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Chapter XI: Part 11

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"The restive soldier suddenly flamed out. He would be tried in Virginia as was his right--there was the charter! and the trial took place. The result was a ruinous commentary on the characters of Wingfield and the council. The testimony of their own witnesses convicted them of subornation of perjury to destroy Smith. He was acquitted by the jury of all the charges against him, and Kendall, who had conducted the prosecution, was condemned to pay him £200 damages. This sum was presented by Smith to the colony for the general use, and then the foes partook of the commission, and the soldier was admitted to his seat in the council." (Cooke's "History of Virginia.")

By autumn the settlement was fearfully reduced in numbers and spirits. Fever, engendered by marshland malaria and famine, threatened utter extinction.

"From May to September, those who escaped lived upon sturgeon and sea-crabs; 50 in this time were buried," writes one of the sufferers. "The rest, seeing the president's projects to escape these miseries in our pinnace by flight (who all this time had neither felt want or sickness), so moved our dead spirits as we deposed him and established Ratcliffe in his place."

It was an exchange of inefficiency for deliberate wickedness, and in the excess of continued misery the more reasonable of the victims arose as a man and put Smith at the head of affairs.

The "terrible summer" left hardly ten men who could wield axe or hoe. Smith himself was ill with malarial fever, yet nursed the sick, prayed with the dying, and kept up the hearts of all by brave words and braver action. He bought corn and meat of the Indians when they would sell, and when they refused, secured supplies by intimidation. Yet we find him, as soon as the immediate peril was over, again the subordinate of envious leaders, and volunteering to satisfy malcontents in America and in England, by heading a party in mid-December to attempt the discovery of the great "South Sea," for so long the _ignis fatuus_ of Western adventurers.

The explorers sailed up the James, diverging here and there into the tortuous creeks of the Chickahominy. When stopped by shallows, Smith procured a canoe and Indian guides and pushed on with but two other white men (Robinson and Emry) into the unknown wilderness, teeming with spies jealous of the foreign intruders. Attempting to land at "Powhatan," one of "the emperor's" residences, he and his guide sank into the morass and were fired upon from the shore.

"The salvages ... followed him with 300 bowmen, led by the king of Pamunkee, who, searching the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Emry by the fire-side. These they shot full of arrowes and slew."

Smith bound the Indian guide to his arm and used him as a shield, thus saving his own life. He was, however, captured, lashed to a tree, and would have been killed, but for his address in presenting the King Opecancanough with "a round ivory double compass Dyall"--his own pocket compass--directing the attention of the "salvages" to the movement of the needle, and describing the uses of the instrument.

"A month those Babarians kept him prisoner; many strange triumphes and conjurations they made of him, yet he so demeaned himself among them as he not only diverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured his own libertie, and got himself and his company such estimation among them that these Salvages admired him as a demi-god."

From the pen of a contemporary we have the account of what led to his "libertie." He had killed two of the attacking party, and was condemned by Powhatan to die for the offence.

"Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held; but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan, then, as many as could lay hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs to beate out his brains, Pocahontas, the king's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death; whereat the emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper."

From other pages we get the stage-setting for this, the most dramatic incident in colonial history.

The emperor had heard the evidence with a "sour look," sitting in state upon a rude dais, covered with mats, his body wrapped in a cloak of raccoon skins. His dusky harem was grouped about him, watchful and interested. When the trial was over he bade one wife to bring water to wash the captive's hands, another a bunch of feathers to dry them upon. This was preliminary to the feast.

"So fat they fed Mee," says "A True Relation of Virginia," published by Smith in 1608, "that I much doubted they intended to have sacrificed mee to the Quioughquosiche, which is a superiour power they worship."

The appointment to the position of armorer in the royal household, and trinket-maker to the princess, was one of honor. Smith enjoyed it for a month only, but to his residence at Powhatan and intimacy with Pocahontas, he was indebted for the familiarity with Indian language and customs which was afterward of incalculable benefit to the Virginians. He describes Pocahontas in respectful admiration:

"For features, countenance, and expression she much exceeded the rest."

Her gala attire was a doeskin mantle lined with down from the breasts of wood-pigeons; bangles of coral bound her brown ankles and wrists, and in her hair was a white heron's feather in token of her royal blood. At the time of her rescue of Smith she was about thirteen years old.

In January, 1608, the emperor offered Smith a forest principality if he would remain with the tribe, but he petitioned to be allowed to return to Jamestown. The request was reluctantly granted, and an escort sent with him to the "Fort." This returned, bearing gifts for Powhatan and his wives, with marvellous stories of the cannon-shot fired into the sleety forest at Smith's command. We cannot but wonder what toy or ornament went to the petted child whom he had served in glad gratitude while a member of her father's household.

He had no time for sentimental musings. Upon the very day of his unlooked for return (January 8, 1608), Ratcliffe repeated Wingfield's attempt to escape to England in the only vessel left at Jamestown. The anchor was actually raised when Smith hastily collected a force and hurried to the landing. "With the hazzard of his life, with sakre, falcon, and musket shot, Smith forced" (them) "now the third time to stay or sinke."

In their sullen rage the foiled conspirators plotted and nearly executed a fiendish revenge. Once more we copy from the "General History," written by Smith and his friends.

