The term of enlistment of the recruit was a matter of arrangement, and was often for life. The troops were long disposed in billets in Great Britain, but in the early part of the eighteenth century barracks for about 5000 men had been created, and the evils of billeting were fully recognised. The barrack accommodation had not increased to more than sufficient for 20,000 men by 1792.
The Jacobite risings form a curious link in the conduct of European politics, and not only led to active interference in them because of the support given by France and Spain to the Stuart cause, but they are also domestically interesting as being the last cases in which armed bodies have met in civil war in England. They also emphasise the curious personal and sentimental attraction which long hung round the dynasty of the Stuarts, and for which there is no sufficient reason to be advanced. They were neither great nor noble, neither good nor trustworthy. Their reigns were either years of disturbance at home or ineptitude abroad. Their attraction was only that of romance, coupled with that odd personal reverence for the divinity of kingship, which James I. brought prominently forward as a political creed, and which no previous sovereign had been successful in establishing. Men of repute and renown often changed sides when the “Roses” reigned; but this was rare when the Stuarts ruled, or tried to rule.
It is this romantic feeling that makes the efforts on the part of the Jacobites to restore King James seem sorrowful. One cannot but sympathise with those who sacrificed all for the most ungrateful group of kings that have ever occupied the English throne, and at the same time wonder why they did so. The Winchester motto of “Aimez loyauté,” meant in the abstract but obedience or love for law, the ordinances of the realm. It was for the enthusiastic Cavalier to translate loyalty into personal regard for an indifferent, to say the very least of it, group of kings, who had as a race scarcely one attribute of true kingship. One’s sympathy, therefore, goes out more fully towards the adherents than the leaders of the hopeless cause; and it is well that the strong common sense of the nation saw that the restoration of either of the Pretenders was hopeless. The peace of Ryswick was the first blow to the faint hopes of James II.’s restoration. His no longer receiving the active sympathy of France reduced, for the time being, his “party” to a “faction.” The mistakes of the Governments which followed were by no means the least of the causes that re-formed it again into a “party” dangerous to the reigning dynasty of Great Britain. There is no doubt that the injudicious conduct of the statesmen of the early Georges, and even of the kings themselves, did little to smooth matters. To have let small bickerings and insurrections severely alone, by treating them as of no great importance, might have rendered serious troubles less probable. Making martyrs strengthened, rather than weakened the Jacobite cause; while, on the other hand, the judicious conduct of the sovereign, later in the century, destroyed for ever the hopes of seeing a Catholic James on the British throne.
But one great result, as far as the growth of the army is concerned, arose from these dynastic troubles. They led by degrees to a closer union between the fighting materials of North and South Britain, and to the formation of those Highland regiments whose glorious record must be the pride of all sections of the army, whose colours they have so often led to victory. The death of James II., and the recognition by France of his son, the “Old Pretender,” as King of England, re-aroused the enthusiasm of the followers of the Stuarts. They ceased to be a faction once more, and hopes rose high when Queen Anne died. The accession of George I. was marked by increasing discontent, and it is possible, though hardly probable, that the Young Pretender may have been in England at the time. But there was no open opposition to the Hanoverian succession at first, though, owing to the severe measures taken against the Jacobites in the north, measures which were looked on as contrary to the Act of Union, many disturbances occurred there and elsewhere, notably in Edinburgh, Oxfordshire, and Staffordshire. Little was known, strange to say, of the Highland people. They were regarded in many quarters as semi-savages, much as the Irish recruits for English regiments were deemed when James II. was king. In 1705 the Lowland Scottish Militia was assessed at 22,000 infantry and 2000 horse, while the fighting strength of the Highlands was regarded as 40,000 men.
The Government hastily prepared for the outbreak of hostilities. Regiments were raised and assembled, and the trained bands warned. The standard of rebellion was soon raised, in Scotland by the Earl of Mar, in Northumberland by the Earl of Derwentwater and others; and some 10,000 men drew the sword for King James VIII., “our rightfull and naturall King ... who is now coming to relieve us from all our oppressions.” Notwithstanding Mar’s slowness, the revolt rapidly spread in Scotland, where only some 2000 English troops under General Wightman were assembled at Stirling, but the eastern counties of England were watched by the newly-embodied battalions in dread of a descent by France. Finally, the Duke of Argyll was appointed to the command of the northern forces, which were to be reinforced, if required, by 6000 men from Holland; and among the troops assembled at Stirling were now the ancestors of the Scots Greys, the 3rd, 4th, and 7th Hussars, the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons, and the 8th, 14th, and 21st battalions of the line. There were also some volunteers from Glasgow, Paisley, and Kilmarnock.
