The Road to Culloden Moor

by Diana Preston

  According to his own account Bradstreet had been enjoying himself hugely. He arrived in Derby coiffed and ruffled and belaced as befitted a gentleman of quality and mounted on a ‘lovely and well-managed Charger’. He had laid his plans carefully with his hero Cumberland: his mission was to delay the Jacobites ‘but twelve hours’ to give the Government troops a chance to catch up. He announced himself as a man of quality come to serve the Prince Regent and was delighted to overhear the whispering clansmen hailing him as an English lord. He was conducted with great ceremony to Charles’s lodgings where he met a number of the Jacobite leaders including Lord Kilmarnock and the Duke of Perth. Tossing down several glasses of fine wine he cheerfully told them a farago of lies. His pièce de résistance was to invent another army of eight or nine thousand men supposedly commanded by Hawley or Ligonier and waiting at Northampton to attack Charles. ‘Observe,’ he later wrote with glee, ‘there was not nine Men at Northampton to oppose them, which shews that mighty Events are often effected by the smallest Causes; for this Report to them, I am as certain as of my Existence, was the only Reason and Motive for that fortunate and dreaded Army (until then) to retreat, from which Period date their inevitable Ruin.’ He had set out to delay the Jacobites for twelve hours. If he is to be believed, he succeeded in delaying them forever.

  The spy was brought before the Council and asked the same questions again. When he reached the part about an army at Northampton Charles knew that he was doomed — ‘the Rebel Prince, who was in a Closet just by, opened the Door, and pointed at me, saying, “That Fellow will do me more Harm than all the Elector’s Army;” and then directing himself to the Council, said, “You ruin, abandon, and betray me if you don’t march on,” and then shut the Door in a Passion.’ The result of events that night in Exeter House was that Charles gave in. This decision was to prove the end of all his hopes and the point at which his life turned sour. Sheridan’s sad comments were entirely accurate. ‘It is all over,’ he mourned, ‘we shall never come back again.’

  There have been many arguments about what would have happened if Charles had been allowed to follow his instincts and march straight to London. The real situation was nothing like as bad as the clan chiefs believed, even without Bradstreet’s misinformation. In fact there were no more than some four thousand men between the Jacobites and the capital. Many contemporaries believed he had the throne within his grasp. Pitt the Elder told the House of Commons as much in 1749. Smollett agreed with him that ‘Had Charles proceeded in his career with that expedition he had hitherto used, he might have made himself master of the metropolis, where he would certainly have been joined by a considerable number of his well-wishers, who waited impatiently for his approach.’ Later generations thought so too. King George V remarked to the Duke of Atholl, ‘Had Charles Edward gone on from Derby I should not have been King of England today.’

  So it was fitting that 6 December was to become ‘Black Friday’ in the Jacobite calendar. The retreat began in freezing conditions. It was symbolic of what had happened that Charles now chose to ride rather than march at the head of his men. He had made his position quite clear to Lord George, ‘… in future I shall summon no more councils, since I am accountable to nobody for my actions but to God and my father and therefore I shall no longer either ask or accept advice.’ In other words from now on he washed his hands of everything and Murray would have to sort it out. Observers described how Charles was so upset that he could hardly stand, which was ‘always the case with him when he was cruelly used’. According to Bradstreet he had been weeping. This tragic figure hunched in despair on a suitably black horse was a different being from the Prince who had marched from Edinburgh to Derby at the head of his men, who was ‘very strong, supped liberally, was often drunk, would throw himself on a couch at eleven o’clock at night without undressing’ and be up again at three a.m.

  A charade was enacted to conceal from the enemy that this was a retreat. A party of horse was sent cantering up the road to within a few miles of the enemy. Meanwhile the army retraced its steps to Ashbourne. Lord George knew he must also conceal what was happening from the clansmen. Only the day before they had been sharpening their dirks in eager anticipation of a battle. So powder and ball were handed out just as they would be before an action, and it was hinted that Wade was at hand. But the deception failed. When the Highlanders found themselves once again on the Ashbourne road they suspected the truth and were extremely dejected. ‘All had expressed the greatest ardour upon hearing at Derby that they were within a day’s march of the Duke of Cumberland; they were at a loss what to think of this retreat, of which they did not know the real motives; but even such as knew them, and thought the retreat the only reasonable scheme, could hardly be reconciled to it.

