from a fountain that gurgled from a rock near him, exclaimed--
"May this water prove my poison, if I will have any arbiter but my
sword, or any terms but an absolute surrender of the whole island!"
Then my grand-uncle Lauchlan Barroch uttered a cry of terror--for
Duairt in his anger had forgotten the prediction, and drank of "the
well at the head of Loch Groynard, where one Maclean was to
fall"--and there, in ten minutes after, he was slain by a MacDonald,
who by a single blow of a claymore swept his head off his shoulders.
Long and bloody was the battle that ensued when the MacDonalds rushed
down the hill to close with the Clan Gillian, who were routed,
leaving eighty duinewassals and two hundred soldiers, with their
chief, dead upon the field. Ronald Maclean of the Drums--a little
tower upon the peninsula of Loch Suinard--was shot by an arrow, and
not one who left Duairt with "a fasting stomach," escaped;--why, God
alone knows; for though my grand-uncle Lauchlan Barroch retreated
with a remnant of our people to the birlinns, he was mortally wounded
by a musket-shot. Of the Clan Donald, only thirty men were killed
and sixty wounded. Among the latter was their young
chief--afterwards a general of the Scots Brigade in Holland--who was
found on the field with an arrow in his breast.
I have heard my mother say that all that night the watchman on the
keep of Duairt heard cries and moans coming from the seaward, though
the castle was more than fifty miles distant from Groynard; for it
seemed as if the spirits of the air brought the sounds of battle on
their wings from the fatal shore of Islay. Late that night, the
hoofs of a galloping horse were heard reverberating in the glen and
ringing on the roadway that led to Duairt; and soon a horse and rider
were seen in the moonlight approaching rapidly, the hoofs of the
steed striking fire from the flinty path.
"A messenger approaches!" cried the watchman, and in an instant the
lady of Duairt and all her household were at the gate; but how great
was their terror when they perceived that the approaching horseman
was headless, though wearing the arms, plaid, and trews of a chief!
Up, up the ascent came the terrible vision, galloping in the pale
moonlight, but passing on, it disappeared in the glen which led to
the blasted oak where Sir Lauchlan had received his last unearthly
warning.
Be this story false or true, there are in our regiment a hundred
brave men of trust and honour, who can swear to having seen this
spectre gallop up to Duairt gate on the anniversary of the battle of
Groynard, or when any calamity overhangs the Clan Gillian. Sir
Lauchlan--the heavens be his bed to-night!--sleeps in Torosay Kirk,
yet that headless horseman may appear to-morrow on the shore of Mull,
for many a bonnet will be on the turf, many a plaid in our ranks dyed
red in the wearer's blood--and I have seven sons in the field! But
our fate is in the hands of God, so let our hearts be stout and true,
for He will never fail us, though we may be false to ourselves. Hand
round the demijohn, Findlay, my brave lad--and rouse the brands,
Farquhar, for the moon has sunk behind the hills, and our fire is
getting low.
So ended this legend of Celtic diablerie, to which I had listened
attentively, for the air and manner of the venerable narrator were
very impressive, as he devoutly believed it all; but Captain Campbell
of Finab, who affected to consider it, as he said, "a tale of a tub,"
was as much startled as I by the issue of the next day's engagement
with the enemy.
By dawn next day the wild pibroch "Come to me and I will give you
flesh," that fierce invitation to the wolf and raven, rang in the
allied bivouac, as his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland took
post at Maulpré in view of the French position, and ordered a
squadron of each regiment, with six battalions of foot, five hundred
pioneers, a body of Austrian hussars, and six pieces of cannon, all
under the command of the veteran Lieutenant-General Sir James
Campbell, K.B., Governor of the Castle of Edinburgh, to drive the
enemy out of the defiles of the wood of Barri. This movement was the
prelude to the disastrous battle of Fontenoy, where Campbell was
killed.
The Guards and we--the old Black Watch--began the engagement at
Veson--the well-known affair of outposts. There the Dauphin
commanded, and his soldiers were the flower of the French line, a
splendid brigade, all clad in white coats laced with gold, long
ruffles, tied perriwigs, and little plumed hats. They were
intrenched breast high, and defended by an abattis.
