Read Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Online
Authors: Frank McLynn
When they came out on to the coast road conditions improved slightly. They picked their way gingerly along the eastern shore route, through Cullen, Fochabers, Elgin, Forres and Nairn, before linking up with the prince at Inverness on 19 February.
80
Lord George visited the prince at his sick-bed in Culloden House the day before Inverness Castle capitulated.
81
He had satisfactory news about the conduct of the retreat. Garrisons had been left at Elgin and Nairn to prevent Loudoun from linking up with Cumberland.
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The Lowland regiments were cantoned in the towns and villages of the north-eastern counties.
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And just before Aberdeen was evacuated, a detachment of Berwick’s cavalry had arrived from France, though without horses. The next move seemed to be Cumberland’s.
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But Cumberland had problems of his own. He could not advance into the Highlands until he had secured adequate food supplies. Even to progress north of Perth carried with it the dangers of starvation.
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He remained at Perth, building up his commissariat, until 20 February, when he began his march to Aberdeen via Montrose. The van of his army reached the town three days after the last Jacobite soldier had left, on 25 February. Cumberland himself came in two days later.
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Food and equipment were not the Hanoverian duke’s only problems. His barbarism and insensitivity had already seriously upset his ally the Prince of Hesse, who arrived with his forces at Leith on 8 February.
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The immediate issue was Cumberland’s categorical refusal to agree to a cartel for prisoners, on the ground that he was dealing with ‘rebels’.
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The Hessians, for their part, refused to fight without one. Beyond that, Cumberland regarded having extra mouths to feed as a burden and was inclined to consider the Hessians a nuisance.
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There was also a clash of temperament between the two commanders, to some extent echoing the friction between Charles
Edward
and Lord George Murray. The Prince of Hesse’s civilisation and the barbarism of Cumberland and his henchmen had already been in collision.
90
The German prince hit back. While Cumberland was campaigning, the prince made a point of giving a number of balls in Edinburgh to which ‘none but Jacobite ladies’ were invited.
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Cumberland’s behaviour was not only insensitive but positively injudicious, since he could have had 6,000 Hessians with him at Culloden if he had been prepared to rein in his own savage instincts. Doubtless he did not want another ‘old woman’ (as he contemptuously dubbed Duncan Forbes) at his side when he put down the rebellion.
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The enforced stay at Aberdeen, while Cumberland replenished his supplies and built up his numbers to compensate for the absence of the Hessians, transferred the military initiative to the Jacobites. Their position was strengthened by a pact with the Grants. After long negotiations, the Grants concluded what was in effect a treaty of neutrality with Charles Edward.
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With the prince lying ill at Culloden House, the way was open for the clan chiefs to pursue the specifically Highland strategy after which they had always hankered. Their approach was a fourfold one. They wanted to detain Cumberland at Aberdeen, retaining the coastal supply line for aid from France, while they besieged the Highland forts, dispersed Lord Loudoun’s forces, and beat off any Hanoverian reinforcements coming up through the central Highlands. Lord George Murray was in buoyant mood. He claimed he could carry on the war in Scotland for several years and eventually force the English to come to terms; Highland cattle plus periodic raids into the Lowlands would provide the food.
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For a while the Jacobites achieved remarkable results with their new strategy. Maxwell of Kirkconnell rated the glorious late flowering of Jacobite military success in March 1746 as their finest achievement, ahead of Prestonpans, Clifton or Falkirk: ‘The vulgar may be dazzled with a victory, but in the eyes of a connoisseur, the Prince will appear greater about this time at Inverness than either at Gladsmuir [Prestonpans] or at Falkirk.’
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O’Heguerty, the prince’s biographer in the 1750s, agreed with this assessment, as did some of the Whigs.
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It seems not to have occurred to Maxwell or O’Heguerty to note the irony that this Indian summer took place while the prince was laid up with illness.
The first target was Fort Augustus. The capture of this fort was entrusted to Brigadier Walter Stapleton of the Irish brigade, who had come from France with Lord John Drummond. On 3 March trenches were opened.
