Chapter III: The End of the Jacobite Cause

The position of Prince Charlie in Inverness was exceedingly critical. To the north lay the forces of Lord Loudon. To the east and south were the Hanoverian army commanded by the Duke of Cumberland now stationed at Aberdeen. But his position was rendered even more precarious by lack of foresight in ignoring the advice of Lord George Murray, and refusing to provide a supply of provision in the Highlands.

Judging that the Duke would not advance for some weeks, the Prince decided on the reduction of various forts and positions held by the enemy, and above all the destruction of Lord Loudon's army.

It was arranged, therefore, that Lord Cromartie (one of those incompetent officers who handicapped the Jacobite cause) should advance upon Lord Loudon in order that the menace from the north might be destroyed, and this, he prepared to do, accompanied by the Mackenzies, the Mackintoshes, Macgregors and others.

The preparations for this expedition were under discussion when Muckle John and Rob came into the main street. For a while they walked along in silence, Muckle John grown suddenly gravely absorbed, and taking such great strides that Rob was hard put to it to keep up. The dawn was come, and with it the town of Inverness began to hum and buzz like a hive of bees. Men, quartered in every house along the narrow street, commenced to pour out upon the highway, some putting on their sword-belts as they came, others wiping sleep out of their tired eyes with their knuckled hands.

It was the sight of their claymores that sent Muckle John's flickering eyes upon his companion.

"My lad," said he, stopping abruptly, "there's one thing we must be seeing too. For cutting firewood or driving bestial,* I have no doubt yon weapon might serve as well as another, but for the game of war it is disappointing," and whipping out his own sword he made a parry or two, and winked at him.

* Cattle.

"What do ye think o' that?" said he, and drove it home again into the scabbard.

"I think it's bonny," said Rob shivering with the chill wind.

"Bonny--you Fraser loon--what kind of word is that for the sword of Muckle John," and without a word, he turned his back and began to stride again up the street, snorting as he went.

"But, sir," cried Rob, at his heels, "what about me?"

"You," cried Muckle John in a huff, "what indeed?"

"I know nothing of swords," said Rob, anxious to appease him at all costs.

Presently Muckle John stopped and looked, first upon the ground and then at Rob, and so upon the ground again.

"Rob," said he at last, "had ye no better take your ways home?"

"Never!" cried he.

Without a word the other turned upon his heel, again, and so in a dour silence they reached the centre of the town.

"Rob," said Muckle John, "you see that house there? That is where the Prince is staying, and there at the door he is, and with him Lord George Murray, a braw soldier but no Irish, and so not above suspicion."

On the door-step stood Prince Charlie talking in a vexed, irritated manner to a very choleric-looking gentleman, who seemed in a bubble of anger, which he could ill control.

"Come ye with me, Rob," said Muckle John, "and keep your eyes open, and your mouth as tight as a gravestone."

As they approached, the Prince let his eyes rest on the massive figure of Muckle John, then nodded absently like a man whose thoughts are far away. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, greeted him with some cordiality, and turning again to the Prince, continued his conversation.

"I can assure your Highness that no aid will come from France," he said, "Fitzjames is captured, and that is not the last of it...."

The Prince gnawed his lip with bitter vexation.

"Your lordship was always most certain in disaster," he said peevishly, "a long face carries a long tale."

"Unless we drive back Loudon we are like rats in a trap," went on Murray ignoring the words.

"You forget Prestonpans, my lord."

The other shook his head fretfully.

"The men are tired and wearied of it all," he replied, "they want to go home--they are not regular soldiers...."

"What would you say to talk like this?" said the Prince, turning of a sudden upon Muckle John.

"Sir," he answered, "your troops are exhausted. But in the mountains you could resist the enemy until they recovered their strength."

"But there is no money--no sign of men nor arms. What of France--what of the English Jacobites?"

"What indeed?" said a low voice from the doorway.

Looking down upon them all stood a young man of about thirty--a thin, slight, anxious-looking man dressed in black, carefully tended clothes. It was Mr. Secretary Murray, or, to give him his full name, John Murray of Broughton.

"May the English Jacobites not escape their just punishment," he said gravely, "should disaster await us," and he sighed and stared out across the street.

"Shall I go north to assist Lord Cromartie?" asked Lord George Murray, who hated Broughton.

The Prince frowned as though he would like to know the inner purpose for such a plan. Then, seeing none but that of reason and loyal service, and yet doubting the latter very sincerely, he replied almost gruffly:

"We will see what Sir Thomas Sheridan has to advise," whereat the countenance of Lord George Murray grew dark with strangled rage. For a man who had risked his life and fortune and the lives of his people to be dependent upon the whim of an Irish adventurer with nothing to lose and everything to gain was enough to ruin any cause. Already the end of the '45 was in sight.

