General Cope, having landed at Dunbar, had rallied his fugitive dragoons, and was advancing with all speed on Edinburgh. On the 20th of September, the two armies found themselves face to face on the plain of Prestonpans. It was late: the prince was urged to make the attack, but marsh separated him from the foe. A council was held. Charles Edward lay down on a bundle of straw in the midst of his soldiers. In the night he was awakened by one of his aides-de-camp. The proprietor of the piece of ground occupied by the troops, Mr. Wilson, of Whitbough, had remembered an indirect passage which enabled them to avoid the dangerous parts of the marsh. He communicated his plan to the prince. At sunrise the highlanders had surmounted the obstacle, and already threatened the royal troops. A moment of meditation, with uncovered head, on the part of all the soldiers, preceded the shrill summons of the bagpipes and the shouts of the mountaineers. Before the English soldiers could draw, the highlanders had turned aside, with blows of their daggers, the barrels of the muskets, striking with their claymores the foremost ranks, who fell back dying. The cannon had been discarded from the first.
Like the Vendean peasants, the Scotch mountaineers dreaded artillery, and their impetuous bravery was constantly bent on hindering its ravages. Like the former, also, they dragged after them an old field-piece, which they called 'the mother of muskets,'—a worthy predecessor of the illustrious Marie Jeanne of the army of Lescure and under Laroche-jacquelin.
The dragoons had, as on the day before, taken flight, in spite of the efforts of the brave and pious Colonel Gardener, slain soon afterward himself, as he was encouraging the resistance of a little platoon of troops. The infantry held its ground well, but every effort of the highlanders was now concentrated against it. The axes of Lochabar felled heads and lopped limbs. Before this savage valor the English soldiers at length gave way. James MacGregor, son of the celebrated Rob Roy, himself pierced with five wounds, shouted to his companions, "I am not dead, my men; I look to you to do your duty." Everywhere the chiefs were in the fray, at the head of their men. "Do you think that our men are fit to resist the regular troops?" the prince had asked of MacDonald of Keppoch, who had served long in France "I know nothing about it," replied the highlander; "it is long since our clans have been defeated; but what I know well is that the chieftains will be in front, and that the soldiers will not leave them long alone." The attack and the victory only lasted for some moments. General Cope followed his dragoons and brought the news of his defeat to Berwick. "You are the first general who has ever himself announced his own defeat," said Lord Mark Kerr, ironically to him. The fugitives had not been pursued: the highlanders were absorbed in the division of spoils. The prince had carefully protected the wounded. "If I had gained the victory over foreigners, my joy would be complete," he wrote on the morrow to the king his father, "but the idea that it is over the English has mingled in it more bitterness than I thought possible. I learn that six thousand Dutch troops have arrived, and that ten battalions of English have been sent. I wish that they were all Dutch, so that I should not have the sorrow of shedding English blood. I hope I shall soon oblige the elector to send the rest, which at all events will be a service done to England, by making her renounce a foreign war, which is ruinous to her. Unhappily the victory brings embarrassments. I am charged with taking care of my friends and of my enemies; those who ought to bury the dead, as if that did not concern them. My highlanders consider themselves above doing it, and the peasants have withdrawn. I am equally much embarrassed on account of my wounded prisoners. If I make a hospital of a church, people will cry out against this great profanation, and will repeat what I said in my proclamation, by which I was pledged not to violate any propriety. Let come what may, I am resolved not to leave the poor wounded fellows in the street. If I cannot do better, I shall convert the palace into a hospital, and give it to them."
King George II. had just returned to England, recalled by the anxieties of his cabinet. The Marquis of Tweedale, charged with Scotch affairs, being himself undecided and perplexed, complained of being neither seconded nor obeyed. The inhabitants of the Lowlands possessed no arms, the Whig clans of the Highlands delivered up their muskets after the rebellion of 1715 and 1719. Public spirit was not yet excited in England. Either the fears there were shameful, or the indifference excessive. "England will belong to the one who arrives first," wrote Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, and himself a member of the government, to one of his friends. "If you can tell me which will be here most quickly, the six thousand Dutch and the ten English battalions that we are receiving from Flanders, or the five thousand French and Spanish that are announced, you would be made certain of our lot."
Patriotic sentiment, even when it is tardy of awakening, is more powerful than politicians are sometimes led to believe. The prudent indifference of Louis the XV.th's ministers was not deceived. In spite of the ardor of his warlike zeal, Charles Edward felt how precarious was success, and how necessary was external aid. He had several times renewed his representations to the Court of Versailles. Some convoys of arms and money had been sent him; it was even proposed to place the young Duke of York at the head of the Irish brigade; but the ordinary slowness of a weak government interfered with its operations. The assistance so often promised by Spain, as by France, was, up till then, confined to the personal expeditions of some brave adventurers. The Duke of Rochelieu ought to place himself at the head, it was said. "As for the landing at Dunkirk which was spoken of," wrote the eminent Barbier, at the end of the year 1745, "there is much anxiety about it, for we are at the end of December and it is not yet accomplished, which permits every one to invent news according to his fancy. This uncertainty discourages the French, who publish that our expedition will not take place, or at least that it will not assemble."