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Since Mirabel was in disgrace and no longer
employed
as chief engineer, the siege prospered. The new director of siege operations, Grant, showed how the job should be done. Aided by an explosion of the magazine inside the fortress, he compelled the surrender of Fort Augustus in just two days.
98
The fort was systematically pillaged by the Highlanders. According to Stapleton, the wholesale rapine surpassed anything he had seen in a long career of warfare.
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Two days later, on 7 March, virtually the same forces appeared outside Fort William.
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Lord John Drummond was left as Jacobite governor of Fort Augustus. Motivation to compass the fall of Fort William was high, for this was Cameron country, and the Hanoverians’ premier fortress had long dominated Lochaber. During the prince’s invasion of England, the Fort William garrison had sortied to burn and plunder Lochiel’s country.
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Cumberland agreed with the Jacobites in their estimate of the fort’s importance: ‘I look upon Fort William to be the only fort in the Highlands that is of any consequence. I have taken all possible measures for the securing of it … for the preventing it falling into the rebels’ hands.’
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Grant immediately set out to open trenches. With a good eye for terrain, he suggested establishing a battery on a hill to the south-east, dominating Fort William.
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But by sheer bad luck he was killed almost immediately by a chance cannonball. Reluctantly, Stapleton had to send for Mirabel. Immediately jettisoning Grant’s imaginative approach, the Frenchman soon showed that he had learned nothing and forgotten nothing since Stirling. Once again a Jacobite siege quickly settled into stalemate.
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At about this time, a courier arrived at Inverness for the prince, who was alternately staying at Castle Hill and Culloden House, still recovering from the pneumonia contracted on the night of the ‘Rout of Moy’.
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This emissary brought news that further units of the Irish brigade were on their way to Scotland. For a while it looked as if Lord George was right, and the Jacobites would very soon have an army 8,000 strong with which to face Cumberland.
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The good news relieved the prince’s worst anxieties. He was persuaded to accept the more relaxed convalescence provided in the Inverness home of the dowager Lady Mackintosh.
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After the Highland forts, the Highlanders’ next objective was the persistent gadfly Lord Loudoun. Loudoun had foreseen the possibility of a seaborne Jacobite pursuit and had seized all available boats in the Cromarty and Dornoch Firths.
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These, of course, were fishing vessels, not suitable for a sea-going voyage; for this reason Loudoun
could
not heed Cumberland’s increasingly shrill summonses to join him in Banffshire.
109
Following the capture of Inverness, Cromarty was sent with Glengarrys, Clanranalds, the Appin Stewarts, Mackinnons and some Mackenzies in pursuit. Having no boats, they were obliged to go round the head of the Firth. At their approach Loudoun retired across Dornoch Firth to Dornoch.
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When Cromarty attempted to pursue him by land, Loudoun recrossed the Firth into Ross-shire.
111
With all boats at his disposal, Loudoun appeared to be a very superior mouse dodging a lumbering and ponderous cat. Cromarty momentarily gave up and returned to Tain, upon which Loudoun again crossed to Dornoch.
112
Cromarty’s supersession by Perth as Jacobite commander in this theatre of war brought changes. It was quickly obvious to Perth that land operations were going to be impossibly protracted. He instituted an extended dragnet for fishing boats. Moir of Stoneywood got together an impressive flotilla at Findhorn, north of Forres on the North Sea coast.
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These were then sailed across the Moray Firth during a thick fog which concealed them from Royal Navy cruisers.
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Knowing that there was no shipping for an army on the other side of Dornoch Firth, Loudoun felt himself secure. Suddenly, on 20 March, as if by sorcery, Perth’s men were ashore and Loudoun’s army surrounded. The Jacobites came in under a pall of thick wet mist that restricted visibility to one hundred yards. The operation ended with the total dispersal of Loudoun’s forces.
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Loudoun, Sutherland, Forbes of Culloden and the other leaders made their escape by sea to Skye.
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Whatever Cumberland did now, the Jacobites could be confident of having no enemy in their rear.
