The Road to Culloden Moor Page 7
Murray of Broughton joined Charles at Kinlochmoidart two days later. An anonymous letter had alerted him to the fact that Charles had landed in Moidart and he had set out at once armed with two boxes of proclamations and manifestoes and a small amount of weapons. Ever the operator, he despatched Rob Roy’s son, James Macgregor to Edinburgh to mislead the Government with false reports of Charles’s doings. As to be expected of a man who had arrived ready equipped with paperwork, Murray was appointed Secretary though he may have hoped for the more glamorous position of aide-de-camp. Whatever the case he was Charles’s éminence grise and stayed with him until taken ill a few days before Culloden.
Together they planned the details of the great rendezvous that was to signal the start of the campaign. They also grappled with some of the logistical problems that would dog them throughout. The departing Walsh had thoughtfully intercepted two vessels laden with oatmeal to feed the clansmen. However, Charles could not prevail on his brave Highlanders to carry it to the rendezvous. They considered this to be manual labour and beneath them so that ‘he could not procure one Boll of it to be carried …’
At this stage of the game such stubbornness did not worry Charles — he was on the eve of great events. On the evening of 19 August he was rowed up Loch Shiel full of anticipation. Glenfinnan at the head of Loch Shiel was a grand enough setting — in a narrow vale ‘in which the river Finnin runs between high and craggy mountains, not to be surmounted but by travellers on foot’ and ringed by lochs. He came ashore at eleven o’clock expecting the acclamation of thousands of devoted clansmen rallied by their chiefs. Instead he was greeted by a couple of shepherds in Gaelic. Apart from them there were only some companies of Clanranald Macdonalds — not enough to fight a battle let alone win a crown.
It was a dreadful moment and Charles withdrew into a hovel to think what to do. After a while Macdonald of Morar came marching into the glen with one hundred and fifty more Clanranald men. With him came James Macgregor who, continuing his intelligence role, brought the welcome news that the Camerons were on their way.
Their arrival could not have been more dramatic or better stage-managed. Eyewitnesses described the distant wailing of the pipes borne on the wind. It was a war-pibroch and a fitting announcement of the arrival of the mighty clan Cameron. They advanced in two lines, over seven hundred men. They were a magnificent spectacle, but even better was the fact that between them marched the dejected red-coated prisoners captured in the recent ambush.
Charles was so ‘elevated with the sight of such a clan’ that he waited no longer to stake his claim. The elderly Duke of Atholl unfurled the silk standard and the double-sized flag billowed out, crimson and white. It was greeted by a storm of huzzas and ‘schiming of bonnetts into the air … like a cloud’. According to the stories a Gaelic poet recited an emotional address to ‘Tearlach Mac Sheumais’ — ‘Charles son of James’. Atholl read proclamations from James appointing Charles his regent and declaring war on the Elector, after which Charles did what he was so good at. Looking every inch the young hero in the dun coloured coat, red-laced waistcoat and breeches that had replaced the scruffy abbé’s outfit, he made a ‘very Pathetick’ speech which touched the hearts of his listeners even though many would not have known enough English to understand him. He talked about striving for their welfare and happiness as much as for his own rights. He talked about honour and the noble example of their ancestors. He promised to protect Protestants and Catholics alike. One can imagine the tears streaming down Atholl’s face.
Not long after Charles’s spirits rose even further as Macdonald of Keppoch strode proudly in with another three hundred men or so, ‘clever fellows’ of his ‘hardy and warlike clan’ and a small group of Macdonalds from Skye who had defied their chief and come to support their Prince. It was a moving occasion and men were seduced in spite of themselves to believe that there was a chance of success.
Other observers of this momentous occasion were old Gordon of Glenbucket a veteran of the ’15 who had sold all his lands so he could devote his life to the cause. Like so many of Charles’s supporters, Glenbucket was an elderly man reliving the glorious adventures of his youth. A contemporary described him as ‘so old and infirm that he could not mount his horse, but behoved to be lifted into his saddle, notwithstanding of which the old spirit still remained in him’. He had been bed-ridden for three years but on hearing of Charles’s arrival had risen Lazarus-like and hurried off to greet him.
