Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  At the beginning of the march, the prince manifested distinct manic tendencies. An exploit like this touched the deep springs of Charles Edward’s imagination. Bold, attacking strategy, this was ever the stuff to bring his positive impulses to the fore. The charm, so long dormant during the ordeal of early 1746, briefly surfaced again. His remarks to Lord George give a lightning flash of the Charles Edward of Moidart eight months before:

  ‘Lord George, you can’t imagine, nor can I express to you, how acknowledging I am of all the services you have rendered me. But this will crown all. You’ll restore the king by it. You’ll have all the honour and glory of it. It is your work. It is you imagined it, and be assured that the king nor I will never forget it.’85

  In an effusive gesture of friendship, the prince placed his arm around Murray’s neck. He then walked beside him a long way, charming and flattering. The response from the cold and aloof Murray was typical. He said not a word in reply, but stiffly took off his bonnet and made a low bow.86 Even allowing for the deference due to the Prince Regent by indefeasible right, this degree of reserve by Murray was odd; he might at least have mumbled a homily in reply.

  After firing the heather around Culloden to make the enemy think they were still there, the army marched out in a single column, the rear about a mile from the van. Lord George had the van, Lord John Drummond was in the centre. Perth was in the rear with Charles Edward and Fitzjames’s horse.87 The Mackintoshes were in the front and rear to prevent straggling. Small parties were sent out to seize all adjacent roads so that Cumberland could not be tipped off.88

  It had originally been intended that three separate columns should approach Nairn by three different routes, but owing to the incompetence of the Mackintosh guides, only one route was followed. Inevitably, delays resulted. After only a mile orders were sent to the vanguard to slow down.89 The Irish troops in the service of France were not used to the Highlanders’ furious pace and could not keep up. Another serious bottleneck was caused by a wall in Culraich wood which the Mackintoshes had not taken into account in their optimistic estimates. This stone wall prevented the Athollmen from going three abreast. They were reduced to single file.90

  By 1 a.m., when the attack should have been starting, Lord George Murray and the van had progressed just six miles and were still four miles short of their target.91 Murray claimed he had already received ‘one hundred’ messages to slow down while crossing Culraich.92 Apart from the heavy going underfoot and the thick fog, the Irish picquets and Royal Scots had proved useless at the kind of marching that was second nature to the clan irregulars. They even insisted on marching in full battle order.

  There were other impediments. The bog on the moorland was splashy. The clansmen had to make frequent turns and detours to avoid houses. There were also two or three dykes that took a long time to pass.93 It became quite obvious that the Mackintosh guides had never really had any true idea of how long it would take to march ten miles across this moor.

  The last straw for Lord George was when Lord John Drummond came galloping up a mile before the intended river crossing with yet another message to slow down.94 Murray sent Lochiel back to Charles Edward to suggest that time had already run out on them and the march had better be abandoned.95 Lochiel added his own worries, telling the prince that many of his Camerons had deserted under cover of the fog.96

  The appearance of Lochiel with Lord George’s plea to retreat was too powerful a reminder of Derby, where these two men in his father’s age group had ruined him, as he saw it. All the prince’s positive impulses, in evidence at the beginning of the march, went into reverse. Struggling to control his rage, he rebuked Lochiel sharply and turned down all idea of a retreat: ‘I’ll answer for the men, but I am surprised that you are the man chosen to bring me such a message.’97

  The prince ordered O’Sullivan and Perth to go back and talk to Lord George. Riding hard, they overtook him by the farm of Knockbuie or the Yellow Knoll, a little to the east of the ancient mansion of Kilravock, about a mile before the spot where Murray intended to cross the river.98 The hopeless situation was immediately clear to Perth. He and his brother Lord John agreed that any further advance was impracticable. They could not possibly reach the enemy before daybreak. But O’Sullivan, knowing how his master’s mind worked, repeated the prince’s adamant orders, that the attack could be called off only if compelling reasons were shown.99

  Knowing the storm that would follow, Lord George insisted on having the opinions of all the officers present canvassed and recorded.100 Except for O’Sullivan, Sir John MacDonald and the officers who had volunteered for the first wave, they were unanimous for calling off the advance. To a man, the clan leaders pointed out that they could not conceivably attack in force before daylight. If the van pressed on, they could attack on their own. But what could 1,200 men do against 8,000, even with the element of surprise? Another consideration was that for three miles around Nairn the ground was open moor with hard dry soil.101 The Jacobites were on the horns of a dilemma. If they waited for the whole army to come up and then attacked at daylight, they would be annihilated in such conditions. If they attacked with just the van, they would be eaten up by superior numbers.

