The most subtle form of disinformation was that which mixed genuine intelligence with false, gave a correct time but incorrect place, or vice versa.94 So, for example, Albemarle was told in September that Charles Edward was hidden underneath the ground in a sort of cave (as he was, in Cluny’s cage), but that this was in Mull.95 A large-scale search party was then sent to Mull, at the very time the prince was departing for France from Loch-nan-Uamh.96
The other Jacobite tactic which worked very well was to pretend that the prince had already made his escape. When O’Sullivan arrived in Paris in August, the marquise de Mezières bruited it about that the prince was with him. This was untrue, but the English accepted the story and virtually abandoned the search in the Highlands.97 Albemarle broke his camp at Fort Augustus and sent the main body of his army south, out of the Highlands.98 Campbell’s Argyllshire militia was marched to Inverary and disbanded. Only Loudoun’s regiment and seventeen companies of militia were left north of the Highland line.99 As to why there was no sign of the prince in France, the usual answer given was French desire to obfuscate.
General Campbell alone disagreed with this analysis. He argued that Charles Edward must still be in Scotland, since it was in the French interest to keep him there as bogeyman as long as possible.100 The consequence of these divided counsels was that for a long time the Whigs could not make up their minds whether the ‘Young Pretender’ was still in Scotland.101 It was 17 September before the authorities had really solid information that the prince was still in the Highlands.102 But by that time the intelligence was three weeks old and the bird had as good as flown.
The worst danger was in fact over, as the Glenmoriston men surmised. But there were still scouting parties in the Braes of Glengarry. It was thought best to wait until the way ahead was completely clear. The prince spent the day on a hilltop, then moved down to a sheally hut at night. His worst foe at this time was lice. Since he changed his shirt just once a fortnight and slept with his clothes on, it was not surprising that he became louse-ridden.103
On the 13th, two of the Glenmoriston men were sent to Loch Arkaig to locate Cameron of Clunes, the pathfinder to the Lochiel country. Next day, finding the Glengarry country apparently clear of troops, the prince and his party strode out well, making excellent progress.104 After an afternoon start, they passed through Glenmoriston, Glenlyne and Glengarry. The river Garry was engorged with flood water and fording it was difficult. As night came on, the rain intensified. They spent a miserable vigil in the open, on a hillside about a mile from the river.105
In the morning it was still raining, but a graver problem afflicted them. They had nothing to eat, and the land round about had been laid waste and depopulated by Cumberland’s marauders. They pressed on six miles to the Braes of Achnasual. They sheltered from the rain in another wretched hovel: ‘it was raining as heavily within as without.’106
A message arrived from Cameron of Clunes with instructions to go to a wood two miles away and rendezvous with him there next day. This turned the tide of their fortunes. As they made their way to the wood, hunger pains gnawing at their bellies, they espied a fine red deer stag.107 This posed a quandary. If they fired at the deer, the shots might be heard by enemy patrols. For once the prince was decisive: better a quick death than a slow one, he urged. Fortunately, the Glenmoriston men were easily as skilled in woodcraft as they claimed to be. The deer was killed outright with a single shot.108
They dragged the carcase to the wood recommended by Cameron of Clunes and found it an excellent hiding place. Convinced that luck was running their way, they dispensed with the normal precautions and built a fire, over which they roasted haunches of venison.109
Even as they were gorging themselves, Donald MacDonell of Lochgarry – the same who had commanded the Glengarry regiment throughout most of the ’45 – came in with two of his kinsmen.110 Lochgarry informed Charles that Lochiel was still alive. He was amazed by the prince’s physical condition. He described him thus:
He was then barefooted, had an old black kilt coat on, a plaid philabeg and waistcoat, a dirty shirt, a long red beard, a gun in his hand and a pistol and dirk by his side. He was very cheerful and in health and in my opinion fatter than when he was in Inverness.111
Next day Cameron of Clunes joined them. With good food inside them, they trudged on to Loch Arkaig. Here they hid in a wood. The prince sent messengers to summon Lochiel.112 Lochgarry had been urging on the prince ever since he met him that the Stuart standard should be set up again. Lochgarry guaranteed that his people would be ready to rise at forty-eight hours’ notice; their first objective should be the surprise and capture of Fort Augustus.113 The proposal was not to the prince’s liking but he stalled, saying he needed first to hear the opinion of Cluny and Lochiel.
