The Road to Culloden Moor Read online

  Gradually the Jacobite force grew to some five thousand foot and five hundred horse. Yet despite this progress there was a long-running sore in Edinburgh. The Jacobites had failed to take the castle so that, while Charles was master in Holyrood, it could not be claimed that he had total mastery of the city. Two old Hanoverians, General Joshua Guest, aged eighty-five, and the bellicose fire eater General George Preston, aged eighty-six and scarcely able to walk, were sitting tight and firing at will on the city. Preston kept his guards on their toes by conducting regular inspections in his wheelchair. On 29 September Charles decided that he must bring this situation to an end and ordered a blockade. He was not prepared for the robust and unchivalrous response. Guest wrote to the Provost ‘in a very blustering military Style, intimating that did the highlanders Continue to obstruct the Communication betwixt the City and the Garrison, he would … be obliged to Cannonade the Town.’

  He proved as good as his word, raining down cannon-balls — one of which can still be seen today in the side of a house — and killing and wounding a number of people. The streets were thick with bullets. Raiding parties stormed out of the castle and burned down nearby houses. This caused panic among the citizens who ‘made the most hideous complaints against the garrison’ and Charles, as a civilised man, had no option but to desist, leaving the castle to continue its mischief firing on the Highlanders. However, it taught him a valuable lesson for the future — that citadel as well as city must be captured.

  Charles won the citizens’ gratitude for his gentlemanly behaviour over the castle, but his measures to raise money were less popular in Edinburgh and the other Lowland cities. He levied taxes and customs in Edinburgh and asked the city for six thousand pairs of shoes, a thousand tents and a whole mass of other articles for his troops. Glasgow was asked to fork out fifteen thousand pounds — a sum later reduced to five thousand following vociferous complaints, but in Murray’s view ‘a very triffle to so rich a place’. Unfortunately, the town preferred to keep its money to raise troops to fight against Charles!

  Despite these measures Charles remained very short of money and his enemies made propaganda out of it. Cope was told a story of two officers ‘who chanced to be a little mellow, and in the most reproachful manner demanded arrears of their pay, which, as they said, were in arrears altogether except two guineas. He, [Charles] with sugared words, flattered them out, and then exclaimed, “Good God! what a slavery to have to do with these fellows!” The story may be false but the problem was real enough.

  As far as Charles was concerned things could not go on as they were. England, not Scotland, was his objective and he was in a fever of impatience to march south. There was no point waiting for further reinforcements either from France or the clans if every day his existing troops were deserting, bored by the enforced inactivity and suffering from his dwindling resources. On 30 October — while England was celebrating George II’s birthday —he provoked a debate in the Council. Many of the chiefs showed their reluctance to leave Scotland at all. They said that ‘they had taken arms and risked their fortunes and lives, merely to set him on the throne of Scotland; but that they wished to have nothing to do with England.’ He had declared the Union at an end so why not just sit tight and force the Hanoverians to take the initiative? Charles explained why not. He had come to reclaim the crown of his ancestors not to hive off a single realm. According to Lord Elcho he was pretty blunt: ‘I find, Gentlemen you are for Staying in Scotland and defending Your Country, and I am resolved to Go to England.’

  The Scots in the Council were unhappy. It seemed to them that Charles ‘was preoccupied only with England’. It was galling that ‘he seemed little flattered with the idea of possessing a kingdom to which, however, the family of Stuart owes its origin and its royalty.’ In the end, though, Charles won his point and the debate turned into a wrangle less about whether to invade England than about which route to take. Charles wanted to march for Newcastle and attack General Wade whose forces amounted to little more than the Jacobites. Lord George Murray pointed out that Wade was a wily and experienced old soldier and that the Jacobites would arrive exhausted by the long march and unfit for immediate battle. He proposed a compromise. Why not make for Cumbria which was mountainous and good fighting country for Highlanders? Furthermore, the army would be well-placed to receive replacements from Scotland and to join up with the French when they landed. They would also be able to attract the large numbers of English Jacobites assumed (wrongly) to exist in the north-west of England. Charles was unhappy — it could look as if he was trying to avoid Wade.