"Some no better than they should be, had plotted with the president" (Ratcliffe) "the next day to have put him" (Smith) "to death by the Leviticall law for the lives of Robinson and Emry, pretending the fault was his that had led them to their ends; but he quickly took such order with such lawyers that he layd them by the heeles till he sent some of them prisoners to England."

The colony was almost destitute of food, and the memories of the famine of last year terrified the imaginations of those who had lived through it. "Gentlemen" having again predominated in reinforcements sent from England, the crops planted and gathered in Smith's absence had been meagre, while rats brought over in one of the vessels had wrought havoc with stored grain. Like an angel of mercy was the apparition of Pocahontas, at the head of a "wild train" of Indians laden with corn and game, approaching the fort. "Ever once in four or five days during the time of two or three years," the young princess, thus attended, visited the fort and succored the needy settlers. Smith declares that "next under God she preserved the colony from death, famine, and utter confusion." He might have subjoined that, but for himself, not even Pocahontas's bounty could have saved the settlement from the consequences of misconduct and misrule.

His was the only voice lifted to condemn the mad folly of loading a homeward-bound vessel with the glittering mud of a neighboring creek. That he was "not enamored of their dirty skill to freight such a drunken ship with so much gilded dirt"--was one of the mildest of his phrases, as, "breathing out these and many other passions," he harangued those who had "no thought, no discourse, no hope, and no work but to dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and load gold."

Before the English assayers confirmed his judgment as to the value of this cargo, the intrepid adventurer had sailed, with fourteen others, up the Chesapeake into new and wonderful regions. Never losing heart, even when he believed himself to be dying from the sting of a poisonous fish, he discovered and entered the Potomac, the Rappahannock, and tributary creeks, fighting his way when not allowed to proceed peaceably. In July (1608) he led another party to the spot now occupied by the city of Baltimore, and made friends with a tribe called Susquehannocks, believed to be sun-worshippers. Returning from these voyages of three thousand miles in all, he drew in masterly style a chart of the countries explored, and sent it to England.

Jamestown was still in a state of what he calls "combustion," under the tyranny of Ratcliffe. Emboldened by Smith's return, the colonists deposed the hated governor, and formally elected Smith Governor of Virginia. The winter closed in upon an "affrighted" population. Storehouses were nearly empty, agriculture having been neglected in the gold fever. As Smith could not be "persuaded to use" the gallows, so he now announced that "no persuasion could persuade _him_ to starve." In company with George Percy and fifty others, he visited his old ally Powhatan, and tried to buy food. A change had come to the emperor's heart. He addressed his quondam armorer as a "rash youth;" protested that he was afraid of him, and would not treat with the English unless they came to him unarmed. Warned by Pocahontas, who stole through the woods after dark to apprise Smith that treachery was intended, the party lay on their arms all night, and the force sent to surprise them retreated. Next day, Powhatan loaded the boats with corn, and Smith sailed up the York upon a similar errand to Opecancanough, Powhatan's brother. While in audience with him, the Englishmen were surrounded by a band of seven hundred armed savages. Seizing the wily chieftain by the scalp-lock, Smith held a pistol to his breast, and demanded a cargo of corn and safe-conduct for his party to Jamestown. The fifty men, without loss of a single life, took back enough food to victual the town.

Early in the spring of 1609, the president thus made known his policy to his constituents:

"Countrymen! You see now that power resteth wholly in myself. You must obey this now for a law--_he that will not work shall not eat_. And though you presume that authority here is but a shadow and that I dare not touch the lives of any, but my own must answer for it, yet he that offendeth, let him assuredly expect his due punishment.

"I protest by that God that made me, since necessity hath no power to force you to gather for yourselves, you shall not only gather for yourselves, but for those that are sick. _They_ shall not starve."

Fields were tilled, the fort was repaired, wise Powhatan treated the pale-faces kindly for Smith's sake, and the emigrants felt for the first time firm ground beneath their feet. They had twenty-four pieces of ordnance, and three hundred stand of small-arms; three ships, seven boats, a store of more than two months' provisions, six hundred hogs, with goats, fowls, and sheep, and an established trading-station with the natives.

Like an aërolite from the summer sky came news from England that a fleet was to be sent out with a new colony, a new charter, and new officers; Smith's old enemy, Christopher Newport, was in command of the expedition. Smith had been complained of at home as "dealing harshly with the natives and not returning the ships full-freighted." His day was over. The king so willed it.

Smith's last official act was the establishment of a colony at Powhatan, renamed "Nonsuch," opposite where the city of Richmond was laid out over a century later. On his way back to Jamestown, he was cruelly wounded by the explosion of a bag of gunpowder. There was no good surgeon in the colony. To return forthwith to England was but anticipating by a few weeks what must be when the fleet arrived.

He returned to London at the age of thirty. "He had broke the ice and beat the path, but had not there" (in Virginia) "one foot of ground, nor the very house he builded, nor the ground he digged with his own hands."

In 1614 he returned to America, but now to the northern region assigned to the Plymouth Company. He gave name to Boston; explored and made a survey of the New England coast. On a second voyage he had a fight with a French squadron, was captured, and taken to Rochelle. While there he wrote a "Description of New England," for which service James I. appointed him "Admiral of New England." He died in London, in 1631, at the age of fifty-two, never having revisited Virginia. Upon his tomb, in the Church of St. Sepulchre's, London, may be still traced the outlines of the Three Turks' Heads and the inscription, beginning:

"_Here lies one conquered that hath conquered kings._"

Any sketch of his life, however brief, would be incomplete that contained no reference to the letter written by him to Queen Anne (the consort of James I.), in 1616, recommending the Lady Rebecca Rolfe to the royal favor.