Three days later the Cameron chief’s answer arrived. He apologised for not coming himself, but sent his brother Dr Archibald.114 With Archie Cameron, as well as his kinsman Reverend John, were the three French officers who had been landed from Le Bien Trouvé.115 Next day, in the wood of Torvault opposite Achnacarry House (Lochiel’s seat but now a charred ruin after being gutted by Cumberland’s men), the prince, incognito as ‘Captain Drummond’, interviewed the three Frenchmen.116 M. de Lancize, spokesman for the three, showed him his orders and described the full-scale French rescue attempt. It was clear that, however much Louis XV had disappointed the prince during the ’45 itself, he was determined to have the last word by whisking Charles Edward from under the Hanoverian noses.117 The meeting had positive results. It encouraged the prince to go into hiding in a secure frame of mind, confident that the French were doing their best for him.
It was important now to construct a secure chain of communication with the Scottish west coast, so that there was no repeat of the many missed rescue chances in the half dozen French ships that had already made landfall. Lochgarry, Clunes, Archie Cameron, young Glenaladale and young Borrodale were sent off to arrange this.118
Charles Edward seemed beyond harm’s way. But complacency nearly led to disaster. At the eleventh hour, by a mere fluke, Albemarle’s men came closer to capturing the prince than at any other time.
Two days later, at eight o’clock in the morning, the prince was awakened by one of the Seven Men with news that the enemy was approaching the hut where they lay in Torvault wood.119 Racing out of the hut, the prince and his eight companions took up position on the hill of Meall-an-Tagraidh above the wood. Charles’s immediate reaction was that he must have been betrayed by one of the party who had departed on the 21st. He was determined to make a last stand and go down fighting. He examined the Glenmoriston men’s guns, pronounced them in good order, and was confident they would do a lot of execution: ‘for his part he was a tolerable marksman and could be sure of one at least.’120
But there was no treachery afoot. What happened was that a party of Loudoun’s regiment under Grant of Knockando came upon the hut accidentally. They saw the signs of recent habitation but could not have dreamed these were traces of the ‘Young Pretender’. There would have been nothing surprising about Highlanders fleeing from the advent of soldiers in the summer of 1746. Soon Grant’s men moved on, suspecting nothing. But the prince was shaken by the incident. He spent the night on the hills of Glenkingie Braes.121 Next day he slept on a mountain top right through the afternoon in his wet clothes, wrapped in a plaid, even though it was an excessively cold day and the driving rain frequently turned to hail.122
For the next two days the prince and the Glenmoriston men stayed on the heights of Glenkingie. They killed a cow and roasted its meat over a fire that they kept lit for half-hour periods only. Their ordeal was relieved by the timely arrival at midnight of a party of MacPhersons sent by Cluny. They brought bread and cheese and, more importantly from the prince’s point of view, whisky. ‘We persuaded him to take a hearty dram,’ the Rev. John Cameron recorded laconically.123
Finally, on 26 August the prince felt secure enough to return to the Achnacarry neighbourhood.
