Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (56 page)

Finally, on 26 August the prince felt secure enough to return to the Achnacarry neighbourhood. Lochgarry and Archie Cameron met them there with word from Lochiel that the prince would be safe where he (Lochiel) was hiding, with Cluny in Badenoch.
¹²⁴

With the MacPhersons as escort, the prince no longer needed the valiant Seven Men of Glenmoriston. All except Patrick Grant were dismissed.
¹²⁵
Having got rid of those who had dared to rein in his impulsive behaviour, the prince ordered an immediate march to Badenoch. The MacPhersons protested that Cluny’s idea was that Charles should wait in Achnacarry until their chief chose just the right moment for the journey. The prince would have none of this. As they were not their own men like the Seven, but answerable to a superior chief, the MacPhersons dared not oppose him. The consequence of Charles’s impulsiveness was that he then missed Cluny on the road.
¹²⁶

At night on the 28th the prince set out. At the river Lochy he said goodbye to Patrick Grant and gave him a purse of twenty-four guineas for the ‘Seven Men’.
¹²⁷
The faithful Glenaladale, too, who had been with the prince for six weeks, was now allowed to depart.
¹²⁸

The prince’s party pressed on, sleeping by day, travelling by night. At Corrineuir, ‘a shieling of very narrow compass’ at the foot of Ben Alder, he at last met Lochiel and Cluny’s inner circle. But not before another close shave. Seeing a party of strangers approaching, Lochiel’s group had taken them for the militia and were preparing to open fire, since Lochiel was still too lame to run. At the last minute, as they primed their guns in the embrasures of the hut at Corrineuir, they recognised friends.
¹²⁹

Inside the hut the prince found plenty of meat. He took ‘a hearty
dram
’ and for the next few days indulged his taste for Scotch whisky out of the twenty-pint cask they had there. ‘Now, gentlemen, I live like a prince,’ he remarked euphorically.
¹³⁰

On 1 September Cluny rejoined them having missed the prince on the road. At sight of the prince he tried to go down on his knees but Charles prevented this, gave him the kiss of an equal, and joshed him about having looked after Lochiel so royally.
¹³¹
Immediately they discussed Lochgarry’s proposal to raise the clans again. Both Lochiel and Cluny dismissed it as impracticable. The only remedy now was to seek sanctuary in ‘Cluny’s cage’ on Ben Alder.
¹³²

On 2 September they penetrated deeper into Ben Alder. For three nights they waited in a ‘little shiel superlatively bad and smokey’ until his clansmen gave Cluny the all-clear.
¹³³
On 5 September they moved two miles farther into the mountain into the famous ‘cage’ that Cluny had constructed.
¹³⁴

Concealed by a thicket of holly, the ‘cage’ had been cut in the face of a very rough and steep rocky spur on the south face of Ben Alder overlooking Loch Ericht. Commanding a superb panorama of the surrounding countryside and guarded by sentries, the ‘cage’ could not be surprised or approached suddenly, for there were no woods in Badenoch but only mountains and crags. Inside there was a rude shelter on two storeys, consisting of several large boulders tilted at various angles. The accommodation was not spacious, but it had been arranged so that the inhabitants slept in the upper ‘room’ and ate in the lower, which doubled as kitchen and larder.
¹³⁵

Cluny’s men immediately started excavating a subterranean ‘house’ for the prince to spend the winter in, in case he could not get away to France.
¹³⁶
Meanwhile he was entertained to Cluny’s best. A nearby fountain provided water. There was plenty of whisky. There was no shortage of food. Cluny’s country was rich in game, especially hares and moorfowl. In addition, he had managed to conserve large flocks and herds from the wrath of the enemy: it was his precious collection of brood mares that had been plundered after Culloden.

With the prince in Cluny’s cage, safe from enemies, we are presented with an opportunity to assess his thoughts and personality as revealed during the five months on the run. Two things strike one immediately: the amazing physical health the prince enjoyed; and the clear-cut way in which stress produced mood swings and depression.

