Charles and Lochiel remained six or seven days in this seclusion, which was one of several to which Clunie was in the habit of retiring, never even informing his wife or his most attached friends whither he was going. But the deliverance of the Prince and Lochiel was now at hand. Several small vessels had arrived from France, and touched on the west coast, expressly to carry away the Prince, but not being able to find him out, they had returned. By the fidelity of the Highlanders and the connection between every member of the different clans, the Prince had been able to keep up a continual communication with persons on the coast, without discovery. This was managed by some of his adherents skulking near the shore; and though they knew not where Charles was, yet they conveyed the intelligence to others, who imparted it to persons in the interior, who again told it to those who were acquainted with the obscure place of his retreat. At last two French vessels, l'Heureux and la Princesse de Conti, departed under the command of Colonel Warren, from St. Malo, and arrived at Lochnarmagh early in September. This event was communicated to Cameron of Clunes, who, on the other hand, learned where the Prince was from a poor woman. A messenger was immediately dispatched to the Cage, and he reached that place on the thirteenth of September. Charles Edward and Lochiel now prepared to bid Scotland a final adieu. Notices were sent round by the Prince to different friends who might choose to avail themselves of this opportunity of escape; and it was intimated to them that they might join him if they were inclined.
The place of embarkation was Borodale, whence Charles had first summoned Lochiel to support his cause. The party travelled only by night, and were six days on their road. They were joined by Glengary, John Roy Stewart, Dr. Cameron, and a number of other adherents. On the twentieth of September they left Lochnarmagh, and had a fair passage to the coast of France. The Prince had intended to sail direct for Nantes, but he altered his course in order to escape Admiral Lestoch's squadron; and after being chased by two men-of-war, he landed at Morlaix, in Lower Bretagne, in a thick fog, on the twenty-ninth of September.
Lochiel was accompanied in his flight to France by his wife, the faithful and affectionate associate of his exile. His eldest son was left in the charge of his brother Cameron, of Fassefern. In Paris Lochiel found his father, who was then eighty years of age; and to this aged chief the Prince paid the well-merited compliment of placing him in the same carriage with himself and Lord Lewis Gordon, when he first went to the Court of Louis the Fifteenth in state. The Prince was followed on that occasion by a number of his friends, both in coaches and on horseback. Lord Ogilvy, Lord Elcho, and the Prince's secretary Kelly, preceded the royal carriage: the younger Lochiel and several gentlemen followed on horseback. Amid this noble train of brave men, the Prince appeared pre-eminent in the splendour of his dress. A coat of rose-coloured velvet, lined with silver tissue, presented a singular contrast to the brown short coat in which some of his adherents had formerly seen him. His waistcoat was of gold brocade with a spangled fringe, set out in scollops, and the white cockade in his hat was studded with diamonds. The order of St. Andrew and the George on his breast were adorned with the same jewels: "he glittered," as an eye-witness observed, "all over like the star which they tell you appeared at his nativity." But all this display, and the feigned kindness of his reception, were but the prelude to a heartless abandonment of his cause on the part of Louis the Fifteenth.
Lochiel was, eventually, provided for by the French Monarch. He was made Colonel of a French regiment, and having a peculiar faculty of attaching others to him, he soon became beloved by those under his command. The Prince showed him affectionate respect; and, blessed in the society of his wife, and in a daughter whom he called Donalda, Lochiel might have passed the rest of his days in tranquil submission to the course of events: but his heart yearned for Scotland; he could not give up the hopes of another expedition, which he desired to undertake with any force that could be collected. Cherishing this scheme, the coldness of the Court of France, and the rashness of the Prince, gave great sorrow to his harassed mind. Soon after his arrival in Paris he opened a correspondence with the Chevalier St. George, and represented to him that the misfortunes which had befallen the cause were not irretrievable, and that if ten regiments only could be landed in Scotland before the depopulating system adopted by the English Government had taken effect, an insurrection might again be raised with good grounds for the hope of success.
Still hoping thus to return to his country, and again to take arms in her service, as he deemed it, it was long before Lochiel consented to accept the command of the French regiment, "intending still," as he said, "to share the fate of his people." "I told his Royal Highness," he wrote to the Chevalier St. George, "that Lord Ogilvy or others might incline to make a figure in France, but my ambition was to save the crown and serve my country, or perish with it. His Royal Highness said, he was doing all he could, but persisted in his resolution to procure me a regiment. If it is obtained, I shall accept it out of respect to the Prince; but I hope your Majesty will approve of the resolution I have taken to share in the fate of the people I have undone, and, if they must be sacrificed, to fall along with them. This is the only way I can free myself from the reproach of their blood, and show the disinterested zeal with which I have lived, and shall dye.
"Your Majesty's most humble, most obedient, and most faithful servant."[296]
When Prince Charles, disheartened at the growing indifference of the French Court to his interests, contemplated leaving Paris, Lochiel objected to a proposal which seemed to imply an abandonment of the cause which he had pledged himself to support. His representations to the Prince were ineffectual, for a stronger influence had arisen to baffle the endeavours of Charles's friends; and he was under the sway of one who was, not inaptly, termed "his Delilah." He left Paris and arrived at Avignon, to which place Lochiel addressed to him a letter full of the most cogent reasons why he should not leave Paris. From his arguments it appears that the English Jacobites had expressed their willingness to rise, had the Prince either supplied them with arms or brought them troops to support them.
"For Heaven's sake, sir," wrote Lochiel,[297] "be pleased to consider these circumstances with the attention that their importance deserves; and that your honour, your essential interest, the preservation of the royal cause, and the bleeding state of your suffering friends, require of you. Let me beg of your Royal Highness, in the most humble and earnest manner, to reflect that your reputation must suffer in the opinion of all mankind, if there should be room to suppose that you had slighted or neglected any possible means of retrieving your affairs."
These remonstrances were at last so far effectual, that Charles returned to Paris, and was only again removed from that capital by force.
The spirit of Lochiel was meantime broken by the mournful tidings which reached him of the death of friends on the scaffold, the cruelties enacted in Scotland, and, more than all, of the Act which took effect in August 1747, disarming the Highlanders and restraining the use of the Highland garb. By this statute it was made penal to wear the national costume: a first offence was punished with six months' imprisonment; a second, with transportation for seven years. Such were the efforts made to break the union of a fiery but faithful people, and such the attempt to produce a complete revolution in the national habits!