CULLODEN
I have neither space nor heart to attempt a history of our brilliant but
ill-starred campaign. Surely no more romantic attempt to win a throne was
ever made. With some few thousand ill-armed Highlanders and a handful of
lowland recruits the Prince cut his way through the heart of England,
defeated two armies and repulsed a third, each of them larger than his own
and far better supplied with the munitions of war, captured Carlisle,
Manchester, and other towns, even pushed his army beyond Derby to a point
little more than a hundred miles from London. Had the gentlemen of England
who believed in our cause been possessed of the same spirit of devotion
that animated these wild Highlanders we had unseated the Hanoverians out
of doubt, but their loyalty was not strong enough to outweigh the
prudential considerations that held them back. Their doubts held them
inactive until too late.
There are some who maintain that had we pushed on from Derby, defeated the
army of the Duke of Cumberland, of which the chance at this time was good,
and swept on to London, that George II would have been sent flying to his
beloved Hanover. We know now in what a state of wild excitement the
capital city was awaiting news of our approach, how the household
treasures of the Guelphs were all packed, how there was a run on the Bank
of England, how even the Duke of Newcastle, prime minister of Great
Britain, locked himself in his chamber all day denying admittance to all
in an agony of doubt as to whether he had better declare at once for the
Stuarts. We know too that the Wynns and other loyal Welsh gentlemen had
already set out to rally their country for the honest cause, that cautious
France was about to send an army to our assistance.
But all this was knowledge too late acquired. The great fact that
confronted us was that without a French army to assist, our English
friends would not redeem their contingent pledges. We were numerically of
no greater force than when we had set out from Scotland, and the hazard of
an advance was too great. General Wade and the Duke of Cumberland were
closing in on us from different sides, each with an army that outnumbered
ours, and a third army was waiting for us before London. 'Tis just
possible that we might have taken the desperate chance and won, as the
Prince was so eager that we should do, but it was to be considered that as
a defeated army in a hostile country, had the fortune of war declared
against us, we would surely have been cut to pieces in our retreat. By
Lord George Murray and the chiefs it was judged wiser to fall back and
join Lord John Drummond's army in Scotland. They declared that they would
follow wherever the Prince chose to lead, but that they felt strongly that
a further advance was to doom their clansmen to destruction. Reluctantly
the Prince gave way.
On the 6th of December, before daybreak, the army began its retreat, which
was conducted with great skill by Lord George Murray. Never were men more
disappointed than the rank and file of the army when they found that a
retreat had been resolved upon. Expressions of chagrin and disappointment
were to be heard on every hand. But the necessity of the retreat was soon
apparent to all, for the regulars were now closing in on us from every
hand. By out-marching and out-maneuvering General Wade, we beat him to
Lancaster, but his horse were entering the town before we had left the
suburbs. At Clifton the Duke of Cumberland, having joined forces with
Wade, came in touch with us, and his van was soundly drubbed by our
rear-guard under Lord George, who had with him at the time the Stewarts of
Appin, the Macphersons, Colonel Stuart's regiment, and Donald Roy's
Macdonalds. By great good chance I arrived with a message to Lord George
from the Prince in time to take part in this brilliant little affair. With
his usual wisdom Lord George had posted his men in the enclosures and park
of Lowther Hall, the Macdonalds on the right of the highway, Colonel
Stuart in close proximity, and the Macphersons and the Appin regiment to
the left of the road. I dismounted, tied my horse, and joined the Red
Macdonald's company where they were lying in the shrubbery. We lay there a
devil of a while, Donald Roy smoking as contented as you please, I in a
stew of impatience and excitement; presently we could hear firing over to
the left where Cluny Macpherson and Stewart of Ardshiel were feeling the
enemy and driving them back. At last the order came to advance. Donald Roy
leaped to his feet, waved his sword and shouted "Claymore!" Next moment we
were rushing pell-mell down the hillside through the thick gorse, over
hedges, and across ditches. We met the dragoons in full retreat across the
moor at right angles toward us, raked them with a cross fire, and coming
to close quarters cut them to pieces with the sword. In this little
skirmish, which lasted less than a quarter of an hour, our loss was
insignificant, while that of the enemy reached well into the three
figures. The result of this engagement was that our army was extricated
from a precarious position and that Cumberland allowed us henceforth to
retreat at leisure without fear of molestation.
