“BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE”
Mary Queen of Scots, and Bonnie Prince Charlie! How they live with us
yet, casting their spell over the centuries!
If there is one figure in the past that still acts powerfully upon
the tradition, literature, and imagination of Scotland,--in a word,
upon that which remains and is imperishable, after stone and brass are
but mouldering relics,--it is the figure and fortunes of Charles, the
Young Pretender to the throne of Great Britain. With him ended Celtic
Scotland, Scottish feudalism, and the age of Highland romance.
About the “Young Chevalier”--the image on the Scottish mind is that of
the fair youth in the full splendor of manhood; not the wretched dregs
of the human form that many years afterwards was cast out of memory
like an abominable branch. It is of the bonnie young fellow that such
songs as “Wae’s me for Prince Charlie,” “Charlie is my darling,” “Come
o’er the stream, Charlie,” and “The White Cockade,” were written and
are still sung. His full name was Charles Edward Louis Philippe Casimir
Stuart.
This young man, of extraordinary beauty and fascinating manners,
against the advice of his friends and most loyal supporters, landed
in Scotland, and summoning the Highland chiefs, who, by affinities
of blood, politics, and religion, were most attached to the Stuart
dynasty, asked for their support. One and all, they declared against
the uprising, but they, nevertheless, agreed to follow their liege lord.
Born at Rome, on December 31, 1720, grandson of King James II of
England, and eldest son of James, the Old Pretender, who called himself
James III, Charles was nominated by his family the Prince of Wales.
Educated under brilliant tutors, he travelled through Italy. He was
able to speak English, French, and Italian, but could never write well
in English. Despite the previous failure, in 1715, of his father, and
the loss at sea by storm of a French fleet, with seven thousand men who
were to assist his Highlanders, Charles landed in Scotland when most of
the British army was in the Belgic Netherlands. On August 19, 1745, in
Glen Finnan, he unfurled his standard as “James VIII of Scotland and
III of England” against George II and the Hanoverian dynasty of Great
Britain. He wore the Highland costume and won the hearts of the women
by his charming manners and manly beauty.
After a meteoric career, including a brilliant series of marches,
victories, occupation of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, invasion of
England almost to London, and sudden retreat, he had to face with his
loyal clansmen the King’s son William, Duke of Cumberland, with an
army specially trained to the use of the bayonet. The two forces met
on Drummossie Moor, near Culloden, April 16, 1746. Cumberland’s men
were in high spirits and fine condition, while the ill-fed followers of
Charles, hungry and weary after a night march, numbered five thousand.
His attempt to surprise the Duke and settle the issue with cold steel
had failed!
Against the advice of his officers, Charles ordered the battle. After
various manœuvres the armies faced each other for the bloody decision,
on which depended the fate of the House of Stuart, the fortunes of the
Highlanders, and the continuance of Scottish feudalism.
One dreadful surprise awaited the clansmen. Cumberland, trusting in the
bayonet, had carefully drilled each of his men to have the nerve to
neglect the man striking at him with his broadsword, but to stab at the
fellow who, in expectation of dashing aside the bayonet of the soldier
in front of him, would expose his body to the oblique thrust of his
comrade on the right, duly fore-warned.
The day was one of chilly weather, with fitful winds and flurries of
snow. Early in the afternoon, the battle was opened by discharges of
cannon from the side of the rebels. But with this kind of work, the
men from the glens never were satisfied. Indeed, all firearms and
long-range weapons were unpopular with these brave fellows, who, like
Indians and semi-barbarians, enjoyed most that action which was, as far
as possible, independent and personal.
In several of their victories over the royal troops, as at Prestonpans,
for example, they had felt little or no annoyance from the royal
cannon, and had almost lost their fear of artillery.
Cumberland had nine thousand men and eighteen well-served guns. Here,
for the first time, the Highlanders were under heavy fire of grape
and round shot, to which they could not proportionately reply. It is
thought that if Charles at Culloden had let his swordsmen rush at once
upon the enemy the issue might have been different.
For half an hour the Duke’s cannon played effectively upon the
clansmen, who saw scores of their kinsmen stretched upon the heath.
After a few moments’ cannonade from their own side, and still under
the withering fire of the enemy’s heavy guns, the Highlanders ranged
themselves in masses, and according to their clans, made ready for the
terrific onset, which they supposed would decide the battle. This it
did, but not in the way they had hoped. It was the Mackintoshes, who,
unable any longer to brook the unavenged slaughter of their comrades,
broke from the centre of the line and rushed forward through the smoke
and snow to mingle with the enemy. Yet the order to advance, though
never delivered, had already been given by Charles, the bearer being
killed by a cannon shot.