There was also the celebrated Miss Jenny Cameron of Glendessary, a relation of Lochiel. This vivacious but definitely middle-aged woman was to be frequently and erroneously described as Charles’s mistress. Jacobite memoirs made determined attempts to restore her reputation asserting that though she was handsome, with pretty eyes and jet black hair she was virtuous. She arrived, according to the stories, at the head of two hundred and fifty men. She was dressed in a sea-green riding habit, with scarlet lapels and gold lacings. The bay gelding she rode was also decked with green and gold. Those black curls were crowned with a velvet cap and scarlet feather and she carried a sword instead of a riding whip. According to one Jacobite, ‘she was so far from accompanying the Prince’s army, that she went off with the rest of the spectators as soon as the army marched; neither did she ever follow the camp, nor ever was with the Prince but in public, when he had his Court in Edinburgh.’ But she was later arrested and became the subject of salacious gossip in the press.
Of course, this noble gathering in the glen was to be portrayed rather differently by the enemies of the cause. They painted a picture of fanatical popish ritual from the moment of Charles’s landing on Scottish soil. According to one story, Charles threw himself on the ground and kissed it after which his confessor hacked a piece of turf and offered it to him, as James’s regent, on behalf of the Pope. This was strictly on condition that he would see to ‘the utter Extirpation of the Persons of Heretics’ and persevere manfully with the same ‘until the Blood of the Heretics shall be washed away from the Face of the Earth’.
The raising of the standard was portrayed in a similarly sinister light: ‘… they erected their Standard with great Solemnity: The Priest first washed it all over with Holy Water, and blessed it, then a certain number of Ave Marys and Paternosters were said, besides Prayers to the Saints; in all which Acts of Devotion, Charles distinguished himself with greater Zeal (if possible) than the Priests themselves.’
In general, the news of Charles’s arrival was greeted with a certain amount of incredulity by the Government and its supporters. It seemed more bizarre than heroic to land with only seven henchmen, and some were quick to see the fell hand of France behind it. The adventurer Dudley Bradstreet, a rumbustious character right out of the pages of Tom Jones, described the initial reaction in London: ‘… there was certain Intelligence that the young Chevalier was landed in Scotland, with seven Persons to aid and assist him. In the Beginning, this weak Attempt was despised by some, and alarmed others: Most of the King’s Troops were engaged abroad and his Majesty in Hanover, when this Advantage was taken by the French King, who sent his occasional Tool to employ some of the Forces of England at home.’
Cumberland’s private secretary compared the exercise to a squib set off by the French who did not care ‘if it bursts, or in whose hands, or about whose ears’. There was a greater inclination to despise the attempt than to be alarmed by it in the early days. It was this apathy that worried Henry Fielding and persuaded him of the need to whip up patriotic fervour in the True Patriot. In Edinburgh the reaction to ‘the news frae Moidart’ was amused and rather patronising. The genteel Edinburgh Evening Courant observed to its readers that their fellow-countrymen from the Highlands were ‘only a pitiful crew, good for nothing, and incapable of giving any reason for their proceedings, but talking only of tobacco, King James, the Regent, plunder and new brogues’. Whig poets pompously predicted that the inexperienced young Pretender would swiftly tumble:
Like Phaeton, with pride elate,
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br /> Unskill’d you soar too high;
Like his, unpity’d too your fate,
Hur’ld headlong from the Skie.
However, such sentiment did not prevent the Lords of the Regency, appointed to govern during George II’s absence in Hanover, from offering a reward of £30,000 for Charles’s capture. When Charles heard about it his reactions were mixed. First of all the price on his head was less than it had been on his father’s. On the other hand this was now the middle of the eighteenth century. Surely, civilisation had moved on and ‘in proportion as the world grew in Politeness they had done so in humanity, that it were unjust to call the ancients Rude and Savage, &c., when no example could be given of their taking so mean and unmanly a way to get rid of their Enemy.’ Yet, on the assumption that any of his supporters would stoop so low, he joked that he might consider offering thirty pounds for George. In the end, though, he was persuaded to match the offer pound for pound. The Government also sent immediate orders that all the British troops garrisoned at Ostend should re-embark at once. There was truth in the observation that ‘such as knew the Highlanders were justly afraid’.