Of the good fortune which almost invariably attended our various
detachments in the North, of our retreat to Scotland and easy victory over
General Hawley at the battle of Falkirk, and of the jealousies and
machinations of Secretary Murray and the Irish Prince's advisers,
particularly O'Sullivan and Sir Thomas Sheridan, against Lord George
Murray and the chiefs, I can here make no mention, but come at once to the
disastrous battle of Culloden which put a period to our hopes. A number of
unfortunate circumstances had conspired to weaken us. According to the
Highland custom, many of the troops, seeing no need of their immediate
presence, had retired temporarily to their homes. Several of the clan
regiments were absent on forays and other military expeditions. The
Chevalier O'Sullivan, who had charge of the commissariat department, had
from gross negligence managed to let the army get into a state bordering
on starvation, and that though there was a quantity of meal in Inverness
sufficient for a fortnight's consumption. The man had allowed the army to
march from the town without provisions, and the result was that at the
time of the battle most of the troops had tasted but a single biscuit in
two days. To cap all, the men were deadly wearied by the long night march
to surprise the Duke of Cumberland's army and their dejected return to
Drummossie Moor after the failure of the attempt. Many of the men and
officers slipped away to Inverness in search of refreshments, being on the
verge of starvation; others flung themselves down on the heath, sullen,
dejected, and exhausted, to forget their hunger for the moment in sleep.
Without dubiety our plain course was to have fallen back across the Nairn
among the hills and let the Duke weary his troops trying to drag his
artillery up the mountainsides. The battle might easily have been
postponed for several days until our troops were again rested, fed, and in
good spirits. Lord George pointed out at the counsel that a further reason
for delay lay in the fact that the Mackenzies under Lord Cromarty, the
second battalion of the Frasers under the Master of Lovat, the Macphersons
under Cluny, the Macgregors under Glengyle, Mackinnon's followers, and the
Glengary Macdonald's under Barisdale were all on the march to join us and
would arrive in the course of a day or two. That with these
reinforcements, and in the hill country, so eminently suited to our method
of warfare, we might make sure of a complete victory, was urged by him and
others. But O'Sullivan and his friends had again obtained the ear of the
Prince and urged him to immediate battle. This advice jumped with his own
high spirit, for he could not brook to fall back in the face of the enemy
awaiting the conflict. The order went forth to gather the clans for the
fight.
To make full the tale of his misdeeds came O'Sullivan's fatal slight to
the pride of the Macdonalds. Since the days of Robert the Bruce and
Bannockburn it had been their clan privilege to hold the post of honour on
the right. The blundering Irishman assigned this position to the Athole
men in forming the line of battle, and stubbornly refused to reform his
line. The Duke of Perth, who commanded on the left wing, endeavoured to
placate the clan by vowing that they would that day make a right of the
left and promising to change his name to Macdonald after the victory.
Riding to the Duke with a message from the Prince I chanced on a man lying
face down among the whin bushes. For the moment I supposed him dead, till
he lifted himself to an elbow. The man turned to me a gash face the colour
of whey, and I saw that it was Donald Roy.
"Ohon! Ohon! The evil day hass fallen on us, Kenneth. Five hundred years
the Macdonalds have held the post of honour. They will never fight on the
left," he told me in bitter despair and grief. "Wae's me! The red death
grips us. Old MacEuan who hass the second sight saw a vision in the night
of Cumberland's ridens driving over a field lost to the North. Death on
the field and on the scaffold."
I have never known a man of saner common sense than Donald Roy, but when
it comes to their superstitions all Highlanders are alike. As well I might
have reasoned with a wooden post. MacEuan of the seeing eyes had predicted
disaster, and calamity was to be our portion.
He joined me and walked beside my horse toward his command. The firing was
by this time very heavy, our cannon being quite ineffective and the
artillery of the English well served and deadly. Their guns, charged with
cartouch, flung death wholesale across the ravine at us and decimated our
ranks. The grape-shot swept through us like a hail-storm. Galled beyond
endurance by the fire of the enemy, the clans clamoured to be led forward
in the charge. Presently through the lifting smoke we saw the devoted
Mackintoshes rushing forward against the cannon. After them came the
Maclaughlans and the Macleans to their left, and a moment later the whole
Highland line was in motion with the exception of the Macdonalds, who
hewed the turf with their swords in a despairing rage but would neither
fight nor fly. Their chief, brave Keppoch, stung to the quick, advanced
almost alone, courting death rather than to survive the day's disgrace.
Captain Donald Roy followed at his heels, imploring his chieftain not to
sacrifice himself, but Keppoch bade him save himself. For him, he would
never see the sunrise again. Next moment he fell to the ground from a
musket-shot, never to speak more. My last glimpse of Captain Roy was to
see him carrying back the body of his chief.
