At Blair, Charles was joined by Lord Nairne, and several other Perthshire gentlemen; but the greater part of the resident gentry had fled on hearing of the entrance of the Highland army into Athole. Charles reviewed his army the morning after his arrival at the castle, when he found that a considerable number of his men were wanting. Some officers were immediately sent to bring them up, and the only reason they assigned for loitering behind, was that they had been denied the gratification of pursuing Cope.
From Blair, Charles sent forward Lord Nairne, and Lochiel, with 400 men, to take possession of Dunkeld, which they entered on the morning of the 3d of September. In this town they proclaimed the Chevalier. After remaining two days at the castle of Blair, Charles repaired on the 2d of September to the house of Lude, where he spent the night,[863] and next day went to Dunkeld, whence he proceeded to Lord Nairne’s house, on the road to Perth. While at dinner, the conversation turning upon the character of the enterprise, and the peculiarity of the prince’s situation, some of the company took occasion to express their sympathy for the prince’s father, on account of the state of anxiety he would be in, from the consideration of those dangers and difficulties the prince would have to encounter. But Charles, without meaning to depreciate his father’s cares, observed that he did not pity him half so much as his brother; “for,” said he, “the king has been inured to disappointments and distresses, and has learnt to bear up easily under the misfortunes of life; but poor Harry! his young and tender years make him much to be pitied, for few brothers love as we do.”[864]
Charles spent the night at Nairne-house, and proceeded next day to Perth, which had been taken possession of by a party of Camerons the preceding evening. Attired in a superb dress of tartan, trimmed with gold, and mounted on Captain Scott’s charger, Charles entered the “fair city,” attended by several gentlemen on horseback. They immediately repaired to the cross, and proclaimed the Chevalier; after which ceremony Charles was conducted, amid the acclamations of the people, to the house of Viscount Stormont, which had been provided for his residence while in Perth. The magistrates and some of the principal inhabitants, following the example set by many of the landed proprietors of the county, abandoned the city on the appearance of the Highlanders, and fled to Edinburgh. An advanced party under Macdonald of Keppoch, had been sent forward to seize Dundee; but being informed by some of the inhabitants, who met him on the road, that his force was too small for the purpose, Keppoch applied for a reinforcement; which was accordingly sent off from Perth, about midnight, under Clanranald. These detachments entered Dundee at day-break, and captured two vessels with arms and ammunition on board, which were sent up the Tay for the use of the royal army.
At Perth, Charles was joined by the Duke of Perth, Lord Ogilvie and Strathallan, Robertson of Strowan, Oliphant of Gask, and several other gentlemen; but the chief personage who rallied under Charles’s standard at Perth, and was indeed among the first to appear there, was Lord George Murray,[865] immediate younger brother to the Duke of Athole. He was conducted by his eldest brother, the Marquis of Tullibardine, into the presence of the prince. Lord George had taken a share in the insurrection of 1715, and was one of the few persons who joined the Spanish forces, which were defeated at Glenshiel in 1719. He afterwards went abroad, and served several years as an officer in the King of Sardinia’s army; but having obtained a pardon, he returned from exile, and was presented to George I. by his brother the Duke of Athole. Lord George was tall in person, and though now past the meridian of life, retained all the qualities of a robust and vigorous constitution. Besides a natural genius for military operations, in which he had had considerable experience, Lord George was fertile in resources, indefatigable in application, and brave even to a fault. With sword in hand he was always the first to rush forward upon the enemy in the day of battle, often saying to his men, “I do not ask you, my lads, to go before, but to follow me.” The accession therefore of such a man, at such a crisis, was of the highest importance to the Jacobite cause. Charles, when at Glenfinnan, had conferred the post of quarter-master-general of the army on O’Sullivan. Aware of the brilliant qualifications of Lord George, the prince, almost immediately on his arrival at Perth, appointed him lieutenant-general, to the great satisfaction of the clans, to whom he was favourably known.
Lord George appointed the Chevalier Johnstone,[866] who had also joined the prince at Perth, his aide-de-camp, and immediately entered on his duties with alacrity. Though the Highlanders acted in complete subordination to their chiefs when in the field of battle, they had so little idea of military discipline, that they would absent themselves without permission, and roam about the country. This happened more particularly on marches, when there was a scarcity of food, on which occasions they would spread themselves over the whole country, in straggling parties, in quest of provisions. The inconveniences and loss of time, and the great abuses to which such a practice led, had been strongly felt in the former insurrection, and had been witnessed by Lord George himself. To prevent a recurrence of such evils during the present contest, the first thing Lord George did, was to advise the prince to appoint proper persons to fill the commissariat department, by whose exertions an adequate supply of food might be provided for the use of the army, without which, he said, it would be impossible to keep the Highlanders together for any length of time. That no delay might take place in waiting for provisions, in forced marches, or in detached enterprises, which required despatch, he caused a considerable number of small knapsacks to be made, sufficient to contain a peck of meal each, which the men could carry on their backs without any inconvenience. A thousand of these knapsacks were sent to Crieff, for the use of the Athole men, who were to march south in that direction.[867]
The march of Charles into Athole had been so rapid and unexpected, that his friends in that district had had no time to gather any considerable force to join him on his route to Perth. He was, therefore, under the necessity of remaining a few days at Perth, to give his adherents time to raise their men. In mustering their tenants and vassals, some of them are said to have met with considerable difficulties from the unwillingness of their people to take up arms, and the Duke of Perth has been charged with the crime of shooting one or two of his tenants, who were refractory, but the charge does not appear sufficiently supported.[868]
Another reason for Charles’s stay in Perth was the want of money. His treasury had been completely drained by his liberal advances for the support of his army; and of the few thousand pounds which he brought with him from France, he had only one guinea remaining when he entered Perth. Taking the solitary coin from his pocket, he showed it to Kelly, one of the gentlemen who came over with him, and told him that it was all the money that now remained; but he added with an air of confidence, that the army had received a fortnight’s pay in advance, and that before the expiration of another fortnight he would receive a fresh supply.[869] In order to meet pecuniary demands, Charles had despatched a circular from Kinlochiel on the 22d of August to his friends in different parts of Scotland, soliciting an immediate supply; but up to the time of his arrival at Perth no money appears to have reached him.[870] Shortly thereafter, however, his expectations began to be realized by some private pecuniary contributions sent by persons well affected to his cause, but who were afraid of openly declaring themselves.[871] But Charles did not trust to such uncertain supplies to recruit his exhausted treasury. Besides compelling the city of Perth to contribute £500, he appointed persons in Perth, Dundee, and other towns in the counties of Perth and Angus, to collect the public money, by means of which, and the contributions of his friends, his coffers were speedily replenished.
