Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (28 page)

This went beyond what had happened at Derby; it was in effect a mutiny. (Charles was to be demoted to being a mere figurehead, where before he had been Commander-in-Chief.) He responded to the memorial point by point, in writing, his response full of disillusionment and anger.

"When I came into Scotland," he began, "I knew well enough what I was to expect from my enemies, but I little foresaw what I met with from my friends. I came vested with all the authority the King could give me, one chief part of which is the command of his armies, and now I am required to give this up to fifteen or sixteen persons, who may afterwards depute five or seven of their own number to exercise it for fear if they were six or eight, that I might myself pretend to be the casting vote."

If this procedure were to be adopted, he wrote, there would be nothing left to him but the dubious honor of presiding over the committee. He denied the chiefs' assertion that armies were customarily governed in this way, and denied too that his army of volunteers should expect any other form of leadership than would an army of mercenaries.

"I am often hit in the teeth, that this is an army of volunteers, and consequently very different from one composed of mercenaries. What one would naturally expect from an army whose chief officers consist of gentlemen of rank and fortune, and who came into it merely upon motives of duty and honor, is more zeal, more resolution, and more good manners, than in those that fight merely for pay. But it can be no army at all," he insisted forcefully, "where there is no general, or what is the same thing, no obedience or deference paid to him."

Warming to his theme, Charles asked the chiefs whether any of them could possibly be risking more than he himself was, with a price of thirty thousand pounds on his head and a kingdom hanging in the balance if he won, almost certain death if he lost. He denied having refused advice, and claimed that, "on more occasions than one," he had deferred to others' plans. After more detailed contradictions of the charges in the memorial, he concluded with a challenge.

"I have insensibly made my answer much longer than I intended," Charles wrote, "and might yet add much more, but I choose to cut it short, and shall only tell you that my authority may be taken from me by violence, but I shall never resign it like an idiot."
⁶

It was a tribute to Charles's leadership that none of the chiefs took himself and his men off following the receipt of this firm counterblast. Instead, the army set about besieging Stirling, and by January 8 had occupied the town, though not the castle.

The soldiers were quartered in villages to the south of the high escarpment of Stirling. Charles stayed at Bannockburn House, the residence of Sir Hugh Paterson, a sixty-year-old Jacobite sympathizer whose brother-in-law, John Walkinshaw, had a long history of service to the Stuart cause. A Lanarkshire gentleman, Walkinshaw had fought for James in the Fifteen, and had been taken prisoner at Sheriffmuir. Escaping his captors, he had made his way to the continent where he was called upon to make himself useful to the court in exile in a variety of capacities until his death in 1731. Walkinshaw's devotion was all the more admirable in that he had a large and growing family. The youngest of his ten daughters was christened Clementina, named for James's bride, who was her godmother.

Clementina Walkinshaw, who was probably about the same age as Charles or a little younger, was staying with her uncle at Bannockburn House in January of 1746. She encountered Charles there, a strong rapport was established between them, and possibly they became lovers. In view of Charles's general indifference to women up until this time, it would seem that Clementina had something very special about her that appealed to him—something, that is, beyond her splendidly Jacobite pedigree.

Clementina was of average height, fair, with a freckled complexion. Her hair may have been red or auburn. Possibly she was handsome, though not a beauty, and she may well have had charm, intelligence and spirit. When Charles encountered her, he was at a low point in his life, frustrated in his bid for the conquest of London, hamstrung by his chiefs and by Lord George Murray, uncertain of his future and that of his army and his cause. He had few sincere allies, fewer confidants. Clementina may have helped to build up his confidence again, as friend or intimate or both. Whatever the nature of their rapport, it made an indelible impression on Charles, though there is no need to presuppose either a passionate erotic interlude or the romantic vow of Jacobite legend.
⁷

While Charles and Clementina held communion, the siege of Stirling Castle proceeded, inconclusively, the Jacobites finding it difficult to deploy their artillery to advantage against the castle guns. As often in the past, the recalcitrance of the Highlanders was a hindrance; they refused to do the menial work of carrying sandbags needed to shore up the position of the guns.

