Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  D’Eguilles himself settled in well with the Jacobites. He was no dour Saxe, no pessimistic Marischal. Like so many others, at least at first, he fell under the prince’s spell and allowed himself to be caught up in the general euphoria. Everything, then, combined to make the prince’s prognostications of an impending large-scale French landing look sober and well-calculated.

  The most significant factor in d’Eguilles’s presence, adding even greater weight to the prince’s blandishments, was that he had been sent to Scotland before Prestonpans. When news of that battle was received in Versailles, the French at last bestirred themselves. By the Treaty of Fontainebleau in late October they formally committed themselves to an alliance with the Jacobites.16 This treaty has sometimes been regarded as a dead letter, but it did prevent the authorities in London from using Dutch troops against the ‘rebels’, since the Dutch were constrained by the articles of a previous capitulation to the French.

  All of this helped the prince. The more evidence there was of French seriousness, the harder it would be for Lord George Murray and his natural majority on the council to resist the call for an incursion into England.

  The moment of decision came on 30 October. That evening in Holyrood the prince forced a definite commitment, but not before the most acrimonious council debate yet had taken place, Charles Edward argued eloquently and cleverly for an invasion of England.17 In the first place, he declared, it was now clear that the Jacobite army throve on activity and faded away in times of inertia or ‘phoney war’. This was not just a question of desertions – though the desertion rate in Edinburgh in October had been alarmingly high – but of morale. A constant momentum had to be sustained if the shaky force of irregulars was to be kept in being. With the defeat of the regular Hanoverian army and with all major Scottish targets in Jacobite hands, except for the forts and castles – impregnable in the present state of Jacobite artillery – where else could the Highland army meaningfully go?

  It was well known, the prince continued, that the clansmen tended to lose interest if the prospect of hard fighting or good living seemed remote. The natural tendency to slink away to the glens and mountains was reinforced by the weeks of boredom and guard duty in Edinburgh. And the danger of wholesale desertion was compounded by another. The capture of Edinburgh and the defeat of Cope had delivered the Jacobites temporarily from financial embarrassment, but by now all the public monies had been collected, yet the Jacobite coffers were almost empty.18 Their position was made no easier by Preston’s previous removal of all silver coin to the castle.19 It would soon be a choice between trying to collect the hated Malt Tax or leaving the army without pay. What would the desertion rate be like then?

  Moreover, there was the not negligible point that clan reaction, even among supposedly Jacobite chieftains, had been a severe disappointment. A month after Prestonpans Lovat still equivocated, the Grants and Mackenzies were still divided, Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald still did Duncan Forbes’s bidding. It was clear that a second victory was needed. It was necessary to seek out Wade and defeat him, in order to remove any doubt about the permanent mastery of Scotland.

  Besides, the prince went on, d’Eguilles’s presence showed that the French were in earnest. Yet it was equally clear that Louis XV had not finally decided whether to send his armies to Scotland or England. The victorious Jacobites in Scotland ought not to squeeze the French king for a definite commitment to a Scottish landing. Quite apart from logistical problems that might beset the French if they were forced to land in Scotland alone – here the prince postulated a scenario where it was relatively easy for a commander to cross the Channel but very hard to bring large numbers of men to Scotland – it was vital not to give Louis XV a plausible excuse for doing nothing. An invasion of England would allow the Jacobites to cover all options. The second army being raised in the north would control Scotland and secure the beachheads for any French landing. The first army in England would meanwhile act as an inducement to the French to make landfall in England if that was their inclination.