Muckle John bowed and drew Rob away. A few minutes later Lord George Murray passed them with a face like murder, bound for the North.

"Maybe ye see now," said Muckle John, "how the wind blows. There goes as good a soldier as can be, but ye'll find that whatever he advises will be contradicted by any poor Irish creature or Frenchman who may be passing. The longer Cumberland sits snug in Aberdeen the more time will there be for hectoring and desertion and the beginning of the end. Wae's me," he sighed, "I would give something to be upon the quay of Dunkirk, for there's nothing here for the likes o' me but a rope with a bit noose."

The business of procuring arms for Rob was next undertaken, and it was a proud day indeed when he strapped a targe on his back, and a claymore to his side. He was attached to Lord George Murray's flying column in pursuit of Lord Loudon, and so on the evening of that day he bade farewell to Muckle John.

The march north was uneventful, and in due course, with only a victorious expedition to his credit, Rob returned with the Duke of Perth to Inverness and was dispatched into Atholl with Lord George Murray's force.

During the succeeding weeks, the guerilla engagements of the detachments in Atholl and Lochaber were completely successful, while in the east the Prince kept at bay the dragoons of General Bland. It is not fully appreciated that the campaign around Inverness was no less brilliant and successful than the other engagements of the Jacobite rebellion.

But the war was nearing a crisis. Cumberland having waited for the spring, moved out of Aberdeen on April 8, his force consisting of six battalions of foot and a regiment of dragoons. At Strathbogie, General Bland, with six battalions, Kingston's Horse and Cobham's Dragoons, awaited his advance, while at Old Meldrum were three battalions under Brigadier Mordaunt. In this manner the entire army advanced on Inverness.

The swiftness of their approach was wellnigh fatal to the Prince. His troops were scattered on foraging and isolated expeditions, while Lord Cromartie was as far away as Sutherlandshire. Many clansmen had returned home while a great number were wandering the country-side in search of food.

On the morning of April 14 the drums began to beat and the pipes to sound through the streets of Inverness, and with Charles Edward at their head the Highlanders marched out of the town towards Culloden. On the 15th the Prince brought his army to Drummossie-Moor, with a view to engaging the enemy there. But the ground was flat and heathy and unsuitable for the method of attack most favoured by the Highlanders. Lord George Murray pleaded for more rugged and boggy country to disconcert the English cavalry, but Charles, tired of long waiting, was obdurate. It was decided that a night attack was under the circumstances the wisest plan of action. To attack the enemy crippled in artillery and cavalry work was on the surface a wise course, and accordingly about eight o'clock on that evening, Rob heard the order to prepare to march. It was with heavy steps that the Highlanders formed up, for only one biscuit per man had been served out that day and they were utterly exhausted for want of food. Moreover it was regarded as unwise to attack without the Mackenzies, the Frasers, the Macphersons, the Macgregors and Glengarry's men, all of whom were supposed to be hastening to Inverness.

However, the prospect of a night attack was sufficient to send them along with good heart, and so the twelve-mile march began, and all through the black night tramped the silent army, stumbling, falling, straying from the road, until the dawn gleamed faintly in the east and they realized that the plan had failed. To meditate attack under such circumstances was to court utter disaster. There was nothing for it but to return. The surprise had failed. The Prince, white and tired, seemed on the point of tears. All around him were haggard faces and lagging feet. Hardly a word was spoken. It was in sober truth the retreat of a beaten army....

The clansmen, now utterly exhausted, strayed back to Inverness in search of food. Many dropped in deep slumber upon the ground. In Culloden House the Prince sat in the deepest dejection. Not long after news reached him that the English forces were advancing. Once again the clans were gathered--messages were sent to Inverness to hasten the stragglers--everything was done to put as brave a face on it as possible. Lord George Murray again advised taking up a position more suited for the Highland charge, or retreating into the hills. But the Prince again rejected his counsel, and instead of seven thousand fresh troops only about five thousand exhausted men assembled on level country to meet Cumberland's veteran force.

To Rob, who looked on the Highland claymore as irresistible, the approaching conflict was none too soon, to others it came as a relief after weeks of waiting and hardship.

Of that ill-omened day everything is known, and little need be said: it was the inevitable conclusion of a forlorn hope.

The English opened fire, and for long enough bullets rained and sang through the sullen Highland ranks. At last Lord George Murray resolved on an advance, but before he could give the order the Mackintoshes, with the heroism that had ever distinguished that clan, charged recklessly, and at that all the regiments on the right moved forward, and the action began in earnest.