Meanwhile the new commander in Edinburgh, Lieutenant-General Henry Hawley, decided on January 13 to advance against Charles and his men and marched toward Stirling. Hawley had a low opinion of the fighting abilities of the ''rascal" Jacobites, and imagined that they would run when faced with the Hanoverian cavalry. He envisioned attacking them when and where he chose, and never imagined that they would offer battle to him, late on the afternoon of the seventeenth, with a hard rain falling and a strong wind blowing from the northwest.

In the dimming wintry light Murray led his men up the ridge of a hill called Falkirk Muir, only a mile or two from where Hawley and his men were encamped. Belatedly Hawley sent three of his cavalry regiments across the yielding, rain-soaked ground toward the hill. When they reached its summit they rode toward the Jacobites, drawn up into two lines by Murray. The men stood their ground, their muskets held at the ready, as the cavalry came on. When the horsemen were a bare ten yards away Murray gave the order to fire, and the first volley felled dozens of horses and men— perhaps as many as eighty, including the cavalry commander. At once the remaining riders closed ranks and spurred their horses to trample the Stuart infantry.

"The most singular and extraordinary combat immediately followed," James Johnstone recalled later. "The Highlanders, stretched on the ground, thrust their dirks into the bellies of the horses. Some seized the riders by their clothes, dragged them down and stabbed them with their dirks, several again used their pistols, but few of them had sufficient space to handle their swords."
⁸

Faced with such savage and dogged resistance, the Hanoverians turned to retreat, throwing their own infantry into confusion as they did so. The Jacobites pursued on foot, scattering men and horses before them, for the most part spared the danger of opposing musketfire because of the rain which dampened the powder and made loading and reloading impossible.

The cry of "Stop pursuit!" flew suddenly from rank to rank, and the Stuart soldiers, who were just warming to their task, were brought up short in confusion. Night was falling, and the men, having broken ranks, were a jumble of clans and tongues, without their own officers to guide them. Some, seeing what they took to be watchfires lit in the Hanoverian camp, thought that the battle had been lost. Others sought shelter from the strong wind and lashing rain.

The men straggled back to their billets in the villages, not learning until later that night that Hawley and his army had abandoned their camp and returned toward Edinburgh. The battle of Falkirk Muir had been a Jacobite victory, sudden and brief like that of Prestonpans. Charles, who had been with the troops when they engaged Hawley, commanding the pickets, rode to Falkirk where he took over the quarters that Hawley had recently occupied and tried to assess how many men he had lost.

Hawley, humiliated in defeat and infuriated at the cowardice of his men, given their superiority in numbers and equipment, consoled himself in Edinburgh with an orgy of hangings and floggings, ordering dozens of his soldiers shot for desertion. Once again, the Jacobites had shown themselves to be the superior fighters. Once again they had humbled a Hanoverian general, the very elements conspiring with them to defeat him.

The next day, January 18, the storm raged on, the wind even stronger and the rains torrential. The weather made it nearly impossible for the Jacobites to recover the cannon that Hawley's men had left abandoned on the battlefield, but toward dusk they tried, riding slowly over the hill in small groups, picking their way by lantern-light. The horses shied when forced to step over heaps of dead bodies whose whiteness made them glimmer in the dark. They were the Hanoverian dead, some four hundred of them, their pale corpses bloated by the rain, their sightless eyes bulging horribly. Johnstone saw them lying there and recorded his revulsion. Once safely back in camp, he wrote, he felt "relieved as from an oppressive burden," and it was a long time before the "horrid spectacle" faded from his mind.

Chapter 17

The winter of 1746 brought a lull in the momentum of Jacobite activity. The victory at Falkirk did not lead to further assaults on government troops, as might have been expected. Instead, Charles preferred to concentrate on the siege of Stirling, and when at the end of January this was abandoned, he allowed his chiefs to persuade him—against his better judgment— that retreat was the wisest course.

