A History of the Four Georges, Volume II

by Justin McCarthy

{208}

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE MARCH SOUTH.

[Sidenote: 1715-1716—The chances in his favor]

The condition of Scotland at the time of the prince's landing was such as in a great degree to favor a hostile invasion. Even educated Englishmen then knew much less about Scotland, or at least the Highlands of Scotland, than their descendants do to-day of Central Africa. People—the few daringly adventurous people—who ventured to travel in the Highlands were looked upon by their admiring friends as the rivals of Bruce or Mandoville, and they wrote books about their travels as they would have done if they had travelled in Thibet; and very curious reading those books are now after the lapse of something over a century. The whole of the Highlands were wild, unfrequented, and desolate, under the rude jurisdiction of the heads of the great Highland houses, whose clansmen, as savage and as desperately courageous as Sioux or Pawnees, offered their lords an almost idolatrous devotion. Nominally the clans were under the authority of the English Crown and the Scottish law; actually they recognized no rule but the rule of their chiefs, who wielded a power as despotic as that of any feudal seigneur in the days of the old régime. The heroes of the Ossianic poems—the Finns and Dermats whom colonization had transplanted from Irish to Scottish legend—were not more unfettered or more antiquely chivalrous than the clansmen who boasted of their descent from them. Scotland was more unlike England in the middle of the last century than Russia is unlike Sicily to day.

There were several things in Charles's favor. To begin with, the disarmament of the clans, which had been insisted {209} upon after "the Fifteen," had been carried out in such a fashion as was now to prove most serviceable to the Young Pretender; for the only clans that had been really disarmed were the Mackays, Campbells, and Sutherlands, who were loyal enough to the House of Hanover, and gave up their weapons very readily to prove their loyalty. But the other clans—the clans that ever cherished the lingering hope of a Stuart restoration—were not in reality disarmed at all. They made a great show of surrendering to General Wade weapons that were utterly worthless as weapons of war, honey-combed, crippled old guns and swords and axes; but the good guns and swords and axes, the serviceable weapons, these were all carefully stowed away in fitting places of concealment, ready for the hour when they might be wanted again. That hour had now come. So that, thanks to the Disarming Act of 1716, the Government found its chief allies in the north of Scotland practically defenceless and unarmed, while the clans that kept pouring in to rally around the standard of the young invader were as well armed as any of those who had fought so stoutly at Sheriffmuir. Yet another advantage on the adventurer's side was due to the tardiness with which news travelled in those times. Charles had been for many days in the Highlands, preparing the way for the rising, before rumors of anything like an accredited kind came to the Court of St. James. The Highlands and islands of Scotland were then so far removed from the great world of government that it had taken something like half a year on one occasion before the dwellers in the stormy Shetlands had learned that their sovereign, King William the Third, was dead and buried; and in the years that had elapsed since William of Orange passed away the means of communication between London and the far north were little if at all better. Charles had actually raised his standard and rallied clan after clan around him before the Government in London could seriously believe that a Stuart in arms was in the island. There were other and minor elements of success, too, to be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing. The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever made high office ridiculous. The King was away in Hanover. England was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy. There were very few troops in England to employ against an invasion, and the Scottish commander-in-chief, Sir John Cope, whose name lives in unenviable fame in the burden of many a Jacobite ballad, was as incapable a well-meaning general as ever was called upon to face a great unexpected emergency. It must be admitted that all these were excellent points in the prince's favor, and that they counted for much in the conduct of the campaign.

From the first, young Charles Stuart might well have come to regard himself as the favorite of fortune. The history of the Forty-five divides itself into two distinct parts: the first a triumphant record of brilliant victories, and the picture of a young prince marching through conquest after conquest to a crown; the second part prefaced by a disastrous resolution, leading to overwhelming defeat, and ending in ignominious flight and the extinction of the last Stuart hope. From the moment when the Stuart standard fluttered its folds of white and crimson on the Highland wind it seemed as if the Stuart luck had turned. Charles might well conceive himself happy. Upon his sword sat laurel victory. Smooth success was strewn before his feet. The blundering and bewildered Cope actually allowed Charles and his army to get past him. Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a terrible blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon Inverness Charles was triumphantly entering Perth. From Perth the young prince, with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, marched on Edinburgh.

[Sidenote: 1745—The advance of the clans]

The condition of Edinburgh was peculiar: although a large proportion of its inhabitants, especially those who were well-to-do, were stanch supporters of the House of Hanover, there were plenty of Jacobites in the place, and {211} it only needed the favor of a few victories to bring into open day a great deal of latent Jacobitism that was for the moment prudently kept under by its possessors. The Lord Provost himself was more than suspected of being a Jacobite at heart. The city was miserably defended. Such walls as it possessed were more ornamental than useful, and in any case were sadly in want of repair. All the military force it could muster to meet the advance of the clans was the small but fairly efficient body of men who formed the Town Guard; the Train Bands, some thousand strong, who knew no more than so many spinsters of the division of a battle; the small and undisciplined Edinburgh regiment; and a scratch collection of volunteers hurriedly raked together from among the humbler citizens of the town, and about as useful as so many puppets to oppose to the daring and the ferocity of the clans. Edinburgh opinion had changed very rapidly with regard to that same daring and ferocity. When the first rumors of the prince's advance were bruited abroad, the adherents of the House of Hanover in Edinburgh made very merry over the gang of ragged rascals, hen-roost robbers, and drunken rogues upon whom the Pretender relied in his effort to "enjoy his ain again." But as the clans came nearer and nearer, as the air grew thicker with flying rumors of the successes that attended upon the prince's progress, as the capacity of the town seemed weaker for holding out, and as the prospect of reinforcements seemed to grow fainter and fainter, the opinion of Hanoverian Edinburgh concerning the clans changed mightily. Had the Highlanders been a race of giants, endowed with more than mortal prowess, and invulnerable as Achilles, they could hardly have struck more terror into the hearts of loyal and respectable Edinburgh citizens.

Still there were some stout hearts in Edinburgh who did their best to keep up the courage of the rest and to keep out the enemy. Andrew Fletcher and Duncan Forbes were of the number. M'Laurin, the mathematician, turned his genius to the bettering of the fortifications. Old {212} Dr. Stevenson, bedridden but heroic, kept guard in his armchair for many days at the Netherbow Gate. The great question was would Cope come in time? Cope was at Aberdeen. Cope had put his army upon transports. Cope might be here to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, to-day, who knows? But in the mean time the King's Dragoons, whom Cope had left behind him when he first started out to meet the Pretender, had steadily and persistently retreated before the Highland advance. They had now halted—they can hardly be said to have made a stand—at Corstorphine, some three miles from Edinburgh, and here it was resolved to do something to stay the tide of invasion. Hamilton's Dragoons were at Leith. These were ordered to join the King's Dragoons at Corstorphine, and to collect as many Edinburgh volunteers as they could on their way. Inside the walls of Edinburgh it was easy enough to collect volunteers, and quite a little army of them marched out with drums beating and colors flying at the heels of Hamilton's Dragoons. But on the way to the town gates the temper of the volunteers changed, and by the time that the town gates were reached and passed the volunteers had dwindled to so pitiable a handful that they were dismissed, and Hamilton's Dragoons proceeded alone to join Cope's King's Dragoons at Corstorphine.