He would "be guilty of the deadly poison of ingratitude," he wrote, if he failed to narrate what he and the colony at Jamestown owed to Pocahontas. He besought the queen's kindly consideration for the stranger just landed upon her shores, as due to Pocahontas's "great spirit, her desert, birth, want, and simplicity." His one call upon the wife of John Rolfe, Gentleman, was marked by profound respect on his part to one whom he accosted as "Lady Rebecca;" by profound emotion on hers.

John Smith's biography and epitaph are best summed up by one of his brothers-in-arms:

"What shall I saye, but thus we lost him that in all his
proceedings made justice his first guide and experience his
second, ever hating basenesse, sloth, pride, and indignitie more
than any dangers; that never allowed more for himself than for
his soldiers with him; that upon no danger would send them where
he would not lead them himselfe; that would never see us want
what he either had or could by any means get us; that would
rather want than borrow, or starve than not pay; that loved
action more than wordes, and hated falsehood and covetousnesse
worse than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose losse
our deaths."

[Signature: Marion Harland.]

WILLIAM HARVEY

(1578-1657)

William Harvey was born on April 1, 1578, at Folkestone, on the southern coast of Kent. He was the eldest of nine children; of the rest little more is known, than that several of the brothers were among the most eminent merchants in the city of London during the reigns of the two first Stuarts. His father, Thomas Harvey, followed no profession. He married Joanna Falke, at the age of twenty, and lived upon his own estate at Folkestone. This property devolved by inheritance upon his eldest son; and the greater part of it was eventually bequeathed by him to the college at which he was educated.

At ten years of age he commenced his studies at the grammar school in Canterbury; and upon May 31, 1593, soon after the completion of his fifteenth year, was admitted as a pensioner at Caius College, Cambridge.

At that time a familiar acquaintance with logic and the learned languages was indispensable as a first step in the prosecution of all the branches of science, especially of medicine; and the skill with which Harvey avails himself of the scholastic form of reasoning in his great work on the Circulation, with the elegant Latin style of all his writings, particularly of his latest work on the Generation of Animals, affords a sufficient proof of his diligence in the prosecution of these preliminary studies during the next four years which he spent at Cambridge. The two next were occupied in visiting the principal cities and seminaries of the Continent. He then prepared to address himself to those investigations to which the rest of his life was devoted; and the scene of his introduction to them could not have been better chosen than at the University of Padua, where he became a student in his twenty-second year.

The ancient physicians gathered what they knew of anatomy from inaccurate dissections of the lower animals, and the slender knowledge thus acquired, however inadequate to unfold the complicated functions of the human frame, was abundantly sufficient as a basis for conjecture, of which they took full advantage. With them everything became easy to explain, precisely because nothing was understood; and the nature and treatment of disease, the great object of medicine, and its subsidiary sciences, was hardily abandoned to the conduct of the imagination, and sought for literally among the stars. Nevertheless, so firmly was their authority established, that even down to the close of the sixteenth century the naturalists of Europe still continued to derive all their physiology, and the greater part of their anatomy and medicine, from the works of Aristotle and Galen, read not in the original Greek, but re-translated into Latin from the interpolated versions of the Arabian physicians. The opinions entertained by these dictators in the republic of letters, and consequently by their submissive followers, with regard to the structure and functions of the organs concerned in the circulation, were particularly fanciful and confused; so much so that it would be no easy task to give an intelligible account of them that would not be tedious from its length. It will be enough to say, that a scarcely more oppressive mass of mischievous error was cleared away from the science of astronomy by the discovery of Newton, than that from which physiology was disencumbered by the discovery of Harvey.

But though the work was completed by an Englishman, it is to Italy that, in anatomy, as in most of the sciences, we owe the first attempts to cast off the thralldom of the ancients. Mundinus had published a work in the year 1315, which contained a few original observations of his own; and his essay was so well received that it remained the text-book of the Italian schools of anatomy for upward of two centuries. It was enriched from time to time by various annotators, among the chief of whom were Achillini, and Berengarius, the first person who published anatomical plates. But the great reformer of anatomy was Vesalius, who, born at Brussels in 1514, had attained such early celebrity during his studies at Paris and Louvain, that he was invited by the Republic of Venice, in his twenty-second year, to the chair of anatomy at Padua, which he filled for seven years with the highest reputation. He also taught at Bologna, and subsequently, by the invitation of Cosmo de' Medici, at Pisa. The first edition of his work, "De Corporis Humani Fabrica" was printed at Basle, in the year 1543; it is perhaps one of the most successful efforts of human industry and research, and from the date of its publication begins an entirely new era in the science of which it treats. The despotic sway hitherto maintained in the schools of medicine by the writings of Aristotle and Galen was now shaken to its foundation, and a new race of anatomists eagerly pressed forward in the path of discovery. Among these no one was more conspicuous than Fallopius, the disciple, successor, and in fame the rival, of Vesalius, at Padua. After him the anatomical professorship was filled by Fabricius ab Aquapendente, the last of the distinguished anatomists who flourished at Padua in the sixteenth century.