We fell furiously on; the Scottish Foot-guards with their clubbed
muskets and fixed bayonets; the Black Watch with swords, pistols, and
dirks, and the struggle was terrible, as the action ensued at a place
which was swept by the fire of a redoubt mounted with cannon and
manned by six hundred of the noble Regiment de Picardie. Old Captain
Maclean, at the head of his grenadiers and with his seven sons by his
side, rushed up the glacis to storm the palisades.
"Open pouches--blow fuses--dirk and claymore, fall on!" were his
rapid orders, as the hand-grenades fell like a hissing shower over
the breastwork, from which a sheet of lead tore through the ranks of
our stormers. Maclean fell at the foot of the palisades with one
hand upon them and the other on his sword. All his sons perished
with him, falling over each other in a gory heap as they strove to
protect his body. The last who fell was the youngest, Angus Dhu,
who, after slaying a French field officer, had driven a bayonet into
his head, thrusting it through the ears; using it as a lever, he
strove furiously to twist, tear, or wrench off the Frenchman's skull
as a trophy of vengeance; for the young Celt was beside himself with
grief and rage, when a volley of bullets from the white-coated
Regiment de Picardie laid him on the grass to rise no more, just as
Sir James Campbell carried the intrenchment sword in hand, and
totally routed or destroyed the soldiers of the Dauphin.
Whether old Captain Maclean and his sons marched that morning without
breaking their fast--a fatal omission apparently in any of the Clan
Gillian--I have no means of ascertaining; but, as Ronald MacAra, who
bore their provisions, was killed by a stray bullet about daybreak,
it was generally believed so by the regiment, as this faithful
henchman of the captain was found dead with a full havresack under
his right arm, and the weird story of the seven fated grenadiers was
long remembered by the Black Watch, when the greater events of the
rout at Fontenoy and the evacuation of Flanders were forgotten.
III.
THE LOST REGIMENT.
A LOVE STORY.
I have been told that a better or a braver fellow than Louis Charters
of ours never drew a sword. He was, as the regimental records show,
captain of our 7th company, and major in the army when the corps
embarked for service in the _Illinois_ in 1763; but prior to that his
story was a strange and romantic one. Louis was a cadet of one of
the oldest houses in Scotland, the Charters of Amisfield; thus he was
a lineal descendant of the famous Red Riever. Early in life he had
been gazetted to an ensigncy in Montgomery's Highlanders, the _old_
77th, when that corps was raised in 1757 by Colonel Archibald
Montgomery (afterwards Earl of Eglinton and Governor of Dumbarton),
among the Frasers, Macdonalds, Camerons, Macleans, and other Jacobite
clans.
Charters was a handsome and enthusiastic soldier, full of the old
chivalry and romance of the Highlands; but, at the time he joined the
Black Watch, with the remnant of Montgomery's regiment, which
volunteered into our ranks in 1763, he was a pale, moody, and
disappointed man, who had no hope in the service, but that it might
procure him an honourable death under the balls of an enemy.
The story of Louis Charters was as follows:--
In January, 1757, he was recruiting at Perth for the 77th, when it
was his good, or perhaps ill fortune, to become attached to a young
lady possessed of great attractions, whom he had met at a ball, and
who was the only daughter of the Laird of Tullynairn, a gentleman of
property in the vicinity of the "Fair City."
Emmy Stuart was four-and-twenty, and Louis was three years her
senior. She was tall and beautiful in face and figure; her hair was
chesnut, her eyes hazel, and there was a charming droop in their lids
which enhanced all her varieties of expression, especially the droll,
and lent to them a seductive beauty, most dangerous to the peace of
all who engaged in a two-handed flirtation with her; for although
that word was unknown to the fair maids of Perth in those days, yet
they flirted nevertheless, and none more than the lively Emmy Stuart.
Though her charming figure was almost hidden by her frightful hoop
petticoat, and her beautiful hair by white powder--but that, if
possible, increased the brilliance of her eyes and complexion--none
knew better than Emmy the piquant mode of arranging her capuchin, of
holding a vinaigrette under her pretty pink nostrils; and your
great-grandmother, my good reader, never surpassed her in the secret
art of putting those devilish little patches on her soft cheek, or
about her bright roguish eyes, in such a manner as to give double
point to those glances of drollery or disdain in which all ladies
then excelled; or, worse still, an amorous languish, levelled _à la
Francaise_, in such a mode as would have demolished a whole
battalion; while the adorable _embonpoint_ of her figure was somewhat
increased by the arrangement of her busk, her jewelled necklace, her
embossed gold watch and _etui_, which no lady was ever without, and
which Emmy of course carried at her waist.