  The Council adjourned with the issue still unresolved. According to Secretary Murray, as soon as Charles had retired to his chambers he began to reflect that since most if not all the chiefs were for marching to Carlisle, forcing them to do the contrary would be unwise. He told them so the next morning and ‘this condescention on his part, made in so obliging a manner, and as if proceeding from the Superior strength of their arguments seemed to give great contentment.’ The Council agreed on a stratagem to deceive the enemy. This was that the army should divide for a time, with one column moving south-east towards Kelso to mislead Wade into believing that they were indeed marching for Northumbria.

  On 1 November the Jacobite army marched out to seek its destiny. Of all the uncertainties that lay ahead the greatest was how the English would react. It was soon to become clear that Charles had grievously misunderstood the position. He was never to see Edinburgh again. For once that ‘little ignorant school master’ Henderson was spot on in his observations. ‘Whom had he of the English Nation, or whom of the best part of the Scots?’ he asked complacently, ‘… for now the Country is civilised: instead of being Soldiers, the People are Merchants and Traders ….’ To many of the English Charles was an anachronism. They wanted peace and prosperity, not heroics, and they certainly did not want the ‘handful of savages’ following in his wake.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘WILD PETTICOAT MEN’

  England had become complacent again in the lull after Preston Pans. The Highlanders seemed a bit of a joke while they stayed north of the border. It was safe enough to mock them as in the raucous procession that wound through the streets of Deptford as part of George’s birthday celebrations. This included ‘a highlander in his proper dress carrying on a pole a pair of wooden shoes with this motto, The Newest make from Paris, a Jesuit, in his proper dress, carrying on the point of a long sword, a banner, with this Inscription in large letters “Inquisition, Flames and Damnation”, two Capuchin friars properly shaved, habited and accoutred with flogging ropes, beads, crucifixes etc …’, selling indulgences ‘cheap as dirt, viz. murder, 9d. Adultery, 91/2d. Reading the bible, 1000£. Fornication, 43/4d …’ and the Pretender, with a green ribband a nosegay of Thistle etc. riding upon an ass, supported by a Frenchmen on the right and a Spaniard on the left, each dressed to the height of the newest modes’. This exhilarating spectacle concluded with grand fireworks and a spirited rendering of ‘God save the King’.

  Horace Walpole took a similarly light-hearted not to say satirical view of things, fantasizing that ‘The Dowager Strafford has already written cards for my Lady Nithsdale, my Lady Tullibardine, the Duchesses of Perth and Berwick and twenty more revived peeresses to invite them to play at whist, Monday three months’ to celebrate a Restoration.’ The chances of a real Restoration were seen as so remote as to be ridiculous.

  Such levity had seemed a little premature when the news of Preston Pans broke. So did confidence in George’s ability to keep the Popish threat at bay. The English Jacobites were an unknown quantity and much would depend on their reaction. Immediately after Preston Pans, John Hickson, the proprietor of the inn where Charles had stayed in Perth, was the slightly unlikely choice to be sent to tell them of ‘the wonderful success with which it has hitherto pleased God to favour my endeavours for their deliverance’, and to give them the glad tidings that ‘it is my full intention, in a few days to move towards them, and t
hat they will be inexcusable before God and man if they do not all in their power to assist me in such an undertaking.’ However, Hickson was arrested at Newcastle and the Prince’s letter was found concealed in his glove. He attempted suicide unsuccessfully and subsequently turned King’s evidence.

  Charles remained convinced that a great body ‘… would join him upon his entering their Country’, but the fact of the matter was that many were seduced by appeals in the Whig Press inviting them to consider whether it was ‘worth fighting to change the name from George to James’. Even if the Hanoverians were not particularly popular, the economy was prospering. Most of the population were at best neutral towards the Jacobites, fearing the uncertainties and disruption that a change of king would bring.