  The volunteer Jacobite gentlemen who had been marching at the front with Lord George were all for pressing on, on the grounds that the redcoats would all be blind drunk after celebrating Cumberland’s birthday.102 This said a lot for their courage but not their insight. Cumberland had foreseen this possibility and deliberately rationed the supply of brandy to his men.103

  O’Sullivan now had Lord George, Perth, Lochiel and Drummond ranged against him. Predictably he began to bluster. The discussion became acrimonious.104 After a quarter of an hour of this, tragedy seemed likely to turn to farce with the arrival of Hay of Restalrig. Hay arrived to reiterate the prince’s insistence on an advance, even if this meant an attack by 1,200 in the vanguard alone.105 No more unhappy choice of messenger could have been devised at this juncture. Hay was already hated and despised for being responsible for the clansmen’s starved and emaciated physical condition. Anything he said was likely to be greeted with derision. Overtly snubbed, Hay galloped back to the prince with the alarming tidings that unless he appeared at the van in person, retreat was irreversible.106 Perth was close on Hay’s heels. When he reached the second column, Perth ordered the officers to wheel about and march back to Culloden.107

  Perth’s men had not retraced their steps more than a hundred yards when they collided with the prince, now riding furiously towards the front column after receiving Hay’s intelligence. ‘Where the devil are the men going?’ the prince called out distraught. ‘We are ordered by the duke of Perth to return to Culloden House,’ came the answer.108

  At this the prince exploded. ‘Where is the duke of Perth?’ he raged. ‘Call him here instantly!’109 He went on in the same vein: ‘I am betrayed! What need I give orders when my orders are disobeyed?’110

  It appears that while the prince was waiting for Perth to present himself, he heard many seditious mutterings in the ranks: men vowing they would not fight once daylight came, others commenting on the general exhaustion of the army and the desertion rate on the march.111 It was a more subdued Charles Edward who took Perth to task. Coldly angry, he asked Perth what he meant by ordering the men back. Perth answered that Lord George Murray and the van had turned off the trail three-quarters of an hour ago, heading for Culloden House.112

  ‘Good God!’ said the prince, reeling under this fresh blow. ‘What can be the matter? What does he mean? We were equal in numbers and would have blown them to the devil. Pray, Perth, can you call them back yet? Perhaps he is not far gone?’

  Seeing that this conversation was being conducted within plain earshot of his demoralised men, Perth asked for some private words with the prince. They drew aside. Patiently Perth explained the situation. Charles seemed crushed by what he heard. Returning to the army, he spoke aloud to his officers. ‘There is no help for it. March back
to Culloden House.’113 To the troops he tried to speak more encouragingly. ‘’Tis no matter, then. We shall meet them and behave like brave fellows.’114

  So ended the ill-fated night march to Nairn. Lord George Murray and the rearguard had already veered off to the left and taken a different route back to Culloden.115 The retreat was the easy part. Now that the Highlanders did not have to shun houses, they were able to march very quickly, as the crow flies. The bulk of the army got back to the environs of Culloden around 6 a.m., in time for three or four hours’ sleep.116

  Why did the plan for a night attack, so promising on paper, end so disastrously? The truth was that it was always a much more risky enterprise than anyone admitted to the prince. It seems clear that the march did not get under way in earnest until 9 p.m. Even given the lengthening evenings in April and the need to preserve absolute secrecy, the Jacobites must have lost a good hour of marching time in the vain attempt to round up those clansmen who had decamped to Inverness in search of food. Then the Mackintoshes had absurdly underestimated the time needed to achieve the ten-mile march across Culraich and the river Nairn. The clansmen were tired and hungry and unlikely to match their best trekking efforts. Weather conditions and the inexperience of the French regiments in irregular warfare also told against the Jacobites.