When she left the assembly, there was always such a crush of gay
gallants about the door to see her depart, that Louis seldom got her
safely into her sedan or coach without swords being drawn, and some
unfortunate being run through the body, or having a few inches of a
flaming link thrust down his throat; for the "fine fellows" of those
days were not over-particular in their mode of resentment when a
pretty woman was concerned. The "Blood," or "Buck," or "Maccaroni,"
of the last century was a very different fellow from the peaceful
unmitigated "snob" of the present day.
It was no wonder that Louis loved Emmy; the only marvel would have
been had he proved invulnerable; so he fell before a glance of her
bright hazel eyes, as Dunkirk fell before the allied armies. But
Emmy was so gay in manner, distinguishing none in particular, that
Charters was often in an agony of anxiety to learn whether she would
ever love him; and moreover, there was one of ours, a Captain
Douglas, recruiting in Perth, who possessed a most annoyingly
handsome person, and who hovered more about the beautiful Emmy than
our friend of the 77th could have wished. To make the matter worse,
Douglas was an old lover, having met Emmy at a ball three years
before, and been shot clean through the heart by one of her most
seductive glances.
Emmy was so full of repartee and drollery, that though Charters was
always making the most desperate love to her, he was compelled to
mask his approaches under cover of pretty banter, or mere flirtation;
thus leaving him an honourable retreat in case of a sharp repulse;
for he could not yet trust himself to opening the trenches in
earnest, lest she might laugh at him, as she had done at others; and
Louis knew enough of the world to be aware, that a lover once laughed
at is lost, and may as well quit the field.
So passed away the summer of--I am sorry to give so antique an
epoch--1757. The snow began to powder the bare scalps of the
Highland frontier; the woods of Scone and Kinnoull became stripped
and leafless, and their russet spoils where whirled along the green
inches and the reedy banks of the Tay; then the hoar frost wove its
thistle blades on the windows in the morning, and our lovers found
that a period was put to their rambles in the evening, when the sun
was setting behind the darkening mountains of the west.
Now came the time to ballot for partners for the winter season; and
then it was that Louis first learned to his joy that he was not
altogether indifferent to the laughing belle. The fashion of
balloting for partners was a very curious one, and now it is happily
abolished in Scottish society; for only imagine one's sensations,
good reader, on being condemned to dance everything with the same
girl, and with her only, during a whole winter season! Besides, as
the devil would be sure to have it so, one would always have the girl
one did not want. The laws respecting partners were strictly
enforced, and when once settled or fairly handfasted to a dancing
girl for the season, a gentleman was on no account permitted to
change, even for a single night, on pain of being shot or run through
the body by her nearest male relative.
In the beginning of the winter season, the appointment for partners
usually took place in each little coterie before the opening of the
first ball or assembly. A gentleman's triple-cocked beaver was
unflapped, and the fans of all the ladies present were slily put
therein; the gentlemen were then blindfolded, and each selected a
fan; then she to whom it belonged, however ill they might be paired
or assorted, was his partner for the season. Such was the strange
law, most rigidly enforced in the days of Miss Nicholas, who was then
the mirror of fashion and presiding goddess of the Edinburgh
assemblies.
When the time for balloting came, great was the anxiety of poor Louis
Charters lest his beloved Emmy might fall to the lot of that
provoking fellow Douglas of ours; but judge of his joy when Emmy told
him, with the most arch and beautiful smile that ever lighted up a
pair of lovely hazel eyes, how to distinguish _her fan_ from amid the
eighteen or twenty that were deposited in the hat.
"Now, my dear Mr. Charters," said she in a whisper, "I never
pretended to be ferociously honest, and thus my unfortunate little
tongue is always getting me into some frightful scrape; but I shall
give you a token by which you will know _my_ fan. Does that make you
supremely happy?"
"Happy, Emmy? Dear Emmy, more than ever you will give me credit for!"
"Do not be sure of that, and do not make a scene. Quick now, lest
some one anticipate you."
"But the fan----"
"Has a silver ball in lieu of a tassel. Now go and prosper."
