FOR a full month Prince Charles had been in Scotland. During that time a
body of men, amounting to a small army, had collected round him; his
manifestoes had been scattered all over the country (some were even
printed in Edinburgh), and yet the Government had taken no steps to
oppose him. News travelled slowly from the Highlands; it was August 9
before any _certain_ account of the Prince's landing was received in
Edinburgh. One bad fruit of the Union was that Scotch questions had to
be settled in London, and London was three days further away. Moreover,
at that greater distance, men had more difficulty in realising the
gravity of the situation. Conflicting rumours distracted the authorities
in Edinburgh; now it was declared that the Prince had landed with 10,000
French soldiers, at another time men ridiculed the idea of his getting a
single man to rise for him. Those who knew the country best took the
matter most seriously. The question of defence was not an easy one. At
that time almost all the available British troops were in Flanders,
fighting the French; the soldiers that were left in Scotland were either
old veterans, fit only for garrison duty, newly raised companies whose
mettle was untried, or local militias which were not to be trusted in
all cases. If the great lords who had raised and who commanded them
chose to declare for the Stuarts, they would carry their men with them.
The commander-in-chief, Sir John Cope, was not the man to meet so sudden
and so peculiar a crisis. He had nothing of a real general's love of
responsibility and power of decision. To escape blame and to conduct a
campaign according to the laws of war was all the old campaigner cared
for. When it was decided that he was to march with all the available
forces in Scotland into the Highlands he willingly obeyed, little
guessing what a campaign in the Highlands meant. Almost at once it was
found that it would be impossible to provide food for horses as well as
men. So the dragoons under Colonel Gardiner were left at Stirling. We
shall hear of them again. But his 1,500 infantry were weighted heavily
enough; a small herd of black cattle followed the army to provide them
with food, and more than 100 horses carried bread and biscuit. Confident
that the loyal clans would come in hundreds to join his standard, Cope
carried 700 stand of arms. By the time he reached Crieff, however, not a
single volunteer had come in, and the stand of arms was sent back. Cope
followed one of the great military roads which led straight to Fort
Augustus, and had been made thirty years before by General Wade. Now
across that road, some ten miles short of the fort, lies a high
precipitous hill, called Corryarack. Up this mountain wall the road is
carried in seventeen sharp zigzags; so steep is it that the country
people call it the 'Devil's Staircase.' Any army holding the top of the
pass would have an ascending enemy at its mercy, let alone an army of
Highlanders, accustomed to skulk behind rock and shrub, and skilled to
rush down the most rugged hillsides with the swiftness and
surefootedness of deer.
While still some miles distant, Cope learned that the Highlanders were
already in possession of Corryarack. The rumour was premature, but it
thoroughly alarmed the English general. He dared not attempt the ascent;
to return south was against his orders. A council of war, hastily
summoned, gave him the advice he wished for, and on the 28th the army
had turned aside and was in full retreat on Inverness.
Meanwhile, the Prince's army was pressing forward to meet Cope. The
swiftest-footed soldiers that ever took the field, the Highlanders were
also the least heavily-weighted. A bag of oatmeal on his back supplied
each man's need, Charles himself burned his baggage and marched at the
head of his men as light of foot and as stout of heart as the best of
them. On the morning of the 27th they were to ascend Corryarack. The
Prince was in the highest spirits. As he laced his Highland brogues he
cried, 'Before I take these off I shall have fought with Mr. Cope!'
Breathless the Highland army reached the top of the hill; they had
gained _that_ point of vantage. Eagerly they looked down the zigzags on
the further side; to their amazement not a man was to be seen, their
road lay open before them! When they learned from deserters the course
Cope's army had taken, they were as much disappointed as triumphant.
A body of Highlanders was despatched to try and take the barracks at
Ruthven, where twelve soldiers, under a certain Sergeant Molloy, held
the fort for the Government. This man showed a spirit very different
from that of his superior officer's. This is his own straightforward
account of the attack and repulse:
'Noble General,--They summoned me to surrender,
but I told him I was too old a soldier to part
with so strong a place without bloody noses. They
offered me honourable terms of marching out bag
and baggage, which I refused. They threatened to
hang me and my party. I said I would take my
chance. They set fire to the sally-port which I
extinguished; and failing therein, went off asking
leave to take their dead man, which I granted.'
Honour to Molloy, whatever the colour of his cockade!
Though unsuccessful at Ruthven, some members of this party, before
rejoining the Prince's army at Dalwhinnie, made an important capture.
Macpherson of Cluny was one of the most distinguished chiefs in the
Highlands, ruling his clan with a firm hand, and repressing all thieving
amongst them. As captain of an independent company, he held King
George's commission; his honour kept him faithful to the Government, but
his whole heart was on the other side. He was taken prisoner in his own
house by a party 'hardly big enough to take a cow,' and once a prisoner
in the Highland army, it was no difficult task to persuade him to take
service with the Prince.