An aide-de-camp was dispatched to hurry the advance of the left wing, but he was shot on the way and this unhappy accident prevented the Highland advance concentrating its full shock. It has long been an established belief that the battle was lost largely owing to the defection of the Macdonalds, who refused to advance on a dispute of precedence. It is time that a story without historical foundation should be for ever discredited. The Macdonalds did not receive the command to charge until it was too late, and they found themselves faced by an impassable morass when they moved forward. When the battle was lost and the Prince in flight, they marched from the stricken moor in good order.

The English soldiery meanwhile had awaited the attack with levelled muskets and fixed bayonets, reserving their fire until the Highlanders were almost upon them. At close quarters they raked the close ranks of the clansmen with deadly aim.

The carnage was terrible. Whole ranks of the Highlanders were swept away. But it took more than that to stem that mad and dauntless charge. It broke through Barrel's and Monro's regiments, but farther they could not go, for they received a storm of grapeshot sufficient to decimate their numbers. Had the whole Highland line delivered its shock simultaneously the English army might have recoiled and taken to flight. But the failure of the extreme left to advance at all lessened the frail chance of such a tactic proving decisive, and within a few minutes the Jacobite cause was lost.

Rob, placed on the left wing, weary of waiting and sick at heart by the sight of men falling all about him, unloosed his claymore, and pulling his bonnet down upon his brows, prepared for his regiment to charge. At last they could stand the shattering fire no longer. With a hoarse noise of shouting rising from Gaelic tongues like the roar of a winter sea, they streamed forward in reckless bravery, and foremost of them Rob, running over the heavy ground towards the storm and thunder of the conflict.

Already, however, the main body of the Highlanders was wavering. The first wild charge had shattered their ranks. The English cavalry were advancing and some one shouted that the Prince was killed. Panic began to do its work. Soon after the left wing commenced to march off the field.

All about Rob arose hoarse cries, groans, eddying smoke, and the roar and clatter of arms. Into the thick of the conflict he struggled onwards. He thrust and parried and thrust again with his claymore. Well for him was it that his father had taught him the secrets of a stiff wrist and the upper cut. An English soldier rushed at him red with battle madness, and shouting as he came. Rob, receiving a blow from an upraised musket on his targe, drove home his claymore and heard the cry die out in the man's throat into a choking sob, and--silence.

Then, before he could disengage his sword, a dragoon, spurring his horse over the heaps of fallen men, slashed at his head with his sabre, and, missing him, pulled up his beast and charged again. For Rob the situation was desperate, but seeing a little solitary group of Highlanders near by, he took to his heels and reached them, picking up an English musket as he ran. He was barely in time; had not a huge Cameron armed with a broadsword hewn down his opponent, it would have fared badly indeed with him. As it was, he clubbed his musket, and standing back to back with the others, prepared to fall as hardly as possible.

The tide of battle swept backwards and forwards; but all over the fatal moor the Jacobite army was in retreat. Gradually the little group about him thinned, until only a bare dozen remained, and it was in a breathing-space that Rob suddenly perceived Muckle John amongst them.

His head was bound in a piece of tartan, and bleeding profusely; but the smile was in his eyes, and his claymore rose and fell, and every time a man floundered upon the ground. Before him there lay a heap of Englishmen as high as his elbow.

Presently the smoke of powder cleared a little, and over the moor came a squadron of dragoons at a loose canter, killing all who stood in their way, both wounded and unarmed. Round the little circle of faces Muckle John looked swiftly.

"Now," said he, "it is each for himself," and he whistled a sprig of a tune as he began to swing his sword-arm.

With a hoarse yell the dragoons were on them. Two fell to Muckle John, there was a wild clash, and a man beside Rob dropped with a groan. And then came an oppressive weight of horses kicking, plunging, rearing--and a blinding blow flung him unconscious beneath their flying feet.

It was well indeed for Rob that death seemed to have snatched him from the cruel hands of his enemies, and the pile of dead and dying about him sheltered his body from the search parties of Hanoverians now busy upon their work of butchery.

When at last he opened his eyes and stared about him silence had fallen over the field--a silence infinitely tragic and menacing, pent up with disaster and following retribution.

Very slowly facts began to stare him in the face. Even he, inexperienced in the manners of war and defeat as he was, realized with a shudder that if he could not crawl away certain death awaited him as it had met those silent figures all about him. The blow on his head throbbed horribly. He felt sick and weak. At last he made an effort to turn upon his side, and moaned aloud. Then suddenly he clenched his lips, and dropped upon his face, for near at hand he caught the tramp of footsteps, and heard the harsh voices of English soldiery.

