their march for England, _in order to be reviewed by his Majesty_."
Everywhere on the march throughout the north of England, they were
received with cordiality and hospitality by the people, to whom their
garb, aspect, and equipment were a source of interest, and in return,
the gentlemen and soldiers of the Reicudan Dhu behaved to the
admiration of their officers and of all magistrates; but as they drew
nearer to London, according to Major Grose, they were exposed to the
malevolent mockery and the national "taunts of the true-bred English
clowns, and became gloomy and sullen. Animated even to the humblest
private with the feelings of gentlemen," continues this English
officer, "they could ill brook the rudeness of boors, nor could they
patiently submit to affronts in a country to which they had been
called by the invitation of their sovereign."
On the 30th April, the regiment reached London, and on the 14th May
was reviewed on Finchley Common, by Marshal Wade, before a vast
concourse of spectators; but the King, whom they expected to be
present, had sailed from Greenwich for Hanover on the same night they
entered the English metropolis. Herein they found themselves
deceived; for "the King had told them a lie," and the spark thus
kindled was soon fanned into a flame.
After the review at Finchley Common, Farquhar Shaw and Corporal
Malcolm MacPherson were drinking in a tavern, when three English
gentlemen entered, and seating themselves at the same table, entered
into conversation, by praising the regiment, their garb, their
country, and saying those compliments which are so apt to win the
heart of a Scotchman when far from home; and the glens of the Gael
seemed then indeed, far, far away, to the imagination of the simple
souls who manned the Black Watch in 1743.
Both Farquhar and the corporal being gentlemen, wore the wing of the
eagle in their bonnets, and were well educated, and spoke English
with tolerable fluency.
"I would that his Majesty had seen us, however," said the corporal;
"we have had a long march south from our own country on a bootless
errand."
"Can you possibly be so simple as to believe that the King cared a
rush on the subject?" asked a gentleman, with an incredulous smile;
for he and his companions, like many others who hovered about these
new soldiers, were Jacobites and political incendiaries.
"What mean you, sir?" demanded MacPherson, with surprise.
"Why, you simpleton, that story of the King wishing to see you was
all a tale of a tub--a snare."
"A snare!"
"Yea--a pretext of the ministry to lure you to this distance from
your own country, and then transport you bodily for life."
"To where?"
"Oh, that matters little--perhaps to the American plantations."
"Or, to Botany Bay," suggested another, maliciously; "but take
another jorum of brandy, and fear nothing; wherever you go, it can't
well be a worse place than your own country."
"Thanks, gentlemen," replied Farquhar, loftily, while his hands
played nervously with his dirk; "we want no more of your brandy."
"Believe me, sirs," resumed their informant and tormentor, "the real
object of the ministry is to get as many fighting men, Jacobites and
so forth, out of the Highlands as possible. This is merely part of a
new system of government."
"Sirs," exclaimed Farquhar, drawing his dirk with an air of gravity
and determination which caused his new friends at once to put the
table between him and them, "will you swear this upon the dirk?"
"How--why?"
"Upon the Holy Iron--we know no oath more binding," continued the
Highlander, with an expression of quiet entreaty.
"I'll swear it by the Holy Poker, or anything you please," replied
the Englishman, re-assured on finding the Celt had no hostile
intentions. "'Tis all a fact," he continued, winking to his
companions, "for so my good friend Phil Yorke, the Lord Chancellor,
who expects soon to be Earl of Hardwick, informed me."
The eyes of the corporal flashed with indignation; and Farquhar
struck his forehead as the memory of his terrible dream in the
haunted glen rushed upon his memory.
"Oh! yes," said a third gentleman, anxious to add his mite to the
growing mischief; "it is all a Whig plot of which you are the
victims, as our kind ministry hope that you will all die off like
sheep with the rot; or like the Marine Corps; or the Invalids, the
old 41st, in Jamaica."
"They dare not deceive us!" exclaimed MacPherson, striking the
basket-hilt of his claymore
"Dare not!"
"No."
"Indeed--why?"
"For in the country of the clans fifty thousand claymores would be on
the grindstone to avenge us!"
A laugh followed this outburst.
