Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  Demoralised by Wade’s failure to come to their aid, and with only a tiny garrison in the castle, the citizens of Carlisle decided to surrender. This time the prince was determined not to make the mistake he had made at Edinburgh: both town and castle had to capitulate before he would give terms; it was all or nothing.10 Despite the pleadings of the castle commander, Carlisle accepted the inevitable. Both town and castle were given up. On Monday 18 November, riding a white horse, the prince entered Carlisle in triumph.11

  The easy capture of the first obstacle on English soil augured well for the prince’s future success, but a shadow was cast over his victory by another row involving Lord George. Murray peremptorily resigned his commission as lieutenant-general when the prince allowed the other commander, Perth, to negotiate Carlisle’s surrender.12 Lord George was on solid ground in pointing out the propaganda advantage the Whig government would extract from the surrender to a Catholic lord of the first town in England the Jacobites reached. It needed no special gifts of imagination to rehearse the likely parrot-cries of ‘popery and arbitrary government’. But in regarding the task laid on Perth as a personal snub to himself, Murray ignored the fact that he had only himself to blame. He had declined to take command of the siege operations outside Carlisle, commenced when the citizens still had hopes from Wade. Perth, on the other hand, had thrown himself into the opening of trenches with gusto. In heavy snow and frost he worked in his shirt-sleeves alongside his men. The commission from the prince to accept the surrender may have been unwise on Charles Edward’s part, but it was very understandable.

  The resignation threw the clan regiments into consternation. Their leaders had faith in Lord George as a military captain, not in anyone else. The effect of the resignation on the clansmen’s morale was so devastating that the prince, against his will, was forced to ask Murray to withdraw it. Perth magnanimously offered to accept what was in effect a demotion, in charge of the rearguard and baggage.13 Thereafter Lord George was sole and undisputed field commander.14

  The ease with which Carlisle had fallen might have made the Jacobites over-confident, but Lord George and his party on the council responded to it instead by arguing for a return to Scotland. The prince spiked their guns by bringing on d’Eguilles (who accompanied the Jacobites into England) and asking him to reveal his instructions from Louis XV.15 When read out these made clear that the French king wanted to gauge the strength of the English Jacobites as well as the Scots. This could be done only by advancing into England. Reluctantly Lord George and the Highland leaders acquiesced. Snow and ice notwithstanding, they would have to penetrate farther into England.

  Because of the loss of tents, the army had to spend every night of the march in towns. To solve billeting problems, the Jacobites advanced in two columns.16 Lord George Murray led the first column, with Elcho’s Lifeguards in the van. With Lord George were his Athollmen, plus Glenbucket’s and Stewart’s Edinburgh regiment. A day behind him came the prince with the main army. It was not planned to make a junction of the two segments of the army until the first sizeable town, Preston, was reached. Undoubtedly both Charles Edward and Lord George relished the days out of each other’s sight.

  The prince was in Penrith on 21 November, rested on the 22nd, and made the long trek to Kendal on the 23rd.17 Despite the sleet, snow, bad roads and fatigue, he marched on foot at the head of his army. Only with difficulty was he persuaded to get up on horseback when crossing rivers.18 On the twenty-seven-mile haul from Penrith to Kendal, he was so tired by the gruelling slog that he took hold of the shoulder belt of one of Ogilvy’s men to prevent himself falling down in a faint.19

  Resting on the 24th, the prince reached Lancaster on the 25th, hoping to confer with Lord George, but the lieutenant-general had already moved on to Preston. The speed of his advance irked the elderly Moidart Men (especially Sheridan, Tullibardine and Sir John MacDonald), who tried to influence the prince by saying that Lord George was stealing all the glory by being permanently in the van. But, as Murray rightly pointed out to O’Sullivan it was not practicable to switch the order of march for the two columns before Preston.20

  On the 26th the prince moved down to Preston. Cumberland and Westmoreland were well known to be hostile pro-Hanoverian country, but Lancashire had now been reached and this was where large-scale enlistment in the Jacobite army was expected. The response was disappointing: a mere dribble. One of the Lancashire volunteers, John Daniel, did, however, leave a famous description of the prince at this time:

