ON January 30 the Duke of Cumberland arrived in Edinburgh. His reception
was a curious parody of Charles's brilliant entry four months before.
The fickle mob cheered the one as well as the other; the Duke occupied
the very room at Holyrood that had been Charles's; where the one had
danced with Jacobite beauties, the other held a reception of Whig
ladies. Both were fighting their father's battle; both were young men of
five-and-twenty. But here likeness gives way to contrast; Charles was
graceful in person, and of dignified and attractive presence; his
cousin, Cumberland, was already stout and unwieldy, and his coarse and
cruel nature had traced unpleasant lines on his face. He was a poor
general but a man of undoubted courage. Yet he had none of that high
sense of personal honour that we associate with a good soldier. In
Edinburgh he found many of the English officers who had been taken
prisoner at Prestonpans. They had been left at large on giving their
word not to bear arms against the Prince. Cumberland declared that this
'parole' or promise was not binding, and ordered them to return to their
regiments. A small number--it is right that we should know and honour
their names--Sir Peter Halket, Mr. Ross, Captain Lucy Scott, and
Lieutenants Farquharson and Cumming, thereupon sent in their
resignations, saying that the Duke was master of their commissions but
not of their honour.
On the 30th the Duke and his soldiers were at Linlithgow, and hoped to
engage the Highland army next day near Falkirk. But on the next day's
march they learned from straggling Highlanders that the enemy had
already retired beyond the Forth. They had been engaged in a futile
siege of Stirling Castle. The distant sound of an explosion which was
heard about midday on the 1st, proved to be the blowing up of the powder
magazine, the last act of the Highlanders before withdrawing from
Stirling. This second, sudden retreat was as bitter to the Prince as the
return from Derby. After the battle at Falkirk he looked forward eagerly
and confidently to fighting Cumberland on the same ground. But there was
discontent and dissension in the camp. Since Derby the Prince had held
no councils, and consulted with no one but Secretary Murray and his
Irish officers. The chiefs were dispirited and deeply hurt, and, as
usual, the numbers dwindled daily from desertion. In the midst of his
plans for the coming battle, Charles was overwhelmed by a resolution on
the part of the chiefs to break up the camp and to retire without delay
to the Highlands. Again he saw his hopes suddenly destroyed, again he
had to yield with silent rage and bitter disappointment.
The plan of the chiefs was to withdraw on Inverness, there to attack
Lord Loudon (who held the fort for King George); to rest and recruit,
each clan in its own country, till in the spring they could take the
field again with a fresher and larger army. Lord George Murray led one
division by the east coast and Aberdeen, to the rendezvous near
Inverness, Charles led the other by General Wade's road through Badenoch
and Athol. Cumberland with his heavy troops and baggage could not
overtake the light-footed Highlanders; by the time he reached Perth he
was six days' march behind them. He sent old Sir Andrew Agnew to
garrison the house of Blair, and other small companies to occupy all the
chief houses in Athol. He himself retired with the main body to
Aberdeen, and there waited for milder weather.
In the neighbourhood of Inverness lies the country of the Mackintoshes.
The laird of that ilk was a poor-spirited, stupid man. It was his simple
political creed that that king was the right one who was willing and
able 'to give a half-guinea to-day and another to-morrow.' That was
probably the pay he drew as officer in one of King George's Highland
companies. Of a very different spirit was his wife. Lady Mackintosh was
a Farquharson of Invercauld; in her husband's absence she raised a body
of mixed Farquharsons and Mackintoshes, several hundred strong, for the
Prince. These she commanded herself, riding at their head in a tartan
habit with pistols at her saddle. Her soldiers called her 'Colonel
Anne.' Once in a fray between her irregular troops and the militia, her
husband was taken prisoner and brought before his own wife. She received
him with a military salute, 'Your servant, captain;' to which he replied
equally shortly, 'Your servant, colonel.'
This high-spirited woman received Charles as her guest on February 16 at
the castle of Moy, twelve miles from Inverness.
Having learnt that Charles was staying there with a small guard, Lord
Loudon conceived the bold plan of capturing the Prince, and so putting
an end to the war once for all. On Sunday the 16th, at nightfall, he
started with 1,500 men with all secrecy and despatch. Still the secret
had oozed out, and the dowager Lady Mackintosh sent a boy to warn her
daughter-in-law and the Prince. The boy was both faithful and sagacious.