"King George made you rods to scourge your own countrymen, and now,
as useless rods, you are to be flung into the fire," said the first
speaker, tauntingly.
"By God and Mary!" began MacPherson, again laying a hand on his sword
with sombre fury.
"Peace, Malcolm," interposed Farquhar; "the Saxon is right, and we
have been fooled. Bithidh gach ni mar is aill Dhiu. (All things
must be as God will have them.) Let us seek the Reicudan Dhu, and
woe to the Saxon clowns and to that German churl, their King, if they
have deceived us!"
On the march back to London, MacPherson and Farquhar Shaw brooded
over what they had heard at Finchley; while to other members of the
regiment similar communications had been made, and thus, ere
nightfall, every soldier of the Black Watch felt assured that he had
been entrapped by a royal falsehood, which the sudden, and to them
unaccountable, departure of George II. to Hanover seemed beyond all
doubt to confirm.
"In those whom he knows," according to General Stewart, "a Highlander
will repose perfect confidence, and if they are his superiors will be
obedient and respectful; but ere a stranger can obtain this
_confidence_, he must show that he _merits_ it. When once it is
given, it is constant and unreserved; but if confidence be lost, no
man is more suspicious. Every officer of a Highland regiment, on his
first joining the corps, must have observed in his little
transactions with the men how minute and strict they are in every
item; but when once confidence is established, scrutiny ceases, and
his word or nod of assent is as good as his bond. In the case in
question (the Black Watch), notwithstanding the arts which were
practised to mislead the men, they proceeded to no violence, but
believing themselves deceived and betrayed, the only remedy that
occurred to them was to get back to their own country."
The memory of the commercial ruin at Darien, and of the massacre at
Glencoe (the Cawnpore of King William), were too fresh in every
Scottish breast not to make the flame of discontent and mistrust
spread like wildfire; and thus, long before the bell of St. Paul's
had tolled the hour of midnight, the conviction that he had been
BETRAYED was firmly rooted in the mind of every soldier of the Black
Watch, and measures to baffle those who had deluded and lured them so
far from their native mountains were at once proposed, and as quickly
acted upon.
At this crisis, the dream of Farquhar was constantly before him, as a
foreboding of the terrors to come, and he strove to thrust it from
him; but the words of that terrible warning--a man may return from an
expedition, but never from the grave--seemed ever in his ears!
On the night after the review, the whole regiment, except its
officers, most of whom knew what was on the tapis, assembled at
twelve o'clock on a waste common near Highgate. The whole were in
heavy marching order; and by direction of Corporal Malcolm
MacPherson, after carefully priming and loading with ball-cartridge,
they commenced their march in silence and secresy and with all speed
for Scotland--a wild, daring, and romantic attempt, for they were
heedless and ignorant of the vast extent of hostile country that lay
between them and their homes, and scarcely know the route to pursue.
They had now but three common ideas;--to keep together, to resist to
the last, and to march _north_.
With some skill and penetration they avoided the two great highways,
and marched by night from wood to wood, concealing themselves by day
so well, that for some time no one knew how or where they had gone,
though, by the Lords Justices orders had been issued to all officers
commanding troops between London and the Scottish Borders to overtake
or intercept them; but the 19th May arrived before tidings reached
the metropolis that the Black Watch, one thousand strong, had passed
Northampton, and a body of Marshal Wade's Horse (now better known as
the 3rd or Prince of Wales's Dragoon Guards) overtook them, when
faint by forced and rapid marches, by want of food, of sleep and
shelter, the unfortunate regiment had entered Ladywood, about four
miles from the market town of Oundle-on-the-Nen, and had, as usual,
concealed themselves in a spacious thicket, which, by nine o'clock in
the evening, was completely environed by strong columns of English
cavalry under General Blakeney.
Captain Ball, of Wade's Horse, approached their bivouac in the dusk,
bearer of a flag of truce, and was received by the poor fellows with
every respect, and Farquhar Shaw, as interpreter for his comrades,
heard his demands, which were, "that the whole battalion should lay
down its arms, and surrender at discretion as mutineers."
"Hitherto we have conducted ourselves quietly and peacefully in the
land of those who have deluded and wronged us, even as they wronged
and deluded our forefathers," replied Farquhar; "but it may not be so
for one day more. Look upon us, sir; we are famished, worn, and
desperate. It would move the heart of a stone to know all we have
suffered by hunger and by thirst, even in this land of plenty."
