The Red men were like incarnate fiends, and, amid groans, yells, prayers, and entreaties, were seen on their knees in frenzy, drinking blood from the spouting veins and bleeding scalps of their victims. The combat was a mere massacre, and seemed as if all hell had burst its gates and held jubilee in that wild forest of the savage West. The Provincials were destroyed. Grant, with nineteen officers, fell into the hands of the French; and of his Highlanders only 150 succeeded in effecting a retreat to Loyal Henning, under the command of Louis Charters, to whose skill, bravery, and energy, they unanimously attributed their escape. Many of their comrades who were captured died under agonies such as Indians, Turks, or devils alone could have devised; and the story of one—Private Allan MacPherson—who escaped a cruel death by pretending that his neck was sword-proof, as related by the Abbé Reynal, and General Stewart of Garth, is well known.
James Grant of Ballindalloch died a general in the army in 1806; but he never forgot the horrors of his rashness at Fort du Quesne, which was abandoned to Brigadier Forbes on the 24th November; by this he was deprived of a revenge, and to win it Charters had volunteered to lead the forlorn hope. Poor General Forbes died on the retreat.
Charters's regiment served next in General Ambent's army at Ticonderoga, at Crown Point, and on the Lake Expedition, where he saved the life of Ensign Grant—now known as Alaster the One-handed—by bearing him off the field when wounded; but during all those desultory and sanguinary operations, he never heard from Emmy, nor did she hear from him. He suffered much; he nearly perished in the snow on one occasion with a whole detachment; he was wounded in the left shoulder on that night of horrors at Ticonderoga, and had a narrow escape from a cannon-ball in the fight with a French ship, when proceeding on the expedition to Dominique under Lord Rollo and Sir James Douglas; but though the ball spared his head, the wind of it raised a large inflamed spot, which gave him great trouble and pain. He was with his corps at the conquest of the Havannah; he was at the capture of Newfoundland with the 46th and the Highlanders of Fraser, and he served with honour in a hundred minor achievements of the brave Highlanders of Montgomery.
Renewed or recruited thrice from the Highland clans, the old 77th covered themselves with glory, and of all the Scottish corps in the King's service, there was none from which the soldiers more nobly and rigidly transmitted to their aged parents in Scotland the savings of their poor pay or the prize money gained by their blood in the Havannah. In one of his (unanswered) letters to Emmy Stuart, Louis says, "I have known some of our poor fellows, my dear girl, who almost starved themselves for this purpose."
One of the majors being killed at the storming of the Moro, his widow, in consideration of his great services, was permitted to sell his commission. Louis was now senior captain, and the regiment knew well that he, having only his pay, was unable to purchase it: but so greatly was he beloved by the soldiers, many of whom, in America, had thrown themselves before the sharp tomahawks and poisoned arrows of the Indians to save him, that they subscribed each Highlander so many days' pay to purchase his majority; and the plunder of the rich Havannah having put these brave souls in good funds, the money was all fairly laid on the drum-head in one hour, when the corps was on evening parade in the citadel of El Fuerte.
Such a noble instance of camaraderie and true soldierly sentiment never occurred in the British service but once before; and then it was also in an old Scottish regiment which had served, I believe, in the wars of Queen Anne, before the amalgamation of the forces of the two kingdoms.*
* See "Advice to Officers." Perth, 1795.
This was the most noble tribute his soldiers could pay to Charters, who was duly gazetted when the regiment was stationed at New York in the summer of 1763, to enjoy a little repose after the toils of the past war.
The services and adventures so briefly glanced at here, had thus spread over a period of five years—to Louis, long and weary years—during which he had never heard of Emmy but once; and now he had no relic of her to remind him of those delightful days of peace and love that had fled apparently for ever. The ring she had given him, warm from her pretty hand, had been torn from his finger by plunderers as he lay wounded and helpless on the ramparts of Fort Loudon, on the confines of far Virginia; her fan was lost when his baggage was taken on the retreat from Fort du Quesne; the locket with her hair had been rent from him, when he was taken prisoner and stripped by the French, in the attack on Martinique. He was changed in appearance too; his hair once black as night was already seamed by many a silvery thread, yet he was only two-and-thirty. His face was gaunt and wan, and bronzed by the Indian sun and keen American frost. His eyes, like the eyes of all inured to facing death and danger, pestilence and the bullet, were fierce at times, and keen and haggard; and when tidings came, or it was mooted at mess, that the war-worn regiment of Montgomery was once again to see the Scottish shore, poor Louis looked wistfully into his glass, and doubted whether Emmy would know him; for between the French and the Cherokees he had acquired somewhat the aspect of a brigand.
Peace was proclaimed at last, and the Government made an offer to the regiment, that such officers and men as might choose to settle in America should have grants of land proportioned to their rank and services. The rest might return to Scotland or volunteer into other corps. A few remained among the colonists, and on the revolt of America in 1775, were the first men to join the standard of George III., who ordered them to be embodied as the 84th or Royal Regiment of Highland Emigrants. The rest—most of whom volunteered to join the Black Watch,—with the band, pipes, and colours, under Louis Charters, embarked at New York, and, full of hope and joy, with three hearty cheers, as their ship cleft the waters of the Hudson and bore through the Narrows, saw the future capital of the western world sink in the distance and disappear astern.