Campaigning in the dead of winter was in any case hopeless. As it was the men, marching northward to Inverness, were in sorry shape from exposure and exhaustion. To keep from freezing they carried flasks of whiskey which they shared, when the weather was at its worst, with their suffering horses.
¹
Snow, hail and freezing rain slowed their progress. "Men were covered with icicles hanging on their eyebrows and beards," wrote one who made the trek, "and an entire coldness seized all their limbs, a severe contrary wind driving snow and little cutting hail bitterly down upon our faces, in such a manner that it was impossible to see ten yards before us," Morale dropped as the retreat progressed. The men felt cheated of the fruits of their victory; like Charles they wanted to push on to Edinburgh rather than to take refuge in the far north. According to Elcho's account, the men were "struck with amazement" when ordered to retreat, "for everybody expected a battle and it appeared very strange to run away from the very army that had been beat only a fortnight before."

The relatively few government troops in Inverness left as the Jacobites approached on February 21, and for the next seven weeks the town belonged to Charles, who for the most part remained there. He needed stability. His cold had worsened into pneumonia, and for a few frightening days in March it looked as if he might not recover. The unceasing cold weather, the strain and the endless disappointments and frustrations had lowered his resistance. When he did recover, it was not to his former level of conscientious leadership. He went hunting, he entertained the local aristocracy, he even danced at balls. But he left to subordinates the tasks of looking after provisioning and supplies, finding money to pay the soldiers and maintaining discipline among them. The result was that the men, still loyal to Charles and his cause but restive from long inactivity, left in large numbers for their homes and returned as and when it suited them. What military gains were made over the winter were brought about by small groups which detached themselves from the main army, and which were closely supervised by their officers.

When on April 13 Charles learned that Cumberland was rapidly approaching Inverness, he ordered his by now rather slipshod army of some forty-five hundred men to assemble immediately.

The available men scrambled to put themselves in what order they could, mindful of the large numbers of their comrades who were absent. On the fourteenth the army marched to the site O'Sullivan had chosen as a favorable battleground—Culloden Moor, about four miles from Inverness. It was a flat and featureless stretch of plain, just the sort of terrain the Hanoverians preferred and where their tactical strengths—large bodies of men, fighting as units, and powerful artillery—could be put to use with the greatest advantage.

Culloden was precisely the sort of site the Jacobites ought to have avoided, as Lord George realized right away when he learned of it. But Charles had not consulted Lord George. He had determined months earlier to rely on no one but himself, and those closest to him whom he trusted. Twice he had allowed himself to be persuaded by Murray and the chiefs that a course of action that he knew to be wrong was nonetheless advisable. Twice he and his army had been forced to throw away all they had gained. Both times his own instincts had told him what was best. He would not let those instincts be overridden again.

And now, with the Hanoverians nearly at hand, his instincts told him to meet them boldly and fearlessly, no matter how undermanned his army was or how precarious their provisioning. His men carried victory with them, they were unbeatable. They fought for a just cause, a godly cause, while the enemy fought for a wicked usurper. And the usurper's son led them. Surely in any trial of battle, God would see to it that the usurper's son and those who followed him lost.

That night the Jacobites slept near their chosen battle site, and woke the next morning to await Cumberland. By afternoon he had not arrived. He and his men were encamped at Nairn, some twelve miles to the east, apparently in no hurry to attack. It was Cumberland's birthday, and his men were celebrating, toasting him with the brandy he had distributed among them, well fed and lying at their ease. Charles's men, by contrast, were on edge, relieved to be called into action once again but suffering, as usual, from cold and hunger. Their ration that day was a single biscuit. Not surprisingly, they left their ranks in search of food.

They could not last another day without provisions, and what few provisions existed were miles away in Inverness. The engagement had to come immediately. If Cumberland could not be brought to Culloden, Murray reasoned, the Jacobites could go to Nairn. He proposed to Charles that the men make a night march to Nairn and take the Hanoverians by surprise, before they had a chance to form up and defend themselves. It had worked at Prestonpans: the sudden unexpected maneuver, the sudden furious attack, the sudden and precipitate flight of the enemy. It would work now, Charles reasoned. It harmonized with his instincts.