The army now descended into the district of Athol. With curious emotion
old Tullibardine approached his own house of Blair from which he had
been banished thirty years before. The brother who held his titles and
properties fled before the Highland army, and the noble old exile had
the joy of entertaining his Prince in his own halls. The Perthshire
lairds were almost all Jacobites. Here at Blair, and later at Perth,
gentlemen and their following flocked to join the Prince.
One of the most important of these was Tullibardine's brother, Lord
George Murray, an old soldier who had been 'out in the '15.' He had real
genius for generalship, and moreover understood the Highlanders and
their peculiar mode of warfare. He was no courtier, and unfortunately
his blunt, hot-tempered, plain speaking sometimes ruffled the Prince,
too much accustomed to the complacency of his Irish followers. But all
that was to come later. On the march south there were no signs of
divided counsels. The command of the army was gladly confided to Lord
George.
Another important adherent who joined at this time was the Duke of
Perth, a far less able man than Lord George, but endeared to all his
friends by his gentleness and courage and modesty. Brought up in France
by a Catholic mother, he was an ardent Jacobite, and the first man to be
suspected by the authorities. As soon as the news spread that the Prince
had landed in the West, the Government sent an officer to arrest the
young duke. There was a peculiar treachery in the way this was
attempted. The officer, a Mr. Campbell of Inverawe, invited himself to
dinner at Drummond Castle, and, after being hospitably entertained,
produced his warrant. The duke retained his presence of mind, appeared
to acquiesce, and, with habitual courtesy, bowed his guest first out of
the room; then suddenly shut the door, turned the key and made his
escape through an ante-room, a backstairs, and a window, out into the
grounds. Creeping from tree to tree he made his way to a paddock where
he found a horse, without a saddle but with a halter. He mounted, and
the animal galloped off. In this fashion he reached the house of a
friend, where he lay hid till the time he joined the Prince.
[Illustration: Escape of the Duke of Perth]
No Jacobite family had a nobler record of services rendered to the
Stuarts than the Oliphants of Gask. The laird had been 'out in the '15,'
and had suffered accordingly, but he did not hesitate a moment to run
the same risks in the '45. He brought with him to Blair his
high-spirited boy, young Lawrence, who records his loyal enthusiasm in a
journal full of fine feeling and bad spelling! Indeed, one may say that
bad spelling was, like the 'white rose,' a badge of the Jacobite party.
Mistress Margaret Oliphant, who with her mother and sisters donned the
white cockade and waited on their beloved Prince at her aunt's, Lady
Nairne's, house, also kept a journal wherein she regrets in ill-spelt,
fervent words that being 'only a woman' she cannot carry the Prince's
banner. This amiable and honourable family were much loved among their
own people. 'Oliphant is king to us' was a by-word among retainers who
had lived on their land for generations. But at this crisis the shrewd,
prosperous Perthshire farmers refused to follow their landlord on such a
desperate expedition. Deeply mortified and indignant, the generous,
hot-tempered old laird forbade his tenants to gather in the harvest
which that year was early and abundant. As Charles rode through the Gask
fields he noticed the corn hanging over-ripe and asked the cause. As
soon as he was told, he jumped from his horse, cut a few blades with
his sword and, in his gracious princely way, exclaimed 'There, _I_ have
broken the inhibition! Now every man may gather in his own.' It was acts
like this that gained the hearts of gentle and simple alike, and explain
that passionate affection for Charles that remained with many to the end
of their days as part of their religion. The strength of this feeling
still touches our hearts in many a Jacobite song. 'I pu'ed my bonnet
ower my eyne, For weel I loued Prince Charlie,' and the yearning
refrain, 'Better loued ye canna be, Wull ye no come back again?' On the
3rd Charles entered Perth, at the head of a body of troops, in a
handsome suit of tartan, but with his last guinea in his pocket!
However, requisitions levied on Perth and the neighbouring towns did
much to supply his exchequer, and it was with an army increased in
numbers and importance, as well as far better organised--thanks to Lord
G. Murray--that Charles a week later continued his route to Edinburgh.
Having no artillery the Highland army avoided Stirling, crossed the
Forth at the Fords of Frew entirely unopposed, and marched to
Linlithgow, where they expected to fight with Gardiner's dragoons. That
body however did not await their arrival, but withdrew to Corstorphine,
a village two miles from Edinburgh.
The next halt of the Prince's army was at Kirkliston. In the
neighbourhood lay the house of New Liston, the seat of Lord Stair, whose
father was so deeply and disgracefully implicated in the massacre of
Glencoe. It was remembered that a grandson of the murdered Macdonald was
in the army with the men of his clan. Fearing that they would seize this
opportunity of avenging their cruel wrong, the general proposed placing
a guard round the house. Macdonald hearing this proposal, went at once
to the Prince. 'It is right,' he said, 'that a guard should be placed
round the house of New Liston, but that guard must be furnished by the
Macdonalds of Glencoe. If they are not thought worthy of this trust they
are not fit to bear arms in your Royal Highness' cause, and I must
withdraw them from your standard.' The passion for revenge may be strong
in the heart of the Highlander, but the love of honour and the sense of
loyalty are stronger still. The Macdonalds, as we shall see, carried
their habit of taking their own way to a fatal extent.