The Road Not Taken

by Frank McLynn

  Charles Edward always had enough common sense to ‘balance the ticket’ – after all the Seven Men of Moidart had comprised four Scots and three Irishmen – and now in selecting his lieutenant-generals he allowed experience and prestige to override his personal feelings. Accordingly he appointed Lord George Murray and the Duke of Perth as his lieutenant-generals, with O’Sullivan under them as major-general, Strathallan brigadier-general, Sir John MacDonald the cavalry commander, and other leading Jacobites made colonels as regimental commanders. Unfortunately Perth did not get on particularly well with Lord George either, and this exacerbated the already endemic factionalism in the Jacobite army. In France in 1744–5 the prince had had to contend with the strife between the Paris-based Jacobites loyal to James (the ‘king’s party’) and those loyal to himself (the ‘prince’s party’), and this tended to bifurcate in turn into Scotsmen and the Irish.34 Since the Scots he took with him as part of the ‘Seven Men’ were all loyalists, that seemed to have ended one aspect of Jacobite factionalism, but by the time he reached Perth another had sprung up to take its place. There were those like Perth and O’Sullivan who always backed the prince in decision-making, but the clan leaders like Lochiel tended to heed the advice of Lord George. When the pro-Stuart feudal lords from north-eastern Scotland and the Lowlands came in – men like Lords Pitsligo, Glenbucket and Lewis – they too tended to side with the prince rather than Lord George, giving him in most circumstances a bare majority if controversial issues were put to the vote. In a good working partnership the inspirational leadership of the prince would have complemented the down-to-earth common sense of Lord George, but their innate clash of personalities meant that the two sides tended rather to pull apart.35 This was a weakness in the Jacobite army that was never overcome. Overlaying the prince– Murray mésalliance was a largely unspoken divergence of view between Charles and his Scottish followers. Whereas for the prince the aim of the rising was to recoup the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland for the House of Stuart, for most Scottish Jacobites the aim was repeal of the Act of Union and an independent Scotland.36 This divergence of aims was always shelved for another day, never discussed and allowed to fester, but it was to re-emerge at times of crisis with devastating effect. As part of his ‘all or nothing’ mentality the prince always insisted that he would have all three kingdoms or none (rien de partage: tout ou rien – ‘no dividing up or partial shares’ was his watchword).

  So far the Highland army had proved superior to the Hanoverian enemy in speed and mobility, but now George II’s government hit back with a valuable weapon of its own with which the Jacobites could not compete: seapower. Although the effect and importance of seapower in the ’45 has been absurdly overdone, usually by devotees of historical inevitability, it did play a significant part in the early and late stages of the rising, while being irrelevant to the crucial middle chapters.37 In September the immediate consequence was that Cope, learning that the Jacobites were threatening Edinburgh, marched his army from Inverness to Aberdeen, embarked them and landed them on the Firth of Forth at Dunbar, east of Edinburgh. Meanwhile the Highland army was within striking distance of the Scottish capital, having marched to Falkirk, within cannon shot of Stirling Castle, and then to the environs of Edinburgh, whence they sent out a demand for surrender to the burghers of that city. Within Edinburgh there were divided counsels, with some advocating a fight to the death but a majority, fearful that the city would be put to the sword and sacked as thoroughly as Rome by Alaric or Geiseric, or given over to mass atrocity like Magdeburg in the Thirty Years War, in favour of submission. The surrender terms were all but agreed when the burghers suddenly heard that Cope had landed at Dunbar. This encouraged them to stall, but Charles Edward, abandoning his usual humanitarian ‘softly, softly’ stance, warned them that he would burn the city to the ground unless he received an immediate surrender. The browbeaten citizens gave in but saved themselves from later accusations of treason by ‘accidentally’ leaving some of the city gates open, allowing the clansmen to pour in.38 The upshot of this confused period of alarums and excursions was one of the golden moments in Charles Edward’s life when he entered Edinburgh in triumph on 17 September. While the diehard Whigs held aloof, most of Edinburgh was swept up in a maelstrom of euphoria, nostalgia and triumphalism, with the prince at his magnetic best, and Edinburgh’s women particularly impressed by his charms. He entered Holyrood House as a conquering hero, and indeed had every reason to feel pleased with himself for, just twenty-eight days after raising the standard at Glenfinnan, he was almost master of Scotland.39