  Chevalier Johnstone described it even more vividly: ‘The Highlanders, believing at first that they were in march forward to attack the army of the Duke of Cumberland, testified great joy and alacrity; but as soon as the day began to clear in the distance, and that they perceived we were retracing our steps, we heard nothing but howlings, groans, and lamentations throughout the whole army to such a degree as if they had suffered a defeat.’ The commanders thought of another artifice as the army marched gloomily on its way. It was given out that the reinforcements expected from Scotland were already on the road and had actually entered England; that Wade was trying to intercept them and that the Prince was marching to their relief. This was a plausible explanation and the suspicious clansmen brooded on it, but their officers noticed that they were sullen and silent the whole of that day.

  It did not take long for the truth to dawn that this was a game of cat and mouse with the pursuing Goverment troops in the feline role. When he realised what was happening — and he was deceived for a short while — Cumberland gave chase. With Wade and Ligonier on his trail as well, Lord George’s task was not an easy one. The army was demoralised and unsure of itself. The local people in the towns and villages they passed through were now actively hostile. And he had Charles to deal with — behaving like a glamorous but sulky schoolboy, uninterested in the problems and positively obstructive. Lord George was depressed by this change in behaviour: ‘His Royal Highness, in marching forwards, had always been first up in the morning, and had the men in motion before break of day, and commonly marched himself afoot; but in retreat he was much longer of leaving his quarters, so that, though the rest of the army were all on their march, the rear could not move till he went, and then he rode straight on, and got to the quarters with the van.’ Part of Lord George’s irritation was that he himself was commanding the rearguard.

  Charles was dragging his heels. The idea that he was fleeing from his cousin weighed heavily. It did not help that Cumberland was virtually the same age and had grown up enjoying all the privileges that Charles believed should have been his own. Physically they could not have been more different. Charles was the fairy-tale prince — tall and slender. He would not have looked out of place holding a glass slipper in his hand. Cumberland — more of an ugly sister — was a vast young man. His portraits show a startling degree of embonpoint, and where he is mounted the horse is drawn similarly barrel-shaped. Their personalities were also very different. Charles saw himself as a model of what a young prince should be, humane and chivalrous even when it was to his disadvantage. Cumberland, by contrast, was a bruiser — fond of boxing and horse racing, loved by his men but harsh with them and without pity for his enemies. The brutality that was to earn him such a bad name in the aftermath of the ’45 was already showing itself. He wrote to the Duke of Newcastle that ‘There are, I believe, to the number of about fifteen or sixteen of their stragglers picked up who are sent to different jails. As they have so many of our Prisoners in their hands, I did not care to put them to death, but I have encouraged the country people to do it, as they may fall in their way.’

  The country folk obeyed with a will. Lord Elcho described with disgust how ‘They were quite prepared in case the army had been beat t
o have knock’d on the head all that would have escaped from the Battle. Whenever any of the men straggled or stayed behind they either murder’d them or sent them to the Duke.’ He was not exaggerating. Two Highland stragglers were shot dead by a farmer and his sons on the road to Ashbourne. Lord George tried to find ways of rounding up the laggards, but it was difficult because the clansmen would only obey men from their own clans. He had to form a special unit of officers drawn from each of the clan regiments. All in all it was a desperate march. They were harassed by the locals who lit bonfires to signal the whereabouts of the rebel army, the militia played hit and run on their fringes, and it was bitterly cold. The discipline which the Jacobite army had displayed on its march into England began to break down. Some of the retreating Highlanders could not resist the temptation to help themselves to horses and other likely loot. Sometimes there was bloodshed. Two clansmen shot dead Humphrey Brown at Clifton near Ashbourne because he refused to hand over his horse.

  As one report put it, the retreating army ‘seemed to be extremely out of humour’.

  The True Patriot gave Cumberland the credit for containing the mayhem the Highlanders would have inflicted if they had had the chance. It noted in approving tones, ‘The great Expedition with which his Royal Highness the Duke hath pursued the Rebels, must have certainly prevented much Mischief to the Northern Counties, by forcing them to retreat with such Celerity: For when we consider the Temper in which the Rebels left Derby, incensed at their Disappointment, and the Ill-will which the Pretender and their Chiefs must have borne to their English Friends, from whom they received so little assistance, we must necessarily conclude, that had they had sufficient Leisure, they would not only have plundered every Place through which they passed, but have left the most terrible Marks of Cruelty behind them.’

