Yet the prince soon made good his boast that he had never cared for Rome, as a society too soft and decadent for a true warrior. If he could not yet exercise his devastating charisma, since the Catholic inhabitants of Eriskay spoke Erse or Gaelic, he could show that he was a hero. Bearded and unshaven, wearing the dress of a student for the priesthood at the Scots college in Rome, the prince settled down for his first night on Scottish soil.
It was a wet and windy night. They were lodged in the cottage of Angus MacDonald, a poor crofter. There was no bread, not even a grain of meal, but they cooked flounder over the peat fire.14 It was by fire, or rather smoke, that the prince’s first ordeal came. Since there was no chimney in the bothy, but only a hole in the roof, the lungs accustomed to the groves of Cisterna and the forests of Navarre soon protested. The prince was forced to make frequent trips to the door to inhale fresh air. Eventually Angus MacDonald, not knowing that he was dealing with his rightful prince and seeing only a scruffy cleric, burst out irritatedly in Gaelic: ‘What a plague is the matter with that fellow, that he can neither sit nor stand still and neither keep within nor without doors?’15
The news of the prince’s arrival had been taken across the strait to South Uist. In the morning there arrived Alexander MacDonald of Boisdale, brother of the chief of Clanranald MacDonalds. If the prince thought he had problems with smoky hovels and damp beds, these were trifles compared with the news Boisdale brought. The two great Skye chiefs, on whom the prince had depended for his initial strategy, Norman Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald of Sleat, absolutely refused to ‘come out’ in rebellion, on the grounds that the prince had not arrived with the promised French troops.16 Sir Alexander was within his rights in refusing to rise, for he had indeed always made a French expedition a precondition of his appearing under the Stuart banner; Macleod had not.17
This was a staggering blow. Boisdale advised the prince to cut his losses and return home. ‘I am come home,’ the prince replied, a memorable opening to Bliadhna Thierlaich (Charlie’s year, 1745–6).18 After warning the prince that he would advise all other MacDonalds, including the Catholic Clanranalds, to do as Sir Alexander (‘Lord of the Isles’) had done, Boisdale departed.19 At this the prince’s followers took fright and urged an immediate return to France. Only Sheridan and, clinchingly, Walsh backed Charles.20 Nothing daunted, the prince restated his case with vigour and clarity and sent Aeneas MacDonald over to the mainland by boat to sound his brother Kinlochmoidart.21 Meanwhile he sent another message to Sir Alexander MacDonald, summoning him to the royal presence.
It was clear that the situation in Scotland was not nearly so promising even as in Murray of Broughton’s ‘realistic’ estimate.22 They could not remain on Eriskay. Apart from the lack of food, a Royal Navy vessel was now patrolling dangerously near the Doutelle.23 Walsh proposed to give this unknown but dangerous snooper the slip at night. At dead of night on the evening of 24/25 July (OS) the Doutelle slid silently out of the loch and out on to the open sea. Walsh held a course for Moidart. At daybreak Skye was espied on the port side away to the north-east. To the south-east were Canna and Rhum.24 Late on 25 July OS (5 August NS), they entered Loch-nan-Uamh and anchored at Lochailort in Arisaig.25
This part of the western Highlands – Arisaig, Moidart, Knoydart, Morar (‘the highlands of the Highlands’) – enjoyed a higher standard of living than the Outer Hebrides. With cattle bred in large numbers, and wild deer roaming free in droves, there was plenty of meat, at least for the Highland gentry and their royal visitor.26 The prince was extended the spartan hospitality of a MacDonald farmhouse at Borrodale. For the next two weeks he remained at Borrodale, sometimes in the farmhouse, sometimes on board the Doutelle.27 Here the local clan dignitaries came to meet him. Ranald MacDonald of Borrodale, who had met Charles in Rome eight years before, did not at first recognise the hirsute, shabbily dressed priest.28
On shipboard next morning (26 July/6 August), he was visited by young Clanranald, son of the chief of Clanranald MacDonalds, and by Alexander MacDonald of Glenaladale. Clanranald too tried to persuade the prince to return to France.29 When he found his resolve firm, he agreed to take another message to the great Skye chiefs Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald.30 Predictably, the pair again refused to have anything to do with an enterprise attempted without the minimum prerequisite previously stipulated: 6,000 French troops.31
Glenaladale meanwhile was sent to assemble Clanranald’s clansmen as a bodyguard for the prince. Kinlochmoidart, Ranald MacDonald’s brother, was dispatched to inform Lochiel, Perth, Murray of Broughton and the other ‘Associators’ of the arrival of the Stuart liberator.32 While the prince awaited the result of Clanranald’s mission to Skye, further MacDonald luminaries came to visit him: MacDonald of Scotus (representing the chief of Glengarry), MacDonald of Keppoch, Alexander MacDonald of Glencoe, and Hugh MacDonald, brother of Morar.33 Thus were assembled all the important decision-makers in the extended clan MacDonald, awaiting the final reply from the Lord of the Isles.