Harvey became his pupil in 1599, and from this time he appears to have applied himself seriously to the study of anatomy. The first germ of the discovery which has shed immortal honor on his name and country was conceived in the lecture-room of Fabricius.

He remained at Padua for two years; and having received the Degree of Doctor of Arts and Medicine, with unusual marks of distinction, returned to England early in the year 1602. Two years afterward he commenced practice in London and married the daughter of Dr. Launcelot Browne, by whom he had no children. He became a Fellow of the College of Physicians, when about thirty years of age, having in the meantime renewed his degree of Doctor in Medicine, at Cambridge; and was soon after elected Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which office he retained till a late period of his life.

On August 4, 1615, he was appointed Reader of Anatomy and Surgery to the College of Physicians. From some scattered hints in his writings it appears that his doctrine of the circulation was first advanced in his lectures at the college about four years afterward; and a note-book in his own hand-writing is still preserved at the British Museum, in which the principal arguments by which it is substantiated are briefly set down, as if for reference in the lecture-room. Yet with the characteristic caution and modesty of true genius, he continued for nine years longer to reason and experimentalize upon what is now considered one of the simplest, as it is undoubtedly the most important known law of animal nature; and it was not till the year 1628, the fifty-first of his life, that he consented to publish his discovery to the world.

In that year the "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis" was published at Frankfort. This masterly treatise begins with a short outline and refutation of the opinions of former anatomists on the movement of the animal fluids and the function of the heart; the author discriminating with care, and anxiously acknowledging the glimpses of the truth to be met with in their writings; as if he had not only kept in mind the justice due to previous discoveries, and the prudence of softening the novelty and veiling the extent of his own, but had foreseen the preposterous imputation of plagiarism, which, with other inconsistent charges, was afterward brought forward against him. This short sketch is followed by a plain exposition of the anatomy of the circulation, and a detail of the results of numerous experiments; and the new theory is finally maintained in a strain of close and powerful reasoning, and followed into some of its most important consequences. The whole argument is conducted in simple and unpretending language, with great perspicuity, and scrupulous attention to logical form.

The doctrine announced by Harvey may be briefly stated thus: The blood circulates through the body, thereby sustaining life. The heart is simply the pump which drives the blood through the arteries, from whence it returns impure, and is then forced through the lungs and repurified.

The pulmonary circulation had been surmised by Galen, and maintained by his successors; but no proof even of this insulated portion of the truth, more than amounted to strong probability, had been given till the time of Harvey, and no plausible claim to the discovery, still less to the demonstration, of the general circulation has ever been set up in opposition to his. Indeed, its truth was quite inconsistent with the ideas everywhere entertained in the schools on the functions of the heart and other viscera, and was destructive of many favorite theories. The new doctrine, therefore, as may well be supposed, was received by most of the anatomists of the period with distrust, and by all with surprise. Some of them undertook to refute it, but their objections turned principally on the silence of Galen, or consisted of the most frivolous cavils; the controversy, too, assumed the form of personal abuse even more speedily than is usually the case when authority is at issue with reason. To such opposition Harvey for some time did not think it necessary to reply; but some of his friends in England, and of the adherents to his doctrine on the Continent, warmly took up his defence. At length he was induced to take a personal share in the dispute in answer to Riolanus, a Parisian anatomist of some celebrity, whose objections were distinguished by some show of philosophy, and unusual abstinence from abuse. The answer was conciliatory and complete, but ineffectual to produce conviction; and in reply to Harvey's appeal to direct experiment, his opponent urged nothing but conjecture and assertion. Harvey once more rejoined at a considerable length; taking occasion to give a spirited rebuke to the unworthy reception he had met with, in which it seems that Riolanus had now permitted himself to join; adducing several new and conclusive experiments in support of his theory; and entering at large upon its value in simplifying physiology and the study of diseases, with other interesting collateral topics. Riolanus, however, still remained unconvinced; and his second rejoinder was treated by Harvey with contemptuous silence. He had already exhausted the subject in the two excellent controversial pieces just mentioned, the last of which is said to have been written at Oxford about 1645; and he never resumed the discussion in print. Time had now come to the assistance of argument, and his discovery began to be generally admitted. To this, indeed, his opponents contributed, by a still more singular discovery of their own, namely, that the facts had been observed, and the important inference drawn, long before. This was the mere allegation of envy, chafed at the achievements of another, which, from their apparent facility, might have been its own. It is indeed strange that the simple mechanism thus explained should have been unobserved or misunderstood so long; and nothing can account for it but the imperceptible lightness as well as the strength of the chains which authority imposes on the mind.

In the year 1623 Harvey became physician extraordinary to James I., and seven years later was appointed physician to Charles. He followed the fortunes of that monarch, who treated him with great distinction during the first years of the civil war, and he was present at the battle of Edgehill, in 1642. Having been incorporated doctor of physic by the University of Oxford, he was promoted by Charles to the wardenship of Merton College, in 1645; but he did not retain this office very long, his predecessor, Dr. Brent, being reinstated by the Parliament after the surrender of Oxford in the following year.