Lochgarry and Archie Cameron met them there with word from Lochiel that the prince would be safe where he (Lochiel) was hiding, with Cluny in Badenoch.124
With the MacPhersons as escort, the prince no longer needed the valiant Seven Men of Glenmoriston. All except Patrick Grant were dismissed.125 Having got rid of those who had dared to rein in his impulsive behaviour, the prince ordered an immediate march to Badenoch. The MacPhersons protested that Cluny’s idea was that Charles should wait in Achnacarry until their chief chose just the right moment for the journey. The prince would have none of this. As they were not their own men like the Seven, but answerable to a superior chief, the MacPhersons dared not oppose him. The consequence of Charles’s impulsiveness was that he then missed Cluny on the road.126
At night on the 28th the prince set out. At the river Lochy he said goodbye to Patrick Grant and gave him a purse of twenty-four guineas for the ‘Seven Men’.127 The faithful Glenaladale, too, who had been with the prince for six weeks, was now allowed to depart.128
The prince’s party pressed on, sleeping by day, travelling by night. At Corrineuir, ‘a shieling of very narrow compass’ at the foot of Ben Alder, he at last met Lochiel and Cluny’s inner circle. But not before another close shave. Seeing a party of strangers approaching, Lochiel’s group had taken them for the militia and were preparing to open fire, since Lochiel was still too lame to run. At the last minute, as they primed their guns in the embrasures of the hut at Corrineuir, they recognised friends.129
Inside the hut the prince found plenty of meat. He took ‘a hearty dram’ and for the next few days indulged his taste for Scotch whisky out of the twenty-pint cask they had there. ‘Now, gentlemen, I live like a prince,’ he remarked euphorically.130
On 1 September Cluny rejoined them having missed the prince on the road. At sight of the prince he tried to go down on his knees but Charles prevented this, gave him the kiss of an equal, and joshed him about having looked after Lochiel so royally.131 Immediately they discussed Lochgarry’s proposal to raise the clans again. Both Lochiel and Cluny dismissed it as impracticable. The only remedy now was to seek sanctuary in ‘Cluny’s cage’ on Ben Alder.132
On 2 September they penetrated deeper into Ben Alder. For three nights they waited in a ‘little shiel superlatively bad and smokey’ until his clansmen gave Cluny the all-clear.133 On 5 September they moved two miles farther into the mountain into the famous ‘cage’ that Cluny had constructed.134
Concealed by a thicket of holly, the ‘cage’ had been cut in the face of a very rough and steep rocky spur on the south face of Ben Alder overlooking Loch Ericht. Commanding a superb panorama of the surrounding countryside and guarded by sentries, the ‘cage’ could not be surprised or approached suddenly, for there were no woods in Badenoch but only mountains and crags. Inside there was a rude shelter on two storeys, consisting of several large boulders tilted at various angles. The accommodation was not spacious, but it had been arranged so that the inhabitants slept in the upper ‘room’ and ate in the lower, which doubled as kitchen and larder.135
Cluny’s men immediately started excavating a subterranean ‘house’ for the prince to spend the winter in, in case he could not get away to France.136 Meanwhile he was entertained to Cluny’s best. A nearby fountain provided water. There was plenty of whisky. There was no shortage of food. Cluny’s country was rich in game, especially hares and moorfowl. In addition, he had managed to conserve large flocks and herds from the wrath of the enemy: it was his precious collection of brood mares that had been plundered after Culloden.
With the prince in Cluny’s cage, safe from enemies, we are presented with an opportunity to assess his thoughts and personality as revealed during the five months on the run. Two things strike one immediately: the amazing physical health the prince enjoyed; and the clear-cut way in which stress produced mood swings and depression.
It was a staple of Whig propaganda that the prince in the heather dragged himself from hovel to hovel, looking like a leper: ‘scabbed to the eye-holes’ was a favourite cliché of the London yellow press.137 The truth was that, the ‘bloody flux’ apart, the prince enjoyed amazingly good health, all the more remarkable when one considers the appalling conditions in which he lived: sleeping in the cold in wet clothes, bitten by midges, eating an uncertain and unbalanced diet.138 Charles Edward’s apparently ox-like constitution strengthens the inference that it was not organic weakness that caused him to succumb to illnesses like those in the first months of 1746. Such injuries as he did sustain healed quickly. He was hurt badly while crossing the burn on the road from Glencoradale in South Uist: he fell on a pointed stone and bruised his ribs, but mended with remarkable speed.139 And, although naturally sunburned – ‘black, weather-beaten’ was one description of him in Benbecula – that was the only sign of wear and tear after the summer.140
As for mental health, the prince showed for the most part the positive side of his psyche. In particular, there is ample evidence of humour, one of the great defences against depression.141 Only in moments of great stress, such as on the tidal island at Benbecula or when nearly surprised in the wood of Torvault, did the old cry of ‘I am betrayed’ go up. This relative equilibrium was purchased at some cost. We have Malcolm Macleod’s testimony that the prince’s slumber was frequently violently disturbed, that he would talk in his sleep in English, French and Italian. One of his English utterances was particularly significant: ‘Oh God! Poor Scotland!’142
The prince has often been accused of not showing sufficient remorse for the sufferings of his subject and largely unwilling allies in Scotland. Even at the conscious level, this is a hard charge to sustain. We have the clear statement the prince made to Lochiel and the other leading Camerons: ‘he regretted more the distress of those who suffered for adhering to his interest than the hardships he himself was hourly exposed to.’143 But there may have been other forces working at an unconscious level. One of the keys is the prince’s genuine and absolute incredulity that Cumberland’s atrocities could have been as bad as they really were.144 If the prince did not express a level of remorse for the Highlanders’ plight that would satisfy his critics, it may well be that squarely facing this extra cargo of guilt might have overwhelmed him.
