HE scene shifts to the shores of a remote loch in the Western Highlands of Scotland. Great, gloomy hills rise from the water’s edge; the whole aspect of the place is wild and solitary. At the head of the loch is a little plain, from which a narrow, rocky glen runs far inland. Not a soul is in sight; not a sound breaks the stillness. Now you see a small company of men appear on the plain. In the centre of them is a gallant young soldier, tall and slim, with a high, broad forehead, a shapely nose, rich, dark-brown eyes, and chestnut hair. He carries himself right nobly, and you feel as you gaze upon him that here at last is a real hero of romance. Full of hope and eager anticipation he comes upon the scene; but as he waits, and the minutes lengthen into hours, his light-hearted gaiety gives place to dejection. The glen remains silent and deserted. Those who have sworn to meet here have not kept tryst. The young prince—for such he is—retires with a sinking heart to the shelter of a barn. Suddenly he hears the faint sound of distant bagpipes. His eyes light up, he springs to his feet, and hastily quits his shelter. His heart beats fast as he listens. Louder and louder grows the sound of the pibroch, and now on the skyline of yonder hill you see Lochiel with seven or eight hundred Camerons. As soon as they sight the prince they raise loud huzzas, which echo and re-echo from the hills.
The clansmen form up, and the feeble old Marquis of Tullibardine, supported by a man on each side, proudly unfurls a royal standard. As its white, blue, and red folds lift upon the wind, cheer after cheer is raised, and the greatest enthusiasm prevails. A commission of regency is read, and the prince, baring his head, makes a brief but gallant speech. “I knew,” he says, “that I should find in Scotland brave gentlemen, fired with the noble example of their predecessors, and jealous of their own and their country’s honour, to join me in so glorious an enterprise. For my own part I do not doubt of bringing the affair to a happy issue.” The cheers which greet the prince’s speech have scarcely died away before the Macdonalds, to the number of three hundred, arrive. Others follow, and before the camp fires are lighted fifteen hundred men have sworn to follow the prince to the death.
Who is this prince, and why has he invaded this remote and desolate part of Scotland? He is Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of James the Second, the son of the “old Pretender,” a gay, light-hearted, active, robust, adventurous young man of twenty-five, who since boyhood has cherished the hope of winning back the throne of his fathers. There has already been one attempt, but it was a dismal failure. Fifty-seven years ago his grandfather fled from the kingdom, and William and Mary began to reign in his stead. Then followed his aunt, Queen Anne; and at her death the Tories very nearly made his father king. The activity of the Whigs foiled them just in the nick of time, and the King of Hanover, “a wee German lairdie,” who claimed descent through his mother from James the First, was brought over and crowned. Now his son, the second George, was King of Great Britain and Ireland.
A fierce continental war was now raging, and Britain was foolish enough to take a hand in it. To the exiled court, then established in Rome, England’s embarrassment was the Jacobites’ opportunity, and our young hero, “bonnie Prince Charlie,” saw that he must shoot his bolt now or never. To his father he said, “I go in search of three crowns, which I doubt not but to have the honour and happiness of laying at your Majesty’s feet. If I fail in the attempt, your next sight of me shall be in my coffin.” “Heaven forbid,” replied James, “that all the crowns in the world should rob me of my son.”
Some months of delay elapsed, and then an expedition was fitted out; but the winds and waves, never kindly disposed to the Stuarts, drove it back. Weary of waiting for further French assistance, Prince Charlie determined to stake all on a desperate venture. “I will go to Scotland,” he said to Lord George Murray, one of the wisest and most trusted of his advisers, “if I take with me only a single footman.” His equipment makes us smile. He was about to challenge the might of Britain with a few hundred muskets, some broadswords, twenty small field-guns, a war-chest of £4,000, and a barrel or two of brandy. The whole story would be a farce had not the splendid spirit of young Charles lifted it into a romance. Sailing from Nantes with a little privateer and a fast brig called the Doutelle, he soon lost the privateer, which was driven back to harbour by a British ship. The Doutelle, however, skirted the eastern shores of Scotland, rounded the tempestuous north, sailed amidst the islands of the west, and landed him with seven followers at Eriskay, a little island of the Hebrides, on July 25, 1745.
Let us picture the scene. The French frigate lies off the little rocky isle, and the prince is eager to go ashore. During the brief voyage he has exercised that extraordinary personal magnetism with which he is endowed, and every man on board is his willing slave. No one, not even Napoleon, ever possessed so much of that strange attraction which can capture the imagination of men and women, and make them leave home, kindred, and friends in order to throw themselves into a perilous and ruinous cause. As the needle points to the pole, so do all men’s hearts turn to him, whether in sunshine or in storm, in defeat or in victory. As the French frigate comes to her anchorage an eagle hovers over the ship. “Sire,” says old Tullibardine, “the king of birds has come to welcome your royal highness.”
A few hours later Charles trod the soil of Scotland for the first time. The day was wet and stormy, and the opening of the campaign was most inauspicious. Next day a neighbouring chief, Macdonald of Boisdale, was sent for. He came “over the water to Charlie,” but bluntly advised the prince to return home. With that readiness of speech which marked him, the prince replied, “I am come home, sir, and I will entertain no notion of returning to that place from whence I came. I am persuaded that my faithful Highlanders will stand by me.” He refused to be rebuffed, and forthwith crossed in the French ship to the coast of Inverness, where he summoned the gallant Lochiel and other leading chiefs to meet him. And now his fate seemed to rest on the goodwill of a single man. Lochiel had already denounced Charles’s invasion as a rash and desperate undertaking, and he was in no mood to join the prince. Other leading men shook their heads, though Charles pleaded his cause with all the earnestness of despair, pacing up and down the deck, and pouring forth a torrent of eloquent words.
As he did so he espied a young Highlander listening attentively with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. Here was a kindred spirit. The prince suddenly turned to him and said, “You, at least, will not forsake me.” “I will follow you to the death,” said the lad. “I would follow you to the death, even were there no other to draw a sword in your cause.” The lad’s speech had an excellent effect on his hearers. Their Highland pride was touched, their Highland chivalry was aroused. Most of them flung their caution to the winds and eagerly embraced his cause. Lochiel, however, had yet to be persuaded, and Charles, tired of pleading, tried reproach. “In a few days,” he said, “with the few friends that I have, I will erect the royal standard and proclaim to the people of Britain that Charles Stuart is come to claim the crown of his ancestors, and to win it or perish in the attempt. Lochiel can stay at home and learn from the newspapers the fate of his prince.” This was more than Lochiel could bear. “No,” he cried; “I’ll share the fate of my prince, come what may.” Forthwith arrangements were made for the meeting at Glenfinnan. You have already witnessed the gathering of the clansmen and the unfurling of the royal standard.
On the very day that the prince’s banner first waved in the northern breeze, Sir John Cope, the commander of the royal forces in Scotland, moved towards the Highlands with three thousand men, mainly raw recruits, for well-nigh the whole British army was overseas in Flanders. Cope was a dull man of the stock-and-pipeclay school, and a thoroughly incompetent general. His object was to relieve the small garrisons of royal troops stationed at Fort William and Fort Augustus. When, however, he reached the rocky steeps of Corry Arrack he found the clansmen in possession of the pass. Rumours were rife that every zigzag path was commanded by big guns, and that every rock concealed an armed Highlander. Turning aside, he marched towards Inverness, and thus left the southern road open.