Read Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Online
Authors: Frank McLynn
The headlong retreat continued. The army crossed the Forth at the Fords of Frew and scattered for the night through Dunblane, Doune and the neighbouring villages.
18
The prince found a billet at Drummond Castle.
19
On the 2nd the cavalry and advance guard were ordered to Perth, while the clans and most of the other foot regiments made their way to Crieff. Once there, Charles Edward held a general review and found to his anger and disgust that there were far fewer desertions than had been reported to him by Murray. Jacobite strength had shrunk by only about 1,000.
20
Then Lord George rode into Crieff and demanded a meeting of the full war council. It was by common consent the most acrimonious of all such meetings hitherto – and they had not been noted for their lack of harsh words and open antagonism.
21
Everyone’s temper was frayed. The general black humour was not allayed by the anti-Jacobite party in Crieff, bitterly hostile to the House of Stuart ever since the earl of Mar burnt the town down during the ’15.
Lord George began by making a violent attack on the prince and his supporters for changing the orders at Bannockburn. In this he was joined by Elcho and Lochiel, both furious at having come so close to capture by Cumberland.
22
O’Sullivan replied that all this was pharisaical: it was Lord George who had insisted on the retreat; the prince had pointed out the certain consequences; they had duly happened, therefore Murray had no cause for complaint.
23
This simply lashed Lord George to new heights of fury. He demanded to know who was responsible for the pernicious order to retreat in such a chaotic fashion from Stirling at 6 a.m. on the morning of 1 February.
24
‘I am afraid we have been betrayed, for it is worth the government at London’s while to give a hundred thousand pounds to any who would have given such advice and got it followed.’
25
O’Sullivan protested that he was not responsible. The matter was resolved only when the prince agreed to take all the blame on himself.
If there was a true instance of autocratic behaviour in the Jacobite
army
during the ’45, it was provided by Murray’s unconscionable behaviour at the council at Crieff. Pale with anger, he insisted that he and he alone was running proceedings; only those he named would be allowed to speak.
26
He treated his colleagues as witnesses in a court case where he was the prosecutor. He asked for opinions only and would not allow supporting reasons unless he so decided. Whenever the prince tried to speak, Lord George threatened to storm out. He told Charles Edward that he could speak only when everyone else had given their opinion. He was tired of the prince’s tactics on the council; this time, if there was any leading of the witnesses to be done, he, Murray, would be doing it.
Lord Lewis Gordon protested at this impertinence: was Lord George mad that he could so humiliate the prince?
27
But Murray got his way. He pressed hard for general acceptance of a retreat through the Highlands to Inverness, via Wadebridge and the Tay.
28
But at this juncture the Prince dug in his heels. He wanted to march by the coast road. He still expected a French landing in the north-east. If the French sent an army, they would want to see the Stuart prince, not Lord George.
29
To preserve harmony, Lochiel sided with the prince. Seeing Charles Edward’s doggedness, Lord George became more conciliatory and offered to make a stand in the Atholl country if the prince would take the Highland route.
30
The prince refused.
At this point one of the Murray faction stormed out of the room in a glowering rage. Surprisingly, it was not Murray himself but his most successful military collaborator Cluny MacPherson.
31
White with fury, outside the room Cluny railed bitterly at the prince’s self-destructive stubbornness. Realising the grave consequences of a continuing split on the council on this matter of the itinerary, Murray of Broughton prevailed on Sheridan to get the prince to reverse his decision.
32
Still full of misgivings that once the clansmen were in their native hills, they would desert
en masse
, Charles Edward reluctantly agreed to accompany the clan regiments into the Highlands, while Murray, the cavalry and the Lowland regiments wound round the coast via Montrose and Aberdeen to Inverness.
33
The latter arrangement was a compromise to meet the prince’s earlier objections and to provide him with a partial face-saver. A smaller third detachment of Ogilvy’s regiment and the Farquharsons were allowed to make for Speyside via Coupar-Angus, Glen Cluva and Glen Muick, so that the men could visit their homes.