"The remedy is easy," said the captain.
"Name it, sir."
"Submit."
"We have no such word in our mother-tongue, then how shall I
translate it to my comrades, so many of whom are gentlemen?"
"That is your affair, not mine. I give you but the terms dictated by
General Blakeney."
"Let the general send us a written promise."
"Written?" reiterated the captain, haughtily.
"By his own hand," continued the Highlander, emphatically; "for here
in this land of strangers we know not whom to trust when our King has
deceived us."
"And to what must the general pledge himself?"
"That our arms shall not be taken away, and that a free pardon be
given to all."
"Otherwise----"
"We will rather be cut to pieces."
"This is your decision?"
"It is," replied Farquhar, sternly.
"Be assured it is a rash one."
"I weigh my words, Saxon, ere I speak them. No man among us will
betray his comrade; we are all for one and one for all in the ranks
of the Reicudan Dhu!"
The captain reported the result of his mission to the general, who,
being well aware that the Highlanders had been entrapped by the
Government on one hand, and inflamed to revolt by Jacobite emissaries
on the other, was humanely willing to temporize with them, and sent
the captain to them once more.
"Surrender yourselves prisoners," said Ball; "lay down your arms, and
the general will use all his influence in your favour with the Lords
Justices."
"We know of no Lords Justices," they replied "We acknowledge no
authority but the officers who speak our mother-tongue, and our
native chiefs who share our blood. To be without arms, in our
country, is in itself to be dishonoured."
"Is this still the resolution of your comrades?" asked Captain Ball.
"It is, on my honour as a gentleman and soldier," replied Farquhar.
The English captain smiled at these words, for he knew not the men
with whom he had to deal.
"Hitherto, my comrade," said he, "I have been your friend, and the
friend of the regiment, and am still anxious to do all I can to save
you; but, if you continue in open revolt one hour longer, surrounded
as you all are by the King's troops, not a man of you can survive the
attack, and be assured that even I, for one, will give quarter to
none! Consider well my words--you may survive banishment for a time,
but from the grave there is no return."
"The words of my dream!" exclaimed Farquhar, in an agitated tone of
voice; "_Bithidh duil ri fear feachd, ach cha bhi duil ri fear lic_.
God and Mary, how come they from the lips of this Saxon captain?"
The excitement of the regiment was now so great that Captain Ball
requested of Farquhar that two Highlanders should conduct him safely
from the wood. Two duinewassals of the Clan Chattan, both corporals,
named MacPherson, stepped forward, blew the priming from their pans,
and accompanied him to the outposts of his own men--the Saxon _Seidar
Dearg_, or Red English soldiers, as the Celts named them.
Here, on parting from them, the good captain renewed his entreaties
and promises, which so far won the confidence of the corporals, that,
after returning to the regiment, the whole body, in consequence of
their statements, agreed to lay down their arms and submit the event
to Providence and a court-martial of officers, believing implicitly
in the justice of their cause and the ultimate adherence of the
Government to the letters of local service under which they had
enlisted.
Farquhar Shaw and the two corporals of the Clan Chattan nobly offered
their own lives as a ransom for the honour and liberties of the
regiment, but their offer was declined; for so overwhelming was the
force against them, that all in the battalion were alike at the mercy
of the ministry. On capitulating, they were at once surrounded by
strong bodies of horse, foot, and artillery, with their field-pieces
grape-shotted; and the most severe measures were faithlessly and
cruelly resorted to by those in authority and those in whom they
trusted. While, in defiance of all stipulation and treaty with the
Highlanders, the main body of the regiment was marched under escort
towards Kent, to embark for Flanders, two hundred privates, chiefly
gentlemen or cadets of good family, were selected from its ranks and
sentenced to banishment, or service for life in Minorca, Georgia, and
the Leeward Isles. The two corporals, Samuel and Malcolm MacPherson,
with Farquhar Shaw, were marched back to London, to meet a more
speedy, and to men of such spirit as theirs, a more welcome fate.
The examinations of some of these poor fellows prove how they had
been deluded into service for the Line.