  But it seems that sycophancy among Charles Edward’s inner circle of admirers also played its part. The prince was never warned of the very real risk that the enterprise might miscarry.117 At this stage in his life, Charles was far too credulous and trusting towards his favourites, while being ludicrously suspicious of those not in the circle of initiates. The charm and affability of Charles Edward was the positive side of a mentality that was also distinguished by a marked anxiety to please those he considered his friends. This made him highly vulnerable to flattery and in thrall to those who had captured his confidence. All of these signs of a fragile identity were reinforced by a declining grip on reality. Charles Edward genuinely thought his clansmen were invincible, that Cumberland’s troops were mesmerised and awestruck by them. He was obsessed with the desire not to appear weak and lose face before Cumberland. Now once again, as at Derby and Falkirk, he felt himself betrayed. This conviction led directly to the ultimate disaster at Culloden. For what sort of a remark is the following to be addressed by a field commander trying to rally his troops? On good authority, Charles Edward is said to have told his men with tears in his eyes on the march back to Culloden that he did not so much regret his own loss as their inevitable ruin!118

  18

  Débâcle

  (April 1746)

  THE ARMY BEGAN to arrive back at Culloden at 5 a.m., but Charles Edward did not return to his quarters until two hours later. Deeply affected by the privations of the clansmen, he rode twelve miles to Inverness and back in search of provisions.1 His quest ended in anger when he threatened to burn down Inverness unless the townspeople got the necessary provisions out to Culloden House in waggons.2 With difficulty Perth, aware of the possibility of an immediate attack by Cumberland (who had by now learned of the failure of the night march), persuaded the prince to return to Culloden.

  Almost the first person Charles met there was Lord George Murray. The prince railed at him for his timidity. Murray stood his ground, confusing the issue by shifting the responsibility for the retreat to Lochiel, whom the prince deeply respected.3 A fruitless argument then took place as to who exactly had first spoken of retreat and in what terms. When the abortive conversation petered out, Lord George asked the prince if he still intended to give battle that day.4 The prince replied that there were no realistic alternative options. His officers were too tired for a council to be called. In fact all ranks had simply flopped on the ground, sleeping wherever they halted.5

  Lord George answered that there were no fewer than three possibilities. They could retire to Inverness where there were stores, and defy Cumberland to winkle them out in a siege he could not accomplish. The Hanoverians would take severe casualties if they tried to storm a well-barricaded town.6 They could melt away into the Highlands and the shires of Aberdeen, Banff and Angus, ready to reform in the spring. If Cumberland attempted to follow them there, he would be drawn away from his supply lines, for his army was being revictualled by shipping in the Sound of Nairn.7

  Finally, if the prince was set on a battle, they should retire across the Nairn to the field that Stapleton and Ker had reconnoitred the day before. This hilly, boggy and mossy ground on the south side of the river was steep and uneven and ideally suited to the Highlanders’ methods.8 A meticulous three-hour examination by Ker and Stapleton had revealed that the ascent from the waterside was steep, that there were only about two or three places within a four-mile stretch of river where horses could cross, and that horses could not act on the terrain even if they did cross.9 There was the further advantage that the Jacobites could fight a holding action if necessary, keeping Cumberland at bay until next day when Cluny’s regiment and the other reinforcements would have come up. It also left the door open to another night attack on Cumberland.10

  The prince dismissed all three suggestions. A siege of Inverness would merely postpone the inevitable battle. The Jacobites would be bottled up while Cumberland could be reinforced by sea.11 A fighting withdrawal to the Highlands, on the other hand, was ruled out because of the clansmen’s desperate hunger.12 As for the field of battle on the far side of the Nairn, not only would this look as though the Jacobites were shunning Cumberland, but it would also mean abandoning Inverness with all stores, ammunition and baggage to the enemy.13 Lord George replied that if they were defeated, as they were likely to be if they fought on Drummossie Moor, Inverness would be lost anyway.

