Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (16 page)

Several more Macdonald chiefs came to meet with Charles on shipboard in the following days. They found him in a large tent erected on the deck of the ship, "covered and well furnished with variety [
sic
] of wines and spirits." At first glance he looked like a clergyman, dressed in a plain black coat with a plain shirt in need of washing, a simple neckpiece with a silver buckle, and a round wig. But his elegant bow, his graciousness in toasting the chiefs with a glass of wine, his affability were aristocratic. He was unmistakably princely. "At his first appearance," one of the Macdonalds wrote, "I found my heart swell to my very throat."

Boisdale had warned Charles that news of his arrival was spreading rapidly—there had been rumors all summer that he would soon come to Scotland—and it would only be a matter of time before the government in Edinburgh dispatched its forces to meet the rebels. Once dispatched, they would not reach Charles and his men quickly—the difficult terrain ensured that—but they would come in strength, and before very long. He had to raise and organize his own forces, and supply them with arms, in as short a time as possible.

He moved from the
Du Teillay
into a farmhouse at Borrodale on the shore of Loch nan Uamh, taking with him his closest companions and some of the men from the ship. Here he busied himself overseeing the unloading of the ship and the distributing of guns and broadswords. Most of the weapons and the remaining men went to Kinlochmoidart some six miles to the south.

"I am joined here by brave people as I expected," Charles wrote to O'Brien on August 4. "As I have not yet set up the standard I cannot tell the number, but that will be in a few days as soon as the arms are distributed, at which we are working with all speed. I have not as yet got the return of the message sent to the Lowlands, but expect it very soon. If they all join or at least all those to whom I have sent commissions to at request, [
sic
] everything will go to a wish."
²

These were optimistic words, for in fact only a few minor chieftains had as yet agreed to send men to Charles's camp, among them Alexander Macdonald of Keppoch and Alistair Macdonald of Glengarry.* [*From this point on, to avoid the confusion of multiple surnames, the Scottish lords will be referred to wherever possible by their territorial titles.] As he wrote in his letter, nothing had been heard as yet from the Lowland Jacobite leaders, and it was clear that many Highland chiefs were hesitating, wanting to lend their support but wary of being among the first to commit themselves. Beyond these, who were in a position to provide fighting men, there were other Jacobites who, if discreetly approached, might give money, either directly or through intermediaries. But they too had to be persuaded that they would be contributing to a successful rising and not merely a bold and ultimately futile adventure. What helped to sway them in these early days was Charles's own absolutely unshakable faith in the success of his undertaking. He would succeed or die in the attempt, he announced to skeptics. He was leaving himself no alternative. Unlike James in the 1715 rising, he did not provide himself with a convenient means of escape if things went badly; he sent the
Du Teillay
back to France, after rewarding Walsh with the grandiose title "Lord of Ireland."

Curiosity drew the local populace to the Borrodale farm, where "the whole neighborhood without distinction of age or sex crowded in ... to see the Prince." He received them sitting in state, where everyone could see him, surrounded by his retinue and presiding over a table abundant with food and drink. He was toasted in the Highland tongue, with the words
Deoch slainte an Righ
—To the King's Health—and he did his best to repeat the unfamiliar words convincingly.

This was mere posturing—though Charles did it well. The loyalty of the Borrodale locals would count for nothing if none of the major clan chiefs took a stand. Yet Donald Cameron of Lochiel, head of the large and powerful Cameron clan, having been strongly opposed to Charles's undertaking at first, had begun to waver. Fifty years old, practical and hardheaded, he faced the bright-eyed, irrepressible Charles Stuart, and told him he ought to "be more temperate." There was no reason why he shouldn't go back to France, hire more soldiers and buy more weapons, and return in force. But Charles was more than a match for him.

"In a few days," he informed Lochiel, "with the few friends that I have, I will erect the Royal Standard, and proclaim to the people of Britain that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, or die in the attempt."