When young Clanranald returned with the Skye chiefs’ adamant and depressing refusal to come out, even Sheridan and Walsh changed their minds about the wisdom of proceeding further. The prince was alone in his resolve to land.34 Sheridan was further cast down by a disingenuous reply from Murray of Broughton, advising return; as Sheridan pointed out, Murray himself had explicitly agreed to the ‘going it alone’ strategy.35
Blithely confident, the prince ordered Walsh to land the arms and ammunition from the Doutelle. This was a key decision. There was no question of Charles’s keeping the Doutelle cruising until he saw which way the Highland wind was blowing. This was Cortés burning his boats.36
And at this critical moment the prince’s personal charisma came into its own. Charles Edward made a dramatic appeal for assistance, not to young Clanranald, whose refusal would have settled the issue, but to the headstrong young Ranald MacDonald. Bombastically Ranald replied that he would follow his rightful prince, even though no other man in the Highlands drew his sword.37
This was shrewd manipulation on Charles Edward’s part. The code of honour put young Clanranald in an impossible position. How could he refuse where a lesser kinsman had accepted? Even so, he wrestled hard with himself before making his decision. His kinsman Sir John MacDonald (one of the ‘Seven Men’) related that Clanranald paced the room at Borrodale for half an hour, leaving it for consultations no less than three times, before he gave his consent. But when he gave it, it was wholehearted. Young Clanranald promised to raise his clan and defend the prince with his life, even if no other Highlanders joined the revolt.38
Once Clanranald decided to join in, Glencoe and Keppoch threw in their lot with him.39 The prince was making progress, but he still needed a major accession of strength before he could form a credible Jacobite army. The turning point came with Donald Cameron, ‘Young Lochiel’.
On receipt of the prince’s letter, Lochiel made a more honest response then his fellow ‘Associator’ John Murray. He sent his brother Dr Archibald Cameron as his envoy to the prince, urging him to return to France. Charles Edward replied that honour and duty required that Young Lochiel say this to his face.40
Both Archie Cameron and his brother John Cameron of Fassifern, who accompanied him, quickly came under the prince’s magnetic spell. Even so, the good doctor made no promises; he merely said that if he did join in, he would be the last to leave.41 Fassifern met Young Lochiel on the road to Borrodale and warned him to beware the prince’s spellbinding charm.42 Lochiel arrived at Borrodale with his defences well prepared, determined not to be outwitted as Clanranald had been. No arguments would sway him from his self-imposed brief, which was to persuade the prince that he was embarked on a suicide mission.
The crucial meeting between Lochiel and Charles Edward at Borrodale remains a mystery.43 No one knows exactly what was said, but the prince clearly excelled himself that day in powers of advocacy, refuting once again the canard that he was stupid. Lochiel was no man’s fool, and on
ly an exceptionally quick-witted individual could have demolished his arguments so successfully.
The main outlines of the interview can be inferred from hints and pointers given by the prince to his later biographers (such as O’Heguerty and Father Leslie). The prince did not make the mistake of lying about French assistance but strongly reiterated that it was inconceivable they would not send an army to Scotland once they saw a Jacobite rising fully launched.44 The answer to the clan chief’s question, why had he come without French troops, was obvious; if he had had them, he would not have landed in Scotland but in England.45
Lochiel saw an opportunity to blunt the force of the prince’s telling point about France. Very well, he replied, if Your Royal Highness will not return to France, and what you say is correct, why not send an envoy to Versailles to tell them that you are safe and well hidden and will remain in the bosom of the clans, clandestinely raising a Highland army, until the French army arrives?46 The prince was equal to the challenge. After eighteen months of dealing with the French ministers, he replied, he knew their minds. They would believe in the existence of a Jacobite army only when they saw it in the field. He reminded Lochiel of the many French projects for a descent on Scotland and how they had always foundered on the circularity of who should make the first move. It was now his role to cut the Gordian knot. French worries about landing troops would be removed if it could be shown that there was a bridgehead already in existence.