During his stay at Perth, Charles devoted almost all his time to the disciplining and training of his men, in writing despatches, and in a variety of military details to which he had hitherto been unaccustomed. Though fond of amusement, he never allowed it to occupy much of his time; and if he accepted a convivial invitation, it was more from a wish not to disoblige than from a desire to join in the festivities of his friends. Amid the occupations of the camp he did not, however, neglect the outward observances of religion. For the first time, it is believed, of his life, he attended the Protestant service at Perth, on Sunday the 8th of September, rather, it may be conjectured, to please his Protestant friends, than from any predilection for a form of worship to which he was an entire stranger. The text appropriately chosen on this occasion by the preacher, a Mr. Armstrong, was from Isaiah xiv., verses 1, 2, “For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.”[872] The non-juring Jacobite discourse delivered on the occasion in question, would certainly form an extraordinary contrast with the democratic harangues to which Charles’s great-grandfather, Charles I., and his grand uncle, Charles II., were accustomed to listen from the mouths of the stern Covenanters.
While Charles was thus employed at Perth, Sir John Cope was marching from Inverness to Aberdeen. After leaving the direct road to Fort Augustus, Cope had proceeded by forced marches to Inverness, where he arrived on the 29th of August. Here he met the Lord President, who communicated to him a letter he had received on his arrival in the north, from Sir Alexander Macdonald, informing him of the names of the chiefs who had joined Charles, and requesting directions how to act in the event of the insurgent chiefs being forced to retire to the islands. After consulting with the President, Cope resolved to march back his army to Stirling, provided he could obtain a reinforcement of Highlanders from the Whig clans in the neighbourhood of Inverness. An application was accordingly made to the chiefs; but as it turned out ineffectual, Cope determined to march to Aberdeen and embark his troops for the Frith of Forth. The feelings of alarm and anxiety with which he was agitated on this occasion, are thus described by himself in a letter which he wrote from Inverness, on the 31st of August, to Lord Milton the Justice Clerk:—“I, from the beginning, thought this affair might become serious; and sorry I am that I was not mistaken: indeed, my lord, it is serious. I know your activity and ability in business,—the whole is at stake,—exert your authority,—lengths must be gone,—and rules and common course of business must yield to the necessity of the times, or it may soon be too late. So much fatigue of body and mind I never knew of before; but my health continues good, and my spirits do not flag. Much depends upon the next step we take. In this country the rebels will not let us get at them unless we had some Highlanders with us; and, as yet, not one single man has joined us, though I have lugged along with us 300 stand of arms. No man could have believed that not one man would take arms in our favour, or show countenance to us; but so it is.”[873]
It is rather singular, that on the same day on which the above-mentioned letter was written, the adherents of government at Edinburgh, who had hitherto derided the attempt of the prince, should have been at last aroused to a full sense of the danger they were in. Lulled by a false security, they had never, for a moment, doubted that Cope would be successful on his expedition in the north; but certain intelligence, brought to them by James Drummond or Macgregor, son of the celebrated Rob Roy, who arrived at Edinburgh on the 26th, began to open their eyes. With the object of throwing the government party in the capital off their guard, this man was despatched from the Jacobite camp in Lochaber to Edinburgh, with the necessary instructions. Enjoying in some degree the confidence of the whig party, he was the better fitted to impose upon them by his misrepresentations. When introduced to the public functionaries on his arrival, he stated that the Highland army was not 1,500 strong,—that it was chiefly composed of old men and boys, who were badly armed, and that from what he saw and knew of them he was sure they would fly before Cope’s army. Though unsuccessful, as will be seen, in this branch of his mission, he succeeded in another which he had volunteered to perform, by getting one Drummond, a Jacobite printer, to print the prince’s proclamations and manifestoes, which he took care to distribute throughout the city among the friends of the cause. When apprised of the fact of the publication, the magistrates, without suspecting Macgregor as the importer of these treasonable documents, issued a proclamation, offering a large reward for the discovery of the printer.