Harvey then returned to London, and resided with his brother Eliat at Cockaine house, in the Poultry. About the time of Charles's execution he gave up his practice, which had never been considerable, probably in consequence of his devotion to the scientific, rather than the practical, parts of his profession. He himself, however, attributed his want of success to the enmity excited by his discovery. After a second visit to the Continent, he secluded himself in the country, sometimes at his own house in Lambeth, and sometimes with his brother Eliat at Combe, in Surrey. Here he was visited by his friend, Dr. Ent, in 1651, by whom he was persuaded to allow the publication of his work on the "Generation of Animals." It was the fruit of many years of experiment and meditation; and, though the vehicle of no remarkable discovery, is replete with interest and research, and contains passages of brilliant and even poetical eloquence. The object of his work is to trace the germ through all its changes to the period of maturity; and the illustrations are principally drawn from the phenomena exhibited by eggs in the process of incubation, which he watched with great care, and has described with minuteness and fidelity. The microscope had not at that time the perfection it has since attained; and consequently Harvey's account of the first appearance of the chick is somewhat inaccurate, and has been superseded by the observations of Malpighi, Hunter, and others. The experiments upon which he chiefly relied in this department of natural history had been repeated in the presence of Charles I., who appears to have taken great interest in the studies of his physician.

In the year 1653, the seventy-fifth of his life, Harvey presented the College of Physicians with the title-deed of a building erected in their garden, and elegantly fitted up, at his expense, with a library and museum, and commodious apartments for their social meetings. Upon this occasion he resigned the professorship of anatomy, which he had held for nearly forty years, and was succeeded by Dr. Glisson.

In 1654 he was elected to the presidency of the college, which he declined on the plea of age; and the former president, Sir Francis Prujean, was re-elected at his request. Two years afterward he made a donation to the college of a part of his patrimonial estate, to the yearly value of £56, as a provision for the maintenance of the library, and the annual festival and oration in commemoration of benefactors.

At length his constitution, which had long been harassed by the gout, yielded to the increasing infirmities of age, and he died in his eightieth year, on June 3, 1657. He was buried at Hempstead, in Essex, in a vault belonging to his brother Eliat, who was his principal heir, and his remains were followed to the grave by a numerous procession of the body of which he had been so illustrious and munificent a member.

In person he was below the middle size, but well proportioned. He had a dark complexion, black hair, and small, lively eyes. In his youth his temper is said to have been very hasty. If so, he was cured of this defect as he grew older; for nothing can be more courteous and temperate than his controversial writings; and the genuine kindness and modesty which were conspicuous in all his dealings with others, with his instructive conversation, gained him many attached and excellent friends. He was fond of meditation and retirement; and there is much in his works to characterize him as a man of warm and unaffected piety.

PRINCE CHARLES STUART[13]

[Footnote 13: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By ANDREW LANG, LL.D.

(1720-1788)

Charles Edward Stuart, called the "Young Pretender" by his enemies, the "Young Chevalier" by neutrals, "Prince of Wales" and "Prince Regent" by his partisans, "Prince Edouard" by the French, "Ned" by his intimates, as we read in letters of Oliphant of Gask, and "Prince Charlie" by later generations, was born at Rome, December 31, 1720. His father was James VIII., of Scotland, and III. of England, according to the Legitimist theory; his foes called him "The Pretender," partly on the strength of the old fable about the warming-pan, so useful to the Whigs. No sane person now doubts the genuineness of James' descent from James II., but the nickname of Pretender still sticks, though Boswell tells us that George III. particularly disliked an appellation which "may be parliamentary, but is not gentlemanly." James III., or the Chevalier de St. George, was taken up by Louis XIV. on the death of James II., in France. He is said to have displayed courage in several battles in Flanders, but his attempt to assert his rights in 1715 was a melancholy failure. James showed melancholy and want of confidence; he soon left Scotland for the Continent, and the best that can be said for his conduct is that he endeavored to compensate the peasants whose houses were destroyed in the military operations of "the Fifteen." Unable to reside in France, he retired to Rome, a pensioner of the Pope, and entertained with royal honors. In 1719 he married Clementina Sobieski, a granddaughter of the famous John Sobieski, who delivered Europe from the Turks. Their eldest son, Prince Charles, appears to have inherited the spirit and daring of his Polish ancestors, which animated him throughout his youth, and were extinguished less by Culloden than by the treatment which he received from the French court, by his imprisonment in Vincennes in 1748, and by the unrelenting animosity of the English Government, which made him a homeless exile living mysteriously in hiding on the Continent. Heart-broken by these misfortunes and by other disappointments, Charles developed an unreasoning and sullen obstinacy, which alienated his adherents, while the habit of heavy drinking, learned in his Highland distresses, ruined his head and heart, and converted the most gallant, gay, and promising of princes into a brutal dipsomaniac.

