Short History of Scotland — 53 - Ch. 33: The Last Jacobite Rising, pt 4

A great mistake was made next day, if Lochgarry, who commanded the Macdonalds of Glengarry, and Maxwell of Kirkconnel are correct in saying that Lord George insisted on placing his Atholl men on the right wing.

The Macdonalds had an old claim to the right wing, but as far as research enlightens us, their failure on this fatal day was not due to jealous anger.

The battle might have been avoided, but to retreat was to lose Inverness and all chance of supplies.

On the Highland right was the water of Nairn, and they were guarded by a wall which the Campbells pulled down, enabling Cumberland's cavalry to take them in flank.

Cumberland had about 9000 men, including the Campbells.

Charles, according to his muster-master, had 5000; of horse he had but a handful.

The battle began with an artillery duel, during which the clans lost heavily, while their few guns were useless, and their right flank was exposed by the breaking down of the protecting wall.

After some unexplained and dangerous delay, Lord George gave the word to charge, in face of a blinding tempest of sleet, and himself went in, as did Lochiel, claymore in hand.

But though the order was conveyed by Ker of Graden first to the Macdonalds on the left, as they had to charge over a wider space of ground, the Camerons, Clan Chattan, and Macleans came first to the shock.

"Nothing could be more desperate than their attack, or more properly received," says Whitefoord.

The assailants were enfiladed by Wolfe's regiment, which moved up and took position at right angles, like the fifty-second on the flank of the last charge of the French Guard at Waterloo.

The Highland right broke through Barrel's regiment, swept over the guns, and died on the bayonets of the second line.

They had thrown down their muskets after one fire, and, says Cumberland, stood "and threw stones for at least a minute or two before their total rout began."

Probably the fall of Lochiel, who was wounded and carried out of action, determined the flight.

Meanwhile the left, the Macdonalds, menaced on the flank by cavalry, were plied at a hundred yards by grape.

They saw their leaders, the gallant Keppoch and Macdonnell of Scothouse, with many others, fall under the grape-shot: they saw the right wing broken, and they did not come to the shock.

If we may believe four sworn witnesses in a court of justice (July 24, 1752), whose testimony was accepted as the basis of a judicial decreet (January 10, 1756), {290} Keppoch was wounded while giving his orders to some of his men not to outrun the line in advancing, and was shot dead as a friend was supporting him.

When all retreated they passed the dead body of Keppoch.

The tradition constantly given in various forms that Keppoch charged alone, "deserted by the children of his clan," is worthless if sworn evidence may be trusted.

As for the unhappy Charles, by the evidence of Sir Robert Strange, who was with him, he had "ridden along the line to the right animating the soldiers," and "endeavoured to rally the soldiers, who, annoyed by the enemy's fire, were beginning to quit the field."

He "was got off the field when the men in general were betaking themselves precipitately to flight; nor was there any possibility of their being rallied."

Yorke, an English officer, says that the Prince did not leave the field till after the retreat of the second line.

So far the Prince's conduct was honourable and worthy of his name.

But presently, on the advice of his Irish entourage, Sullivan and Sheridan, who always suggested suspicions, and doubtless not forgetting the great price on his head, he took his own way towards the west coast in place of joining Lord George and the remnant with him at Ruthven in Badenoch.

On April 26 he sailed from Borradale in a boat, and began that course of wanderings and hairbreadth escapes in which only the loyalty of Highland hearts enabled him at last to escape the ships that watched the isles and the troops that netted the hills.

Some years later General Wolfe, then residing at Inverness, reviewed the occurrences, and made up his mind that the battle had been a dangerous risk for Cumberland, while the pursuit (though ruthlessly cruel) was inefficient.

Despite Cumberland's insistent orders to give no quarter (orders justified by the absolutely false pretext that Prince Charles had set the example), Lochgarry reported that the army had not lost more than a thousand men.

Fire and sword and torture, the destruction of tilled lands, and even of the shell-fish on the shore, did not break the spirit of the Highlanders.

