The Road to Culloden Moor

by Diana Preston

  On reaching the Palace of Holyrood he dismounted and walked slowly towards the great doors of the palace of his ancestors. An even more theatrical event then occurred. A gentleman stepped out of the crowd, drew his sword, and holding it aloft walked up the stairs in front of Charles. This was James Hepburn of Keith, a grizzled veteran of the rebellion of 1715 and an inveterate opponent of the Act of Union, regarded as the very model of a true Jacobite gentleman.

  There were jubilant scenes that night. The crowd surged about the streets and huzza’d every time Charles appeared at the windows. People of fashion came to the palace to be presented, including Jacobite ladies avid for a sight of their hero and the chance to kiss his hand. Dr Alexander Carlyle was to describe in his autobiography how a well-informed citizen told him that two thirds of the ladies in the city were Jacobite supporters. However, Charles shied away from them for all his polish and chivalry. His officers were surprised that he always seemed embarrassed to be with women and excused it on the grounds that Charles was unused to female company. Looking back over his childhood they were probably right, but whatever the cause, the prince’s aloofness only seemed to increase his appeal. He was the personification of the heroic young warrior bent on his quest to the exclusion of earthly pleasures.

  Not that there had been much fighting yet. As contemporaries observed, the remarkable fact was that he had taken Edinburgh — a city of some forty thousand people — with hardly a drop of blood spilt. But what kind of a city was this that had fallen so easily into his waiting hands? Captain Burt had found it magnificent with its handsome stone-built houses. However, he had a few problems with the standards of hygiene. Given that the eighteenth century was not the most fastidious of times they must have been appalling. He described dining in a tavern where the cook was ‘too filthy an object to be described’ and where another Englishman suggested to him that if the cook were thrown against the wall he was so greasy he would stick to it.

  Even worse health hazards were to be found out of doors as Burt described graphically: ‘Being in my retreat to pass through a long narrow wynde or alley, to go to my new lodgings, a guide was assigned me, who went before me to prevent my disgrace, crying out all the way, with a loud voice, “Hold your hand.” The throwing up of a sash or otherwise opening a window, made me tremble, while behind and before me, at some little distance, fell the terrible shower.’ He blamed this ‘great annoyance’ on the very high buildings, sometimes ten or even twelve storeys all crowded close together.

  Daniel Defoe was similarly struck with the sanitary arrangements, wondering whether the people of Edinburgh ‘delighted in Stench and Nastiness …. In a morning, earlier than Seven o’Clock, before the human Excrements are swept away from the doors, it stinks intolerably; for after Ten at Night, you run a great Risque, if you walk the streets, of having Chamberpots of Ordure thrown upon your Head ….’ It was a problem that had not been solved some fifty years later when Dr Johnson described with his customary relish ‘Many a full-flowing perriwig moistened into flaccidity’.

  However, such grossness did not intrude into the noble apartments of the Duke of Hamilton in Holyrood House where Charles was considering his next move. He had been joined before entering Edinburgh by young Lord Elcho who had first made Charles’s acquaintance when he was making the grand tour in 1740. James had made them stand back to back to measure which was the taller and he had watched Charles in the Villa Borghese playing a ‘Scotch game called goff’. When Elcho later returned to England he was such an elegant dandy, or ‘macaroni’, in the language of the day, that he was booed and hissed in the streets of Rochester with cries of ‘Down with the French dog’. He was now a welcome addition to Charles who made him his aide-de-camp and discussed with him the battle to come. The encounter Charles had been waiting for was not far off. Hearing that Cope had disembarked his army at Dunbar on 17 September and was advancing towards Edinburgh he famously exclaimed ‘Has he, by God?’ in the best laconic tradition of the British military.

  The great question was how to arm his Highlanders properly. His opponents had been quick to note their eccentric weapons as they stood at the Market Cross, in particular the superannuated old guns, ‘some tied with puck thread to the stock, some without locks and some matchlocks’. Much of their remaining armoury consisted of little more than pitchforks, scythes lashed to poles and some old Lochaber axes, although some had the longswords which the Government had tried to confiscate in the aftermath of previous rebellions and which had been hidden deep in the thatch of their houses or in the peat.