It was a staple of Whig propaganda that the prince in the heather dragged himself from hovel to hovel, looking like a leper: ‘scabbed to the eye-holes’ was a favourite cliché of the London yellow press.
¹³⁷
The
truth was that, the ‘bloody flux’ apart, the prince enjoyed amazingly good health, all the more remarkable when one considers the appalling conditions in which he lived: sleeping in the cold in wet clothes, bitten by midges, eating an uncertain and unbalanced diet.
¹³⁸
Charles Edward’s apparently ox-like constitution strengthens the inference that it was not organic weakness that caused him to succumb to illnesses like those in the first months of 1746. Such injuries as he did sustain healed quickly. He was hurt badly while crossing the burn on the road from Glencoradale in South Uist: he fell on a pointed stone and bruised his ribs, but mended with remarkable speed.
¹³⁹
And, although naturally sunburned – ‘black, weather-beaten’ was one description of him in Benbecula – that was the only sign of wear and tear after the summer.
¹⁴⁰

As for mental health, the prince showed for the most part the positive side of his psyche. In particular, there is ample evidence of humour, one of the great defences against depression.
¹⁴¹
Only in moments of great stress, such as on the tidal island at Benbecula or when nearly surprised in the wood of Torvault, did the old cry of ‘I am betrayed’ go up. This relative equilibrium was purchased at some cost. We have Malcolm Macleod’s testimony that the prince’s slumber was frequently violently disturbed, that he would talk in his sleep in English, French and Italian. One of his English utterances was particularly significant: ‘Oh God! Poor Scotland!’
¹⁴²

The prince has often been accused of not showing sufficient remorse for the sufferings of his subject and largely unwilling allies in Scotland. Even at the conscious level, this is a hard charge to sustain. We have the clear statement the prince made to Lochiel and the other leading Camerons: ‘he regretted more the distress of those who suffered for adhering to his interest than the hardships he himself was hourly exposed to.’
¹⁴³
But there may have been other forces working at an unconscious level. One of the keys is the prince’s genuine and absolute incredulity that Cumberland’s atrocities could have been as bad as they really were.
¹⁴⁴
If the prince did not express a level of remorse for the Highlanders’ plight that would satisfy his critics, it may well be that squarely facing this extra cargo of guilt might have overwhelmed him.

Of Lord George Murray the prince was critical without being, as later, unbalanced. He pointed out that Murray always wanted to be the one to give orders, not to receive them, but he scouted any suggestion of treachery on Lord George’s part.
¹⁴⁵
The contrast with his later statements is so great that some have postulated that the prince’s henchmen only truly inflamed his mind against Murray once
in
France. A more likely explanation is in terms of the prince’s own psychology. The absence of responsibility for others during the time in the heather allowed his positive side to burgeon. He was therefore capable of the sort of balanced assessment foreign to him later when he was again pitched into the pressures of the world.

At this stage, too, there was no hint of hostility to his brother Henry. Some of his statements about his brother are, admittedly, so lavish that a suspicion of protesting too much arises: ‘one preferable to himself in all respects’, ‘few brothers love as we do’.
¹⁴⁶
But as yet Henry had done nothing major to offend the prince. As far as Charles knew, he had been at the coast with Richelieu, urging the French expedition forward. Only on his return to France would the prince’s attitude change profoundly.

The one notable absentee as a subject of Charles Edward’s recorded observations was his father. His only reference to James during the ’45 came on 3 September 1745. When asked whether ‘the king’ would not be worried about his adventures, the prince replied: ‘No, the king has been inured to disappointments and distresses and has learnt to bear up easily under the misfortunes of life.’
¹⁴⁷
Bearing in mind Benedict XIV’s description of James’s hyper-anxiety at the time, we may read this either as lack of perceptiveness or (more likely) simple indifference.

The final point in the prince’s psychological profile at this time concerns his much-touted plans for marrying a daughter of the king of France. Charles felt himself (with much justification) to be entitled to the admiration of all Europe for his exploits. In that case, he wished to claim a high marriage as his reward. His toastings of the ‘black-eyed beauty’ – whom he explained was Louis XV’s second daughter – are evidence not so much of wishful thinking as a kind of exultant hypermania.
¹⁴⁸
And we know from later correspondence that the claiming of a well-born wife ran very much in his thoughts at this time.