  These were powerful arguments. Lord George Murray and the clan leaders hit back by calling for a retreat to the Highlands.20 It was folly to enter England with 4,000 men to face 30,000 regulars plus large numbers of militia without definite cast-iron promises from France such as the marquis d’Eguilles was unable to provide. The Jacobites already had a sound base in Scotland; the task, Lord George argued, was to consolidate it. In this sense the greatest boon the French could give at present was heavy cannon and mortars to reduce the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling and pound the Highland forts into submission. Beyond this, the full fighting potential of the Highlands should be exhausted before any descent on England was made. Lord George called for a division of labour: Lochiel, Keppoch and the Stewarts of Appin should march to Glasgow and raise Argyllshire; the Athollmen would bring Breadalbane’s levies out; the Glengarry and Clanranald men would return to MacDonald country to put the squeeze on Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald.21

  The effort should not end there. The Mackintoshes and Frasers could raise the Mackenzies; the combined clans could attack the Munros and Sutherlands and take hostages for their good behaviour. It would be the task of Cluny MacPherson and John Roy Stewart to raise the Grants. Finally a general rendezvous should be held at Inverness. If the prince arrived there with the Lowland regiments, the combined army could amount to 24,000 men. Even a token reinforcement from France of, say, 3–4,000 troops would provide a large enough army for a confident and triumphant march on London, an army moreover elated with the knowledge that its rear in Scotland had been firmly secured.22 As for the prince’s objections about money, what was to stop the Lowland regiments making periodic raids into England to uplift the public money? And even if a cash shortage did develop, there was enough meal, beef and mutton in the Highlands to feed the army. Officers and men could be paid in IOUs meanwhile.

  At this juncture the issue of the English Jacobites was raised. This was to be a running sore during the next two months. In 1743–4 the powerful trio of Lord Barrymore, Sir John Hynde Cotton and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, the secret leaders of the English Jacobite party, had committed themselves to bringing their levies to support Saxe’s French invaders once they made landfall.23 Charles Edward assumed that what they had promised eighteen months earlier they would fulfil now, when conditions were far more favourable, with a Jacobite army already in being. The assumption was warranted, up to a point. As soon as they heard of the landing at Moidart, the trio sent secretly to Versailles to press ‘loudly and vehemently for a body of troops to be landed near London as the most effectual means to support the prince, and the only method by which a dangerous and ruinous civil war can be avoided’.24 What they did not want to do was rise in rebellion for the prince before a French army had landed.

  The problem for the prince at the council in Edinburgh was that the Scottish leaders despised these English magnates. The prince maintained that his ‘friends’ in England would show themselves only if they could wrap themselves in the folds of an invading army. Lord George and the clan leaders dismissed the English Jacobites as paper tigers.

  Which of them was right? There were circumstantial grounds for thinking that Murray was better informed on this particular issue. In 1743–4 the English Jacobites had not appeared to great advantage. Sir John Hynde Cotton had protested to the French about the original invasion date of January 1744 on the ground that the weather was too cold then. Aged fifty-seven at the time of the ’45, Cotton was described by a contemporary as ‘one of the tallest, biggest, fattest men I have ever seen … he was supposed to be able to drink as much wine as any man in England without being disgusted by it’. He escaped imprisonment in early 1744 during the French invasion scare, when Habeas Corpus was suspended, because a Hanoverian spy confused him with another Cotton (Sir Robert of Huntingdonshire).25

  James, 4th earl of Barrymore was scarcely more impressive. Now aged seventy-eight he had been implicated in the 1743–4 inv
asion by a Hanoverian spy, arrested and examined by the Cabinet. Barrymore double-talked his way out of trouble on that occasion, and was released from house arrest in March after Saxe abandoned the descent on England, Yet Barrymore’s words to the Cabinet in February contained more of his true feelings than he probably admitted even to himself:

  I have, my lords, a very good estate in Ireland, and, on that, I believe fifteen hundred acres of very bad land; now by God I would not risk the loss of the poorest acre of them to defend the title of any king in Europe, provided – it was not in my interest.26

  The third of the English Jacobites was, by common consent, the most formidable. In his early fifties, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn was the most powerful territorial magnate in Wales. But his ultra-cautious credo comes out clearly in his statement of position in October 1745. He said he was ‘languishing for the landing of troops’ without which the English Jacobites ‘don’t find it in their power to make a step’, although he added that they would certainly ‘join the prince if H.R.H. could force his way to them’.27 The problem with Wynn’s stance was that he was in Wales while Barrymore and Cotton were still attending Parliament in London. The English Jacobite position thus amounted to a pledge that they would either join the prince in Wales – where he had no intention of going – or in London – in which case the prince would already have defeated his enemies. Lord George Murray was entitled to feel sceptical about ‘commitment’ of this kind.

