The Prince was now an altered man. Full of distrust, he marched not with Lord George in the rear, he rode in the van.
Meanwhile Lord John Drummond, who, on November 22, had landed at Montrose with 800 French soldiers, was ordered by Charles to advance with large Highland levies now collected and meet him as he moved north. Lord John disobeyed orders (received about December 18). Expecting his advance, Charles most unhappily left the Manchester men and others to hold Carlisle, to which he would return. Cumberland took them all,—many were hanged.
In the north, Lord Lewis Gordon routed Macleod at Inverurie (December 23), and defeated his effort to secure Aberdeen. Admirably commanded by Lord George, and behaving admirably for an irregular retreating force, the army reached Penrith on December 18, and at Clifton, Lord George and Cluny defeated Cumberland’s dragoons in a rearguard action.
On December 19 Carlisle was reached, and, as we saw, a force was left to guard the castle; all were taken. On December 20 the army forded the flooded Esk; the ladies, of whom several had been with them, rode it on their horses: the men waded breast-high, as, had there been need, they would have forded Tweed if the eastern route had been chosen, and if retreat had been necessary. Cumberland returned to London on January 5, and Horace Walpole no longer dreaded “a rebellion that runs away.” By different routes Charles and Lord George met (December 26) at Hamilton Palace. Charles stayed a night at Dumfries. Dumfries was hostile, and was fined; Glasgow was also disaffected, the ladies were unfriendly. At Glasgow, Charles heard that Seaforth, chief of the Mackenzies, was aiding the Hanoverians in the north, combining with the great Whig clans, with Macleod, the Munroes, Lord Loudoun commanding some 2000 men, and the Mackays of Sutherland and Caithness.
Meanwhile Lord John Drummond, Strathallan, and Lord Lewis Gordon, with Lord Macleod, were concentrating to meet the Prince at Stirling, the purpose being the hopeless one of capturing the castle, the key of the north. With weak artillery, and a futile and foolish French engineer officer to direct the siege, they had no chance of success. The Prince, in bad health, stayed (January 4-10) at Sir Hugh Paterson’s place, Bannockburn House.
At Stirling, with his northern reinforcements, Charles may have had some seven or eight thousand men wherewith to meet General Hawley (a veteran of Sheriffmuir) advancing from Edinburgh. Hawley encamped at Falkirk, and while the Atholl men were deserting by scores, Lord George skilfully deceived him, arrived on the Falkirk moor unobserved, and held the ridge above Hawley’s position, while the General was lunching with Lady Kilmarnock. In the first line of the Prince’s force the Macdonalds held the right wing, the Camerons (whom the great Wolfe describes as the bravest of the brave) held the left; with Stewarts of Appin, Frazers, and Macphersons in the centre. In the second line were the Atholl men, Lord Lewis Gordon’s levies, and Lord Ogilvy’s. The Lowland horse and Drummond’s French details were in the rear. The ground was made up of eminences and ravines, so that in the second line the various bodies were invisible to each other, as at Sheriffmuir—with similar results. When Hawley found that he had been surprised he arrayed his thirteen battalions of regulars and 1000 men of Argyll on the plain, with three regiments of dragoons, by whose charge he expected to sweep away Charles’s right wing; behind his cavalry were the luckless militia of Glasgow and the Lothians. In all, he had from 10,000 to 12,000 men against, perhaps, 7000 at most, for 1200 of Charles’s force were left to contain Blakeney in Stirling Castle. Both sides, on account of the heavy roads, failed to bring forward their guns.
Hawley then advanced his cavalry up hill: their left faced Keppoch’s Macdonalds; their right faced the Frazers, under the Master of Lovat, in Charles’s centre. Hawley then launched his cavalry, which were met at close range by the reserved fire of the Macdonalds and Frazers. Through the mist and rain the townsfolk, looking on, saw in five minutes “the break in the battle.” Hamilton’s and Ligonier’s cavalry turned and fled, Cobham’s wheeled and rode across the Highland left under fire, while the Macdonalds and Frazers pursuing the cavalry found themselves among the Glasgow militia, whom they followed, slaying. Lord George had no pipers to sound the recall; they had flung their pipes to their gillies and gone in with the claymore.
Thus the Prince’s right, far beyond his front, were lost in the tempest; while his left had discharged their muskets at Cobham’s Horse, and could not load again, their powder being drenched with rain. They received the fire of Hawley’s right, and charged with the claymore, but were outflanked and enfiladed by some battalions drawn up en potence. Many of the second line had blindly followed the first: the rest shunned the action; Hawley’s officers led away some regiments in an orderly retreat; night fell; no man knew what had really occurred till young Gask and young Strathallan, with the French and Atholl men, ventured into Falkirk, and found Hawley’s camp deserted. The darkness, the rain, the nature of the ground, and the clans’ want of discipline, prevented the annihilation of Hawley’s army; while the behaviour of his cavalry showed that the Prince might have defeated Cumberland’s advanced force beyond Derby with the greatest ease, as the Duke of Richmond had anticipated.
Perhaps the right course now was to advance on Edinburgh, but the hopeless siege of Stirling Castle was continued—Charles perhaps hoping much from Hawley’s captured guns.
The accidental shooting of young Æneas Macdonnell, second son of Glengarry, by a Clanranald man, begat a kind of blood feud between the clans, and the unhappy cause of the accident had to be shot. Lochgarry, writing to young Glengarry after Culloden, says that “there was a general desertion in the whole army,” and this was the view of the chiefs, who, on news of Cumberland’s approach, told Charles (January 29) that the army was depleted and resistance impossible.