  So it was in a very different mood that the army was retracing its steps back through Ashbourne, Leek, Macclesfield, Stockport to Manchester. In Manchester they were now stoned by a hostile mob, and only extracted with difficulty the £2,500 they had levied on the town for its bad behaviour. An elderly Whig merchant was told to raise the money by a 1 p.m. deadline which sent him scurrying anxiously to the coffee house to consult his fellow-merchants. Between then they came up with the funds, but not without an extension of the deadline to 2 p.m. Even then the problems were not over. The party of Scots sent to collect the money were fired on as they crossed Salford Bridge and there were other signs of hostility. A sniper took a pot-shot at O’Sullivan from a garret window, mistaking him for Charles. Bradstreet, who was still with the Jacobites awaiting the opportunity to escape, later claimed that it was only his intervention which saved Manchester from being burned to the ground in revenge.

  Bradstreet was continuing to undermine the Jacobites in any way he could think of. He had discovered his fellow spy Captain Vere in Ashbourne, ‘tied with Ropes, after being kept starving a Day and Night’. The Duke of Perth wanted to hang him without further ado but Bradstreet persuaded Lord Kilmarnock to intercede. The result was that Vere was spared though kept crammed in a little closet. He was able to continue compiling his careful and damaging notes about the various Highland leaders. Before he took to his heels Bradstreet also had time to observe the rebel leaders at close quarters, which inspired some intriguing pen-portraits. ‘Lord Kilmarnock was genteel in Person and Manners, the Duke of Perth was prodigious tall and thin … his Hair, when loose, came down to the Small of his Back; Lord Ogilvie was a young handsome Man; Lord Elcho was young, smooth-faced, inclined to Fat, and passionate, he commanded the Hussars, and wore a Fox Skin Cap with the Ears pricked up, which made him, when on Horseback at the Head of his Men, look very formidable; Colonel Sullivan was a fat, well-faced Man; Sir Thomas Sheridan was a drooping old Man; … the Duke of Atholl was old and infirm.’

  Charles, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly stubborn about appearing to be fleeing from Cumberland and wanted to show the world ‘he was retiring and not flying’. He would have been deeply upset by a ‘stop press’ in the True Patriot that ‘The Highlanders are running away as fast as they can … In fact the papers had been very quick to pick up the true state of affairs. On the very day of the retreat from Derby the London Gazette received a despatch from Nottingham accurately judging what was happening. In Manchester Charles tried to persuade Lord George to stay an extra night and only gave up the idea after a struggle. At Preston he was quite determined. ‘At Supper at Lancaster the Prince talk’d much about retiring so fast, and said it was a Shame for to go so fast before the son of an Usurper, and that he Would stay at Lancaster.’ In the event they vacated Preston — with its fatal reputation for their cause — with only an hour to spare. There was a real prospect now that Cumberland would catch them before they reached the border. It was only a false report of a French landing on the south coast that stopped him by delaying him a day. But Charles was pleased that Cumberland was close. He wanted a battle and he said so to his commanders while they paused at Lancaster. Lord George Murray, Lochiel and O’Sullivan were sent off to find a suitable site outside Lancaster.

  But in the event it was Wade’s force, not Cumberland’s, that came on the scene. Wade had sent an advance guard over the Pennines to try and intercept the Highlanders. There was a skirmish with Elcho’s Lifeguards and some of the Government soldiers were captured. They gave the Highlanders the unwelcome tidings that both Wade and Cumberland would shortly be on them. This was too much even for Charles despite his ‘fanciful taste for battles’, and the Jacobite army set out post haste for Kendal. Lord George, with that air of superiority Charles found so irritating, could not resist saying to him as they left Lancaster: ‘As Your Royal Highness is always for battles, be the circumstances what they may, I now offer you one in three hours from this time with the army of Wade which is only about three miles from us.’ At Kendal, Murray tried to get O’Sullivan to substitute two-wheeled ammunition carts for the heavier four-wheeled wagons that were proving so difficult to manage on the poor country roads. But he found the Irishman at supper with Charles and enjoying some fine mountain Malaga. The only comfort the exasperated Murray received was ‘a glass or two of it’.