  Murray won the debate in the council over the English Jacobites. But the three issues of desertion, money and the French made a powerful impact on the waverers. Lord George found himself deserted even by some of his erstwhile allies. In the end he was left with just the rump of clan chieftains as support. A vote was taken. The prince’s faction scraped home with one vote.28 This narrow victory was attributable apart from the arguments advanced, to three special factors. One was that some of the council members were absent, away in the north drumming up men and money. The second was that John Roy Stewart, who would certainly have voted with Lord George, was, to his intense chagrin, the only regimental colonel without a seat on the council.29 The third was that Perth and Elcho, who Lord George had thought committed to his Highland strategy, switched their votes at the last minute and sided with the prince.30

  The interplay of personalities on the council at this crucial juncture is fascinating. Elcho was normally a Lord George man, but he was also a hothead, well capable of changing tack on a whim. He was a good cavalry commander, but it is doubtful that Lord George ever credited him with much gravitas. Lord George could bear his momentary defection with equanimity, confident that the next time the prince did something to annoy Elcho, the young Wemyss lord would be back on the side of the clan leaders.

  Perth’s opposition was more trying. As joint lieutenant-general, he seemed to be setting himself on a collision course with Murray. As a Catholic, he seemed to be aligning himself with the Irish ‘Charles Edward right or wrong’ faction. Yet, at thirty-two, James Drummond, 3rd titular duke of Perth, was no lightweight. ‘A foolish horse-racing boy’ one of his Whig critics had called him in the early 1740s, but Perth had deliberately cultivated a foppish façade to conceal the fact that he was a dedicated Jacobite plotter.31 Perth was one of the 1744 Associators. After clandestine conversations with him that year, Murray knew that he could not be mistaken for anything less than a deeply serious devotee of the House of Stuart. Moreover, Perth had what Murray could never acquire: the gift of managing men, by appealing to their nobler, more heroic instincts. Murray realised that Perth’s opposition to him on this critical question of the invasion of England boded ill for the future.

  The Jacobite army was also at this point running the risk of dangerous polarisation, not just in personalities, but in preconceptions and lack of liaison. Charles Edward was an inspirational commander, an intuitive opportunist. It was no accident that his youth had been largely spent as a huntsman, in pursuit of regular quarry. The slow methodical pace of eighteenth-century warfare was not his forte; he would have fitted better into a far different military framework. Murray, by contrast, was par excellence the soldier’s soldier. What was needed to bridge the crevasse between them was a first-class staff officer. But no such person existed in the Jacobite camp. Despite his much-vaunted military experience, O’Sullivan was a tactical incompetent who disguised his deficiencies behind a smokescreen of bluster. Perth was a fine diplomat, but knew little about the minutiae of soldiering. Lochiel, who commanded the confidence of both Murray and the prince, was on paper ideally placed, yet he was doubly handicapped for the role of staff officer through being overly deferential to both men.

  In a sense, the dispute over the English Jacobites was profoundly revealing. Charles Edward, basing himself on the pledges given in 1743–4, took it for granted that he could pick Wynn, Barrymore and Cotton up where they had been left in March 1744. He made one half-hearted attempt to make contact with them while he was in Scotland, but his agent, one John Hickson, was apprehended by the enemy as soon as he crossed the border.32 Thereafter the prince relaxed, buoyed up by his sycophantic followers among the Seven Men, especially the four Irishmen. Such complacency infuriated Lord George. He looked around for the staff officer who would arrange an efficient espionage system, who would establish definite contacts with the English Jacobites and generally tie up all the logistical loose ends. But in the prince’s Jacobite army he looked in vain.