  There was just one obstacle left: Cope. On paper he easily held the advantage over the Jacobites for, advancing to the relief of Edinburgh, he had the luxury of selecting the field of battle on which he would confront the enemy. This was at Gladsmuir or Prestonpans to the east of the capital, in a strong natural position, with the sea as a natural defence to the north protecting his right flank. He also disposed of powerful artillery, which could have devastated the Highland army if it had made a frontal assualt from the west or south. There was one weak point, which Lord George Murray, who had a superb eye for ground, spotted at once. On the eastern side of Cope’s forces was a seemingly impenetrable morass, but one of the men John Roy Stewart had enlisted in Edinburgh knew of a narrow path through it. Travelling at times in Indian file, the clansmen picked their way through the marsh on the night of 20–1 September and fell on Cope’s flank at first light. The big guns were captured first, after the inexperienced gunners panicked and fled. Then wave after wave of claymore-wielding clansmen smashed into the Hanoverian army. They acted so quickly that the enemy cavalry were routed almost before they realised what had hit them. Panic spread to the infantry, and the short-lived battle quickly became a rout. The Jacobite officers lost control of their men at this point, with the result that the Highlanders cut loose and butchered as many of the fleeing redcoats as they could catch up with. Cope’s army lost more than 300 dead and over 400 wounded, while the Jacobite casualties totalled barely a dozen.40 Cope fled to Dunbar where, according to Robert Burns, though inaccurately, he was the first general to come with news of his own defeat. The consequences of Prestonpans were dramatic. Except for isolated fortresses like the castles at Stirling and Edinburgh, all of Scotland was in Jacobite hands. The regime in London finally realised the gravity of the situation that faced it, and the London stock market reacted badly, triggering a financial crisis. In a panic George II and his principal minister, the Duke of Newcastle, recalled regular troops from the battlefields of northern Europe (where the king’s son the Duke of Cumberland had recently been devastatingly defeated by Marshal Saxe at the Battle of Fontenoy), and called on the Swiss and Dutch to honour their treaty obligations, committing them to provide mercenaries to fight in England in a dire emergency.41 Charles Edward returned to Edinburgh in triumph and made another stunning entry into the city, this time as a proven conqueror. For a full month he held a glittering court at Holyrood House, with levées, receptions, banquets and balls. On 10 October he issued his manifestos on future policies in England and Scotland, disappointing his more perceptive supporters by the vagueness of his proposals. But, this issue aside, the prince’s sojourn at Edinburgh in October 1745 was the high point of his life. These were his great days, the ones he would look back on forever through a nostalgic mist.42