Of Lord George Murray the prince was critical without being, as later, unbalanced. He pointed out that Murray always wanted to be the one to give orders, not to receive them, but he scouted any suggestion of treachery on Lord George’s part.145 The contrast with his later statements is so great that some have postulated that the prince’s henchmen only truly inflamed his mind against Murray once in France. A more likely explanation is in terms of the prince’s own psychology. The absence of responsibility for others during the time in the heather allowed his positive side to burgeon. He was therefore capable of the sort of balanced assessment foreign to him later when he was again pitched into the pressures of the world.
At this stage, too, there was no hint of hostility to his brother Henry. Some of his statements about his brother are, admittedly, so lavish that a suspicion of protesting too much arises: ‘one preferable to himself in all respects’, ‘few brothers love as we do’.146 But as yet Henry had done nothing major to offend the prince. As far as Charles knew, he had been at the coast with Richelieu, urging the French expedition forward. Only on his return to France would the prince’s attitude change profoundly.
The one notable absentee as a subject of Charles Edward’s recorded observations was his father. His only reference to James during the ’45 came on 3 September 1745. When asked whether ‘the king’ would not be worried about his adventures, the prince replied: ‘No, the king has been inured to disappointments and distresses and has learnt to bear up easily under the misfortunes of life.’147 Bearing in mind Benedict XIV’s description of James’s hyper-anxiety at the time, we may read this either as lack of perceptiveness or (more likely) simple indifference.
The final point in the prince’s psychological profile at this time concerns his much-tou
ted plans for marrying a daughter of the king of France. Charles felt himself (with much justification) to be entitled to the admiration of all Europe for his exploits. In that case, he wished to claim a high marriage as his reward. His toastings of the ‘black-eyed beauty’ – whom he explained was Louis XV’s second daughter – are evidence not so much of wishful thinking as a kind of exultant hypermania.148 And we know from later correspondence that the claiming of a well-born wife ran very much in his thoughts at this time.
The prince’s stay in Cluny’s cage was his third relatively secure interlude during his days on the run. First there was Corradale; then the cave provided by the Seven Men of Glenmoriston; finally the untraceable eyrie on Ben Alder. Here he waited for a week, drinking and talking with Cluny, Lochgarry, Lochiel and Archie Cameron, until the chain of listening posts stretching to the west coast brought him word that there were two French ships in Loch-nan-Uamh.149
On 13 September the prince started for the coast, travelling by night and resting by day. At Uiskchicra John Roy Stewart came to the hut where he was resting. The prince gave him the fright of his life by rising up from a pile of plaid in the middle of the room.150 This high-spirited jape gives a good indication of the prince’s state of mind at the time.
They pressed on, through the Ben Alder forest to Glenroy, crossed the river Lochy by night and reached Achnacarry. The crossing of the river in bright moonlight again showed the prince at his most positive. When Cluny offered to cross the swollen Lochy by boat first, he gave six bottles of brandy to Lochiel for safe keeping. ‘Oh,’ said the prince, ‘do you have a dram there?’151 There was nothing for it but to broach the bottles. After consuming three of them in a very short time the prince was finally ready for the crossing. They rowed across in relays, first Cluny and party, then the prince, lastly Lochiel. On the final crossing the leaky boat let in five pints of water.
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Page 40