  There was not long to remedy this. A proclamation demanding the surrender of firearms in the city yielded some powder and ball and about twelve hundred muskets, some serviceable, others ‘indifferent’. Collecting any other weapons they could find or patch together, the Jacobites prepared for their first real trial of strength. They also sought out ‘Clothes, Shoes and Linens, of which they were in great Want, the most part having nothing but a short old Coat of coarse Tartan, a Pair of Hose, much worn, coming scarce up to their Knees, their Plaids and Bonnets in the same Condition’.

  Charles joined his troops at Duddingston where it was agreed they would march on Cope without delay. On the morning of 20 September the men assembled to the sound of the bagpipes and Charles called his chiefs to his side. There was palpable excitement in the camp as Charles addressed them. Like the diligent secretary he was, Murray of Broughton described the scene. He shows us Charles, exhilarated and confident, drawing his sword and proclaiming that he had flung away the scabbard and how with God’s assistance he did not doubt of making them a free and happy people, prophesying that ‘Mr Cope’ should not give them the slip as he had in the Highlands. As the messages reverberated through the lines there were hoarse cheers and those ragged bonnets were flung in the air.

  A Highland army on the march must have presented quite a spectacle. An old lady described in the 1820s what she witnessed that day. The amazed young girl saw the Highlanders stride by, ‘with their squalid clothes and various arms, their rough limbs and uncombed hair, looking around them with faces, in which were strangely blended, pride with ferocity, savage ignorance with high-souled resolution’. Even allowing for the language and sentiment of the nineteenth century writer who recorded her memories, it must have been a remarkable sight. Of course she had words of praise for Charles: ‘Our aged friend remembers, as yesterday, his graceful carriage and comely looks — his long light hair straggling below his neck — and the flap of his tartan coat thrown back by the wind, so as to make the star dangle for a moment clear in the air by its silken ribbon. He was viewed with admiration by the simple villagers; and even those who were ignorant of his claims, or who rejected them, could not help wishing good fortune and no calamity to so fair and so princely a young man.’

  With Lord George Murray and the Lochiel Camerons at its head the army moved quickly. Charles and his leaders believed that Cope was heading to Tranent, planning to face them on the moorlands to the west of it, and they raced to capture the high ground before him. However, Cope decided to strike north towards some low ground between the villages of Preston and Seton. It was a shrewd move. The stubble fields in which he drew up his men were protected to the north by the sea and to the south by a ditch and morass. It was difficult to know how best to get at him. The Chevalier Johnstone, a young Jacobite officer who wrote a detailed account of the ’45, was full of gloom, seeing ‘no means of attacking him without visibly exposing ourselves to be hewn in pieces with dishonour’.

  There were other problems as well. At this inopportune moment fierce inter-clan rivalry threatened to undermine the whole operation. The point at issue was who should fight in the place of honour on the right. Charles had become aware of this ticklish problem very early on. At Perth he had made the diplomatic suggestion that the problem be settled by the drawing of lots. This proved fine in principle, but less so in practice. To their chagrin the Macdonalds now drew the left-hand position, while the Camerons and
the Appin Stewarts who had chosen to fight together won the coveted place on the right. The Macdonalds balked at this, loudly asserting their traditional right to fight in the place of greatest honour. Lochiel solved it by suggesting that if there was no action on that particular day, he would willingly yield his post to the Macdonalds on the next, notwithstanding the agreement.