Meanwhile, the ceremony at Glenfinnan ‘was followed by a general Housaw, & a great deal of Allacrety’. Morale was riding high with much toasting of the King’s health in brandy and a general air of excitement and expectation. O’Sullivan described how Charles used the occasion to demonstrate that chivalry which helped establish him as a romantic hero. He saw that the captured soldiers were well-treated and given good sleeping quarters. (The Highlanders, as was tartly observed, had to make do with sleeping in the fields.) Captain Scott, who was wounded in the shoulder, had already been paroled shortly after his capture by Lochiel who was ‘shocked with the barbarity’ of a refusal by the old governor of Fort William to send the garrison surgeon to treat him under a pass of safe conduct.
Charles now freed another officer, Captain Swettenham, who had been captured in a separate incident and was ‘recon’d a very good engineer’, on the condition that he would promise not to take up arms again for a year and a day. Charles was genuinely merciful but as a tactic it worked brilliantly. ‘This officer behaved very gallantly, he frighten’d the Governors of the Garrisons he past by, and even Cope [who had the grand title of Commander in Chief of all the forces in North Britain]. For he told ’um all, that the Prince had six thousand men, & that neither armes or mony was wanting to ’em; he gave every where the most favorable account that cou’d be given of the Prince’s personne and activety. It is said the Ellector sent for him when he arrived at London, & asked him, what kind of a man the Prince was, he answered that he was as fine a figure, & as clivor a Prince, as a man cou’d set his eyes on, upon which George turned his back, & left him there.’ The other officers were released conditionally a few days later but ‘behaved basely’, returning to their colours at the first opportunity.
As one of Charles’s officers later wrote, Glenfinnan ‘was, properly speaking, the beginning of the Prince’s expedition’. By any standards Charles had already succeeded remarkably. With little more than personal charisma he had managed to spark a rebellion that was embarrassing at the very least to his enemies. As his father wrote to Louis, ‘I knew absolutely nothing about it, but … I frankly admit I cannot help admiring him.’
Instinct told Charles that audacity must continue to be his chief weapon. He decided to push south and seek out his foe. His aim was to engage Sir John Cope, before the Government could call up reinforcements from Flanders. Hearing that Cope was preparing to march north for Fort Augustus he sent appeals to some of the clans between Glencoe and Glen Garry asking them to join him in marching to meet Cope.
A few days later he and his half-naked, ill-equipped little army set out. He again had problems persuading the Highlanders to do heavy work. This time it was weapons, ammunition, pick-axes and shovels rather than grain which had to be abandoned since ‘the Highlanders could not be prevailed upon to carry them on the shoulders, but there was no other method of transporting them in this rugged country.’ However, Charles determined to show them what he was made of. He marched on foot with his men the whole way to Invergarry. All that training in Italy was paying off to the extent that he walked sixteen miles in boots, ‘and one of the heels happening to come off, the Highlanders said they were unco’ glad to hear it, for they hoped the want of the heel would make him march more at leisure.’ He halted at Invergarry Castle, the stronghold of the Glengarry Macdonalds, and sat up late with his chiefs discussing which route to take.
A messenger struggled through that wet and stormy night bringing word from old Lord Lovat. Lovat was a dubious ally. He had excused himself from coming out for Charles on account of his age and ill-health, but this did not prevent him from offering his advice. This was that Charles should march north to Inverness. Charles, however, listened to the advice of others and decided to continue south to seek out Cope. He was not to know that Lovat was also busily corresponding with the Lord President Duncan Forbes and describing him in highly unflattering terms as ‘a mad and unaccountable gentleman’. Neither did he know how closely his every move was being watched. Lovat’s spy even recorded how the next morning Charles put on Highland dress: ‘the young forward leader called for his Highland clothes; and at tying the lachets of his shoes, he solemnly declared that he would be up with Mr Cope before they were unloosed.’
The route the Prince picked lay over the wild Corrieyairach Pass but Charles and his Highlanders crossed it ‘like lightning’. Hearing that Cope was to camp that night at Garvamore, ‘the Prince marched directly to him, with a design to attack him wherever he met him.’
