The Prince who believed himself invincible because he had not
yet been beaten, defied by enemies whom he thoroughly despised,
seeing at their head the son of the rival of his father;
proud and haughty as he was, badly advised, perhaps betrayed,
forgetting at this moment every other object, could not bring
himself to decline battle even for a single day. I requested
a quarter of an hour’s private audience. There I threw myself
in vain at his feet. In vain I represented to him that he was
still without half his army; that the great part of those who
had returned had no longer targets--a kind of defensive armour
without which they were unable to fight with advantage; that
they were all worn out with fatigue by a long march made on the
previous night, and for two days many of them had not eaten at
all for want of bread; that it was necessary to fall back to
defend Inverness; that it would be even more prudent to abandon
that town, and to place between the enemy and ourselves the
river near which this town is built; that if the worst came
to the worst, we might betake ourselves to the neighbouring
mountains--there it was that he would be truly invincible; there
we would remain masters of that part of the coast, at which
supplies of arms and of money ought to be arriving, and as soon
as these reached us, we should march towards England by that
same coast as had already been arranged; that the more the enemy
should advance towards us, the greater would be their difficulty
to retrace their steps so as to get to London before us; the
capture of that great city should be made his one object, for
successes that he might achieve elsewhere would have no decisive
value, while, in a single hour, all would be lost without hope of
recovery if he should chance to be beaten.
In the end, finding him immovable in the resolve he had taken
to fight at any cost, I made my desire yield to my duty. I left
him for the first time. I retired in haste to Inverness, there
to burn all my papers, and there to think over the means of
preserving for your Majesty that portion of the [French] troops
which might survive the action. I saw before the end of the day,
the most striking spectacle of human weakness--the Prince was
vanquished in an instant; never was a defeat more complete than
his.