  The next hurdle was to cross Shap Fell, no easy matter, now or then, in snow and ice. Lord George proposed to Charles that the big guns should be left at Kendal. Charles refused, reminding him with some pleasure that at Derby he had promised to be in the rearguard during the retreat and to look after the baggage and artillery. Not a single cannon ball must be abandoned. Grinding his teeth Lord George had to agree. The consequence was that Charles, with the van of the army, managed to struggle across Shap Fell and reach Penrith. Lord George and the rearguard struggled on with the unwieldy carts, many overturning in the appalling weather. One fell into a stream rendering most of the contents useless. Lord George paid Glengarry’s men sixpence a piece to carry over two hundred cannon-balls to Shap, some of them tying them in their plaids. Inevitably he became separated from Charles and the rest of the force. The Prince had reversed his policy of dragging his heels and was now going great guns. ‘… We had the cruellest rain that day, that ever I saw, we had several torrents to pass; the Prince was always a foot, and forded those torrents as the men did, never wou’d he get a’ horse-back, & if it was not for the way he acted that day, I verilly believe we cou’d not keep half our men together.’

  Murray was overtaken by some of Cumberland’s dragoons and mounted infantry. To his horror he heard ‘a prodigious number of trumpets and kettle-drums’. A running battle broke out near the village of Clifton, with the cavalry attacking and the Highlanders repulsing them ‘like lions’. Murray sent to Charles for orders — it seemed a good opportunity to go on the offensive before Cumberland’s full force caught up — the numbers were ‘pretty near equal … and the Ground was advantageous for foot to fight in’. Charles simply ordered him to retire to Penrith. Cluny Macpherson’s regiment and the Appin Stewarts came to help Murray extricate himself but, as an increasingly sceptical Elcho remarked,
it was a lost chance. He noted that ‘As there was formerly a Contradiction to make the army halt when it was necessary to march, so now there was one to march and shun fighting when there Could never be a better opportunity got for it …’

  As it was, a short skirmish did take place an hour after sunset amid hawthorne hedges and stone walls. The sky was cloudy but, now and then, the moon shone through, picking out the bright clothes of the dragoons. The Highlanders moved towards them, invisible in their darker tartans, cutting their way through the hawthorne prickles which were ‘very uneasy … to our loos’d tail’d lads’. They killed or wounded some forty dragoons, smashing their broadswords on the dragoons’ newly-issued metal skull caps and enabling Lord George to secure his retreat. He rejoined Charles the next day in Penrith. The Prince’s steward had managed to find him three bottles of cherry brandy and he was in an appropriately cheerful mood. Although they both knew the engagement had been against Charles’s orders the Prince told the weary Murray that he was pleased with the night’s work. They were not to know that it was in fact the last battle between rival armies on English soil. It also had a sinister aftermath. Cumberland wrote in his report that the rebels had cried, ‘No quarter! Murder them,’ and it was to be a forerunner of his own behaviour at Culloden.

  On 19 December the army marched on to Carlisle. Charles was again marching on foot at its head and in renewed spirits. It was ‘one of the darkest nights I ever saw, yet did his R. H. walk it on foot, and the most part of the way without a lanthorn, yet never stumbled, which many of us Highlanders did often’. However, it was now that Charles made one of the saddest and most controversial decisions of the whole campaign. He decided to leave a garrison behind, partly on the advice of O’Sullivan.

  To the other leaders it looked like suicide. Lord George ‘was clear for evacuating it’ and had assumed that Carlisle would be abandoned and the castle and fortifications blown up. After all, the Jacobites knew better than anybody the real state of the ‘crazy walls of the town and castle’ — the fortifications were rotting. Johnstone realised that Carlisle ‘could not hold out for more than four hours against a cannonade from a few field-pieces’. Not only that, but the population of the city was largely hostile. But Charles hoped to be back before long, reinforced with Lord John Drummond’s troops from France and Lord Strathallan’s Scottish forces, and he claimed to want to hold Carlisle to ‘facilitate his entry into the kingdom’ again. Retaining a toehold in England was also important psychologically. He could tell himself that his sortie into England had not been a failure.