  The most dramatic consequence of Prestonpans was that the French decided, albeit hesitantly, to commit themselves to the Stuart cause, thus proving the soundness of the prince’s voluntarist approach. Astounded at first by his ‘go it alone’ strategy, Louis XV was sufficiently intrigued to send an envoy to Scotland, the Marquis d’Eguilles, to sound out the true state of affairs. The question of whether to support the Stuart prince occupied many sessions of the Council of State, Louis’s inner cabinet, composed at that time of just six ministers of state, of whom only two were outright Jacobite supporters. To make matters worse for the Jacobite cause, their two supporters, the Mar
quis d’Argenson and Cardinal Tencin loathed each other and supported different factions: Tencin was a supporter of James Francis, while d’Argenson admired the prince. Of the other four, both finance minister Philibert Orry and the man who succeded in late 1745, M. Machault d’Arnouville, were most concerned about the costs of an expedition to Great Britain, while the Comte d’Argenson (the marquis’s brother) wanted to concentrate on European warfare. The Duc de Noailles was an advocate of the Americas as the primary focus for French energies, while navy minister the Comte de Maurepas opined that a restored Charles Edward would be more of a threat to France than George II had ever been.43 Faced with such divided counsels among his ministers, the pathologically indecisive Louis XV opted for a peculiarly modern solution – ‘more research’ – which was the genesis of the d’Eguilles mission. What the French king should have done was get down to serious planning for an invasion the moment he heard that the clans had risen for the prince, but he believed that he who hesitates is king.44 His decision to stall was probably the single most important cause of Charles Edward’s eventual defeat. Had he acted at once, the entire history of 1745–6 would have been different. The d’Eguilles mission yielded some useful data on the Jacobite grandees, but all the hard intelligence he had to transmit had already been conveyed by the envoys the prince sent from Scotland to Versailles, first the Machiavellian parson George Kelly, one of the Seven Men of Moidart and then an emissary of an altogether superior calibre, the distinguished economist Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees.45 D’Eguilles’s arrival in Scotland on 14 October 1745 was a tremendous fillip for the Jacobites, as it seemed to confirm the truth of all the prince had told them. Even more encouraging was the sequel to Prestonpans when Louis XV concluded a formal pact with ‘King James’ – the Treaty of Fontainebleau – giving him co-belligerent status. The Jacobites had thus achieved a level of recognition in wartime which had eluded them for fifty-six years. Moreover, the treaty prevented Dutch troops from serving against the Jacobites, since they were constrained by the articles of a previous capitulation to France. From late October to late December the French worked hard to mount a credible cross-Channel expedition. 15,000 troops, including most of the Scottish and Irish exiles in the service of France, were earmarked for the enterprise, the command was given to the high-born aristocrat the Duc de Richelieu, who thirsted for a marshal’s baton, and all necessary shipping assembled in a chain of Channel ports stretching from Ostend to Dieppe.46

  One of the profound problems that beset the Jacobites (and the French) in 1745–6 was that it took twelve days for events and decisions taken in either Scotland or France to be conveyed to the other side. They were both thus in the position of astronomers gazing at distant stars that had already ceased to exist. The debacle this would engender was realised only gradually, and meanwhile d’Eguilles’s presence buoyed up the prince’s newly formed council. To this were appointed his Irish favourites O’Sullivan and Sheridan; Perth and Lord George Murray automatically qualified as lieutenant-generals; also coopted were the lords of the feudal north-east and the Lowlands: Pitsligo, Balmerino, Glenbucket, Elcho, Ogilvy, Lewis Gordon, Murray of Broughton – most of whom tended to support the prince in the council’s decision-making.47 Most bizarre of the Lowland lords with a council place was the Earl of Kilmarnock: his motive for joining the Jacobites was bankruptcy, and he famously declared that he would have joined Saracens, Turks or Moslems who set up a standard in the Highlands if he could thereby be relieved of his debts. The other faction on the council largely comprised the clan leaders or (in the case of chiefs who elected not to ‘come out’ in person but to send a senior representative to lead their men) their deputies: Lochiel, Cluny MacPherson, Keppoch, Lord Nairne, young Clanranald, Stewart of Ardshiel (commanding the Stewart clan), MacDonald of Keppoch, Mackinnon of Skye and Lochgarry (heading the Glengarry regiment).48 The council met every day to discuss not just policy and grand strategy but day-to-day administration and the conduct of the continuing siege of Edinburgh Castle. Having ridden out the curse of factionalism between ‘king’s party’ and ‘prince’s party’ in France in 1744–5, and then prevented the worst aspects of an Irish-Scottish rift among his followers, the prince found that a new division had arisen: between those invariably loyal to him (Sheridan, O’Sullivan, Tullibardine, Murray of Broughton, Kilmarnock, Pitsligo, Perth, Lord Nairne) and those who took their cue from Lord George (Lochiel and the other clan leaders); invariably there were a few floating voters who oscillated between the two sides. The heterogeneity of motivation among council members was striking. Sincere ideologues joined forces with political adventurers; those excluded from office through proscription of the Tory Party made common cause with politicians taking out an insurance policy; clan chieftains sat in conclave with bankrupts; banished Irish Catholics plotted with covert Scottish republicans. Scottish nationalists hoped to throw off the English yoke; the English working man looked forward to the root and branch dismantling of the regime of money.49 Like most historical events, the Jacobite rising of 1745 cannot be fitted into any general category without omitting most of the nuances, undertones, subtexts and unique factors of contingency which went into its make-up.