The education of Charles was casual and interrupted. Now he was in the hands of Protestants, now of Catholic governors and tutors, as the advice of English adherents, or the wishes of his devout mother, chanced to prevail. There were frequent quarrels between James and his wife, turning partly on the question of education, more on the jealousy which the queen conceived of the Countess of Inverness. The Pope sided with the queen in these melancholy broils, and James's private life (which was not faultless) was much more subject to criticism and interference than that of his at least equally lax rival on the English throne. A second son, Henry Benedict, Duke of York, was born in 1725, and, at one time, was regarded as of more martial disposition than Prince Charles. As the elder, Charles was first under fire, and at the siege of Gaeta, in 1734, while a mere boy, he displayed coolness, daring, and contempt of danger. Young Henry, aged nine, "was so much discontented at being refused the partnership of that glory and that danger, that he would not put on his sword till his father threatened to take away his garter too," says Murray of Broughton, in a letter dated 1742. In later life the Duke of York showed no military aptitude. A kind of progress which Charles made through the cities of Italy, aroused his desire to be a prince in more than name. The English Government quarrelled with the Republic of Venice about the royal honors paid to the prince, and his ambition was awakened. His education, we have said, was very imperfect. Murray of Broughton, indeed, credits him with Latin, Greek, history, and philosophy. But his spelling in both French and English was unusually bad, even in an age of free spelling; he wrote _époles_ for _epaules_, "Gems" for "James," "sord" for "sword." He did not neglect physical exercise; was wont to make long marches without stockings, to harden his feet (as he told a follower during his Highland distresses). He was a good shot, fond of hunting, and, about 1742, was probably the first man who ever played golf in Italy. Murray describes him as "tall above the common stature, his limbs cast in the most exact mould, his complexion of an uncommon delicacy, all his features perfectly regular and well turned, and his eyes the finest I ever saw." Whether they were blue or hazel is undecided; they are hazel in at least one contemporary portrait. As a boy, engravings show him pretty, merry, and buoyant; an air of melancholy may be remarked as early as 1744. With bright nut-brown hair, golden in the sun, and worn long beneath his peruke, he certainly justified the endearing name of "Bonny Prince Charlie." The distinction of his air could be concealed by no disguise, as his followers loved fondly to declare. He certainly had the royal memory for faces. At the opera, in 1773, he noticed an English officer opposite, whom he sent for. The gentleman visited the royal box, accompanied by a Scotch servant. "I have seen you before," said Charles to this man. "You once brought me a message at Falkirk, in 1746."

Such was Prince Charles when, in 1742, Murray of Broughton became acquainted with the royal exile in Rome, and was appointed secretary for Scotland. With Lochiel and others, Murray formed a Jacobite association in his native country. Negotiations were begun with the French court, which hung off and on, as did the English Jacobites. They would rise, if France supplied men, money, and arms. France would do this if sufficiently assured of support in England. The king had no enthusiasm for the enterprise. He was weary of promises and of leaning on that broken reed, Louis XV. Murray intrigued in Scotland, Lord Elcho in England, Kelly at the French court. Lord Semple confused all by false hopes; Charles was much in the hands of Irishmen--Sheridan, Sullivan, O'Brien, and O'Neil; already a "forward," or Prince's party was growing, as opposed to the waiting policy and party of the disheartened and unambitious James. To what extent English Jacobites were pledged is uncertain. There was much discontent with the Hanoverian dynasty in England, but the dread of popery was strong among the middle classes. The butchers were advised that Catholics ate no meat on Sundays, the official clergy preached Protestant sermons, the Jacobite gentry feared for their lives and estates in case of failure, and the sagacity of the Government has never revealed the extent to which the Duke of Beaufort and others were committed to King James. The universities, the sporting squires, and the smugglers drank to "The king over the water," but there enthusiasm began and ended.

More was expected, and till assured of more, France held aloof, while making promises enough. Even the Highland chiefs said that without a French army nothing could be done. In 1744 Charles left Rome, under pretext of a hunting party, concealed his withdrawal with great skill, and reached Paris. He was obliged, however, to be incognito and was not received by the king. An invading force was crowded on board ship. The chance seemed excellent, England's forces being mainly abroad; but the old friends of England, the winds, drove the battered fleet back into harbor, and Charles in vain tried to persuade the Earl Marischal to accompany him to Scotland in a small fishing vessel.

One result followed the reception of Charles by France, niggardly as that reception was--war with England broke out, and the French army of invasion was moved from Dunkirk to Flanders. The prince, not permitted to serve in the French army, returned to Paris, where he had been falsely assured by Semple and Æneas Macdonald that England was ready to rise for him. Murray, who visited him in Paris, tried to dissuade him from a wild venture; in Scotland he found the chiefs of his own opinion, but the letter carrying the news never reached the prince. His Irish friends urged him on; "the expedition was entirely an Irish project." He borrowed money from his bankers, the Waters, he pawned his share of the Sobieski jewels, and, with a privateer man-of-war and a brig, La Doutelle, he left Belleisle on July 13, 1745. Neither the French court nor his father knew that, attended only by seven men, "The Seven Men of Moidart," he had set out to seek for a crown. The day before he embarked he wrote to James; he said that no man would buy a horse, nor trust a prince, that showed no spirit. "I never intend to come back," he added. So, dressed as a student of the Scots College, he started. He lost his convoy, the Elizabeth, on the way, after a drawn battle with the Lion (Captain Brett). Resisting all advice to turn back, as Æneas Macdonald, who accompanied him, narrates, he held on in La Doutelle, and reached Erisca, an islet between Barra and South Uist, on August 2, 1745. An eagle hovered over his ship, and Tullibardine hailed the royal bird as a happy omen. But he found himself unwelcome. Boisdale bade him go home; "I _am_ at home," said the prince. He steered for Moidart, the most beautiful but the wildest shore of Scotland, a region of steep and serrated mountains, of long salt-water straits, winding beneath the bases of the hills, and of great fresh-water lochs. Loch Nahuagh was his port; here he received Clan Ranald, whose desolate keep, Castle Tirrim, stands yet in ruins, since "the Fifteen." Glenaladale (whose descendants yet hold their barren acres), Dalilea, and Kinlochmoidart (now, like Clan Ranald, landless men) met him with discouraging words. But, seeing a flash in the eyes of a young Macdonald, of Kinlochmoidart, Charles said, "You will not forsake me?" "I will follow you to death, were no other sword drawn in your cause."

