As for the unhappy Charles, by the evidence of Sir Robert Strange,
who was with him, he had “ridden along the line to the right animating
the soldiers,” and “endeavoured to rally the soldiers, who,
annoyed by the enemy's fire, were beginning to quit the field.”
He “was got off the field when the men in general were betaking
themselves precipitately to flight; nor was there any possibility of
their being rallied.” Yorke, an English officer, says that
the Prince did not leave the field till after the retreat of the second
line.
So far the Prince's conduct was honourable and worthy of his
name. But presently, on the advice of his Irish entourage, Sullivan
and Sheridan, who always suggested suspicions, and doubtless not forgetting
the great price on his head, he took his own way towards the west coast
in place of joining Lord George and the remnant with him at Ruthven
in Badenoch. On April 26 he sailed from Borradale in a boat, and
began that course of wanderings and hairbreadth escapes in which only
the loyalty of Highland hearts enabled him at last to escape the ships
that watched the isles and the troops that netted the hills.
Some years later General Wolfe, then residing at Inverness, reviewed
the occurrences, and made up his mind that the battle had been a dangerous
risk for Cumberland, while the pursuit (though ruthlessly cruel) was
inefficient.
Despite Cumberland's insistent orders to give no quarter (orders
justified by the absolutely false pretext that Prince Charles had set
the example), Lochgarry reported that the army had not lost more than
a thousand men. Fire and sword and torture, the destruction of
tilled lands, and even of the shell-fish on the shore, did not break
the spirit of the Highlanders. Many bands held out in arms, and
Lochgarry was only prevented by the Prince's command from laying
an ambush for Cumberland. The Campbells and the Macleods under
their recreant chief, the Whig Macdonalds under Sir Alexander of Sleat,
ravaged the lands of the Jacobite clansmen; but the spies of Albemarle,
who now commanded in Scotland, reported the Macleans, the Grants of
Glenmoriston, with the Macphersons, Glengarry's men, and Lochiel's
Camerons, as all eager “to do it again” if France would
only help.
But France was helpless, and when Lochiel sailed for France with
the Prince only Cluny remained, hunted like a partridge in the mountains,
to keep up the spirit of the Cause. Old Lovat met a long-deserved
death by the executioner's axe, though it needed the evidence
of Murray of Broughton, turned informer, to convict that fox.
Kilmarnock and Balmerino also were executed; the good and brave Duke
of Perth died on his way to France; the aged Tullibardine in the Tower;
many gallant gentlemen were hanged; Lord George escaped, and is the
ancestor of the present Duke of Atholl; many gentlemen took French service;
others fought in other alien armies; three or four in the Highlands
or abroad took the wages of spies upon the Prince. The £30,000
of French gold, buried near Loch Arkaig, caused endless feuds, kinsman
denouncing kinsman. The secrets of the years 1746-1760 are to
be sought in the Cumberland and Stuart MSS. in Windsor Castle and the
Record Office.
Legislation, intended to scotch the snake of Jacobitism, began with
religious persecution. The Episcopalian clergy had no reason to
love triumphant Presbyterianism, and actively, or in sympathy, were
favourers of the exiled dynasty. Episcopalian chapels, sometimes
mere rooms in private houses, were burned, or their humble furniture
was destroyed. All Episcopalian ministers were bidden to take
the oath and pray for King George by September 1746, or suffer for the
second offence transportation for life to the American colonies.
Later, the orders conferred by Scottish bishops were made of no avail.
Only with great difficulty and danger could parents obtain the rite
of baptism for their children. Very little is said in our histories
about the sufferings of the Episcopalians when it was their turn to
be under the harrow. They were not violent, they murdered no Moderator
of the General Assembly. Other measures were the Disarming Act,
the prohibition to wear the Highland dress, and the abolition of “hereditable
jurisdictions,” and the chief's right to call out his clansmen
in arms. Compensation in money was paid, from £21,000 to
the Duke of Argyll to £13, 6s. 8d. to the clerks of the Registrar
of Aberbrothock. The whole sum was £152,237, 15s. 4d.