What impressed Lochiel was the calm, logical way the prince outlined his arguments. The combination of wit, charm and lucidity was a hard one to resist. While Lochiel hesitated, Charles Edward threw in the magic name of Earl Marischal, now negotiating at Versailles and destined as the ultimate Commander in Chief of Franco-Jacobite armies.47 Marischal’s reputation in the Highlands was enormous: his adherence gave the project a soundness and solidity it had seemed to lack. The prince added that he intended to raise the standard whatever the Camerons decided.
Lochiel was reeling, but he was not yet ready to give in completely. He would join the rising, he announced, if two stiff conditions were met. One was that the prince would give him security for his estates in the event of the rebellion’s failure.48 The prince, thinking of the Sobieski jewels, unaware that his father had already raised money on them, agreed. The second condition was that the chief of the Glengarry MacDonalds (‘Old Glengarry’) would undertake in writing to raise his clan for the prince.49 This assurance, too, was given.
Lochiel’s adherence was the turning point of the rising.50 If there was any doubt of it, Charles Edward now sent Walsh back to France in the Doutelle with letters for the court and a recommendation to his father that the intrepid Franco-Irishman be knighted.51 Arrangements were made to raise the royal standard at Glenfinnan on Monday 19 August (OS).52
The clan leaders departed to raise their tacksmen and tenants, leaving the prince under the protection of the Glengarry men.53 He stayed at Borrodale until 11 August (OS), making this his headquarters. He continued to send out messages to all his friends and supporters in Scotland.54 On Sunday 11 August the prince went by boat with the artillery and baggage to Kinlochmoidart, skirting the heads of Loch-nan-Uamh and Lochailort. The Clanranald men marched round by shore.55
From the 11th to the 17th the prince was based at Kinlochmoidart.56 Here Keppoch joined him with three hundred fighting men of his clan. The prince, in good spirits, half-playfully suggested that all the clan leaders sign a bond of loyalty. There was, however, some serious purpose behind this proposal, since the prince was annoyed by the reports now reaching him that Aeneas MacDonald had tried to persuade his kinsmen to remain aloof from the rising. But Tullibardine reacted with wounded dignity, calling it a slur on his reputation and integrity. The other six of the ‘Seven Men’, who did not have Tullibardine’s potentially lofty position in the world, decided to humour the prince’s whim.57
The government in London, meanwhile, was slow to react to the prince’s landing, largely through difficulty in believing in it. This was hardly surprising, since Whig ministers on the spot in Scotland were initially highly sceptical.58 But by about 8 August (OS) disbelief was turning to alarm as reports came in of numbers of clansmen flocking to the Stuart prince’s standard.59
It was fortunate for George II that at this juncture in Scotland he possessed a servant of high calibre. Born in 1685, Duncan Forbes, laird of Culloden and Lord President of the Scottish Court of Session, proved the Jacobites’ most formidable opponent.60 Successively Deputy Lord Advocate (1716) and Lord Advocate (1725), since becoming Lord President in 1737 Forbes had striven to reconcile the Jacobite clans to the Hanoverian regime and to get them to see the 1688 Revolution as an irreversible fact of life. He had kept the devious Lord Lovat out of Jacobite clutches61 (though Lovat was eventually to be his greatest failure), settled Edinburgh after the Porteous riots, and effectively blackmailed Norman Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald into staying loyal to George II.62
In 1745 Forbes immediately tried to stop the contagion of rebellion from spreading. He rushed to Culloden House, near Inverness, where he rallied to the government side lords Sutherland and Mackay, the Grants of Grant, Lord Fortrose (Seaforth Mackenzie), Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald, plus the Munro clans, raising twenty companions for Lord Loudoun’s regiment among Highlanders who might otherwise have followed Charles Edward.63 There was little else he could do, since the 1725 Disarming Act meant that Jacobite clans had hidden their weapons, while pro-Hanoverian ones had surrendered theirs. Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald cunningly used their official lack of arms as an excuse to remain neutral during the crucial first few weeks of the rising.64