  Another sign of the tensions within the Jacobite camp was the row which now took place between Lord George Murray and Charles. He had deployed a detachment of Lord George’s men to block off Cope’s retreat in case he tried to give them the slip and make a dash for Edinburgh. It was sound enough strategy but caused Lord George to scold him like a school master. O’Sullivan recorded in disapproving tones how Lord George ‘asked the Prince in a very high tone, what was become of the Atholl Brigade; the Prince told him, upon which Lord George threw his gun on the Ground in a great passion, & Swore God, he’d never draw his sword for the cause, if the Brigade was not brought back. The Prince with his ordinary prudence, tho’ sensible of the disrespect, & too sensible of the consequence it may be of, gave orders that the brigade shou’d come back, but Lord George who was brought to himself, by Lochiel’s representation as it is said, prayed the Prince to send the brigade to their first destination.’ In the event this does not seem to have happened and there was no real reconciliation between the two, even if later that day they appeared to be ‘great at cup and can’ together. Instead it marked the beginning of an open breach that was to grow wider and ultimately prove fatal to the aspirations of both men.

  However, in spite of these problems Charles was in good spirits the evening before the battle. He went to dine with two companions in the principal inn in Tranent. It was a poor place but he apparently ‘condescended to enter it, and accept of its meagre hospitalities’. Unfortunately the inn-keeper’s wife had hidden every bit of pewter she had ‘for fear of the wild Highlanders’. She was now faced with the embarrassment of a royal guest and no dishes or cutlery. All she could manage was two wooden spoons to be shared between the three of them. They ate their supper of soup and meat with some difficulty and Charles afterwards provided himself ‘with a portable knife and fork for the exigencies of his campaign’.

  That night Charles called a council of war at which it was decided to attack Cope at dawn. The Highland army wrapped themselves in their plaids and lay down on the prickly, stubbly ground to sleep as best they could before the coming battle. Although, as the Caledonian Mercury had been recording, the weather that September was the finest for decades, the evenings were growing chill. That night a cold mist was rising which ‘without doing any particular injury to the hardy children of the North, was infinitely annoying to their opponents’. Not only was it uncomfortable for those unused to bivouacking in these conditions, but they had to be on the alert against a night attack. Cope lit great fires around his camp to warm and comfort his men and he planted pickets all around. However, it was a sign of his nervousness that he sent his military chest and baggage away to safety under a strong guard.

  He was right to be nervous. That night the Jacobites found his Achilles’ heel. Robert Anderson, the son of the ‘proprietor’ of the morass which was Cope’s southern defence, came to Charles ‘very opportunely to relieve us of a terrible embarrassment. He assured the Prince that there was a passage through the morass where we could pass, and that he had crossed it daily in shooting. The Prince having sent at once to reconnoitre the passage, found his report correct, and that General Cope, believing it impraticable, had neglected to place a guard on it. During the night he made his army to pass over it. The Highlanders defiling one after another without encountering any opposition on the part of the enemy, formed their ranks according as they got out from the morass …’

  It was a deadly tactic — the Highlanders, moving swiftly and silently through the night in their clan regiments, outmanoeuvred an already nervous enemy. At first the bleary-eyed dragoons mistook the first Highland line, twelve hundred clansmen drawn up in battle formation and only two hundred paces away, for bushes! When they realised their mistake it was too late. The look-outs raised the alarm at last, but Cope could barely get his men into battle formation before Lord George hurled the Highland front line on him. As was to happen at Culloden the left wing was not synchronised with the right, but this time it did not matter. Cope’s untried, unblooded men quailed before the terrifying onslaught. John Home, later taken prisoner by the Jacobites at Falkirk, described a scene that could have been a Zulu attack: ‘… the ground was covered with a thick stubble, which rustled under the feet of the Highlanders as they ran on, speaking and muttering in a manner that expressed and heightened their fierceness and rage.’

  Chevalier Johnstone painted a similarly powerful scene describing how the Highlanders threw themselves upon the dragoons ‘head foremost, sword in hand. They had been often recommended to deal their sword strokes upon the noses of the horses without attacking the horsemen, explaining to them that the natural movement of the wounded horse in front, would be to make him bolt round; and that a few wounded horses at the head would be sufficient to throw a whole squadron into disorder, and without their being able to remedy it. They followed this advice with exactitude, and the English cavalry were immediately in disorder.’ So were all of Cope’s forces.