I rode back at a gallop along the ridge to my troop. The valley below was
a shambles. The English cannon tore great gaps in the ranks of the
advancing Highlanders. The incessant fire of the infantry raked them. From
the left wing Major Wolfe's regiment poured an unceasing flank fire of
musketry. The Highlanders fell in platoons. Still they swept forward
headlong. They reached the first line of the enemy. 'Twas claymore against
bayonet. Another minute, and the Highlanders had trampled down the
regulars and were pushing on in impetuous gallantry. The thin tartan line
clambering up the opposite side of the ravine grew thinner as the
grape-shot carried havoc to their ranks. Cobham's and Kerr's dragoons
flanked them _en potence_. To stand that hell of fire was more than mortal
men could endure. Scarce a dozen clansmen reached the second line of
regulars. The rest turned and cut their way, sword in hand, through the
flanking regiments which had formed on the ground over which they had just
passed with the intention of barring the retreat.
Our life-guards and the French pickets, together with Ogilvy's regiment,
checked in some measure the pursuit, but nothing could be done to save the
day. All was irretrievably lost, though the Prince galloped over the field
attempting a rally. The retreat became a rout, and the rout a panic. As
far as Inverness the ground was strewn with the dead slain in that ghastly
pursuit.
The atrocities committed after the battle would have been worthy of
savages rather than of civilized troops. Many of the inhabitants of
Inverness had come out to see the battle from curiosity and were cut down
by the infuriated cavalry. The carnage of the battle appeared not to
satiate their horrid thirst for blood, and the troopers, bearing in mind
their disgrace at Gladsmuir and Falkirk, rushed to and fro over the field
massacring the wounded. I could ask any fair-minded judge to set up
against this barbarity the gentle consideration and tenderness of Prince
Charles and his wild Highlanders in their hours of victory. We never slew
a man except in the heat of fight, and the wounded of the enemy were
always cared for with the greatest solicitude. From this one may conclude
that the bravest troops are the most humane. These followers of the Duke
had disgraced themselves, and they ran to an excess of cruelty in an
attempt to wipe out their cowardice.
Nor was it the soldiery alone that committed excesses. I regret to have to
record that many of the officers also engaged in them. A party was
dispatched from Inverness the day after the battle to put to death all the
wounded they might find in the inclosures of Culloden Park near the field
of the contest. A young Highlander serving with the English army was
afterwards heard to declare that he saw seventy-two unfortunate victims
dragged from their hiding in the heather to hillocks and shot down by
volleys of musketry. Into a small sheep hut on the moor some of our
wounded had dragged themselves. The dragoons secured the door and fired
the hut. One instance of singular atrocity is vouched for. Nineteen
wounded Highland officers, too badly injured to join the retreat, secreted
themselves in a small plantation near Culloden-house, to which mansion
they were afterward taken. After being allowed to lie without care
twenty-four hours they were tossed into carts, carried to the wall of the
park, ranged against it in a row, and instantly shot. I myself was a
witness of one incident which touches the butcher of Cumberland nearly. If
I relate the affair, 'tis because it falls pat with the narrative of my
escape.
In the streets of Inverness I ran across Major Macleod gathering together
the remnant of his command to check the pursuit until the Prince should
have escaped. The man had just come from seeing his brave clansmen mowed
down, and his face looked like death.
"The Prince-- Did he escape?" I asked. "I saw him last trying to stem the
tide, with Sheridan and O'Sullivan tugging at his reins to induce a
flight."
The Macleod nodded. "They passed through the town not five minutes ago."
I asked him whether he had seen anything of Captain Roy Macdonald, and he
told me that he had last seen him lying wounded on the field. I had him
describe to me accurately the position, and rode back by a wide circuit
toward Drummossie Moor. I had of course torn off the white cockade and put
it in my breast so as to minimize the danger of being recognized as a
follower of the Prince. My heart goes to my throat whenever I think of
that ride, for behind every clump of whins one might look to find a
wounded clansman hiding from the riders of Cumberland. By good providence
I came on Captain Macdonald just as three hussars were about to make an
end of him. He had his back to a great stone, and was waiting grimly for
them to shoot him down. Supposing me to be an officer of their party the
troopers desisted at my remonstrance and left him to me. Donald Roy was
wounded in the foot, but he managed to mount behind me. We got as far as
the wall of the park when I saw a party of officers approaching. Hastily
dismounting, we led the horse behind a nest of birches till they should
pass. A few yards from us a sorely wounded Highland officer was lying.