The chiefs caught fire, Charles landed, with the seven men of Moidart--Æneas Macdonald, the Judas of the cause; the Duke of Athol (Tullibardine), who had been out in the fifteen; Sheridan, the prince's tutor; Sir John Macdonald; Kelley, a parson who had been in Atterbury's affair; Strickland, an Englishman; and Buchanan. Young Lochiel was disinclined to join, but yielded to the fascination of the prince. With his accession the rising was a certainty. But Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the lord president, had influence enough to hold back the Macleods of Skye, to paralyze the shifty Lovat, and to secure the Sutherland house for the Hanoverian cause. Charles left Boisdale for Kinlochmoidart, "the head of Loch Moidart," where an avenue of trees, the prince's walk, is still shown, though the old house was burned after Culloden. Keppoch cut off a small party of Scots Royal; this was first blood for the Jacobite cause. The wounded were hospitably treated by Lochiel; the English captain was released on parole. Charles now crossed the steep hills between Kinlochmoidart and the long narrow lake of Loch Sheil, there he took boat, and rowed past the lands of Glenaladale and Dalilea to Glenfinnan, where Tullibardine raised the standard, inscribed _Tandem Triumphans_. A statue of the prince, gazing southward, now marks the spot. The clans came in, and as Charles marched southeast, each glen sent down its warriors to join the stream. The clansmen, as a rule, had probably little knowledge of or interest in the cause. They followed their chiefs. The surviving Gaelic poetry speaks much of the chieftains; of _Tearlach, righ nan Gael_, but little is said. It was the middle of August before the rulers of England received the news of the landing. They at once set a reward of £30,000 on Charles's head, a proceeding "unusual among Christian princes," said Charles, who was compelled by his forces, and their threats of desertion, to follow the evil example. Sir John Cope was sent with an English army to stop the prince. It appeared likely that the armies would meet about Dalwhinnie, now the highest and bleakest part of the Highland Railway. The path then led over Corryarrack; Charles and his men raced for the summit, but Cope was not to be seen. He had marched east and north, to Inverness, and all the south of Scotland lay open to the prince. He passed by Killiecrankie and Blair Athol to Perth; Cluny came in, with the Duke of Perth, and Lord George Murray, Charles's most skilled general, who had been out at Glensheil, in 1719, and had learned the lesson of war in the Sardinian army. How easily he won Edinburgh, how he held court at Holyrood, how he routed Cope (who returned by sea) at Preston Pans or Gladsmuir, is familiar to all. His clemency was conspicuous; he wrote to James that he would give up Holyrood to the wounded, rather than see them homeless. Home, a Whig volunteer, and the author of a Whiggish history, acknowledges the nobility of his conduct, and his "foolish lenity" (he would not permit the execution of several persons who tried to assassinate him) is blamed by the fanatics who, in 1749, issued a wild Cameronian manifesto, "The Active Testimonies of Presbyterians." The contrast with the savage brutalities of Cumberland is very notable. In the battle the chiefs refused to let Charles lead the charge, but he was at the head of the second line, "a pistol shot behind" the first. Preston Pans was fought on September 21, 1745. That Charles dallied before Edinburgh Castle till October 21st was no fault of his. Some of his men had gone home with booty, others were to be waited for, many of the chiefs were in favor of holding Scotland under James as a separate kingdom, and it was only by constant personal appeals that the prince persuaded them to push south. Lord George's strategy deceived the English, who knew not where to look for the Highlanders. They met at Carlisle, took it, passed through Preston and Manchester, gave Cumberland the slip, and their advanced posts, six miles south of Derby, were within a hundred and twenty miles of London. The army of Finchley was unlikely to make a stand, the city was partly Jacobite, the mob were ready for anything, when Lord George and the chiefs insisted on retreat. Historians doubt which policy was the wiser; it is certain that success, if to be attained at all, could only be won by audacity. The chiefs, however, declared for a return and a junction with French forces then expected. Charles wept and prayed to no avail. His army, as disappointed as himself, found their faces set to the north, and the prince, who had ever walked among the first ranks, leaving his carriage to old Lord Pitsligo, now rode dejected and heart-broken. The retreat was rapid and able. At Clifton, Murray turned on the pursuing dragoons, headed a claymore charge, and drove them back. A hapless garrison of Lancashire volunteers was left to the tender mercies of Cumberland in Carlisle, and Charles went by way of Whiggish Dumfries (the house where he lodged is now an inn) to Glasgow. To all intents and purposes the end had come. Charles had lost faith in the advisers who dragged him back from the south, he listened to Murray of Broughton and to his Irishry; he suspected, unjustly but not unnaturally, the good faith of Lord George. He dallied at Stirling, besieging the castle without proper artillery, and Hawley was sent to attack him. On January 17, 1746, the armies met at Falkirk. A storm of wind and rain blew at the backs of the Highlanders, they charged, scattered the enemy, drove them in flight, and cut up the Glasgow volunteers. But, in the dark and the mist they scarcely knew their own advantage. The pipers had thrown their pipes to their boys, had gone in with the claymore, and could not sound the calls. Hawley wrote to Cumberland "My heart is broke ... I got off but three cannon of the ten." Hawley retreated to Edinburgh, the Duke of Cumberland came to take the command; the Highlanders began to desert with their booty, dissensions prevailed, and Charles went on besieging Stirling. Again Lord George Murray urged a retreat, Charles dashed his head in impotent rage against the wall of his room, but he had to follow. With perfect truth he said:

