‘Marischall.’
From Lockier, Spence got the familiar anecdote of the Earl’s conduct at Queen’s Anne’s death, before the projects for a Restoration of the Chevalier were completed. Ormonde, Atterbury, and the Earl met, when Atterbury bade Marischal go out (with the Horse Guards) and proclaim King James. Ormonde wished to consult the Council. ‘Damn it,’ says Atterbury in a great heat (for he did not value swearing), ‘you very well know that things have not been concerted enough for that yet, and that we have not a moment to lose.’ That moment they lost, and a vague anecdote represents the Earl as weeping, after the battle of Sheriffmuir, over the many dead men who might have been alive had he taken Atterbury’s advice. D’Alembert, who does not mention Atterbury, attributes the idea of an instant stroke for the King to the Earl himself.[2]
When the rising of 1715 was in preparation, the Earl, according to d’Alembert, wrote to James, telling him that ‘a sovereign deprived of his own must share the dangers of those who risked their lives for his sake,’ and so made him ‘leave his retreat’ at Bar-le-Duc. But James’s natural brother, the Duke of Berwick, on July 16, 1715, had already given the same advice. ‘Your honour is at stake, your friends will give over the game if they think you backward.’ James replied that he hoped to be at Dieppe by the 30th of the month. Within five days Berwick was crying off from the task of accompanying his brother, who replied with a repressed emotion, ‘You know what you owe to me, what you owe to your own reputation and honour, what you have promised to the Scotch and to me.... I shall not, therefore, bid you adieu, for I expect that we shall soon meet.’
It was now not the King who turned laggard, but Berwick who advised delay. ‘I find Rancourt’ (the King), he says, ‘very much set on his journey.’ In brief, it was Berwick and Bolingbroke who kept James back, though with great difficulty. He needed no urging (as d’Alembert suggests) by our Earl. ‘I fear I shall scarce be able to hinder him from passing the sea,’ says Berwick (August 6).
Then Louis XIV. died, all was confusion, and the Regent Orléans detained Berwick in France, exactly at the time when Mar went to raise the Highlands. What with Bolingbroke, Berwick, the death of Louis XIV., and the intrigues of Orléans in the Hanoverian interest, James, travelling disguised through an Odyssey of perils, did not leave France for Scotland till mid-December. A month before (November 13) Mar had been practically defeated at Sheriffmuir, and Forster, Mackintosh, Derwentwater and Kenmure had surrendered at Preston. The King thus came far too late, but certainly by no lack of readiness on his part.
D’Alembert makes the Earl utter a fine constitutional speech on the duties of a king when he proclaimed James at Edinburgh. Unluckily, on this occasion James was never proclaimed at Edinburgh by anybody. The Éloge of d’Alembert is eloquent, but it is not history. It has been the chief source for the Earl’s biography.
The Earl had doubtless been won over by Mar to resign his English commission, and desert King George for King James. The story is told that, as he rode North from London in 1715 to join Mar in the Highlands, he met his young brother James riding South to take service with King George. He easily induced his brother to share his own fortunes, and Prussia ultimately gained the great soldier thus lost to England. The Covenanting historian, Wodrow, avers that ‘Marischal was bankrupt,’ and therefore eager for res novæ. But he would have been a Jacobite in any case. As to the Earl’s conduct when Mar’s ill-organised and ill-supplied rising drew fatally to a head at Sheriffmuir, his brother, the Field-Marshal of Prussia, in his fragmentary Memoir, tells all that we know. The Earl, with ‘his own squadron of horse’ and some Macdonalds, was sent to occupy a rising ground, the enemy being, as was thought, in Dunblane. From the height, however, the whole hostile army was seen advancing, and the Earl sent to bid Mar bring up his forces. There was much confusion, and the Earl’s squadron of horse was left in the centre of the line. Mar’s right with the Earl routed Argyll’s left, while Argyll’s left routed Mar’s right. ‘In the affair neither side gained much honour,’ says Keith, ‘but it was the entire ruin of our party.’ Half of Mar’s force, having thrown down their plaids,[3] were now unclothed: many had deserted; the evil news of the Preston surrender came, the leaders were at odds among themselves, 6,000 Dutch troops were advancing from England. Seaforth and Huntly took their followers back to the North, and when King James arrived at Perth, late in December, he found a wintry welcome, soldiers few and dispirited, and dissensions among the officers. The army wasted away while Cadogan, Argyll, and the Dutch troops, greatly outnumbering the Jacobites, advanced on Perth through the snow.
James’s army now beat a retreat, with no point to make for, as Inverness was in the hands of the enemy. Mar, therefore, advised James, who had not ammunition enough for one day’s fight (thanks to Bolingbroke, said the Jacobites), to take ship at Montrose. If he stayed, the enemy would make their utmost efforts to come up with and capture him. If he departed, the retreating Highlanders would be less hotly pursued. James consulted Marischal, who wished to offer no opinion, alleging ‘his age and want of experience,’ says Keith.[4] Finally, he privately admitted to Mar that ‘he did not think it for the King’s honour, nor for that of the nation, to give up the game without putting it to a tryall.’ Powder enough for one day’s fight could be got at Aberdeen; he hoped to gain recruits as they went North, and, at worst, James, if beaten, could escape from the West coast. ‘Mar seemed to be convinced of the truth of this’ (very like Bobbing John); ‘however, a ship was already provided,’ and James, with Mar, Melfort, and others, eloped; the King characteristically leaving all his money to recompense the peasants who had suffered by the war. James was no coward, he had charged the English lines repeatedly, at the head of the Royal Household, in the battle of Malplaquet, where he was wounded. In his journey from Lorraine to the coast he had run the gauntlet of Stair’s cut-throats. But a Scottish winter, a starveling force, no powder, and Mar’s advice, had taken the heart out of the adventurer.
According to Mar, the Earl had orders to sail with the King, ‘who waited on the ship above an hour and a half, but, by what accident we yet know not, they did not come, and there was no waiting longer.’[5] ‘The King and we are in no small pain to know what is become of our friends wee left behind.’ D’Alembert says that the Earl refused to sail. ‘Your Majesty is to protect yourself for your friends. I shall share the sorrows of those who remain true to you in Scotland, I shall gather them, and shall not leave without them.’ If Mar tells truth, the Earl can have made no such speech. A modest man, he remained at his duty without rhetoric.