  The Jacobite army divided as planned. The main column under Lord George Murray, with the cannon and heavy baggage, went by Peebles and Moffat. The reaction of the Lowland Scots of Peebles was a taste of things to come in England. ‘“There’s the Hielantmen! There’s the Hielantmen!” burst from every mouth, and was communicated like wildfire through the town; while the careful merchant took another look at the cellar in which he had concealed his goods, and the anxious mother clasped her infant more closely to her beating bosom.’

  Charles led the second column composed of Elcho’s Lifeguards and the clan regiments, making the agreed feint to Lauder and Kelso before veering off to Jedburgh where yet again he made a great impression on the ladies. It was quite a sight as the Lifeguards trotted by in their red and blue uniforms. The chieftains too looked magnificent, armed in the Highland fashion and fairly bristling with muskets, broadswords, silver-handled pistols, dirks tucked in their belts, targets of wood and leather studded with nails and with yet another dagger stuck in the garter of the right leg. They were quite a contrast to ‘the undistinguished warriors of the rear ranks … in general armed in a much inferior manner, many of them wanting targets.’

  As before Charles marched on foot, but it was nearly winter now and the lanes were dirty and the snow was deep. His endurance won him the admiration of the clans. People thought he would only walk for a mile or two to encourage the soldiers. They were amazed to see him continue all day, every day, setting a furious pace. ‘It’s not to be imagined how much this manner of bringing himself down to a level with the men, and his affable behaviour to the meanest of them, endeared him to the army,’ wrote one of his admirers. Charles also rode back to encourage and round up stragglers.

  On 6 November the force crossed the Tweed, apparently amid scenes of wild elation. The river was scarcely fordable but the story goes that the Highlanders plunged into the icy water ‘expressing their delight by discharging their pieces and uttering cries of joy. Such was their humour, that they gave the horses which were taken from the enemy the name of General Cope, by way of expressing their contempt for the fugitive Englishman.’

  On 8 November, Charles’s column crossed the Esk. Murray of Broughton described a more subdued scene: ‘… the Highlanders without any orders given, all drew their Swords with one Consent upon entering the River, and every man as he landed on t’other side wheeld about to the left and faced Scotland again.’ It was a poignant moment for them as they left their native land. According to one tale Lochiel drew his sword as he trod on English soil and cut his hand. It was seen as a bad omen. But if the Scots were dubious about what awaited them so was the local populace. According to young Lord Elcho, ‘The people in England seemed mightily afraid of the army and had abanbon’d all the villages upon its approach.’ The young sophisticate was startled by the story of one old woman in a house where some officers were quartered. After they had supped she apparently said to them, ‘Gentlemen, I Suppose You have done with Your murdering today, I should be Glad to know when the ravishing begins.’

  Ironically, it was in Edinburgh that barbarity had broken out. Murray of Broughton described indignantly how, no sooner had the Highlanders left, than the garrison fell upon the town ‘like a parcel of hungry dogs, and without any Command or the least shew of order, discipline or humanity, ran into every house where either Soldier or officer had quartered, and pillaged, and destroy’d what they could not carry off, abused the poor house keepers where ever the highlanders had been quartered, and treated some of those that were left wounded in the most barbarous manner imaginable’. One poor man was dragged downstairs by his heels, his head striking every step and along the pavement until he died. But Murray added rather piously that he did not care to dwell on too many instances of this kind of behaviour for fear of appearing to complain too much.

  However, the Jacobite army knew nothing of this as they marched south into England. On 9 November the two columns joined up again ‘upon a vast heathery common in England, distant about a quarter of a league from Carlisle’. They had no idea what to expect from this border town. Matters were not helped the next day by a fog so dense that a man was hard put to it to see his horse’s ears. The Duke of Perth together with O’Sullivan and some of the Atholl men penetrated the mist to within a pistol shot of the ancient walls. The fortifications looked strong but the reality was that the walls were crumbling away and the castle’s cannon obsolete. The small garrison within its walls was composed of a company of eighty elderly men and several equally decrepit gunners under their gouty commander, Captain Durand. Durand was already anxious — the only other force under his command were the five hundred amateurs of the Cumberland and Westmorland Militia. As far as he knew General Wade and his regulars were still in Newcastle and unable to reach him in time.