"I did not desert, sirs," said John Stuart, a gentleman of the House
of Urrard, and private in Campbell of Carrick's company. "I repel
the insinuation," he continued, with pride; "I wished only to go back
to my father's roof and to my own glen, because the inhospitable
Saxon churls abused my country and ridiculed my dress. We had no
leader; we placed no man over the rest."
"I am neither a Catholic nor a false Lowland Whig," said another
private--Gregor Grant, of the family of Bothiemurchus; "but I am a
true man, and ready to serve the King, though his actions have proved
him a liar! You have said, sirs, that I am afraid to go to Flanders.
I am a Highlander, and never yet saw the man I was afraid of. The
Saxons told me I was to be transported to the American plantations to
work with black slaves. Such was not our bargain with King George.
We were but a Watch to serve along the Highland Border, and to keep
broken clans from the Braes of Lochaber."
"We were resolved not to be tricked," added Farquhar Shaw. "We will
meet the French or Spaniards in any land you please; but we will die,
sirs, rather than go, like Saxon rogues, to hoe sugar in the
plantations."
"What is your faith?" asked the president of the court-martial.
"The faith of my fathers a thousand years before the hateful sound of
the Saxon drum was heard upon the Highland Border!"
"You mean that you have lived----"
"As, please God and the Blessed Mary, I shall die--a Catholic and a
Highland gentleman; stooping to none and fearing none----"
"_None_, say you?"
"Save Him who sits upon the right hand of His Father in Heaven."
As Farquhar said this with solemn energy, all the prisoners took off
their bonnets and bowed their heads with a religious reverence which
deeply impressed the court, but failed to save them.
On the march to the Tower of London, Farquhar was the most resolute
and composed of his companions in fetters and misfortune; but on
coming in sight of that ancient fortress, his firmness forsook him,
the blood rushed back upon his heart, and he became deadly pale; for
in a moment he recognised the castle of his strange dream--the castle
having a square tower, with four vanes and turrets--and then the
whole scene of his foreboding vision, when far away in lone Lochaber,
came again upon his memory, while the voice of the warning spirit
hovered again in his eat, and he knew that the hour of his end was
pursuing him!
And now, amid crowds of country clowns and a rabble from the lowest
purlieus of London, who mocked and reviled them, the poor Highlanders
were marched through the streets of that mighty metropolis (to them,
who had been reared in the mountain solitudes of the Gaël, a place of
countless wonders!) and were thrust into the Tower as prisoners under
sentence.
Early on the morning of the 12th July, 1743, when the sun was yet
below the dim horizon, and a frowsy fog that lingered on the river
was mingling with the city's smoke to spread a gloom over the
midsummer morning, all London seemed to be pouring from her many
avenues towards Tower Hill, where an episode of no ordinary interest
was promised to the sight-loving Cockneys--a veritable military
execution, with all its stern terrors and grim solemnity.
All the troops in London were under arms, and long before daybreak
had taken possession of an ample space enclosing Tower Hill; and
there, conspicuous above all by their high and absurd sugar-loaf
caps, were the brilliantly accoutred English and Scots Horse
Grenadier Guards, the former under Viscount Cobham, and the latter
under Lieutenant-General John Earl of Rothes, K.T., and Governor of
Duncannon; the Coldstream Guards; the Scots Fusiliers; and a sombre
mass in the Highland garb of dark-green tartan, whom they surrounded
with fixed bayonets.
These last were the two hundred men of the Reicudan Dhu selected for
banishment, previous to which they were compelled to behold the
death, or--as they justly deemed it--the deliberate murder under
trust, of three brave gentlemen, their comrades.
The gates of the Tower revolved, and then the craped and muffled
drums of the Scots Fusilier Guards were heard beating a dead march
before those who were "to return to Lochaber no more." Between two
lines of Yeomen of the Guard, who faced inwards, the three prisoners
came slowly forth, surrounded by an escort with fixed bayonets, each
doomed man marching behind his coffin, which was borne on the
shoulders of four soldiers. On approaching the parade, each politely
raised his bonnet and bowed to the assembled multitude.
"Courage, gentlemen," said Farquhar Shaw; "I see no gallows here. I
thank God we shall not die a dog's death!"
