Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (25 page)

The last days of November found the Stuart army in Manchester, where their reception could hardly have been more joyful. Bells pealed, bonfires were lit, crowds gathered to cheer and call out, "God bless Your Royal Highness, Prince Charles!" It was a noisy, boisterous welcome, a foretaste, some must have thought, of the welcome the army would receive once it reached London. For Manchester, like London, was known to have strong Jacobite sympathies, and there was wild exultation when King James was proclaimed at the Market Cross. Nor was the exultation empty of substance. Three hundred volunteers enrolled under the Stuart banner. And to add to the general euphoria, Charles received a letter from his brother Henry in Paris, saying that King Louis was "absolutely resolved upon the expedition into England," and that it would be ready to embark by December 9.
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From Manchester they passed safely to Macclesfield, to Leek, to Ashbourne, and finally to Derby, each day expecting to encounter government troops and remaining unusually vigilant. They had intelligence that a Hanoverian army with five cavalry and fifteen infantry regiments was near; the officers allowed themselves no sleep at all on the night of December 3 in order to be ready if the alarm were raised. But they were more than ready to take on any army, no matter how large or how powerful. All the talk among the men was of London, and how close they were to getting there, and how exciting it would be to sweep in and take the capital, with the enemy falling down like matchsticks before them.

"We are now within a hundred miles of London," one soldier wrote home from Derby, "without seeing the face of one enemy, so that in a short time I hope to write to you from London, where if we get safe, the whole of our story and even what has happened already must appear to posterity more like a romance than anything of truth."
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It had been a romance indeed, a series of events so improbable as to seem a fantasy. No one had believed the rebel army capable of surviving more than a few days once it entered England. Yet now it stood poised for a descent on the capital, the men keen for battle and their leader eager to grasp his father's throne.

Chapter 15

That the Stuart army reached Derby without engaging any government troops was amazing, for only two days earlier a huge Hanoverian force, ten thousand strong, had been drawn into battle lines to take the field against them.

The government army was drawn up near the town of Stone, a few miles north of Stafford, early in the morning of December 3. Their commander, the heroic young Duke of Cumberland, had chosen the large open expanse adjacent to the town as ideal for combat between his more numerous force and the rebel army. Cumberland was certain that the Jacobites were on their way to Stone, for on the previous day Lord George Murray had taken about a quarter of the Stuart forces and marched from their encampment at Macclesfield to Congleton—only some fifteen miles from Stone— and Murray's men, in demanding billets and food in Congleton, had told their hosts that Charles was on his way there with the rest of the army. Cumberland's spies, who had been in Congleton, brought him the news, and on receiving it he confidently went ahead with his plans to meet the rebel force just outside Stone.

Cumberland had his men ready at four in the morning. They stood in their positions, teeth chattering, boots stamping on the frozen ground to keep the circulation going in their cold feet. They knew from their intelligence reports that Charles and his artillery were usually on the road long before dawn, and they meant to give him a harsh reception. But by eight o'clock there was still no sign of the rebels, and as the wintry sun rose higher in the sky the men were swaying on their feet from weariness, for they had had only a few hours' sleep in the past ten days, and had gone for a full twenty-four hours with food. They kept their ranks, for their devotion to their commander was strong, but as the hours passed and there was still no sign of the Stuart army, their fatigue began to overwhelm them. By eleven o'clock it looked as though there would be no engagement, and by afternoon Cumberland—who had had almost no sleep himself the night before—left the field. The following morning, after learning that Charles and his men were in Derby and that Lord George Murray's march to Congleton had been nothing more than a stratagem, he marched his long-suffering soldiers back to Stafford.

William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland was King George's second son and greatest favorite. Tall and forceful, with a fleshy, porcine face, long nose and sensual mouth, Duke William had been brought up to be a soldier. Unlike his elder brother Frederick, Prince of Wales, the duke did not expect to have to govern a kingdom; not being heir to the throne, he felt no particular rivalry with its present occupant. So while Frederick quarreled with King George, William busied himself in becoming the soldier his father wanted him to be.