  The fateful decision to invade England has often been considered a piece of mindless quixotry.33 Yet, even apart from the compelling arguments put at the council which swung round the doubters, the decision contained a greater degree of rationality than it is usually credited with. To understand this we must turn aside for a moment to look at the enemy.

  Throughout October the government in London was steadily building up its strength. On 1 October George II ordered a strong force of cavalry and infantry to prepare to march to Scotland under Marshal Wade.34 This force assembled at Doncaster on 19 October and reached Newcastle on the 29th.35 The English army in Flanders, recalled home to counter the rebellion, began to arrive in the Thames on 23 September and continued coming over until the beginning of December. Some of these troops were also sent to Newcastle and Berwick. By 29 September seven battalions of British troops and 6,000 Dutch had arrived as reinforcements for Wade.36 General Handasyde arrived at Berwick as Wade’s second-in-command; Ligonier was given charge of a second army; and the duke of Cumberland arrived in London from Flanders.37 Most ominously of all, Lord Loudoun, who had fled to England after Prestonpans, returned to Inverness on 11 October and took over the forces Lord President Forbes had been raising.38 Throughout England there were obvious signs of strengthened Hanoverian defences and clear hints of the counterattack to come.39

  Wade had not yet been given the order to cross the border, but this could hardly be long delayed, especially since the longer the Jacobites remained in Edinburgh, the greater the likelihood that their true numbers would be discovered, or that the Whigs would finally conclude that it was paucity of numbers that was preventing a Jacobite invasion of England.40 It was folly for Charles Edward to remain forever on the defensive, awaiting an onslaught that would be overwhelming when it came. Besides, the prince calculated that Scotland could never be raised in the way Lord George Murray suggested while Wade’s army lay at Newcastle. Sea power – the selfsame naval hegemony that enabled the outwitted Cope to reappear at Dunbar from Inverness – meant that Wade could land troops in the Jacobite rear and catch the prince between two fires.41 The only way to bring the recalcitrant Hanoverian clans (and the ambivalent Jacobite ones) to heel was to remove all hope of assistance from England. This meant defeating Wade. The prince, in a word, had to strike first before he was struck.

  It can be seen, then, that there was some desperation as well as a good deal of rational calculation in the prince’s invasion strategy. Time was against him, and he knew it.42

  The prince was unable to carry the council with him on
both halves of his strategy. Lord George Murray won the second round of the debate by persuading the council not to opt for an immediate head-on clash with Wade, but instead to enter England by the north-west. This would gain time and give the French an opportunity to act.43 Lord George’s arguments had a certain ad hoc force and appealed to men well aware of tactical realities.44 But they effectively vitiated the prince’s strategy in proposing the invasion in the first place. It was all very well Lord George’s saying that a western itinerary would keep the Whigs guessing as to the Jacobites’ ultimate destination: Wales or London. The duke of Newcastle and his advisers were not fools. The avoiding of Wade combined with a route that suggested a rendezvous in Wales strongly hinted at Jacobite weakness. If the Jacobites were a credible fighting force, it was madness for them not to advance on London by the quickest route.

  Lord George’s argument about sweeping up support in Catholic Lancashire was also bogus. These secret sympathisers would very probably declare for the prince after he had defeated Wade. It was most unlikely that they would appear in open revolt for a small army that had appeared to duck a pitched battle with Wade. In this way, the prince’s grand strategic vision became lost in the detail of Lord George’s tactical imperatives. Arguably, it was not the decision to invade England that was wrong so much as Lord George’s excessive caution. The correct option was to attack Wade at Newcastle, as Charles Edward wanted to. His strategy was a gamble, admittedly, but once having agreed to it, however unwillingly, Lord George should have entered into its spirit. ‘By the book’ tactical circumspection has no place in such an enterprise. Brilliant as Murray was as military commander and tactician, he never fully grasped this, as Derby was to show.