Nearer they came, until they halted beside him.

"None for Master Gibbet 'ere," said one, and a chuckle followed.

"You never know," said another, and began dragging the bodies this way and that.

A muffled groan came from one of these unfortunates, and a moment later, to Rob's horror, a pistol barked, and the same grim silence fell again.

Then a hand gripped him by the arm, and turned him over. To feign death--that old, hazardous device--was Rob's solitary hope. He lay with closed eyes, holding his breath, in an agony of suspense. Second followed second, and no sound reached him. Stealthy footsteps he heard, and a muffled laugh, but nothing to warn him of immediate impending danger. So awful became the mysterious nature of the delay that he could hold out no longer. Breathe he must, or he would burst his lungs.

He drew in a long draught of air through his nostrils, and in a flash--before he knew what had happened, he had sneezed. A roar of brutal laughter greeted the penetrating noise, and a voice cried out beside him:

"Two to one on the snuff, Jerry; I've won the wager," and he was dragged to his feet.

Rob opened his eyes now that the worst was come. He would meet his end as bravely as he could. Four English soldiers were seated upon a pile of dead Highlanders, and another held him by the arm. He saw that there was little chance of mercy written on their brutal faces. Memories of Prestonpans and Falkirk were too sore for that.

"Well, my gamecock," said the man who held him, "so you are not so dead after all. What shall it be? A little bullet from a pistol, or a dig with one of your own claymores--more homelike that, eh?"

Rob kept silence. He could not understand a word they said in their queer, nasal twang. Vainly his eyes searched the desolate, wind-swept moor. The clash of battle was long since past. No hope of friendly succour lay there.

"Haste ye!" cried one of the four men who sat together. "There is other work. Pistol him and be done with it."

At that the fellow who held Rob stepped back a pace, and drawing his pistol, raised it and fired deliberately at him. Had Rob not ducked it would have killed him as he stood.

"A miss!" cried the others, and with an exclamation the man snatched a loaded pistol from one of his comrades, and prepared to finish the business.

Rob stood very still this time. He was too weak to run. The sooner it was all over the better.

The man was poising the pistol in his hand; he had shut one eye, and was glaring at Rob with the other. Already the trigger was moving, when a stern voice shouted "Halt!" and an English officer, very resplendently dressed, and with a white peruke, snatched the pistol from the man's hand. The other four staggered to their feet, and stood at attention.

The officer, whose back was turned on Rob, appeared to stare for a moment at the soldiers. Then, throwing the pistol upon the ground, he folded his arms and began to speak with a strong English accent, as baffling to Rob as that of his captors.

"What does this mean?" he cried. "Would you shoot a wounded boy?"

"Our orders were no quarter," growled the man who had so nearly killed Rob.

"Take your orders from me," thundered the officer in a blaze of anger, "or there will be more gibbets in Inverness than you had reckoned upon, and with fine, red-coated gentry upon them belike," at which Rob saw the fellows stir uneasily, and cast apprehensive glances at one another.

Apparently satisfied by the fear he had put upon them, the officer pointed to a horse wandering aimlessly about the moor, his reins about his knees.

"Fetch that horse," said he; "my beast was shot from under me an hour since."

Two of the men darted off, only too glad to win his favour, and all the time the officer stood with his back to Rob--a great, square figure, with a broad tear across the middle of his doublet and the long hair showing beneath his peruke. The soldiers caught the horse without difficulty, and returned with it. It was a dragoon charger, a great grey, raking beast, strong and sound.

Taking the reins in his hands, the officer turned again to the men.

"Mayhap you cannot guess whom you so nearly shot," said he darkly.

They shook their heads in an awed silence.

"Then ask in Inverness," he replied, and vaulted into the saddle.

"Now," he went on, "hand that boy up here. He's no prisoner for such as you."

In a moment, two of the soldiers caught up Rob and placed him in front of the saddle, so that he sat upon the horse's withers.

Then gathering up the reins they walked slowly away, leaving the soldiers at the salute.

A hundred yards passed and still they maintained this idle pace. Then suddenly the officer leaned forward.

"Haud tight," he whispered into Rob's ears in a voice strangely familiar, "for we're no through with it yet," and with a plunge the great horse sprang into a gallop.

"Muckle John!" cried Rob, nearly falling off altogether.

"Aye," said he, "just Muckle John and no sae happy at that."

Onward they rode at a headlong, tearing gallop, until the ill-fated field of Culloden with its heaps of huddled dead lay far behind them; and passing the water of Nairn, made for Aberarder and clattering through, thundered onward to Faraline.