In 1754 an Act “annexed the forfeited estates of the Jacobites
who had been out (or many of them) inalienably to the Crown.”
The estates were restored in 1784; meanwhile the profits were to be
used for the improvement of the Highlands. If submissive tenants
received better terms and larger leases than of old, Jacobite tenants
were evicted for not being punctual with rent. Therefore, on May
14, 1752, some person unknown shot Campbell of Glenure, who was about
evicting the tenants on the lands of Lochiel and Stewart of Ardshiel
in Appin. Campbell rode down from Fort William to Ballachulish
ferry, and when he had crossed it said, “I am safe now I am out
of my mother's country.” But as he drove along the
old road through the wood of Lettermore, perhaps a mile and a half south
of Ballachulish House, the fatal shot was fired. For this crime
James Stewart of the Glens was tried by a Campbell jury at Inveraray,
with the Duke on the bench, and was, of course, convicted, and hanged
on the top of a knoll above Ballachulish ferry. James was innocent,
but Allan Breck Stewart was certainly an accomplice of the man with
the gun, which, by the way, was the property neither of James Stewart
nor of Stewart of Fasnacloich. The murderer was anxious to save
James by avowing the deed, but his kinsfolk, saying, “They will
only hang both James and you,” bound him hand and foot and locked
him up in the kitchen on the day of James's execution.
Allan lay for some weeks at the house of a kinsman in Rannoch, and escaped
to France, where he had a fight with James Mor Macgregor, then a spy
in the service of the Duke of Newcastle.
This murder of “the Red Fox” caused all the more excitement,
and is all the better remembered in Lochaber and Glencoe, because agrarian
violence in revenge for eviction has scarcely another example in the
history of the Highlands.
Conclusion.
Space does not permit an account of the assimilation of Scotland
to England in the years between the Forty-five and our own time: moreover,
the history of this age cannot well be written without a dangerously
close approach to many “burning questions” of our day.
The History of the Highlands, from 1752 to the emigrations witnessed
by Dr Johnson (1760-1780), and of the later evictions in the interests
of sheep farms and deer forests, has never been studied as it ought
to be in the rich manuscript materials which are easily accessible.
The great literary Renaissance of Scotland, from 1745 to the death of
Sir Walter Scott; the years of Hume, a pioneer in philosophy and in
history, and of the Rev. Principal Robertson (with him and Hume, Gibbon
professed, very modestly, that he did not rank); the times of Adam Smith,
of Burns, and of Sir Walter, not to speak of the Rev. John Home, that
foremost tragic poet, may be studied in many a history of literature.
According to Voltaire, Scotland led the world in all studies, from metaphysics
to gardening. We think of Watt, and add engineering.
The brief and inglorious administration of the Earl of Bute at once
gave openings in the public service to Scots of ability, and excited
that English hatred of these northern rivals which glows in Churchill's
‘Satires,' while this English jealousy aroused that Scottish
hatred of England which is the one passion that disturbs the placid
letters of David Hume.
The later alliance of Pitt with Henry Dundas made Dundas far more
powerful than any Secretary for Scotland had been since Lauderdale,
and confirmed the connection of Scotland with the services in India.
But, politically, Scotland, till the Reform Bill, had scarcely a recognisable
existence. The electorate was tiny, and great landholders controlled
the votes, whether genuine or created by legal fiction-“faggot
votes.” Municipal administration in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries was terribly corrupt, and reform was
demanded, but the French Revolution, producing associations of Friends
of the People, who were prosecuted and grievously punished in trials
for sedition, did not afford a fortunate moment for peaceful reforms.
But early in the nineteenth century Jeffrey, editor of ‘The
Edinburgh Review,' made it the organ of Liberalism, and no less
potent in England than in Scotland; while Scott, on the Tory side, led
a following of Scottish penmen across the Border in the service of ‘The
Quarterly Review.' With ‘Blackwood's Magazine'
and Wilson, Hogg, and Lockhart; with Jeffrey and ‘The Edinburgh,'
the Scottish metropolis almost rivalled London as the literary capital.