  Carlisle was ‘a wealthy populous Place’ as far as any English town apart from London and Bristol was populous at the time. The entire population of England and Wales was only seven million, with ten per cent of those living in the capital. Carlisle was noted for its neatly-paved streets and well-built houses. Perhaps Captain Durand took comfort from its reputation in times past as a bulwark against the Scots. The townspeople had their first good look at the Scots on Martinmas Saturday when fifty or sixty of Charles’s cavalry rode in and coolly surveyed the town. The streets thronged with folk who had come in from the surrounding country and stared at the Jacobite horsemen, unsure what to make of it all. The clergy kept watch from their eyrie in the Cathedral tower.

  The next day Charles sent a message to the town. His messenger was rather an unlikely character — a Mr Robinson who claimed he had been coerced. Charles called on the citizens to open the gates to him ‘to avoid the effusion of blood’ and the usual dreadful consequences for a town taken by force. The ultimatum was immediately taken to the Governor, the officers of the militia and the magistrates who agreed that no answer should be sent. When news came that the Jacobite army was moving off towards Brampton, some seven miles east of Carlisle they congratulated themselves on their firm stand. The acting Mayor, Alderman Thomas Pattinson, wrote a crowing letter to Lord Lonsdale claiming that: ‘I told your Lordship that we would defend this city; its proving true gives me pleasure, and more so since we have outdone Edinburgh, nay, all Scotland.’

  They had not. Charles had marched off to Brampton fired by the news that Wade was heading west from Newcastle with the express purpose of doing battle with him. But he had not forgotten Carlisle and the fact that the citizens had refused to open their gates to their rightful prince. When it became clear that Wade was not, after all, on his way but had been beaten back by thick snow, the siege began in earnest. It was surprisingly short-lived. Murray of Broughton described how trenches were dug and cannon brought up to batter the town walls more in hope than expectation. However, ‘… the dread the inhabitants had of a Siege, together with the Cowardice of the militia, made them hang out a white flag’ on the evening of 14 November. What had clinched it was a message from Wade that he could do nothing to help them. Despite Durand’s best efforts there had been mass panic with people climbing over the walls or forcing their way through the gates.

  Pattinson and other civic dignitaries arrived to discuss surrender terms, wonderi
ng, perhaps, how they would explain this volte-face to Lord Lonsdale. At first they tried to bargain that Charles could have the town but not the castle, but after their experiences in Edinburgh the Jacobites knew better. After ‘a good deal of reasoning on both Sides, it was agreed that the Castle Should be given up alongst with the Town’. The keys were then delivered up to Charles at Brampton by the Mayor and Corporation on their knees, but he returned them in ‘a very obliging manner’ assuring the citizens of his future favour and protection. So Carlisle was taken more easily than anyone had envisaged. The only Jacobite casualties had been one soldier and one officer. The officer — an Irishman named Dalton — had been rash enough to jump out of the trenches and jeer at the defenders who promptly shot him through the throat. Charles took possession of his first English prize on 17 November, riding into Carlisle on a white horse and preceded by a hundred pipers. But the watching crowd was sullen and unresponsive. Many stayed indoors, terrified about what was going to happen and expecting excesses of all kinds.

  Murray of Broughton was taken aback by their lurid fears of child murder and cannibalism. ‘To show how incredibly ignorant the Country people of England are, and industrious the friends of the Government were to impose upon their ignorance and credulity, in the little house where the Chevalier was quarterd after he had been for above an hour in the Room, some of the gentlemen who attended him heard a rustling below the bed, and upon Searching they found a little girl of five or six years old. The mother coming into the room to fetch something, seeing the Child discovered, called out for God’s sake to Spare her Child, for She was the only remaining one of Seven she had bore. Upon which some of the gentlemen being curious to know what She meant, followed to the door and enquired what made her express herself in that manner. To which she answered that indeed She had been assured from Creditable people that the highlanders were a Savage Sett of people and eat all the young Children.’