At age twenty-two he fought beside his father at the battle of Dettingen, and was wounded in the leg. Later, given his own command, he led English, Hanoverian and mercenary troops on the continent, acquitting himself competently at Fontenoy, though the battle was lost to the French. Contemporaries thought he was everything a soldier should be: personally brave, forthright, confident, aggressive, with a straight spine and a brisk manner. He never shirked danger, but faced it head on, winning his men's respect and achieving a deserved reputation for heroism. Cumberland had "all the good qualities that ever a young prince was endowed with," the Duke ol Richmond wrote. "He has justly got the love and esteem of everybody."
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There was new hope in the Hanoverian ranks when Cumberland was given supreme command of the armies in England on November 23. He was young, active, capable—everything General Wade, who had so far been unable to halt the advance of the rebels, was not.

Wade had become bogged down in Newcastle, a victim of weather, age, and continual frustration. He meant to do his best, but everywhere he turned things went against him. Provisioning was abysmal. When he moved his troops westward in a futile attempt to reach the Jacobites, there was not enough meat or bread to feed the men, nor enough straw or forage, nor even the minimum number of horses and carts necessary to move a large fighting force across country. An epidemic of dysentery had spread among the men, leaving them ill and weak, quite unfit to slog their way through knee-deep snow. The weather was ferocious. Men froze to death when forced, for lack of tents, to sleep in the open. Even the quarters in Newcastle were flooded. The Swiss and German soldiers, indifferent to the outcome of the rebellion, were on the verge of mutiny; the Dutch refused to leave Newcastle until their grievances over pay and horses were resolved.

All these crises plagued Wade, and made him turn despairingly to his inept Quartermaster-General and ask what was to be done. Wade was seventy-two, and felt ninety; already he was thinking ahead to the next year's campaigning season, and hoping to be relieved of command by then. He had been born in the reign of Charles H, he remembered the Glorious Revolution, and had fought his first battle soon after it. A bachelor, he had never known any life but soldiering, and now even that was becoming unendurable. According to his embittered and critical second-in-command. Lord Tyrawly, Wade was "infirm both in mind and body, forgetful, irresolute, perplexed, and snappish." He refused to listen to good advice, and refused to take steps to remedy the woeful shortcomings in provisioning and billeting that hamstrung his army. In brief, he was unfit for command—and Tyrawly privately thought that he was afraid of the rebels besides.
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Cumberland's assessment was more blunt. He referred to the general as "Grandmother Wade," and asked that he be replaced.
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While stopping short of removing Wade, the government was taking the incursion of the Stuart army more and more seriously. With England at war with both France and Spain, and rapidly losing ground to the French in the Austrian Netherlands, there were no troops to spare. Yet some troops had been withdrawn from the continent to defend England, and more might have to be withdrawn soon. This placated the government's critics in the Commons, who were demanding to know why the supporters of Charles Stuart had not been crushed weeks, or even months, earlier, and who invariably objected to the expending of British men and money abroad. The king, however, was mightily displeased, protective as he was of his beloved Hanover and eager as he was to play the role of a European rather than a mere British sovereign.

Pelham was endeavoring, unsuccessfully, to broaden the base of the "Broadbottom Administration," but the interests of the various political factions kept them apart. Newcastle continued to wring his hands and issue dire warnings about the "army of ten thousand desperate men, inured to fight and fatigue" who were advancing on London. The king, impatient with the politicians and baffled by his generals' lack of military success, put his second son in command of the troops and announced that he himself would march to Finch-ley, where the defenders of the capital were encamped, and raise his standard at the head of the army. Was he not the hero of Dettingen, who as a young man had fought at Oudenarde and Malplaquet? After eighteen years as king he was not about to surrender his authority to a pack of insurgents led by a presumptuous boy. He intended, he swore, "to remain and die King of England."
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Frederick, Prince of Wales displayed a far less belligerent attitude. His wife had recently given birth to a son, and the prince celebrated his christening by giving a large and sumptuous banquet. He ordered his pastry chef to carve a likeness of the citadel of Carlisle in sugar, and served it at the banquet, where he and his guests entertained themselves by pelting it with sugar plums.
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Cumberland reached the Midlands at the end of November, and began the work of consolidating the various scattered units placed under his command into a single fighting force. By December 3 he was ready to offer battle at Stone—but, as we have seen, the Jacobites eluded him and went on to Derby. Hastily the duke sent a message to Wade, urging him to send his cavalry at least to engage the rebels, though with the Stuarts only a few days' distance from London Wade's cavalry would not have been likely to stop them. And even now there was uncertainty in the government camp about whether Charles would in fact lead his men to London or whether he might invade Yorkshire, or turn toward Wales, or even return to Scotland to await reinforcements from France. Whatever he did, there was always the possibility that a second army of rebels might be formed in Scotland, and that with Cumberland occupied in the south. Wade would have to be relied on to march his men north to meet them.