  There were perhaps half a dozen days of decision, when momentous issues were decided, during the rising. One of these came on 31 October 1745 when the council passed a motion to invade England. This was one of the most hard-fought triumphs for the prince, and the decision was taken by just one vote. He would not have succeeded at all if John Roy Stewart, colonel of the newly formed Edinburgh regiment, had been on the council. On the other hand, many of his natural supporters were absent that day raising recruits: Pitsligo, Glenbucket, Ogilvy, Lewis Gordon. The prince was supported by his ‘old faithfuls’: Sheridan, O’Sullivan, Tullibardine, Kilmarnock, Murray of Broughton, Perth and Lord Nairne: Lord George mustered Lochiel, Clanranald, Keppoch, Ardshiel, Glencoe and Lochgarry.50 The clan leaders objected vociferously to crossing the border into England and advocated sitting tight and consolidating a united Scotland, confident that the French would send an army. One of Murray’s best arguments was that if the Jacobites invaded England, the Hanoverians would simply take the opportunity to reconquer Scotland.51 The prince assured the doubters that he was confident of raising enough men both to invade England and to maintain their position in Scotland, pointing out that the projected French invasion was being launched at England, not Scotland, which would prevent George II and his ministers from sending an army north, lest they suffer the notorious fate of Harold Godwinsson in 1066, caught between Harald Hardrada in the north and William of Normandy in the south. The French factor, indeed, was one of the four motifs the prince plugged away at in a bravura display of dialectical skill – a feat impossible to achieve if he really was a Polish blockhead, as his critics allege.52 It was essential to keep up the momentum and make the French believe they were backing winners, not abject losers. Lord George’s alternative strategy was to retreat to the Highlands for a massive recruiting drive, which he alleged could net 24,000 fighting men in all, but to foreign eyes this would look like a craven retreat. Momentum was also the pith of the prince’s second main argument, which was that to remain in Scotland risked losing the army through inanition and low morale. Clan armies were notorious for their part-time nature, with warriors slipping away home for the harvest or to visit families, and many a promising anti-English venture in Scotland had perished on just such a rock. Weeks of boredom and guard duty in Edinburgh, with no prospects of hard fighting, good living or loot, would sap and drain away Highland esprit de corps. Continuing his theme of momentum, the prince stressed the need for a second victory, over the armies of Marshal Wade, currently converging on Newcastle. Vanquishing Wade would set England alive, and all the latent Jacobite support there, both in the Tory gentry and among the common people, would then manifest itself.53 As his fourth and final point, the prince sharply posed the question of how the Highland army was to be financed, fed and equipped if it remained on the defensive
in Scotland. The promised treasure ships from France had yet to arrive and would have to run the gauntlet of the Royal Navy to do so. The Hanoverians had cunningly secreted most of the silver in Scotland inside their impregnable fortresses, and soon the Jacobites would either run out of money or be forced to collect the hated Malt Tax, the very impost that had made the Hanoverian regime so unpopular. South of the border, however, were rich pickings. The Jacobites, claiming de jure right, had already begun collecting the public moneys, principally the cess and the excise, but the revenue base in Scotland was small, and in England huge.54