Finding the high road already full of soldiers, he skulked in a ditch
till they were past, then, by secret ways, over moor and moss, running
at the top of his pace, he sped on, till, faint and exhausted, he
reached the house at five o'clock in the morning, and panted out the
news that Loudon's men were not a mile away! The Prince was instantly
aroused, and in a few minutes was out of the house and off to join
Lochiel not more than a mile distant. As it happened, Lord Loudon's
troops had already been foiled and driven back by a bold manoeuvre of
some of 'Colonel Anne's' men. A blacksmith with some half-dozen men--two
pipers amongst them--were patrolling the woods near the high road, when
in the dim morning twilight they saw a large body of the enemy
approaching. They separated, planted themselves at intervals under
cover, fired rapidly and simultaneously, shouted the war cries of the
various clans, Lochiel, Keppoch, Glengarry, while the pipers blew up
their pipes furiously behind. The advancing soldiers were seized with
panic, and flying wildly back, upset the ranks of the rear and filled
them with the same consternation. The 'Rout of Moy' was hardly more
creditable to the Hanoverian arms than the 'Canter of Coltbridge.' In
this affair only one man fall, MacRimmon, the hereditary piper of the
Macleods. Before leaving Skye he had prophesied his own death in the
lament, 'Macleod shall return, but MacRimmon shall never.'
The next day, February 18, Charles, at the head of a body of troops,
marched out to besiege Inverness. He found that town already evacuated:
Lord Loudon had too little faith in his men to venture another meeting
with the enemy. Two days later Fort George also fell into the Prince's
hands.
During the next six weeks the Highland army was employed in detachments
against the enemies who surrounded them on all sides. Lord John Drummond
took Fort Augustus, Lochiel and others besieged--but in vain--the more
strongly defended Fort William. Lord Cromarty pursued Lord Loudon into
Sutherland. But the most notable and gallant feat of arms was performed
by Lord George Murray. He marched a body of his own Athol men, and
another of Macphersons under Cluny--700 men in all--down into his native
district of Athol. At nightfall they started from Dalwhinnie, before
midnight they were at Dalnaspidal, no one but the two leaders having any
idea of the object of the expedition. It was the middle of March; at
that season they might count on five hours of darkness before daybreak.
It was then explained to the men that they were to break up into some
thirty small companies, and each was to march to attack one of the
English garrisons placed in all the considerable houses in the
neighbourhood. It was necessary that each place should be attacked at
the same time, that the alarm might not spread. By daybreak all were to
reassemble at the Falls of Bruar, within a mile or two of Castle Blair.
One after the other the small parties moved off swiftly and silently in
the darkness, one marching some ten miles off to the house of Faskally,
others attacking Lude, Kinnachin, Blairfettie, and many other houses
where the English garrisons were sleeping in security. Meanwhile Lord
George and Cluny, with five-and-twenty men and a few elderly gentlemen,
went straight to the Falls of Bruar. In the grey of the morning a man
from the village of Blair came up hastily with the news that Sir Andrew
Agnew had got the alarm, and with several hundred men was scouring the
neighbourhood and was now advancing towards the Falls! Lord George might
easily have escaped up the pass, but if he failed to be at the
rendezvous, each small body as it came in would be surrounded and
overpowered by the enemy. The skilful general employed precisely the
same ruse as had been so successful at the Rout of Moy.
[Illustration: The 'Rout of Moy']
He put his followers behind a turf wall at distant intervals, displayed
the colours in a conspicuous place, and placed his pipers to advantage.
As Sir Andrew came in sight, the sun rose, and was flashed back by
brandished broadswords behind the turf wall. All along the line plaids
seemed to be waving, and heads appeared and disappeared as if a large
body of men were behind; while the pipes blew up a clamorous pibroch,
and thirty men shouted for three hundred. Sir Andrew fell into the
snare, and promptly marched his men back again. One by one the other
parties came in: some thirty houses had yielded to them, and they
brought three hundred prisoners with them.
After this success Lord George actually attempted to take the House of
Blair. It was a hopeless enterprise; the walls of the house were seven
feet thick, and Lord George had only two small cannons. 'I daresay the
man's mad, knocking down his own brother's house,' said the stout old
commander, Sir Andrew, watching how little effect the shot had on the
walls. Lord George sent to Charles for reinforcements when it began to
seem probable that he could reduce the garrison by famine, but Charles,
embittered and resentful, and full of unjust suspicion against his
general, refused any help, and on March 31 Lord George had to abandon
the siege and withdraw his men. The Prince's suspicions, though unjust,
were not unnatural. Lord George had twice advised retreat, where
audacity was the only way to success.