"'Tis well," replied MacPherson, "for honour is more precious than
refined gold."
The murmur of the multitude gradually subsided and died away, like a
breeze that passes through a forest, leaving it silent and still, and
then not a sound was heard but the baleful rolling of the muffled
drums and the shrill but sweet cadence of the fifes. Then came the
word, _Halt!_ breaking sharply the silence of the crowded arena, and
the hollow sound of the three empty coffins, as they were laid on the
ground, at the distance of thirty paces from the firing party.
Now the elder brother patted the shoulder of the other, as he smiled
and said---
"Courage--a little time and all will be over--our spirits shall be
with those of our brave forefathers."
"No coronach will be cried over us here, and no cairn will mark in
other times where we sleep in the land of the stranger."
"Brother," replied the other, in the same forcible language, "we can
well spare alike the coronach and the cairn, when to our kinsmen we
can bequeath the dear task of avenging us!"
"If that bequest be valued, then we shall not die in vain."
Once again they all raised their bonnets and uttered a pious
invocation; for now the sun was up, and in the Highland fashion--a
fashion old as the days of Baal--they greeted him.
"Are you ready?" asked the provost-marshal.
"All ready," replied Farquhar; "_moch-eirigh 'luain, a ni'n t-suain
'mhairt._"*
* Early rising on Monday gives a sound sleep on Tuesday.--see
MacIntosh's _Gaelic Proverbs_.
This, to them, fatal 12th of July Was a _Monday_; so the proverb was
solemnly applicable.
Wan, pale, and careworn they looked, but their eyes were bright,
their steps steady, their bearing erect and dignified. They felt
themselves victims and martyrs, whose fate would find a terrible echo
in the Scottish Highlands; and need I add, that echo _was heard_,
when two years afterwards Prince Charles unfurled his standard in
Glenfinnan? Thus inspired by pride of birth, of character, and of
country--by inborn bravery and conscious innocence, at this awful
crisis, they gazed around them without quailing, and exhibited a
self-possession which excited the pity and admiration of all who
beheld them.
The clock struck the fatal hour at last!
"It is my doom," exclaimed Farquhar; "the hour of my end hath
followed me."
They all embraced each other, and declined having their eyes bound
up, but stood boldly, each at the foot of his coffin, confronting the
levelled muskets of thirty privates of the Grenadier Guards, and they
died like the brave men they had lived. One brief paragraph in _St.
James's Chronicle_ thus records their fate.
"On Monday, the 12th, at six o'clock in the morning, Samuel and
Malcolm MacPherson, corporals, and Farquhar Shaw, a private-man,
three of the Highland deserters, were shot upon the parade of the
Tower pursuant to the sentence of the court martial. The rest of the
Highland prisoners were drawn out to see the execution, and joined in
their prayers with great earnestness. They behaved with perfect
resolution and propriety. Their bodies were put into three coffins
by three of the prisoners, their clansmen and namesakes, and buried
in one grave, near the place of execution."
Such is the matter-of-fact record of a terrible fate!
To the slaughter of these soldiers, and the wicked breach of faith
perpetrated by the Government, may be traced much of that distrust
which characterized the Seaforth Highlanders and other clan regiments
in their mutinies and revolts in later years; and nothing inspired
greater hatred in the hearts of those who "rose" for Prince Charles
in 1745, than the story of the deception and _murder_ (for so they
named it) of the three soldiers of the Reicudan Dhu by King George at
London. "There must have been something more than common in the case
and character of these unfortunate men," to quote the good and
gallant old General Stewart of Garth, "as Lord John Murray, who was
afterwards colonel of the regiment, had portraits of them hung in his
dining-room."
This was the first episode in the history of the Black Watch, which
soon after covered itself with glory by the fury of its charge at
Fontenoy, and on the field of Dettingen exulted that among the dead
who lay there was General Clayton, "the Sassenach" whose specious
story first lured them from the Birks of Aberfeldy.
II.
THE SEVEN GRENADIERS.
"As the regiment expects to be engaged with the enemy to-morrow, the
women and baggage will be sent to the rear. For this duty, Ensign
James Campbell, of Glenfalloch."