Despite his energy, Forbes at first experienced many disappointments. First there was the wholly unexpected defection of Lochiel; later the equally unlooked-for volte-face by Cluny MacPherson.65 In August 1745 everything went Charles Edward’s way. First blood in the rising was drawn by the Jacobites. Just before he left Borrodale on 11 August, the prince had made it clear to his chiefs how important it was to stop reinforcements reaching Fort William.66 On 14 August Colonel Swithenham of Guise’s regiment, on his way down from Ruthven with sixty soldiers to take command at Fort William, was taken prisoner by Keppoch’s men within twelve miles of the fort.67 Two days later the Jacobites scored an even greater success. Keppoch’s lieutenant MacDonald of Tiendrish, assisted by some of the Glengarry men, attacked two companies of the Royal Scots on the shores of Loch Lochy. These soldiers were also on their way (from Perth) to reinforce the garrison at Fort William. A running fight commenced at High Bridge eight miles from Fort William and ended at Laggan at the head of the Loch with the Royal Scots’ surrender.68
At Kinlochmoidart things were also going well. Food shortages had been solved by Clanranald’s capture of three barges loaded with corn and oatmeal.69 At this Murray of Broughton finally decided to commit himself. He arrived at Kinlochmoidart on Sunday the 18th.70 So far was the prince from holding his two-faced behaviour against him that, a week later, he appointed Murray to be his secretary. A shrewder man might have been alerted by Murray’s foot-dragging, but Charles Edward was always of an excessively forgiving nature until the point where he toppled over into suspicion and hatred, when he became impervious to reason. Always in the prince’s personality there was the lack of a middle path or a golden mean. He was too trusting and lacked normal shrewdness and suspicion when dealing with flatterers. When his suspicions were aroused, they quickly toppled into paranoia.
Yet all in all the omens were good when the prince set out for Glenfinnan. The only sombre note had been struck by the London government’s putting a price of £30,000 on the prince’s head. At this stage Charles was inclined to laugh this off.71
Leaving Kinlochmoidart, the prince marched to Loch Shiel and went by boat to Glenaladale, where he spent the night. There the first of the north-eastern lairds (distinct from the clan leaders) joined him: John Gordon of Glenbucket, a stooped man of fifty-eight who brought along Colonel Swithen
ham as a prize exhibit.72 Swithenham thus enjoyed the dubious privilege (for him) of witnessing the raising of the royal standard at Glenfinnan next day.73
In the morning the prince, guarded by fifty of Clanranald’s men, was taken by boat to Glenfinnan at the northern end of Loch Shiel. There he was met by Morar and the rest of the Clanranald clan.74 The narrow fresh-water loch was beset by beetling hills and saw-toothed ridges. Rocky screes dotted with heather added to the sombre effect. It was a desolate location for a scene of high pageantry. No rebellious legion commander in Germany could ever have raised the standard of revolt against Rome in more remote surroundings.
This time it was the Spes Britanniae, come from Rome, that unfurled the banner. At the head of Loch Shiel on Monday 19 August 1745 the prince enjoyed one of his few days of unsullied happiness. The raising of the Stuart colours at the age of twenty-four was the culmination of all his childhood dreams and adolescent aspirations. At the side of the dark loch the prince waited with his three hundred Clanranalds for the gathering of the clans.
The rendezvous had been set for 1 p.m. but for two hours Keppoch and Lochiel did not appear.75 One can only speculate at the anxious state of mind of a prince so plagued by fantasies of betrayal. Suddenly at 3 p.m. the distant skirl of the pipes was heard. Large numbers of Camerons began to descend to Glenfinnan out of the surrounding mountains, forming an ‘agreeably bizarre’ zigzag pattern as they did so.76 Three hundred Keppochs and seven hundred Camerons, virtually that clan’s full fighting strength, made the rendezvous.77 Doubtless Lochiel refrained from telling the prince that raising them had not been easy, that he had had to threaten to burn bothies over their heads before they rallied to him.78
The prince made a short but inspiring speech, playing down his divine right, stressing instead that he had come to Scotland to make his beloved subjects happy.79 At 5 p.m. he ordered the standard carried to the other side of the river Finnan and called his first war council for that very evening.80
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Page 18