The expedition did not sail. The prince was ardently desirous of marching upon London, being, like his predecessors in the Scottish insurrection, fatally drawn on to seek, in the very centre of Great Britain, that support and success which always failed them. The Scottish chiefs protested, being violently opposed to the abandonment of Scotland. The prince was ill-inclined to bear contradiction, and promptly flew into a passion in the council. "I perceive, gentlemen," he cried, "that you are determined to remain in Scotland and defend your country. I am not less determined to try my fortune in England. I will go, though I should be alone."
The highlanders yielded with reluctance, and without confidence. "We have undertaken to re-establish the kingdom as well as the King of Scotland," they had often said, and Charles Edward had solemnly announced that his father would never ratify the union. He had even thought of convoking a parliament at Edinburgh. The practical difficulties of the project had deterred him from it. Before turning his steps into England, the prince published an appeal to his subjects of the three kingdoms, as clever as it was impassioned. "It has been sought to frighten you concerning the dangers that your religion and liberty might run. You have been spoken to of arbitrary power; of the tyranny of France and Spain. Give ear to the simple truth. I have at my own expense hired a vessel. Provided but ill with money, arms, or friends, I have come to Scotland with seven persons. I have published the declaration of the king my father, and I have proclaimed his rights, with pardon in one hand and liberty of conscience in the other. As for the reproaches lately addressed to the royal family, the wrongs which might have called them forth have been sufficiently expiated. During the fifty-seven years that our house has lived in exile, has the nation been more happy and more prosperous for it? Are you right, as fathers of Great Britain and Ireland, to love those who have governed you? Have you found more humanity among those whom their birth did not call to the throne than among my royal ancestors? Do you owe them other benefits than the crushing burden of an enormous debt? If it be not so, whence come so many complaints and such continual reproaches in your meetings? I have come here without the aid of France or Spain. But when I see my enemies rallying against me—Dutch, Danes, Hessians, Swiss—and that the Elector of Hanover summons his allies to protect him against the subjects of the king, it seems to me that the king my father is also, in his turn, warranted in accepting some assistance. I am ready, however. If my enemies desire to put it to the proof, let them send back their foreign mercenaries; let them trust to the lot of battles. I shall run my chance with the subjects of my father alone."
The prince's army amounted at most to six thousand men. Many of the great lords and Scotch gentlemen had remained neutral. Some, like Lord Lovat, the chief of the Fraser clan, being scandalously perfidious and corrupt, had secretly authorized their sons to join the prince, reserving to themselves the right of repudiating, if necessary. "There is a singular mixture of gray-beards and beardless boys," wrote a spy who had been sent from England about the middle of October. "There are old men ready to descend into their graves, and youngsters who are not much higher than their swords, and who have not strength to wield them. There are perhaps a good four or five thousand courageous and determined men. The remnant are ill-looking bands, more intent on pillage than on their prince, on a few shillings than on the crown."
It was with these forces, uncertain and irregular, in despite of their devotion, that Charles Edward crossed the frontier on the 8th of November, 1745. The soldiers, as well as the highland chiefs, left their country with regret. A certain number of desertions had already occurred. At the moment when they put their foot on English soil, the highlanders, uttering loud cries, drew their swords. Lochiel wounded himself in the hand with his weapon, and the sight of blood troubled his followers. It was under the influence of this vexatious omen that the Scots laid siege to Carlisle. The direction of operations had been intrusted to the Duke of Perth. The prince, with Lord George Murray, had conceived a movement on Kelso which should deceive, and which in fact did deceive. General Wade, who found himself at Newcastle with the royal troops. When the English general perceived his error, Carlisle was in the hands of the Jacobites. Charles Edward made his entry there solemnly on the 17th of November, being anxious to appease the germs of discord which the success of the Duke of Perth had just planted among the chiefs of his little army. Lord George Murray was maintained in his important functions. From Carlisle to Preston, from Preston to Wigan and Manchester, the Scotch advanced without striking a blow, but uneasy, and suspicious of enemies who did not show themselves or give them occasion to display their valor on the field of battle, and discontented with the English Jacobites, who remained inert and did not in any way second their efforts. A little body of volunteers was formed at Manchester under the orders of Colonel Townley, who belonged to an old Catholic Lancashire family. On the banks of the Mersey, among the gentlemen assembled to receive him, the prince perceived a very old woman who had formerly assisted at Dover, in 1660, at the landing of King Charles II. Since the revolution of 1688, Mrs. Skyring had constantly divided her income into two parts, sending half of it to the royal exiles. At the news of Charles Edward's arrival, she had collected her plate and her jewels, in order to lay everything at the feet of the young prince. Her prayers were heard, she said, like Simeon of old: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Tradition relates that the old Jacobite did actually die some days after the departure of the adventurous young man whose success she so ardently desired.