Cope, on the other hand, was not having much luck. Unlike Charles he had plenty of weapons but no one to use them. As he advanced northwards with his force of two thousand he heard to his dismay from the Hanoverian Duke of Atholl and Lord Glenorchy that they had failed to raise a single man to fight for the Government. As he marched gloomily on he was plagued by desertions and sabotage. Bags of grain mysteriously burst open and his horses were stolen. Captain Swettenham, full of his experiences at Glenfinnan, brought the unwelcome news that the rebels now controlled the Corrieyairach Pass.
Instead of advancing to Garvamore, Cope veered off ‘in the greatest hurry and disorder to Inverness, so that he left the Prince peaceable possessor of the Camp of Garvamore & nothing to oppose him from thence to Edinburgh’. So Charles found the way to the Lowlands open without a fight and was understandably ‘quite surprised’ by this turn of events. Some deserters from Cope’s army were brought into the camp and delighted the Highlanders with vivid descriptions of how Cope’s men were ‘very much fatigued and frightened’. What delighted them even more were their descriptions of all the baggage and horses waiting to be looted so that ‘there was nothing to be heard but a continued Cry to be marched against the Enemy.’ The chagrin was considerable when Charles made it clear that the priority was to strike south for the soft underbelly of the country and leave Cope to his own devices for the present. He was pressured into allowing a small raiding party to attack the barracks at Ruthven but was ‘not at all disappointed’ when it failed, as he had predicted, through lack of assault ladders and other equipment. His military judgement was vindicated.
He would have been intrigued to know how all these events were being perceived south of the border. There it appeared that he had given Cope the slip and not vice versa. Horace Walpole wrote: ‘The confusion I have found, and the danger we are in, prevent my talking of anything else. The young Pretender, at the head of 3,000 men, has got a march on General Cope.’ These numbers were an exaggeration. Charles did not yet have two thousand men. However, he gained one important recruit in Cluny Macpherson whose reluctance to declare for Charles resulted in him being kidnapped from his house and brought to him. Cluny made a virtue out of necessity, declaring that ‘an angel could not resist the soothing, close applications of the rebels’ and promised to raise his clan.
The little army marched c
onfidently into the Duke of Atholl’s own country. It was an emotional moment for the elderly and asthmatic exile. His brother James, recognised by the Hanoverians as the legitimate duke, had fled at the rebels’ approach. Murray of Broughton painted an extraordinary picture of the ‘men, women and children who came running from their houses, kissing and caressing their master, whom they had not seen for thirty years … an instance of the strongest affection, and which could not fail to move every generous mind with a mixture of grief and joy’.
An interlude of rare luxury followed for Charles as the Duke played host at Blair Castle. Charles charmed Atholl by attempting to drink the healths of the chiefs in Gaelic — he was quickly developing that ‘slight taste for wine’ that was worrying his father — and by only partaking of those dishes ‘supposed to be peculiar to Scotland.’ He was also careful to show himself to the Highlanders who clustered around the hall, anxious for a sight of their Prince. What seems to have struck Charles most about this magnificent old house was its well-tended bowling green and his first taste of a pineapple.
This was a welcome halt for his troops as well, after the challenging pace set by their young leader. It was the first time that the men ‘could properly be said to have had bread from the time of their rendezvous at Glenfinnan, having eaten nothing but beef roasted on the heath, without even bread or salt, during their march thither’. This interval also gave Charles an insight into the character of the men he was commanding. When he reviewed his forces he discovered that some of them had disappeared out of pique at not being allowed to follow after Cope for plunder. They had to be cajoled and threatened before they would return.
A few days later Charles moved on to Lude where he danced minuets and Highland reels to the delight of his admirers. According to legend the first reel he asked for was the aptly named ‘This is no’ mine ain House’. He had a powerful effect on his hostess Mrs Robertson, ‘who was so elevate when about the Young Pretender that she looked like a person whose head had gone wrong’. But, as his female admirers were so often to discover, his mind was on other things. Now he was poised for his first real coup. On the evening of 4 September he entered the city of Perth to claim it for the house of Stuart.