  The first time I saw this loyal army was betwixt Lancaster and Garstang: the Brave Prince marching on foot at their head like a Cyrus or Trojan hero, drawing admiration and love from all those who beheld him, raising their long-dejected hearts and solacing their minds with the happy prospect of another Golden Age. Struck with this charming sight, and seeming invitation leave your nets and follow me, I felt a paternal ardour pervade my veins.21

  Yet the underlying trend was worrying. There was no opposition to the Jacobites, but no enthusiasm for them either. When the two columns reunited in Preston, Lord George Murray insisted on another council meeting. Preston was psychologically important for the Highlanders, for it was the farthest south reached by any raiding Scottish army hitherto. It was also the scene of the Scots’ rout by Cromwell in 1648 and of the Jacobites’ second defeat (on the same day as Sheriffmuir) during the 1715 rising. Knowing well how the superstitious clansmen’s minds worked, Murray worked hard to exorcise this ghost. He marched the vanguard through Preston and to the other side of Ribble Bridge so that the town would not be ‘their ne plus ultra for a third time’.

  There was further tension at the Preston council. Lord George’s north-western strategy, based on his much-vaunted Stanley family connection which made him ‘certain’ they would find support in Lancashire, was already proving a failure. Murray would have liked nothing better than to cut his losses and retreat to Scotland. Again the prince produced d’Eguilles as his trump, again the Scots subsided, but there was a general feeling that the real issues had merely been shelved.22

  The council turned to the question of itinerary. Since Warrington Bridge had now been broken down by the defending militia, the route the Jacobites had intended to take anyway (via Manchester) seemed all the more desirable, since the Whigs would still not be certain that the Jacobite target was London.23

  The pressure on the prince was building up. He decided to write to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn: ‘The particular character I have heard of you makes me hope to see you among the first.’ He asked Wynn to join him with all speed and not to worry too much about numbers: ‘it will be looked upon as a battalion if it come to the number of 4 or 500 men or upwards. But whatever numbers you bring will be acceptable, though they were below that and even though they were very small.’24

  Napoleon used to ask of a general: ‘Has he luck?’ If we accept that this is a key attribute for a military leader, we can immediately infer something about Charles Edward from the fate of the letters he sent to the English Jacobite leaders. His first letter, sent to Lord Barrymore from Brampton on 11 November, was handed to his son, Lord Buttevant, by the prince’s messenger, since Barrymore was at London in the House of Commons. Buttevant, who was violently opposed to his father’s Jacobite sentiments, promptly burned it.25 The prince’s second letter, to Watkin Williams Wynn, was intercepted by one of Cumberland’s agents.

  The army pressed on to Manchester, through Wigan and Leigh. The road from Preston to Wigan was lined with onlookers, who stood at their doors and watched the Scots go by. Most of them wished the prince success but declined to fight when offered arms, on grounds of lack of training.26 There was no opposition from the militia. The Jacobite commanders had correctly read them as ‘small beer’. Whenever the prospect of a fight loomed, the militiamen dispersed or decamped. On the afternoon of 29 November the prince made another triumphal entry, riding to Manchester city centre by way of Salford.27

  Manchester was another triumph in the style of Ed
inburgh though on a much smaller scale. Once again the prince captivated a town in which he had a lot of latent support.28 Once again he made a particular impression on the ladies.29 Here, too, as in Edinburgh, a regiment was raised from among the poor, dispossessed and socially precarious.30 But for the clan leaders the similarities ended there. They were now deep in England, in the heartland of supposedly Jacobite Lancashire, and to show for it they had no more than three hundred volunteers. There was no sign either of the English Jacobites or of a French landing.