34
As a rebuke to Cluny for his intemperate departure from the council, the prince next day sent the MacPherson
chief
an order to use all methods of military execution, including the burning of houses, against those of his clan who deserted or refused to fight.
35
The business of the council was now concluded. Later that same day Lord George Murray took his Athollmen on to Perth.
36
The prince stayed at Fairnton, Lord John Drummond’s home, until the morning of the 4th.
37
Then he pressed on to Castle Menzies at Weem and spent a day there before linking up with his rearguard at Blair Atholl.
38
At Blair Castle he rested until 9 February.
39
The dreadful winter weather ruled out any possibility of pursuit by Cumberland. After reaching Linlithgow on 1 February, Cumberland was detained when the old palace there was burned down through his soldiers’ carelessness (truly 1 February 1746 was a great day for destruction in Scotland!).
40
He reached Stirling on the 2nd, Dunblane on the 4th, Crieff on the 5th and Perth on the 6th. There he halted, sending out garrisons to Dunkeld and Castle Menzies and strengthening the existing garrison at Fort William.
41
He had no intention of following the Jacobites into the Highlands until he had solved the problem of provisioning his army. He intended to follow Lord George Murray’s column up the coast, meanwhile sending parties of irregulars into the Highland fastnesses.
42
Lord George Murray proceeded from Perth through Cowpar-in-Angus and Glamis to Forfar.
43
Joined there by Cromarty and John Roy Stewart, he pressed on to Brechin and Stonerine.
44
At Stonerine Elcho’s Lifeguards and the Edinburgh regiment were detached to oversee the delivery of carriages, horses, stores and ammunition to Stonehaven.
45
At Aberdeen (reached on the 10th), Murray paused for three days, waiting for the third column under Lord Ogilvy.
46
Charles Edward, depressed at the turn events had taken, found himself at Blair having to boost the spirits of his dejected followers. Sheridan wrote to France to say that the Jacobite army was like the old man who felt fine but knew he had to die very soon.
47
Despondency found expression in internecine disputes. The prince had to step in to mediate in a dispute between Lochiel and Robertson of Struan.
48
With tongue firmly in cheek, he assured his men that they would surely be marching south in the spring with a larger army.
49
A more positive sign was the capture of the barracks at Ruthven by Glenbucket.
50
After spending two nights at Dalnacardoch, a public house on one of Wade’s roads, the prince took up his quarters in the Ruthven barracks at Badenoch on 12 February.
51
The weather was cruel and snow-ridden.
52
The going was so bad that horses were dropping dead of exhaustion on the road.
53
After staying two days at Ruthven, the prince spent the night of the 15th at the house of Grant of Dalrachny. On the 16th he arrived at the Mackintosh seat at Moy Hall.
54
Here he was entertained by the beautiful Lady Mackintosh, that ‘Colonel Anne’ of Jacobite legend who had raised her clan for the prince in defiance of her husband.
55
The twenty-three-year-old Anne, a notable firebrand, provided a lavish supper for Charles Edward that night.
56
She also sent four men in charge of the Moy blacksmith Donald Fraser to watch the road from Inverness for any telltale movement of Loudoun’s troops.
57
This chance surveillance gave rise to what was later known as the ‘Rout of Moy’.
Grant of Dalrachny, the prince’s unwilling Whig host of the 15th, sent word to Loudoun in Inverness that the ‘Young Pretender’ was at Moy with a very small bodyguard. Loudoun saw the chance to snuff out the rebellion and gain himself £30,000 into the bargain.
58
Without revealing the true nature of the target, he assembled 1,500 men in Inverness and threw a cordon around the town to prevent any warning from reaching the prince.
59
Luckily, a fourteen-year-old innkeeper’s daughter learned of the proposed raid on Moy from some officers she was serving in her father’s Inverness tavern. She ran barefoot to the house of the dowager Lady Mackintosh and alerted her.