On the 13th November the opposing forces met at Sheriffmuir, near Dunblane. The battle is only instructive as showing the Highlanders’ method of attack; in fact, they had at that time, like cavalry always have, no real defensive. To defend was to take the offensive.
The formation of the Highland host long remained the same. Clans could not be mixed. They fought side by side, each under its chieftain, who stood in the centre, surrounded by his personal kinsmen, much as Harold fought at Hastings with his housecarles. Then, often after silent prayer, the plaids were thrown aside, and the charge was made. To this there were five motions. First, to set the bonnet firmly on the head; secondly, covered by the brass-studded target, to rush up to within fifty yards; next, to fire the long-barrelled Spanish gun and drop it; fourthly, to fire the steel pistol; and, lastly, to charge home with dirk or claymore. The men were often arranged ten or twelve ranks deep.
The march and deployment of the troops on either side in this battle was such as to place the left wings of both armies outflanking the other. This gave Mar his chance, and he quickly took it. Ordering the charge, he led the clan Maclean in person; and they, throwing aside their plaids, fired a volley, dropped their muskets, and rushed with cheers and yells on their opponents, claymore and target in hand. Skilled in the use of these weapons, such a rush was for the time irresistible. The bayonet thrust was met by the shield, and the sword or dirk did the rest. The loss in such a case was terrible, the wounded generally injured beyond recovery. And so the Jacobites swept the enemy’s left clean off the field, but, like the Royalists sixty years before, they did not know when to check pursuit, and turn the defeat of one wing of an army into the rout of the whole. Yet there was more discipline than usual in these irregulars, for they were little more. Their first volley had been most steadily delivered, and they were not “in the least discomposed by the musketry which the British regiments opened on them in turn.” Meanwhile, on the other wing, Mar’s troops had been defeated and routed by the combined attack of Argyll’s cavalry on the flank and his infantry in front, and though the Macraes, especially, fought with desperate obstinacy, the result here was practically as decisive as had been the attack of the Earl of Mar. So he fell back after the battle, leaving Argyll master of the field and of the situation, and who remarked to an officer before the day closed that—
“If it was na weel bobbit,
We’ll bob it again.”
But Mar was not the man to lead continuously a Highland host. Success increased their fighting power—delay but weakened it; so that when Argyll with some military wisdom at once took a simple defensive, Mar feared to push the battle further, and his army fell back with the prayer of at least one Scot, “Oh for one hour of Dundee!” The battle, which is only noteworthy for the hard fighting of the Cameronians against their fellow-countrymen, was theoretically “a draw,” but the possession of the field and the spoil thereof rested with the Hanoverian side. Soon the army of James began to melt away. The Chevalier came to Scotland, but the affair of Preston in Lancashire gave little encouragement for him to stay, and he returned to France. The first attempt to restore James had signally failed, and while Mar, attainted, died in exile at Aix la Chapelle, Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure were beheaded, and the rest of the prisoners, from both fields, were treated with the greatest barbarity. Still, this rather inflamed than cowed the martial spirit of the north, for four years later, the sentiment of revenge for cruelties unworthy even of the days of the first Georges, led to reprisals. Spain had interested herself in the Stuart cause, and treated the Chevalier as King of Great Britain; while, oddly enough, France, being at war with Spain, sided with King George. The Duke of Ormond headed the somewhat puerile effort at invasion, which commenced with but 1500 Spaniards and Scots, who, landing at Loch Alsh, encamped at Glenshiel; but these were to be reinforced by a larger body under Ormond, which was, however, scattered by a storm off Cape Finisterre. The isolated invaders received some small reinforcement, including 400 Macgregors under Rob Roy, and took up a strong position at the pass of Strachells. Against them marched General Wightman once more, with some detachments of Dutch troops, as well as companies of the 11th, 14th, and 15th line regiments; and although the British force was repulsed, the Spaniards surrendered the following day, and the Scots dispersed to their homes.