An incident, which occurred in Flanders, will give an idea of the nature of this brute Hawley, a very fit second-in-command, for such a man as Cumberland afterwards proved himself to be. During the campaign in the Low Countries when Hawley commanded a regiment, one of his own men, a deserter, had been hanged before his windows. So pleasant a sight did he find it, that when the surgeons came to beg the body for dissection he was very loth to part with it.
“At least,” he said at last, “you shall give me the skeleton to hang up in the guard-room!”
Fancy a spruce Colonel of a line-battalion of our own day ordering a guard-room to be decorated in this fashion! Cumberland remained little more than twenty-four hours in Edinburgh, then moved out to find the Prince’s army, which he understood lay at Falkirk; his men appeared to have advanced with every confidence in him.
Charles had, however, much against his will, commenced a retreat towards the Highlands, where his generals had persuaded him with much difficulty to pass the remainder of the winter.
This retreat appears to have been conducted with carelessness and disorder, and much baggage was lost to the pursuing English troops. However, Crieff was reached, and here the two divisions marched by different roads towards Inverness.
It seems pitiable to contrast the position of the Prince’s army from this time forth, sown with dissension, wandering about in the cold northern winter and spring among barren mountains from which it was impossible to break forth, without food or money.
Charles at this period was reduced to his last five hundred louis d’or and had to pay his troops in meal, which course ended as might have been expected, in many desertions.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Cumberland’s army was well fed and clothed and reinforced by five thousand Hessians, who had been hired by the government. These troops, however, did not take part in the subsequent battle, but held the line of communications.
But the end came at last. Cumberland having fixed his Headquarters at Aberdeen, moved out of that place on the 8th of April, 1746, with about eight thousand infantry, and nine hundred cavalry and marched via Banff and the river Spey on Nairn, which town he entered on the 14th April.
That night, Charles, who had come up with his Guards, slept at Culloden House, the seat of President Forbes, one of his principal enemies, his men to the number of about five thousand bivouacing on the moor using the heath during the bitter night both for bed and fuel.