60
Lady Mackintosh sent a young lad, Lachlan Mackintosh, off to Moy with the warning. Evading the cordon and getting past the marching column proved difficult, but Lachlan got through to Moy Hall and raised the alarm.
61
Young Lady Mackintosh and her guests had retired to bed and the boy’s arrival threw the household into confusion. Waking from his sleep, the prince thought the enemy was upon him. Throwing a bonnet over his head, he escaped in a dressing-gown and night-cap, with his shoes unbuckled.
62
Lady Mackintosh was running through the house in her shift, ‘like a madwoman’, imagining the enemy was already within the house.
63
Eventually the Jacobites got a grip on the situation. The prince was sent off to skulk by the lochside a mile away, together with Lochiel and the Camerons.
64
While the prince ran through the wood to the south-western end of Loch Moy, the most remarkable single incident in the entire ’45 campaign was taking place. Donald Fraser, the Moy blacksmith, bluffed Loudoun into thinking that the clan regiments in their entirety were drawn up across the Moy road waiting to receive him. Fraser and his four men shouted out a series of orders to the phantom regiments of Clanranald’s, Keppoch’s and Lochiel’s.
65
Keeping up a constant babel, they fired a number of volleys in Loudoun’s direction.
In
the utter darkness Loudoun took fright at the thought that he had wandered into an ambush.
66
Perhaps Grant of Dalrachny was a double agent. A chance shot, which killed Donald MacCrimmon, piper to the Macleods who were accompanying Loudoun, seemed to confirm the ill omens. Panic and confusion spread through the ranks of the men who had already been routed at Inverurie.
67
One of Loudoun’s officers saw the men in front of him running and marched his troops after them on the double, thinking they were the Jacobites.
68
Finding his column in danger of breaking up, Loudoun ordered it back to Inverness.
The ‘Rout of Moy’ was a great psychological triumph for the Jacobites. Even d’Eguilles was caught up in the euphoria of the moment. He wrote back to France with a glowing testimony to Lady Mackintosh and her blacksmith.
69
One thing only soured the triumph. As a result of his midnight flight in dressing-gown and slippers, the prince caught a chill that later developed into pneumonia.
70
For the rest of February he was out of action.
The 17th of February was spent collecting 2–3,000 men for the assault on Inverness.
71
At the approach of the Jacobites, Loudoun fled and Inverness opened its gates.
72
Loudoun retreated in disorder. The prince’s army was already entering the town as the Hanoverian rearguard was stumbling across the Ness bridge.
73
As this force withdrew, the Jacobites wheeled three pieces of cannon to Cromwell’s old fort and bombarded them.
74
The salvo killed nobody, but it intensified both the panic and the desertion rate among Loudoun’s men.
75
Loudoun’s losses when he reached Tain in Sutherland were found to be considerable.
Major Grant of Inverness Castle was at first tempted to emulate his superiors Preston and Blakeney in Edinburgh and Stirling. But as soon as he saw Jacobite sapping and mining work commence, he surrendered.
76
Loudoun meanwhile continued his flight via the Kessack ferry to Black Isle.
77
While the prince lay ill at Inverness, Lord George Murray and the Lowland regiments ran into the worst patch of weather yet in their trek across country from Aberdeen to Inverness. From Aberdeen they cut off the north-eastern corner of the Scottish coast by marching inland to Old Meldrum; their eventual destination was Banff.
78
The conditions they experienced on this march were well summed up by John Daniel:
When we marched out of Aberdeen, it blew, snowed and hailed and froze to such a degree that few pictures ever represented
winter
, with all its icicles about it, better than many of us did that day. For here men were covered with icicles hanging at their eyebrows and beards; and an entire coldness seizing all their limbs, it may be wondered at how they could bear up against the storm, a severe contrary wind, driving snow and little cutting hail bitterly down upon our faces, in such a manner that it was impossible to see ten yards ahead of us. And very easy it was to lose our companions; the road being very bad and leading over large commons, and the paths being immediately filled up with drifting snow.
79