Lochiel, who had almost certainly not been prepared to find such absolute toughness in a mere boy of twenty-four, was taken aback when Charles invited him to either join him or "stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the fate of his prince."

"I'll share the fate of my prince," Lochiel swore, having made up his mind in that instant to commit himself body and soul to Charles, "and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune hath given me any power."

The ringing promise was music to Charles's ears, for with Lochiel on his side it was easy for him to claim that the hesitation and outright disloyalty of other chiefs was only a pretense designed to test him, to see whether he had the fortitude to press on in the face of opposition. "The prince shows a vast deal of resolution and undauntedness," the Abbé Butler wrote in his account of the early days of the rising, "which prodigiously pleases the people." "As much as I can perceive things could not be in a more smiling attitude."
³

This was hardly true, for although Lochiel's promise was heartening, it was only a beginning, and not all of those who pledged themselves to Charles's cause were satisfied. They complained that there was not enough money, that their weapons were too few and inadequate, and that there was no noteworthy commander to lead them into battle. The scant provisions Charles had brought along were running low, and the local harvest was late. Fortunately, the capture of two British grain ships made available extra supplies of oatmeal and barley just when they were most needed. Still, with "numbers crowding daily to offer themselves," the problems of weaponry, command and supply were certain to escalate.

It was with these problems very much in his thoughts that Charles made the journey from Kinlochmoidart to Glenfinnan to await the arrival of the men Lochiel and the other chiefs had promised to provide. He had written to the mainland clan chiefs asking them to join him at Glenfinnan on August 19, but he could not predict how many of them would come, or with how many supporters.

Charles arrived at the rendezvous point, conspicuous in scarlet breeches and waistcoat, to find that only about a hundred and fifty of Clanranald's men had come in response to his summons. He waited—an hour, two hours. After three hours, early in the afternoon, bagpipes could be heard in the distance, eerie and solemn. Then Lochiel and his piper came into view on a mountaintop. marching in slow cadence at the head of the Camerons, who snaked down the zigzag path to the valley floor in their hundreds. They came in lines two abreast, herding between them eighty or so British prisoners whom Keppoch's men had captured in an ambush several days earlier.

The procession of outsize, fearsome Highlanders, descending the mountain in full war regalia, overawed the spectators, some of whom reckoned their numbers as high as fourteen hundred.
⁴
When they were all assembled at the head of the loch, the elderly Tullibardine, as usual leaning on the arms of two younger men, came forward to stand before them and unfurl the red, white and blue banner of the house of Stuart. James was proclaimed king, his son Charles proclaimed regent. Immediately the men broke into loud huzzas and threw their bonnets up into the air in such numbers that it "appeared like a cloud."

When the cheering had died down, a proclamation was read which constituted a formal statement of the terms under which the new king would take his throne. In it King James, through his regent, declared that all those who had rebelled against the Stuart monarchy since 1688 would be pardoned, provided they now declared their allegiance to their rightful king and renounced their allegiance to the Hanoverian usurper. Soldiers serving in the usurper's army would also be pardoned, so long as they left their regiments and joined King James's army; as an added incentive they would receive any arrears of their pay and an entire year's pay in addition. Officers serving in the Hanoverian forces would, once they entered King James's army, receive commands with higher rank.

The government would continue as presently constituted, the proclamation assured. A free Parliament would be summoned, to function without any degree of duress from King James; officials and magistrates, revenue collectors and judges were all to remain in their offices, save that they were to acknowledge that they held their authority from King James and not from King George. Churchmen too were to carry out their duties unchanged, for King James utterly opposed any form of religious persecution. (In this sensitive area, care was already being taken to prevent giving offense to British Protestants; when Keppoch's Catholic clansmen were marching to Glenfinnan, they were told they could not be accompanied by a priest—an announcement which led some of them to desert their chief—who was himself Protestant.)

Finally, the proclamation ordered every subject between the ages of sixteen and sixty to present himself for service in the Stuart army, on penalty of royal punishment should he fail in his duty.