Meanwhile Londoners had been preparing for the worst. The commercial City was all but deserted, the shops shuttered, the markets shut down, the theaters closed. The merchants had sent their valuables away, and now the last of them were leaving for safer quarters in the countryside. "Nobody but has some fear for themselves, for their money, or for their friends in the army," Walpole wrote. He, along with many others, "feared the rebels beyond his reason."
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On Friday, December 5—afterward called "Black Friday" because of the panic that swept through the city on that day—a rumor spread that the French had landed in the south and were on their way to seize the capital. Cumberland and all his forces were recalled at once, but it would be four or five days at the earliest before he arrived, and long before then the French were expected to be in possession of all of southern England.

People shut themselves in their houses and said their prayers. The streets were deserted, an odd silence prevailed. Even the crowded alleyways of Westminster and the East End, usually shrill and raucous with noise, were unnaturally quiet. For a week or more there had been whispers of a papist plot to kill all Englishmen by poisoning the wells. Murrain had spread among the cattle in the vicinity of London, and it was unsafe to eat beef or even to drink milk. The epidemic was blamed on Jacobite conspirators—or, alternately, on government provocateurs hoping to turn the populace against the Jacobites.

There were few ordinary citizens in the streets, but many guardsmen, prominently posted in the squares and open fields, massing at the City gates, busying themselves setting up alarm posts. An Irish officer in a French regiment who was brought to London in secret by smugglers at just this time found the city hushed and expectant. The great houses of the nobles were being watched, he was told; those who were in sympathy with the rebels expected either Charles and his army or the French to arrive any day. Meanwhile, they waited, keeping their hopes and expectations to themselves, drinking the healths of "the King, the Prince, the Duke," without naming any names.
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The sectors where the Irish congregated were being watched too, especially the docks, for Newcastle and Pelham were afraid that the Jacobite dockworkers might sabotage the naval defenses by burning the dock stores.

"Black Friday" came and went, a dark Saturday succeeded, and a dim and gloomy Sunday. Tensions rose, but there was no confirmation of the rumor of a French landing, and the camp at Finchley remained secure. Messages flew back and forth between the government and the military. Troops moved around and through the capital in an endless procession. No one had reliable information, and in the absence of reliable information, no one could feel secure.

"What in the name of wonder is become of Marshall Wade?" asked the Duke of Richmond in a letter to Newcastle. "The rebels will certainly be two days march ahead of us. ... I make no doubt but this embarkation will go on at Dunkirk. Are we all mad? that you don't send for ten thousand more forces be they Hessians, Hanoverians, or devils, if they will but fight for us!"
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The Jacobites had arrived in Derby on December 4 in waves: first a party of blue-uniformed cavalrymen, then in midafternoon the Life Guards and a number of the Highland chiefs, then later on the main body of the army, marching six or eight abreast with their standards, white flags bearing a red cross. There were nearly as many soldiers as there were townspeople, and as usual they had to be crowded into their assigned quarters, dozens to each house. The mayor and several of the aldermen had left hours earlier, but Lord George Murray summoned those aldermen still in the town to assemble in their robes before the town hall, where the crier proclaimed James Stuart King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland. This done, the final contingent of troops marched in, with Charles leading them, on foot.