  The council held on St Andrew’s Day, 30 November, was the most acrimonious hitherto. The movement in favour of returning to Scotland had not yet become the earth tremor it was to appear at Derby, but for anyone less confident and utterly sanguine than the prince, the rumblings would have been alarming. Once again Charles Edward got his way, just, but it took the intervention of Lord Nairne to sway the vote, plus some successful obfuscation on the prince’s behalf by the Welsh Jacobite David Morgan.31 A lawyer and former secretary to the Jacobite duke of Beaufort, Morgan was one of just two Welshmen who had joined the prince on his march south. So much for the legions of Watkin Williams Wynn. As Charles Edward later cynically remarked: ‘I shall do for the Welsh Jacobites what they did for me; I shall drink their health.’32 Lord George Murray agreed to give the English Jacobites one last chance. The army would march the length of Derbyshire.33 If at the end of that time there was no sign of Lord Barrymore, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn or the other Tory squires, retreat would be the only practicable option. In the euphoria of the moment the prince heard only the agreement to advance, not Murray’s ominous rider.

  Crossing Crossford Bridge, the Jacobite forces marched through Stockport to Macclesfield.34 At Macclesfield they took stock of the situation. It was clear that they had easily outpaced Wade’s army of the north, but now they were in the orbit of the second army which General Ligonier had been preparing (and which had been transferred to the command of the duke of Cumberland). Twenty-four-year-old Cumberland, who had moved up from Lichfield to Stafford, was puzzled by the movements of the Jacobite army. The pointers were still ambiguous: the clansmen’s destination could still be either Wales or London.35

  Lord George Murray tried to make up the duke’s mind for him. Feinting towards Congleton with 1,200 men, he then swung in an arc back to Ashbourne, planning to link up there with the prince and the main army. Convinced at last of Jacobite intentions, but in reality sent the wrong way by Murray, Cumberland selected a battlefield at Stone and placed his army athwart the route to Wales. The battle of Stone would have put the issue of the 1745 rising beyond doubt, but it never took place.36 While Cumberland waited in vain for his enemy, the prince’s army pressed on to Leek, linked up with Lord George’s column at Ashbourne, and reached Derby on the evening of 4 December after a twenty-four-hour march.37

  The prince was now ahead of Cumberland in the race for London. The clansmen were on a knife-edge of expectation. Everyone expected a battle with Cumberland in the next forty-eight hours. Instead, on 6 December, the Jacobite army was retreating to Scotland. How did this happen?

  The blame for the débâcle at Derby must be shared equally by the prince and Lord George Murray. Both suffered for ever afterwards from the momentous decision taken at the council on 5 December 1745. For Murray the retreat meant ruin and exile. For the prince it was the beginning of the collapse of his own personality. What exactly went wrong?

  Charles Edward was at fault for not taking seriously the repeated warnings from Lord George and the clan leaders, at Carlisle, Brampton, Preston, Manchester and Macclesfield, that the advance of the Jacobite army into England was provisional only: it was contingent on the ultimate appearance in the field of the French or the English Jacobites with their levies. A good politician would have found a way to conciliate Lochiel and the MacDonald regimental colonels long before the moment of truth was reached. By sedulous lobbying, the prince could probably have detached Lochiel, Keppoch and Clanranald at least. But Charles was on such a remarkable winning streak that it did not occur to him that not everyone saw him as destiny’s darling or his army as invincible. Such was his blithe confidence that he opened the proceedings at the Derby council meeting by taking it for granted that he and his advisers had gathered merely to discuss the line of march for 6 December.38

  Lord George Murray brought him down to earth with a crash. The situation, as he saw it from the vantage point of a sober field commander, was that they had two armies (Wade’s and Cumberland’s) behind them and another ahead of them at Finchley. Each of these armies was twice the size of the Jacobite force. At the end of their journey loomed London, with a million inhabitants. Even assuming they kept ahead of Cumberland all the way to the capital, and then defeated the army at Finchley, they would arrive in London exhausted and with depleted numbers. A determined and numerous militia would be able to eat them up in that condition. The only thing that could justify an advance was the definite appearance of the English Jacobites or the French. Neither had appeared, so that was that. Only a fool or a madman would advance in such circumstances.

  Charles Edward made a spirited reply, arguing that one final push was needed to bring the Hanoverian dynasty toppling down.39 The very boldness of their advance had the enemy puzzled and disturbed. The psychological initiative would swing violently to Cumberland and the Whigs if the Jacobite army turned its back on England now.