Thus indicated, he soon selected the fan and drew it forth, to the
annoyance of Douglas, who beheld him present it to the fair owner;
and her hazel eye sparkled with joy as Charters kissed her hand with
a matchless air of ardour and respect. Honest Charters felt quite
tipsy with joy. Emmy had now shown that he was _not_ without
interest to her; and was not this a charming admission from a young
beauty, who could command any number of wedding-rings at any hour she
pleased? Thus, according to the witty Sir Alexander Boswell, who
(for one of his squibs) was shot one morning by Stuart of Dunearn,
"Each lady's fan a chosen Damon bore,
With care selected many a day before."
With the dancing of a whole season before them, the reader may easily
imagine the result. All the tabbies, gossips, and coteries of the
fair city had long since assigned them to each other; and though the
mere magic of linking two names constantly together has done much to
cajole boys and girls into a love for each other, no such magic was
required here, for Emmy, I have said, was four-and-twenty, and Louis
was three years her senior.
Finding himself completely outwitted, and that the fan of a
demoiselle of somewhat mature age and rather unattractive appearance
had fallen to his lot, Willy Douglas "evacuated Flanders," _i.e._,
forsook the ballroom, and bent all his energies to recruiting for the
second battalion of the Black Watch, leaving the fair field
completely to his more successful rival.
But though assigned to Charters by the fashion of the time, and by
her own pretty manoeuvre, as a partner for the season, our gay
coquette would not yet acknowledge herself conquered; and Charters
felt with some anxiety that she was amusing herself with him, and
that the time was drawing near when he would have to rejoin his
regiment, which was then expecting the route for America, over the
fortunes of which the clouds of war were gathering. Besides, Emmy
had a thousand little whims and teasing ways about her, all of which
it was his daily pleasure, and sometimes his task, to gratify and to
soothe; and often they had a quarrel--a real quarrel--for two whole
days. These were two centuries to Louis; but then it was of course
made up again; and Emmy, like an Empress, gave him her dimpled hand
to kiss, reminding him, with a coy smile, that
"A lover's quarrel was but love renewed."
"True, Emmy; but I would infinitely prefer a love that required no
renewal," said Charters, with a sigh.
"How tiresome you become! You often make me think of Willy Douglas.
Well, and where shall we find this remarkable love you speak of?"
"Ah, Emmy, you read it in every eye that turns to yours; it fills the
very air you breathe, and sheds a purity and a beauty over
everything."
"Then you always see beauty here?"
"Oh, Emmy, I always see _you_, and you only; but you are still
bantering."
"Do you know, Captain Charters, that I do not think it polite to tell
a woman that she is beautiful?" said Emmy, pretending to pout, while
her eyelids drooped, and she played with her fan.
"To tell any ordinary woman that she was beautiful, might offend her,
if she was sensible; but to tell you so, though you have the sense of
a thousand, must be pleasing, because you are conscious of your great
beauty, Emmy, and know its fatal power--but alas! too well."
"What!" exclaimed Emmy, her eyes flashing with triumph and fun, "I am
beautiful, then?"
"Too much so for my peace. Beautiful! Oh, Emmy Stuart, you are
dangerously so. But you trifle with me cruelly, Emmy. Think how
time is gliding away--and a day must come when I shall be no longer
here."
Her charming eyelids drooped again.
"A time--well, but remember there is an Italian poet who says,
All time is lost that is not spent in love."
Charters gazed at her anxiously, and after a momentary pause, with
all his soul in his eyes and on his tongue, he said:--
"Listen to me, dearest Emmy. Of all things necessary to conduce to
man's happiness, love is the principal. It purifies and sheds a
glory, a halo over everything, but chiefly around the beloved object
herself. It awakens and matures every slumbering virtue in the
heart, and causes us to become as pure and noble as a man may be, to
make him more worthy of the woman we love. Such, dear Emmy, is my
love for you."
This time Emmy heard him in silence, with downcast eyes, a blush
playing upon her beautiful cheek, a smile hovering on her alluring
little mouth, with her breast heaving and her pretty fingers playing
nervously with her fan and the frills of her busk.
This conversation may be taken as a specimen of a hundred that our
lovers had on every convenient opportunity, when Louis was all
truthful earnestness--devotion and anxiety pervading his voice and
manner; while Emmy was all fun, drollery, and coquetry, yet loving
him nevertheless.
But a crisis came, when Charters received, by the hand of his chief
friend, Lieutenant Alaster Mackenzie, of the house of Seaforth, a
command to rejoin his regiment, then under orders to embark at
Greenock, to share in the expedition which Brigadier-General Forbes
of Pittencrief was to lead against Fort du Quesne, one of the three
great enterprises undertaken in 1758 against the French possessions
in North America. How futile were the tears of Emmy now!