Macdonald recognized him as Charles Fraser, younger of Inverallachie, the
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fraser regiment and in the absence of the Master
of Lovat commander. We found no time to drag him to safety before the
English officers were upon us.
The approaching party turned out to be the Duke of Cumberland himself,
Major Wolfe, Lord Boyd, Sir Robert Volney, and a boy officer of Wolfe's
regiment. Young Fraser raised himself on his elbow to look at the Duke.
The Butcher reined in his horse, frowning blackly down at him.
"To which side do you belong?" he asked.
"To the Prince," was the undaunted answer.
Cumberland, turning to Major Wolfe, said,
"Major, are your pistols loaded?"
Wolfe said that they were.
"Then shoot me that Highland scoundrel who dares look on me so
insolently."
Major Wolfe looked at his commander very steadily and said quietly: "Sir,
my commission is at the disposal of your Royal Highness, but my honour is
my own. I can never consent to become a common executioner."
The Duke purpled, and burst out with, "Bah! Pistol him, Boyd."
"Your Highness asks what is not fitting for you to require nor for me to
perform," answered that young nobleman.
The Duke, in a fury, turned to a passing dragoon and bade him shoot the
young man. Charles Fraser dragged himself to his feet by a great effort
and looked at the butcher with a face of infinite scorn while the soldier
was loading his piece.
"Your Highness," began Wolfe, about to remonstrate.
"Sir, I command you to be silent," screamed the Duke.
The trooper presented his piece at the Fraser, whose steady eyes never
left the face of Cumberland.
"God save King James!" cried Inverallachie in English, and next moment
fell dead from the discharge of the musket.
The faces of the four Englishmen who rode with the Duke were stern and
drawn. Wolfe dismounted from his horse and reverently covered the face of
the dead Jacobite with a kerchief.
"God grant that when our time comes we may die as valiantly and as loyally
as this young gentleman," he said solemnly, raising his hat.
Volney, Boyd, and Wolfe's subaltern uncovered, and echoed an "Amen."
Cumberland glared from one to another of them, ran the gamut of all tints
from pink to deepest purple, gulped out an apoplectic Dutch oath, and dug
the rowels deep into his bay. With shame, sorrow, and contempt in their
hearts his retinue followed the butcher across the field.
My face was like the melting winter snows. I could not look at the
Macdonald, nor he at me. We mounted in silence and rode away. Only once he
referred to what we had seen.
"Many's the time that Charlie Fraser and I have hunted the dun deer across
the heather hills, and now----" He broke into Gaelic lamentation and
imprecation, then fell as suddenly to quiet.
We bore up a ravine away from the roads toward where a great gash in the
hills invited us, for we did not need to be told that the chances of
safety increased with our distance from the beaten tracks of travel. A man
on horseback came riding behind and overhauled us rapidly. Presently we
saw that he was a red-coated officer, and behind a huge rock we waited to
pistol him as he came up. The man leaped from his horse and came straight
toward us. I laid a hand on Captain Roy's arm, for I had recognized Major
Wolfe. But I was too late. A pistol ball went slapping through the Major's
hat and knocked it from his head. He stooped, replaced it with the utmost
composure, and continued to advance, at the same time calling out that he
was a friend.
"I recognized you behind the birches, Montagu, and thought that you and
your friend could use another horse. Take my Galloway. You will find him a
good traveller."
I ask you to believe that we stared long at him. A wistful smile touched
his sallow face.
"We're not all ruffians in the English army, lad. If I aid your escape it
is because prisoners have no rights this day. My advice would be for you
to strike for the hills."
"In troth and I would think your advisings good, sir," answered Donald.
"No glen will be too far, no ben too high, for a hiding-place from these
bloody Sassenach dogs." Then he stopped, the bitterness fading from his
voice, and added: "But I am forgetting myself. God, sir, the sights I have
seen this day drive me mad. At all events there iss one English officer
Captain Macdonald will remember whatever." And the Highlander bowed with
dignity.
I thanked Wolfe warmly, and lost no time in taking his advice. Captain
Roy's foot had by this time so swollen that he could not put it in the
stirrup. He was suffering a good deal, but at least the pain served to
distract him from the gloom that lay heavy on his spirits. From the
hillside far above the town we could see the lights of Inverness beginning
to glimmer as we passed. A score of times we had to dismount on account of
the roughness of the ground to lead our horses along the steep incline of
the mountainsides, and each time Donald set his teeth and dragged his
shattered ankle through bracken and over boulder by sheer dour pluck.