  The trouble with this argument was that the council members had heard it all before, in Edinburgh, at Carlisle, in Manchester. This time the prince’s word alone was not enough. They demanded proof. Where were the letters from Louis XV explicitly and unambiguously promising a landing in England? Where were the written promises from the English Jacobites? If they had pledged themselves to rise, they must have specified a time and place.

  At this juncture it dawned on the prince’s officers just how much of a gamble they had committed themselves to. The prince was forced to reveal that he had no specific pledges from Watkin Williams Wynn, Barrymore, Hynde Cotton and his other English supporters. To general incredulity it emerged that he had not made contact with them once since his landing in Moidart.

  This would presumbly not have mattered too much if the English Jacobites were a credible organisation, since they would have used their initiative to meet the prince at the Mersey with their levies. The fact that they had not done so tended to clinch the Scottish thesis that the English Tories were merely Jacobites of the mouth or the wine-bottle.

  Lord George and his associates may have been right in regarding the English Jacobites as paper tigers but for the wrong reasons. According to Aeneas MacDonald, it was the old Tory/Whig conflict of land versus money that finally put the English Jacobites out of the reckoning. When the prince crossed into England, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn had just £200 in ready cash. As MacDonald, with a banker’s shrewdness saw clearly, in an emergency what is important is not so much wealth (in land) but liquidity. Once again the fatal consequences of the prince’s failure to co-ordinate his movements with the English Jacobites were underlined. Williams Wynn, if given sufficient notice, could have raised, instead of £200, the £120,000 he had spent on the previous two general elections.40

  Further probing by the council members threw up the alarming intelligence that Charles Edward did not know what stage French planning for an expedition had reached, since he had no established channel of communication with them either. The third weakness in the Jacobite army’s strategy was already well known to the Scottish commanders themselves: they had no proper espionage system and were thus in the dark as to the enemy’s true numbers and location.

  It was on this issue of credibility that Charles Edward conclusively lost his audience. The arguments between the prince and Lord George Murray had been heard before. By their willingness to come this far, the chiefs had shown a ‘will to believe’ in the prince, even though every extra ten miles they went without seeing the French or the English Jacobites increased their scepticism. Yet at this di
splay of political ineptitude by the prince, they decided enough was enough. The canard that had been whispered among them – that the prince cared nothing for Scotland and its interests, that his sights were always set on England and England alone – now looked increasingly like the sober truth. Why else would Charles have abandoned a secure and promising base in Scotland, in pursuit of a chimera south of the border?

  From this point on the prince could win no support. Even Perth, who was initially sympathetic, dropped out when he saw the prince’s cavalier way with solid objections. In danger of being conclusively outvoted there and then, the prince adjourned the meeting until the evening. He spent the afternoon trying to drum up support for his increasingly isolated stance. But if anything the tide of feeling by late afternoon was running even more strongly against him.41

  The council resumed its deliberations in the evening. The prince found that erstwhile supporters had abandoned him. Any lingering hope of being able to swing the council round by a bravura display of rhetoric or magnetic charm was dashed when the English spy Dudley Bradstreet was introduced into the chamber. Bradstreet barefacedly spoke of a third army, 9,000 strong and commanded by Hawley and Ligonier, barring the way at Northampton (there was no such army).

  Bradstreet’s intervention infuriated the prince. ‘That fellow will do me more harm than all the Elector’s army!’ he bellowed.42 The glib and plausible spy was hustled out of the chamber. A vote was taken. The prince was alone: ‘he could not prevail upon one single person to support him,’ he later testified.43 He was like Alexander the Great at the Beas, convinced that it was his destiny to march on, but unable to get any of his officers to see his point of view. ‘You ruin, abandon and betray me if you do not march on!’ he raged at them.44 The councillors sat impassive and stony-faced. Finding that he could not even get old stalwarts like Tullibardine to break rank with this solid phalanx, the prince sullenly agreed to retreat. But, he added bitterly, ‘In the future I shall summon no more councils, since I am accountable to nobody for my actions but to God and my father, and therefore shall no longer either ask or accept advice.’45