About 1818 Lockhart recognised the superiority of the Whig wits in
literature; but against them all Scott is a more than sufficient set-off.
The years of stress between Waterloo (1815) and the Reform Bill (1832)
made Radicalism (fostered by economic causes, the enormous commercial
and industrial growth, and the unequal distribution of its rewards)
perhaps even more pronounced north than south of the Tweed. In
1820 “the Radical war” led to actual encounters between
the yeomanry and the people. The ruffianism of the Tory paper
‘The Beacon' caused one fatal duel, and was within an inch
of leading to another, in which a person of the very highest consequence
would have “gone on the sod.” For the Reform Bill
the mass of Scottish opinion, so long not really represented at all,
was as eager as for the Covenant. So triumphant was the first
Whig or Radical majority under the new system, that Jeffrey, the Whig
pontiff, perceived that the real struggle was to be “between property
and no property,” between Capital and Socialism. This circumstance
had always been perfectly clear to Scott and the Tories.
The watchword of the eighteenth century in literature, religion,
and politics had been “no enthusiasm.” But throughout
the century, since 1740, “enthusiasm,” “the return
to nature,” had gradually conquered till the rise of the Romantic
school with Coleridge and Scott. In religion the enthusiastic
movement of the Wesleys had altered the face of the Church in England,
while in Scotland the “Moderates” had lost position, and
“zeal” or enthusiasm pervaded the Kirk. The question
of lay patronage of livings had passed through many phases since Knox
wrote, “It pertaineth to the people, and to every several congregation,
to elect their minister.” In 1833, immediately after the
passing of the Reform Bill, the return to the primitive Knoxian rule
was advocated by the “Evangelical” or “High Flying”
opponents of the Moderates. Dr Chalmers, a most eloquent person,
whom Scott regarded as truly a man of genius, was the leader of the
movement. The Veto Act, by which the votes of a majority of heads
of families were to be fatal to the claims of a patron's presentee,
had been passed by the General Assembly; it was contrary to Queen Anne's
Patronage Act of 1711,-a measure carried, contrary to Harley's
policy, by a coalition of English Churchmen and Scottish Jacobite members
of Parliament. The rejection, under the Veto Act, of a presentee
by the church of Auchterarder, was declared illegal by the Court of
Session and the judges in the House of Lords (May 1839); the Strathbogie
imbroglio, “with two Presbyteries, one taking its orders from
the Court of Session, the other from the General Assembly” (1837-1841),
brought the Assembly into direct conflict with the law of the land.
Dr Chalmers would not allow the spiritual claims of the Kirk to be suppressed
by the State. “King Christ's Crown Honours”
were once more in question. On May 18, 1843, the followers of
the principles of Knox and Andrew Melville marched out of the Assembly
into Tanfield Hall, and made Dr Chalmers Moderator, and themselves “The
Free Church of Scotland.” In 1847 the hitherto separated
synods of various dissenting bodies came together as United Presbyterians,
and in 1902 they united with the Free Church as “the United Free
Church,” while a small minority, mainly Highland, of the former
Free Church, now retains that title, and apparently represents Knoxian
ideals. Thus the Knoxian ideals have modified, even to this day,
the ecclesiastical life of Scotland, while the Church of James I., never
by persecution extinguished (nec tamen consumebatur), has continued
to exist and develop, perhaps more in consequence of love of the Liturgy
than from any other cause.
Meanwhile, and not least in the United Free Church, extreme tenacity
of dogma has yielded place to very advanced Biblical criticism; and
Knox, could he revisit Scotland with all his old opinions, might not
be wholly satisfied by the changes wrought in the course of more than
three centuries. The Scottish universities, discouraged and almost
destitute of pious benefactors since the end of the sixteenth century,
have profited by the increase of wealth and a comparatively recent outburst
of generosity. They always provided the cheapest, and now they
provide the cheapest and most efficient education that is offered by
any homes of learning of mediæval foundation.