Hunger gnawed at our vitals, for in forty-eight hours we had but tasted
food. Deadly weariness hung on our stumbling footsteps, and in our gloomy
hearts lurked the coldness of despair. Yet hour after hour we held our
silent course, clambering like heather-cats over cleugh and boggy
moorland, till at last we reached Bun Chraobg, where we unsaddled for a
snatch of sleep.
We flung ourselves down on the soft heather wrapped in our plaids, but for
long slumber was not to be wooed. Our alert minds fell to a review of all
the horrors of the day: to friends struck down, to the ghastly carnage, to
fugitives hunted and shot in their hiding-places like wild beasts, to the
mistakes that had ruined our already lost cause. The past and the present
were bitter as we could bear; thank Heaven, the black shadow of the future
hung as yet but dimly on our souls. If we had had the second sight and
could have known what was to follow--the countryside laid waste with fire
and sword, women and children turned out of their blazing homes to perish
on the bleak moors, the wearing of the tartan proscribed and made a crime
punishable with death, a hundred brave Highlanders the victim of the
scaffold--we should have quite despaired.
Except the gentle soughing of the wind there was no sound to stir the
silent night. A million of night's candles looked coldly down on an army
of hunted stragglers. I thought of the Prince, Cluny, Lord Murray, Creagh,
and a score of others, wondering if they had been taken, and fell at last
to troubled sleep, from which ever and anon I started to hear the wild
wail of the pibroch or the ringing Highland slogans, to see the flaming
cannon mouths vomiting death or the fell galloping of the relentless
Hanoverian dragoons.
In the chill dawn I awoke to a ravening hunger that was insistent to be
noted, and though my eyes would scarce believe there was Donald Roy cocked
tailor fashion on the heath arranging most temptingly on a rock scone
sandwiches of braxy mutton and a flask of usquebaugh (Highland whiskey). I
shut my eyes, rubbed them with my forefingers, and again let in the light.
The viands were still there.
The Macdonald smiled whimsically over at me. "Gin ye hae your appetite wi'
you we'll eat, Mr. Montagu, for I'm a wee thingie hungry my nainsell
(myself). 'Deed, to mak plain, I'm toom (empty) as a drum, and I'm
thinkin' that a drappie o' the usquebaugh wad no' come amiss neither."
"But where in the world did you get the food, Donald?"
"And where wad you think, but doon at the bit clachan yonder? A very guid
freend of mine named Farquhar Dhu lives there. He and Donald Roy are far
ben (intimate), and when I came knocking at his window at cock-craw he was
no' very laithe to gie me a bit chack (lunch)."
"Did you climb down the mountain and back with your sore ankle?"
He coloured. "Hoots, man! Haud your whitter (tongue)! Aiblins (perhaps) I
wass just wearying for a bit exercise to test it. And gin I were you I
wadna sit cocking on that stane speiring at me upsitten (impertinent)
questions like a professor of pheelosophy, you muckle sumph!"
I fell to with a will. He was not a man to be thanked in words. Long since
I had found out that Captain Roy was one to spend himself for his friends
and make nothing of it. This was one of his many shining qualities that
drew me so strongly to him. If he had a few of the Highland faults he did
not lack any of the virtues of his race.
Shortly we were on our way once more, and were fortunate enough before
night to fall in with Cluny and his clan, who having heard of our reverse
had turned about and were falling back to Badenoch. At Trotternich we
found a temporary refuge at the home of a surgeon who was distantly
related to the Macdonald, but at the end of a fortnight were driven away
by the approach of a troop of Wolfe's regiment.
The course of our wanderings I think it not needful to detail at length.
For months we were forever on the move. From one hiding-place to another
the redcoats and their clan allies drove us. No sooner were we fairly
concealed than out we were routed. Many a weary hundred miles we tramped
over the bleak mountains white with snow. Weariness walked with us by day,
and cold and hunger lay down with us at night. Occasionally we slept in
sheilings (sheep-huts), but usually in caves or under the open sky. Were
we in great luck, venison and usquebaugh fell to our portion, but more
often our diet was brose (boiling water poured over oatmeal) washed down
by a draught from the mountain burn. Now we would be lurking on the
mainland, now skulking on one of the islands or crossing rough firths in
crazy boats that leaked like a sieve. Many a time it was touch and go with
us, for the dragoons and the Campbells followed the trail like sleuths. We
fugitives had a system of signals by which we warned each other of the
enemy's approach and conveyed to each other the news. That Balmerino,
Kilmarnock, and many another pretty man had been taken we knew, and scores
of us could have guessed shrewdly where the Prince was hiding in the
heather hills.