"I cannot see anything but ruin and destruction to us all in case we should think of a retreat;" his forces in flight would lose heart, his enemies would gain confidence. All this was true, but all this was unavailing. Months were spent in unimportant movements. Cumberland, meanwhile, instructed his men in the method of meeting a Highland charge, and deceiving the parry of the Highland shields. It was known that France would lend no substantial aid, and a French subsidy of 30,000 _Louis d'or_ came too late, after the battle of Culloden, and was buried at the head of Loch Arkaig. One last chance Charles had: Lord George proposed, and Charles eagerly seconded, a night surprise at Nairn. But the delays on the march, and the arrival of dawn, made Murray command a retreat, and Charles's faith in him was irretrievably gone for the time, though he later expressed in writing a more worthy opinion. With 10,000 well-fed men against 5,000 who were starving, Cumberland had every chance of victory at Culloden. The Macdonalds, placed on the left wing, would not charge. Keppoch's men were discontented because they were not allowed to have a Catholic chaplain. Crying out, "The children of my clan have forsaken me," Keppoch charged alone, and died the death of renown. Beaten and blinded by a storm of snow in their faces, the Highland right clove the ranks of Monro and Burrell, only to fall, in layers three or four deep, before the fire of Sempill's regiment in the second line. The whole English force advanced; Charles rode to his second line, and offered to charge with them. His officers told him that it was in vain; Highlanders once beaten would not rally. (MS. "Lyon in Mourning," and MS. of Stuart Threipland at Abbotsford.) Charles was hurried off the field by his Irish tutor, and fled to Lord Lovat's, at Gortuleg. A story of his lack of courage, told by Sir Walter Scott on the authority of Sir James Stewart Denham's recollections of Lord Elcho's MS., is erroneous. Lord Elcho's MS. does not contain the statement. What he objects to is Charles's refusal to meet the fragments of his army at Ruthven, in Badenoch, whence they hoped to wage a guerilla warfare. Lord George Murray himself admits that the project was impossible. Charles, however, should have gone to Ruthven, but he distrusted Lord George; and his hope of a speedy voyage to France, where he expected to receive aid in men and money, was frustrated.

It is needless to repeat the tale of Cumberland's almost incredible butcheries, cruelties, and robberies, or to tell of the executions accompanied by the torture of disembowelling the living man. The story of Charles's wanderings and distresses is narrated best in the MS. "Lyon in Mourning," partly printed by Robert Chambers, in "Jacobite Memoirs." No words can overpraise the loyalty of the starving Highlanders; neither English tortures, nor the promise of £30,000, ever moved one man or woman from their constant faith. Only one hungry boy whom Charles had fed, attempted to betray him, but was not believed. As for the prince, he is briefly described by a companion as "the most prudent man not to be a coward, the most daring not to be foolhardy, whom he had ever known." He showed a constant gayety, singing and telling tales to hearten his followers. His resource was endless; he was by far the best cook and the least fastidious eater of his company. He could cook a dish of cow's brains, or swallow raw oatmeal and salt-water. Surrounded by English _cordons_, through which he slipped at night up the bed of a burn, when the sentinels had reached their furthest point apart, Charles led a little expedition which cut off the cattle intended for the provender of his enemies. (MS. "Lyon in Mourning.") He would not even let a companion carry his great-coat. He knew every extremity of hunger, thirst, and cold; and perhaps his most miserable experience was to lurk for many hours, devoured by midges, under a wet rock. Unshorn, unwashed, in a filthy shirt, his last, he was yet the courteous prince in his dealings with all women whom he met, notably with Flora Macdonald, the stainless and courageous heroine of loyalty and womanly kindness. At last, late in September, 1746, Charles, with Lochiel and many others, escaped in a French barque from Loch Nahuagh, where he had first landed. It has been said of him by his enemies, especially by Dr. King, a renegade, that he was avaricious and ungrateful. Letters and receipts in the muniment room of a Highland chief show him directing large sums, probably out of the Loch Arkaig treasure, to be paid to Lochiel, to "Keppoch's lady," and to many poor clansmen. The receipts, written in hiding, and dried with snuff or sand, attest that the money came to the persons for whom it was intended.

Charles' expedition could only be justified by success. That it failed was due to no want of courage, or audacity, or resolve on his part, but to the very nature of a Highland army, to the jealousies of Irish and Scotch, to the half-heartedness of his English partisans, and to the English horror of his father's religion. By his own creed he held very loosely.

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Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5Chapter XI: Part 11

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