  Seeing the prince adamant in his determination to fight that very day and on terrain that would benefit Cumberland, the marquis d’Eguilles made a dramatic entry into the fray. He pointed out to the prince that his men were starving, that he was without a large number of them, and that those who were with him mainly no longer even possessed targes. D’Eguilles advocated the Ker/Stapleton battlefield or retreat to the Highlands. The Jacobites could still hope to receive aid from France via the west coast.14 These exhortations made no impact.

  D’Eguilles then asked for a quarter of an hour alone with the prince. Once in private, he threw himself at Charles Edward’s feet and begged him not to give battle that day. The prince was immovable. As d’Eguilles commented bitterly afterwards: ‘I saw before the end of the day the most striking spectacle of human weakness – the prince was vanquished in an instant, never was a defeat more complete than his.’15

  With the failure of all entreaties to swerve him from his fixed purpose, Murray and the others left the prince alone. He flung himself fully clothed on the bed to snatch two hours’ sleep, having been up all night on the 14th and 15th.16 Murray was left to ponder this signal instance of the prince’s obstinacy. Lord George was inclined to blame the Irish, especially O’Sullivan, for the insane decision to fight on Drummossie Moor.17 He attributed this to their inability or reluctance to campaign in the rigours of the Highlands: ‘we were obliged to be undone for their ease.’18

  Lord George, a sober sceptic himself, underrated the element of blind irrationality in Charles Edward’s decision. His refusal to make contingency plans, or to fight on the other side of the Nairn, his confidence that the other Jacobite troops would arrive in time were at best part of a process of whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. This in itself gave an unfortunate impression of vainglorious thickheadedness, so that even if we allow that these were tactics on the prince’s part, they were a failure.

  Cumberland could have been defeated on the 17th on Lord George Murray’s chosen field. Whether another Jacobite victory would have done more than delay the inevitable, whether it would not have been merely another Falkirk is uncertain. The crucial point is that a defeat against the particular army Cumberland brought to Culloden, if the battle was fought on Lord George’s choice of ground, was by no means the in
evitable outcome. It was the prince’s self-destructive actions that made defeat certain and turned a single defeat into the demise of an entire way of life.19 The obsession with the notion that a retreat before Cumberland would be an unacceptable loss of prestige suggests strongly the kind of fragile identity that means the fantasy self-image of an invincible warrior must be maintained at all costs.

  Any lingering chance of persuading the prince to change his mind after his hasty nap was destroyed by Brigadier Stapleton’s infamous jibe about the Highlanders: ‘the Scots are always good troops till things come to a crisis.’20 After that, Lochiel and the other chiefs were determined to go down fighting and cast the lie back in the Irishman’s teeth. When the prince was aroused with the news that Cumberland’s cavalry were now just four miles away, there was no longer any question of fighting elsewhere than where they stood (or slept).

  In the utmost confusion orders were issued. Drums beat, pipes played and cannon were fired to recall the foraging Highlanders. Because the clansmen had scattered to find food or sleep, many took no part in the battle; some were cut down later as they slept.21 Apart from the 2,000 Jacobite absentees, an estimated 1,500 slept through it.22 Barely 5,000 Highlanders gathered on Drummossie Moor to oppose Cumberland’s 9,000.23

  These now hurriedly took up their positions. Lord George Murray and the Athollmen were on the right, Lord John Drummond was in the centre, and Perth with the sullen MacDonalds on the left.24 The prince rode among the men, trying to encourage them, especially the MacDonalds whom he had overruled for the place of honour on the right in favour of Lord George. ‘They don’t forget Gladsmuir nor Falkirk,’ he told them. ‘You have the same swords. Let me see yours … I’ll answer this will cut off some heads and arms today.’25 Yet even as he spoke, O’Sullivan, who knew his master well, said it was clear that at bottom the prince had no great hopes.