The third Jacobite operation was the most spectacularly successful of all. On 15 March Lord George Murray marched south from Inverness with the Atholl brigade. At Ruthven he was met by Cluny MacPherson and his regiment, who had remained in Badenoch to guard the passes there.
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At dusk Cluny and Lord George led their seven hundred clansmen from Dalwhinny to Dalnaspidal. There for the first time Murray let his troops into the secret of the operation.
118
There were thirty posts or blockhouses (some houses, some inns) scattered around the Atholl country: all were to be taken out simultaneously by thirty Highland detachments, the raids to be carried out before daylight. The thirty detachments would then rendezvous shortly after dawn at the Bridge of Bruer, two miles north of Blair.
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The operation was a brilliant success. Between 2 and 5 a.m. all the blockhouses were taken without the loss of a single Highlander.
120
And
Lord George himself pulled off another ‘Rout of Moy’. While he was waiting for the commando groups to rendezvous, Murray was alarmed to see that Sir Andrew Agnew, commander of Blair Castle, had sortied in force to see what was the matter with the outer defence ring. At this point Lord George had just twenty-five men with him. Realising that if he retreated, the returning raiding parties would simply be captured one after the other by Agnew, Murray simulated the presence of a brigade by displaying regimental colours and playing the pipes from behind a turf wall near the bridge. This, coupled with the flashing of claymores in the first rays of the morning sun, convinced Agnew that retreat was the wisest course.
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Soon afterwards, Murray’s raiders came in, bringing more than three hundred prisoners, with news of a total success.
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Murray advanced to the siege of Blair Castle. Sir Andrew Agnew, a well-known Hanoverian fire-eater, indignantly rejected the summons to surrender. As he did not possess the big guns necessary to reduce Blair, Lord George tried to starve the garrison out.
123
He found the garrison ‘more obstinate’ than he expected. The firing was so heavy that Murray had to send for fresh supplies of ammunition.
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Nevertheless, there were only five days’ provisions in Blair and hunger would soon procure for Lord George what he wanted.
Suddenly reinforcements arrived for Agnew in the form of the earl of Crawford and the Prince of Hesse. Lord George immediately sent to Charles Edward to let him have another 1,200 men, with whom he was confident of routing Crawford’s dragoons and the Hessians. Such a victory would have compelled Cumberland to withdraw from Aberdeen.
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In a controversial decision, the prince claimed not to have that number with him in Inverness.
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Lord George had no choice, then, but to retreat slowly before the relieving Hanoverian force, hoping to draw them into an ambush in the pass of Killiekrankie.
The ruse did not work, mainly because the Prince of Hesse refused to allow his men north of Pitlochry without the properly negotiated prisoner cartel that Cumberland adamantly refused.
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The Hessian prince once again proved his reasonableness by declaring publicly that he was not sufficiently interested in the quarrel between the houses of Stuart and Hanover to risk his subjects in a fight with men who had been driven to despair.
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Yet Hesse’s very reasonableness involved Lord George in a charge of treachery. Because Murray felt he could deal directly with such a man, he put out feelers to see whether a negotiated settlement of the rising was possible.
To Charles Edward this was treason, and not to be condoned.
129
He could not afford an open breach with his lieutenant-general, but he set a detail of picked men to watch Murray night and day and to seize him if he showed any signs of betraying the army. Surprisingly (since the Frenchman had so lauded Lord George after Falkirk), Charles Edward was encouraged in this paranoid delusion by the marquis d’Eguilles.
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For all the recriminations it would later engender,
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Murray’s raid into the Atholl country was everywhere recognised as a fine exploit. Jacobite spirits were noticeably lifted.
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Cumberland began to complain about the rebellious spirit even of those areas of Scotland under Hanoverian occupation.
133
There was no longer any talk of the rising’s petering out or of sending the Hessians back to Germany.
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The triumphant Jacobites withdrew in good order, Lord George to Inverness, his infantry to Elchies on Speyside.
135
Cluny remained to guard the Badenoch passes.