The clansmen listened to the words of the proclamation, though few of them understood it, speaking only Gaelic. Afterward Charles said a few words, complimenting his hearers on their adherence to his father's right and telling them that, with God's help, "he did not doubt of bringing the affair to a happy issue."

No doubt this was greeted with more huzzas, especially when Charles ordered casks of brandy opened for the men so that they could toast King James's health. Shouts of “Deoch slainte an Righ" floated out over the loch and echoed from the craggy mountainside. All in all, it was an inspiring afternoon and an auspicious new beginning to what had until then seemed a very fragile rebellion.

Slender though Charles's forces were, they might well prove sufficient to the task of conquering Scotland for King James, for Scotland's defenses, in the summer of 1745, were sadly inadequate.

The government officials in Edinburgh had fewer than four thousand troops at their disposal. There was only one tested, seasoned regiment of infantry. Two others were newly formed and untested, and another was only at half strength. A miscellany of ''additional" companies had recently been raised, intended for use in combat on the continent, but these too were under strength and hardly constituted reliable troops. The two available dragoon regiments had been raised in Ireland, with ill-disciplined men and young horses untrained to gunfire. And though there were guns and mortar in Edinburgh Castle, there were no artillery officers or men to fire them.

Given the fact that for two decades, Walpole had raved about the Jacobite menace, and Britain's vulnerability to attack, the sorry defenses in Scotland were inexcusable. The current rumors of a Stuart landing ought to have resulted in increased preparedness, but the officials did not take the rumors seriously, and in London, Walpole's rather mediocre political heirs did not share his sense of urgency and vigilance. The Marquess of Tweeddale, secretary of state for Scotland, was preoccupied with saving money on Scottish defenses in order to enhance Britain's campaigning strength abroad, and could not be persuaded that a Highland rising was either dangerous or imminent. The king was away in Hanover, renewing his appreciation of the superiority of everything German to everything English, and was not expected to return in the immediate future.

Perhaps the only person in authority who was truly alarmed about what was happening in the Highlands was Lieutenant-General Sir John Cope, Commander-in-Chief for Scotland. Cope had fought at Dettingen, and had been in Scotland for a year and a half. Disliked by his political masters, he was described as "a dressy, finical little man" whose good breeding and fastidiousness were more striking than his military capabilities. Brilliant soldier or not. Cope at least had the sense to take very seriously the report that reached him on August 8 that Charles Stuart had landed and was raising an army.

Cope had been warned to keep "a strict eye on the Highlands," but he knew that this was meaningless. What was vital was to arm those Highlanders known—or believed, at least—to be loyal to the Hanoverian ruler so that they could join the existing infantry regiments and oppose the Stuart forces. In the aftermath of the Fifteen, Parliament had made it illegal for any Highland clansman to carry arms. That meant that the so-called ""well affected" clans would be defenseless against the rebels, unless arms were brought to them from the Lowlands.

A thousand stands of arms were assembled at Stirling Castle, northwest of Edinburgh, for Cope to take northward. His troops gathered there, and waited vital days while bread was baked for them to carry on the march and a butcher with a drove of cattle was found to follow them. Though he had no artillerymen. Cope decided nonetheless to equip his troops with artillery, to frighten the rebels. The guns were brought, though the only men who could be found to handle them were an elderly gunner, long out of service, and three invalids from the Edinburgh Castle garrison.
⁵

On August 20, the day after Charles exhorted his men at Glenfinnan, Cope started northward, intending to rendezvous with the ''well affected" clansmen of the Duke of Atholl (that is, the Hanoverian duke, not his elder brother Tullibardine, whom the Jacobites recognized as Duke of Atholl) and Lord Glenorchy—both of whom had promised to provide him with men. Having armed them, he planned to proceed to Fort Augustus, where he would establish his headquarters. On the twenty-first he arrived at Crieff, only to discover that neither Atholl nor Glenorchy had been able to raise a single man to swell the ranks of the government troops. This was a shock, as Glenorchy's Campbells in particular had been counted on to be staunchly loyal.