Cumberland’s troops, seeing the dark masses moving up the slope, as
in a great wave, stood in steady line. As the Highlanders came to
shock, the oblique thrust of the bayonets was a dreadful surprise,
for it prevented hundreds of clansmen from wielding their favorite
weapon, as most of them were thrust through before they could swing
their broadswords, or make the terrible double-handed sweep with their
claymores, on which they had counted. Soon the moor of Drummossie had
proved itself to be the valley of decision for the hopes of the House
of Stuart.
Within two minutes the charge was general along the whole line. Yet
it was as if advancing into semi-darkness of whirling snow and powder
smoke. One survivor of the battle, a Highlander, said that after
rushing forward the first glimpse he received of the Duke’s troops was,
when the cloud of smoke and snow lifted, he saw the white gaiters of
the soldiers. The Duke’s cannon, now loaded with grapeshot, and the
musketry of his solid columns swept the field as with a hailstorm.
The three ranks in the front line of English Hessians delivered
simultaneous volleys, while the regiments of Wolfe--of whom we
Americans have heard in his later career at Quebec--poured in a flank
fire. Nevertheless, the right wing and centre of the Highlanders fought
with even more than usual gallantry and resolution.
Notwithstanding the fact that they were outflanked, enfiladed, and
met by a heavy musketry fire in front of them, the right wing of the
Highlanders broke Barrel’s regimental front and passed the guns; but
their attack was checked by the bayonets of the second line.
Of the Highlanders who first rushed forward the majority were hardly
able to see their enemy for the smoke, until involved inextricably
among their weapons. Tn their onset, nearly all in the front ranks
fell before either bullets or the piercing weapons used obliquely, as
directed by the Duke, almost every bayonet being bent or bloody with
the strife. Nevertheless, the Highlanders, despite their impending
annihilation, kept on, line after line pushing forward, even though
only a few of those charging last reached the front files of the royal
troops. In parts of the plain, the dead lay three and four deep.
During all this time the Macdonalds, who, because their ancestors at
Bannockburn had fought on the right wing, had ever afterwards, except
on this occasion, occupied this position, would not fight. They made
no onset, and even received the fire of the English regiments without
flinching. They were dissatisfied because they had been put on the
left wing. At last, when the moment of decision and defeat had come,
there being no hope, they also fled with the other clans.
Charles had yet in reserve his foreign troops, and these, after the
mountaineers had been ruined, he hoped, as he looked on from the mound
at some distance off, would redeem the day. But though there were
instances of bravery among these men, yet, demoralized by the wreck of
the clans coming as fugitives among them, and seeing the Duke’s army
getting ready to charge with the cold steel, they fled in a body. Thus
the rout was complete. Charles, who had made his last cast for a crown,
seemed now unable to realize what had happened. Confounded, bewildered,
and in tears, he seemed unable to act. His attendants were obliged to
turn his horse’s head and compel him to retreat, Sullivan his friend
seizing the horse’s bridle and dragging him away.
During the uprising of 1745–46, the local clans wore a red or yellow
cross or ribbon, in order to distinguish themselves from the Stuart
Highlanders, who were all dressed in about the same way, except as to
their bonnets. The Jacobites all wore the white cockade, like that of
the Bourbons of France, friends of the Stuarts. One of the liveliest
tunes played by the Highland pipers was “The White Cockade.” It was the
same air, with different words, which the fifers and drummers of the
Continental army played when the flag of the Revolution was raised
in the War of Independence. In fact, in looking over the American
musicians’ repertoire, from 1775 to 1783, one might almost imagine that
the chief music sounded under “the Congress flag” of thirteen stripes
and, after 1777, under “Old Glory” of later Revolutionary days, was
Scottish. Even the strains of mournful music, over the graves of the
slain American patriots, was “Roslyn Castle.”
One fifth of the Highland army was lost at Culloden. Of the five
regiments which charged the English, almost all the leaders and
front rank men were slain. These numbered nearly a thousand in all.
The actual battle lasted about forty minutes, much of it in distant
firing; but the charge and the crossing of the cold steel were all
over in a quarter of an hour. The number of killed, wounded, and
missing of the royal army was three hundred and ten. The victory was
mainly attributable to the effect of the artillery and musketry of the
royalists; but in Munro’s and Barrel’s regiments, many of the soldiers
put to death one, two, or more Highlanders each, with their bayonets,
and several of the dragoons, sent in pursuit, were known to have cut
down ten or twelve fugitives each in the pursuit.