Many bands held out in arms, and Lochgarry was only prevented by the Prince's command from laying an ambush for Cumberland.

The Campbells and the Macleods under their recreant chief, the Whig Macdonalds under Sir Alexander of Sleat, ravaged the lands of the Jacobite clansmen; but the spies of Albemarle, who now commanded in Scotland, reported the Macleans, the Grants of Glenmoriston, with the Macphersons, Glengarry's men, and Lochiel's Camerons, as all eager "to do it again" if France would only help.

But France was helpless, and when Lochiel sailed for France with the Prince only Cluny remained, hunted like a partridge in the mountains, to keep up the spirit of the Cause.

Old Lovat met a long-deserved death by the executioner's axe, though it needed the evidence of Murray of Broughton, turned informer, to convict that fox.

Kilmarnock and Balmerino also were executed; the good and brave Duke of Perth died on his way to France; the aged Tullibardine in the Tower; many gallant gentlemen were hanged; Lord George escaped, and is the ancestor of the present Duke of Atholl; many gentlemen took French service; others fought in other alien armies; three or four in the Highlands or abroad took the wages of spies upon the Prince.

The 30,000 pounds of French gold, buried near Loch Arkaig, caused endless feuds, kinsman denouncing kinsman.

The secrets of the years 1746-1760 are to be sought in the Cumberland and Stuart MSS.

in Windsor Castle and the Record Office.

Legislation, intended to scotch the snake of Jacobitism, began with religious persecution.

The Episcopalian clergy had no reason to love triumphant Presbyterianism, and actively, or in sympathy, were favourers of the exiled dynasty.

Episcopalian chapels, sometimes mere rooms in private houses, were burned, or their humble furniture was destroyed.

All Episcopalian ministers were bidden to take the oath and pray for King George by September 1746, or suffer for the second offence transportation for life to the American colonies.

Later, the orders conferred by Scottish bishops were made of no avail.

Only with great difficulty and danger could parents obtain the rite of baptism for their children.

Very little is said in our histories about the sufferings of the Episcopalians when it was their turn to be under the harrow.

They were not violent, they murdered no Moderator of the General Assembly.

Other measures were the Disarming Act, the prohibition to wear the Highland dress, and the abolition of "hereditable jurisdictions," and the chief's right to call out his clansmen in arms.

Compensation in money was paid, from 21,000 pounds to the Duke of Argyll to 13 pounds, 6s.

8d.

to the clerks of the Registrar of Aberbrothock.

The whole sum was 152,237 pounds, 15s.

4d.

In 1754 an Act "annexed the forfeited estates of the Jacobites who had been out (or many of them) inalienably to the Crown."

The estates were restored in 1784; meanwhile the profits were to be used for the improvement of the Highlands.

If submissive tenants received better terms and larger leases than of old, Jacobite tenants were evicted for not being punctual with rent.

Therefore, on May 14, 1752, some person unknown shot Campbell of Glenure, who was about evicting the tenants on the lands of Lochiel and Stewart of Ardshiel in Appin.

Campbell rode down from Fort William to Ballachulish ferry, and when he had crossed it said, "I am safe now I am out of my mother's country."

But as he drove along the old road through the wood of Lettermore, perhaps a mile and a half south of Ballachulish House, the fatal shot was fired.

For this crime James Stewart of the Glens was tried by a Campbell jury at Inveraray, with the Duke on the bench, and was, of course, convicted, and hanged on the top of a knoll above Ballachulish ferry.

James was innocent, but Allan Breck Stewart was certainly an accomplice of the man with the gun, which, by the way, was the property neither of James Stewart nor of Stewart of Fasnacloich.

The murderer was anxious to save James by avowing the deed, but his kinsfolk, saying, "They will only hang both James and you," bound him hand and foot and locked him up in the kitchen on the day of James's execution.

{293} Allan lay for some weeks at the house of a kinsman in Rannoch, and escaped to France, where he had a fight with James Mor Macgregor, then a spy in the service of the Duke of Newcastle.