The prince’s stay in Cluny’s cage was his third relatively secure interlude during his days on the run. First there was Corradale; then the cave provided by the Seven Men of Glenmoriston; finally the untraceable eyrie on Ben Alder. Here he waited for a week, drinking and talking with Cluny, Lochgarry, Lochiel and Archie Cameron, until the chain of listening posts stretching to the west coast brought him word that there were two French ships in Loch-nan-Uamh.
¹⁴⁹

On 13 September the prince started for the coast, travelling by night and resting by day. At Uiskchicra John Roy Stewart came to the hut where he was resting. The prince gave him the fright of his
life
by rising up from a pile of plaid in the middle of the room.
¹⁵⁰
This high-spirited jape gives a good indication of the prince’s state of mind at the time.

They pressed on, through the Ben Alder forest to Glenroy, crossed the river Lochy by night and reached Achnacarry. The crossing of the river in bright moonlight again showed the prince at his most positive. When Cluny offered to cross the swollen Lochy by boat first, he gave six bottles of brandy to Lochiel for safe keeping. ‘Oh,’ said the prince, ‘do you have a dram there?’
¹⁵¹
There was nothing for it but to broach the bottles. After consuming three of them in a very short time the prince was finally ready for the crossing. They rowed across in relays, first Cluny and party, then the prince, lastly Lochiel. On the final crossing the leaky boat let in five pints of water.

There was low comedy on the other side. The prince wanted to unstopper the other three bottles. Lochiel had to confess that they had been smashed on the way across and that the clansmen had lapped up the liquor from the boat bottom as if it were punch.
¹⁵²

They next passed through Glencamger at the head of Loch Arkaig. Only one day’s journey now separated them from the French ships. The prince decided to risk travelling during the day. For additional security, he reverted to his ‘Betty Burke’ period and dressed as a woman.
¹⁵³
The precaution was unnecessary. They travelled without incident all day on 18 September to Borrodale. On their arrival they discovered that the two French ships were
L’Heureux
and
Le Conti
.

Commanding this, the last of several French seaborne attempts to rescue the prince, was Richard Warren, the Irishman he had sent to France after the ‘Rout of Moy’.
¹⁵⁴
Warren gave the prince a tale of almost unparalleled good fortune in dodging Royal Navy convoys.
¹⁵⁵
L’Heureux
and
Le Conti
had been at anchor in the loch since 6 September. In normal circumstances they could never have hoped to remain a fortnight without being discovered, but a ferocious gale had been blowing all that time, clearing the Moidart waters of cruisers.
¹⁵⁶

The prince congratulated Warren on his tenacity. A large number of his followers, including Lochiel, Lochgarry and John Roy Stewart, embarked to accompany Charles to exile in France.
¹⁵⁷
Cluny alone remained in Scotland. His brief was to prepare for the Second Coming which all, including the prince, fervently hoped for and genuinely expected.
¹⁵⁸

The prince took a last look at the country in which so much had happened in fourteen months. Then, dressed in trews, ‘philabeg and grey plaid, he went aboard.
¹⁵⁹
When
L’Heureux
weighed anchor at
2
a.m. on the morning of 20 September (OS) and hoist sail for France, no one imagined that this was ‘Lochaber no more.’
¹⁶⁰

(October 1746–April 1747)

THE AMAZING GOOD
fortune that had attended the prince in the heather stayed with him all the way to France. Swinging out into the Atlantic to the west of Ireland, Warren originally intended to make landfall at Nantes. Had he taken
L’Heureux
to that port, he would have run straight into a British squadron then raiding L’Orient and the Atlantic coast of Britanny.
¹
Some instinct made Warren head for the Channel coast instead. The prince came to secure refuge at Roscoff at 2.30 p.m. on 30 September (OS – 11 October NS).
²

Charles Edward’s safe return threw France into a turmoil of excitement. It is difficult now to appreciate the sensation his exploits both on campaign and in the heather had caused. ‘He left France an adventurer and came back a hero,’ was Bulkeley’s comment.
³
Without exaggeration, in October 1746 the prince was the most famous man in Europe. The glamour that attached to his name was of an unusual kind for that era, and this explains his continuing following among the ordinary people of France long after he had lost standing at Versailles.