Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her

by William Elliot Griffis

Some distance away was the place where the English cavalry were held in reserve, to charge upon the fugitives and slaughter them after they had broken and fled. Near the field also was a large flat rock, which the Pretender had mounted to see the action and scan its results. From this point of vantage, he fled, to suffer untold hardships, while wandering for weeks, disguised as a woman, under the care of the heroic Flora Macdonald. He was finally able to reach the French ships, then lying off the coast for him, by which he was able to get back to the Continent, there to end his days as a drunkard.

Cumberland, the British general, knew that a failure to win on this field, or a drawn battle, would mean a long-continued guerilla warfare in the Highlands. So he gave orders to put to the sword all the clansmen known to have been on the field. As we rode back to Inverness, over which the English cavalry had thundered after the battle, the intelligent driver pointed out more than one place, such as blacksmith’s shops, rocks, and hollows, where fugitives had hidden and whence they had been dragged out to be killed.

Culloden enables us to see what war was to the Highlanders, what they meant by a campaign, and how far these men of the claymore, broadsword, and target had advanced in military science. The idea of these stalwart warriors, trained in clan feuds and inheriting the prejudices and traditions handed down to them from ancestors, was to go out in summer time, without special equipment, commissary train, or dépôt of supplies. They would make a foray, fight a battle or two, burn the enemy’s houses, drive off some cattle, and then come home to divide the spoil—a system hardly higher in dignity than that of the North American Indian highlanders, the Iroquois.

The men of the glens cared little for firearms, whether musket or cannon. Their favorite weapons from of old were the dirk and the claymore. The latter was a long-handled, double-edged sword weighing from five to seven pounds, with a handle often a foot long and with one cross-bar for a hilt. This claymore, in which they gloried, was a weapon quite different from the later single-edged and basket-hilted sword, which did not come into use until well into the eighteenth century. Their one idea of fighting was to make an onset and come to close quarters. On their left arm they carried the target, or round shield, made of light, tough wood, covered with bull’s hide, stretched in one or more thicknesses and with boss or studs, and sometimes furnished with a rim of metal, or armed with a sharp point in the middle. With this defence, protecting more or less their faces and body, they rushed upon the foe, in order to be free at once to use, in older times, their claymores, or double-handed blades, or, in later days, the broadsword in close combat. When fighting with infantry armed with smooth-bore muskets and bayonets, they could, after the first volley, fired at more or less close range, dash into the files. Before the soldiers could reload, the Highlanders would be upon them, dashing aside the bayonet thrust. Then, with stabbing or cutting blow, the clansmen slaughtered their foes and thus made firearms of little account.

It is true that when large levies were made, as in the earlier centuries, the Scottish spearmen were massed together and made a formidable front, though as a rule, the English archers, with their long-range missiles, were able to work havoc among the Scots, and thus prevent them from getting into close hand-to-hand action. Thus, the Southrons more than once ruined the chances and hopes of their northern foes. In archery, the Scots never were able to compete with the English.

Even when, later, some of the Highlanders possessed cannon, they were apt to look with contempt upon anything which did not permit them to charge in a rush and come to close quarters. In fact, it was this unintelligent tenacity in holding on to a war equipment which, even to the claymore, to say nothing of the target and ordinary spear, had been discarded in other countries, that brought the clans to final destruction at Culloden. On the Continent improvements were made, first in favor of the pike and then of the musket, with the dropping of anything like a shield, or defence, which required the use of one hand and which could not resist a bullet. It was a thorough knowledge of the Highlander’s conceit and conservatism, which had become his weakness and was ultimately to be his ruin, as well as the perception of the change in battle tactics and the relative merits of bayonet and broadsword fighting, that enabled the Duke of Cumberland, then only twenty-four years of age, to win a decisive victory, such as older men of experience had repeatedly tried to gain, but to no purpose.

Chambers wrote, in 1830, “The field of Culloden yet bears witness to the carnage of which it was the scene. In the midst of its black and blasted heath, various little eminences are to be seen displaying a lively verdure, but too unequivocally expressive of the dreadful chaos. They are so distinct and well defined that the eye may almost, by their means, trace the position of the armies, or at least discover where the fight was most warmly contested.”

The way toward Inverness, otherwise an unimproved, secondary road, is fringed with many doleful memorials. There the daisy and bluebell of Scotland have selected their abode, he tells us, as if resolved to sentinel forever the last resting-place of their country’s heroes. Not infrequently modern curiosity hunters have violated the graves in order to secure some relic of the ill-fated warriors, to show as a wonder in the halls of the Sassenach. The Gaels, with nobler sentiments, have come more frequently to translate the bones of their friends to consecrated ground afar, in their own dear glens of the west. “But enough and more than enough yet remains to show where Scotland fought her last battle and the latest examples of her ancient chivalry fell to feed the eagles and to redeem the desert.”

Inverness in 1745, as Chambers describes it, was a royal burgh in the vicinity of a half-civilized territory not yet emancipated from feudal dominion. Though a seaport, it had only a slight local commerce. The town bore every external mark of wretchedness. Its people, even its shopkeepers, wore the Highland dress, in all its squalor and scantiness; for the Highland plaids which we see to-day, in silk and wool, and sold in shops of luxurious appointment, are vastly different from the home-made fabrics of a century or more ago. The Inverness people generally spoke Gaelic. A wheeled vehicle had never yet been seen within the town, nor was there a turnpike road within forty miles of its walls. Some contact by sea with France and the dwelling in winter time of the Highland gentry in the town shed some gleams of intelligence over the minds of the kilted burghers. Yet when the Young Chevalier took up his residence at the house of Lady Drummuir, hers was the only dwelling that had even one room without a bed in it.

It was from Inverness that “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” in 1745, marched out with his Highlanders to the gage of battle at Culloden, of which we tell in another chapter. At neither of our two visits to the Capital of the Highlands had we hosts or hostesses to invite us to drink with them the inevitable cup of afternoon tea, without which a Britisher does not feel that the island is safe, or that Britannia rules the waves. So we must needs be satisfied with hotel service for our Bohea and cups, though we are bound to say that the decoction was excellent and the white-capped and snowy-aproned maid’s voice was low and sweet.