"Though divided by the sea, dear Louis, our hope will be one, like
our love," she sobbed in his ear.
"Think--think of me often, very often, as I shall think of you."
"I do not doubt you, Louis. I now judge of your long, faithful, and
noble affection by my own. Oh, Louis! I have been foolish and
wilful; I have pained you often; but you will forgive your poor Emmy
now; she judges of your love by her own."
It was now too late to think of marriage. Emmy, subdued by the
prospect of a sudden and long separation from her winning and
handsome lover, and by a knowledge of the dangers that lay before him
by sea and land, the French bullet, the Indian arrow--all the risks
of war and pestilence--was almost broken-hearted on his departure.
The usual rings and locks of hair, the customary embraces, were
exchanged; the usual adieus and promises--solemn and sobbing promises
of mutual fidelity--were given, and so they parted; and with sad
Emmy's kiss yet lingering on his lips, and her undried tears on his
cheek, poor Charters found himself marching at the head of his party
of fifty recruits, while the drum and fife woke the echoes in the
romantic Wicks of Baiglie, as he bade a long adieu to beautiful
Perth, the home of his Emmy, and joined the headquarters of
Montgomery's Highlanders at Greenock.
But amid all the bustle of the embarkation in transports and ships of
war--such rough sea-going ships as Smollet has portrayed in his
"Roderick Random"--Charters saw ever before him the happy, bright,
and beautiful Emmy of the past year of joy; or as he had last seen
her, pale, crushed, and drooping in tears upon his breast--her
coquetry, her drollery, her laughter, all evaporated, and the true
loving and trusting woman alone remaining--her eyes full of
affection, and her voice tremulous with emotion.
Louis sailed for America with one of the finest regiments ever sent
forth by Scotland, which, in the war that preceded the declaration of
American independence, gave to the British ranks more than sixty
thousand soldiers*--few, indeed, of whom ever returned to lay their
bones in the land of their fathers.
* See "Present Conduct of the Chieftains Considered." Edinburgh:
1773. "Thus it appears," says an anti-ministerial pamphlet,
published in 1763, "that out of 756 officers commanding in the Army,
garrisons, &c., 210 are Scots: and out of 1930 in the Navy, 536 are
Scots." The table was thus:--
Army
Scots Generals . . . . . . 29
Scots Colonels . . . . . . 39
Scots Lieut.-Colonels . . 81
Scots Majors . . . . . . . 61
Navy
Scots Admirals . . . . . . 7
Scots Captains . . . . . . 81
Scots Masters . . . . . . 33
Scots Lieutenants . . . . 271
Scots Surgeons . . . . . . 144
Montgomery's Highlanders consisted of thirteen companies, making a
total of 1460 men, including 65 sergeants who were armed with
Lochaber axes, and 30 pipers armed with target and claymore.
Once more among his comrades, the spirit of Charters rose again; a
hundred kindly old regimental sympathies were awakened in his breast,
and, though the keen regret of his recent parting was fresh in his
memory, yet in the conversation of Alaster Mackenzie (who shared his
confidence), and in his military duty, he found a relief from
bitterness--a refuge which was denied to poor Emmy, who was left to
the solitude of her own thoughts and the bitter solace of her own
tears, amid those familiar scenes which only conduced to add
poignancy to her grief, and served hourly to recal some memory of the
absent, and those hours of love and pleasure that had fled, perhaps
never to return.
Meanwhile, Charters had not a thought or hope, desire or aim, but to
do his duty nobly in the field, to obtain promotion, and to return to
wed Emmy. A year--two years--yea, even three, though an eternity to
a lover, would soon pass amid the bustle and excitement of war and of
foreign service. Three years at most, then, would find him again at
the side of Emmy, hand in hand as of old. But, alas I as poor Robert
Burns says pithily--
"The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Gang aft ajee."
Though, our lovers had resolved that nothing should exceed the
regularity of their correspondence, and that the largest sheets of
foolscap should be duly filled with all they could wish each other to
say, in those days when regular mails, steamers, telegraphs, and
penny postage were yet concealed in Time's capacious wallet, neither
Emmy nor Charters had quite calculated upon the devious routes or the
strange and wild districts into which the troops were to penetrate,
or the chances of the Western war, with all its alternate glories and
disasters.