  He had put his infantry in the centre with the 13th Light Dragoons on the right and the 14th on the left flank. A conventional deployment against an unconventional enemy. The ‘hideous shout’ of the attacking clansmen completely unnerved Cope’s naval gunners who fled followed by the 13th Light Dragoons who had not managed to fire one shot at their attackers. The 14th scarcely did better, holding their ground for a mere thirty seconds under an assault from the Macdonalds in their cherished place on the Jacobite right wing. In their wild flight the dragoons actually rode down the artillery guard. The infantrymen in the centre thus found themselves unsupported with the Highlanders in their midst. Those who could took to their heels. The general level of resistance was summed up by Murray of Broughton who doubted ‘if such behaviour merits the name’.

  By the time Charles arrived with the second line ‘the rout was total’. He had wanted to lead the battle charge but had been overruled by his chiefs who pointed out that if he fell, victory or defeat would be all the same to them. So he charged with the reserve, some fifty yards behind. Leaping the four-foot-wide ditch that bordered the morass he slipped and fell to his knees. Chevalier Johnstone grabbed him by the arms and pulled him up, but was startled by the expression on Charles’s face. He looked as if he feared it was a bad omen. But one glance at the stubble fields still wreathed in the early morning mists showed that his victory had been absolute and his confidence in his Highlanders’ fighting skills justified.

  He had grown up with the warrior-legends of the clans. He knew that the whole system was based on the chief’s right to call out his men and on their duty to follow. The clan system provided a natural hierarchy so that every man knew his place in the battle order. As Charles had already discovered the place of honour was on the right and was hotly contested. The chieftains and their tacksmen led, the clansmen followed according to their rank, with the poor ‘humblies’ at the back. The humblies were so called ‘from their wearing no covering on their head, but their hair, which at a more early period they probably matted and felted’. The common tactic was to advance within range of the enemy, discharge the guns and then fall to the ground until the enemy had returned fire. Then, while the enemy was reloading they would leap up and charge, yelling their clan motto. This yelling was particularly unnerving to the English troops.

  To young, gullible and untried soldiers a Highland charge must have seemed terrifying, like being attacked by dervishes. So would the method of raising the clans which was done by a fiery cross carried in relay across the wild terrain with each runner shouting the name of the rendezvous to the next. There were also still strong rumours of pagan ritual and witchcraft in the Highlands of the eighteenth century. Al
l in all, it was probably the Highlanders’ terrifying reputation as much as their tactics on the day which gave them such a convincing victory in a battle which had lasted no more than ten minutes.

  Charles was deeply impressed, writing to James that it was ‘one of the most surprising actions that ever was’. Some of his men had been well-armed but others had had to improvise, attaching sharpened scythes to the ends of long sticks and thereby creating ‘a most murderous weapon’. Some had fought with only sticks in their hands. Nevertheless, they had overwhelmed the enemy with their ‘incredible impetuosity’, capturing between sixteen and seventeen hundred prisoners including seventy officers. Charles’s own casualties were probably no higher than fifty. This filled him with confidence for the future. Rather too much so according to young Lord Elcho, who described how ‘The Prince from this Battle entertained a mighty notion of the highlanders, and ever after imagin’d they would beat four times their number of regular troops ….’

  The Highlanders did not pursue their fleeing enemy very far, being more concerned with plunder. However, there is no doubt of the blind terror of the Government troops and the pitiful ease with which they were captured. They were described as ‘on the plain like a flock of sheep which after having run away, gathers together and begins to run again when seized by a fresh fear’. A single Highlander ‘from a rashness without example, having pursued a party to some distance from the field of battle … struck down the hindermost with a blow of his sword, calling at the same time, “down with your arms!” The soldiers, terror-struck, threw down their arms without looking behind them; and the Highlander, with a pistol in one hand, and his sword in the other, made them do just as he pleased.’ The carnage on the battle-field had unnerved them — it was a blood-soaked ‘spectacle of horror, being covered with heads, legs, and arms and mutilated bodies’.