Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (33 page)

Lord George’s argument about sweeping up support in Catholic Lancashire was also bogus. These secret sympathisers would very probably declare for the prince
after
he had defeated Wade. It was most unlikely that they would appear in open revolt for a small army that had appeared to duck a pitched battle with Wade. In this way, the prince’s grand strategic vision became lost in the detail of Lord George’s tactical imperatives. Arguably, it was not the decision to invade England that was wrong so much as Lord George’s excessive caution. The correct option was to attack Wade at Newcastle, as Charles Edward wanted to. His strategy was a gamble, admittedly, but once having agreed to it, however unwillingly, Lord George should have entered into its spirit. ‘By the book’ tactical circumspection has no place in such an enterprise. Brilliant as Murray was as military commander and tactician, he never fully grasped this, as Derby was to show.

But on 31 October the decision was taken: invasion, yes, but by the north-westerly route. Before setting out on this, the most spectacular episode of his high adventure, the prince made his dispositions in Scotland. The earl of Strathallan, already appointed governor of Perth, was to command the new army assembling there, with his deputy governor Oliphant of Gask as second-in-command.
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MacGregor of Glengyle was appointed governor of Doune castle with a remit to conduct constant surveillance on Stirling castle. Other appointments were made to governorships of Aberdeen, Dundee and Montrose. Lord Lewis Gordon was already acknowledged as the key Jacobite figure in the north-east. Finally, young Glengarry was sent back to the Highlands to raise more MacDonalds.
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In his absence Donald MacDonnell of Lochgarry would command the clan regiment in England.

As for France, a third envoy was sent to solicit aid. Father Gordon SJ had departed on 28 October. Hard on his heels now went Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees.
⁴⁷

Before we follow Charles Edward’s small army across the border into England, it is worth examining the prince’s legend and its relationship to sober history. Is it really true that Charles Edward conquered
Scotland
on the basis of personal charisma and a plausible tongue? Were there really no dynamic elements of conflict in Scottish society that he was able to harness?

All historical figures ultimately depend for their position in history, as opposed to myth or legend, on their relationship with the social forces at play during their lives. Great men make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing. This alone makes it unlikely that the prince unaided, whatever his charisma, could have overturned a peacefully evolving social system in the Highlands, unless other factors were at work. This inference is strengthened when we examine those clan leaders who actually ‘came out’ for Charles Edward and those who did not. What is revealed is a pattern of big clans, co-opted into the post-1688 economic system, supporting the Whigs while the small clans, those excluded from the benefits of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, support the prince.

It would be a gross oversimplification to say that no one fought for Charles Edward out of loyalty, sentiment or ideological conviction. Clearly many of the great Jacobite leaders did just that: Lord George Murray, Perth, Pitsligo, Balmerino, Glenbucket, Oliphant of Gask.
⁴⁸
Indeed, the solidly Episcopalian, properly so-called ‘feudal’ leaders, were largely actuated by ideological motives, forced their tenants out from a belief in divine providence and the Stuarts’ indefeasible right, and were the major sufferers in consequence when the rising failed.
⁴⁹
But since the cutting edge of Jacobite military strength lay in the clans, it is there that we must look for a more complete understanding of the deeper forces shaping the rising of 1745.

The Highland clans fell into four categories during the rising. There were those who were unwaveringly on the side of the government (Campbells, Munros, Mackays, Rosses, Sutherlands). There were putative Jacobite clans who took no part on the prince’s side (Sinclairs, MacDougalls, MacDonalds of Sleat). There were the clans who did appear in strength for the prince (most of the branches of the Clan Donald, the Camerons, MacPhersons, Macleans, etc.). And there were divided clans who split in their allegiance, notably the Macleods and Mackintoshes.

When we turn to the subject of the clan leaders, a very different picture emerges. The motivation of the chieftains, whom legend has credited with unswerving loyalty to the House of Stuart against their better judgment, takes us into a twilight world of ambivalence. Even the legendary figures of the ’45, like ‘Gentle Lochiel’, shrink to human size when their actions are analysed closely. Lochiel had both a cogent motive for rebellion, in that he was hard pressed by the
Campbells
and had no clear legal title to his lands, and a unique opportunity to improve his fortunes, since Charles Edward indemnified him for future losses.
⁵⁰

The other clan leader with no clear legal title was Alexander MacDonald of Keppoch. Keppoch had an even more precarious hold on his lands than Lochiel, since his clansmen owed feudal duties to lords other than their familial leaders. Because Keppoch had no secure territorial base, his power over his clansmen depended mainly on sheer force of personality, and because such a hold was tenuous, the Keppoch MacDonalds had the highest desertion rate and the greatest reputation for indiscipline in the entire Highland army.
⁵¹

Another clan chief, who merged his tiny force of 120 men with Keppoch’s, was Alexander MacDonald of Glencoe who, though not a regimental commander, was given a seat on the prince’s council by virtue of his nominal status. The decline of the Glencoe MacDonalds in the first half of the eighteenth century had been marked, as their scanty numbers indicated. Glencoe was motivated both by a desperate desire to arrest this decline and by the opportunity to settle scores with the Campbells, whose treachery in the 1692 Glencoe massacre was still remembered with bitterness.

Cluny MacPherson too fits the bill of ambivalence. In August 1745 he was working closely with Duncan Forbes, giving him information on Charles Edward’s advance through the Highlands.
⁵²
It was only after his capture by the Camerons that Cluny emerged as a Jacobite supporter, possibly after gauging the feelings of his own clansmen. Even then, he required to be given security for his lands before raising the MacPhersons.
⁵³

Apart from Mackinnon of Mackinnon, who saw the rising as a chance to escape from the shadow of the two great Skye chiefs, these were the only chieftains to take the field in person. This has been consistently overlooked by those who aver that clan leaders ‘came out’ for Charles Edward out of loyalty and against their own interests. And in each case examined above there was a compelling individual motivation for rebellion. No great Scottish magnate ever committed himself to the ’45 rising.
⁵⁴
Almost all clan chiefs hedged their bets to some degree, and this is true even of those who seemed to have more cogent motives and opportunities to rebel.

The Glengarry and Clanranald MacDonalds, for instance, were both Catholic clans. In the Highlands, unlike England, Catholicism and Jacobitism did go together.
⁵⁵
At the same time, both clans were located in inaccessible areas of the Highlands, which meant that punitive action could be taken against them only by a genuine army
of
occupation (unfortunately, though no one could have foreseen it, especially if prognosticating from the aftermath of the ’15, this is precisely what happened in 1746–7). Unlike the chiefs of Mull and Skye, the Clanranald and Glengarry leaders were immune to incursions from the Royal Navy. Even so these two MacDonald chieftains did not venture to appear openly for the Stuart prince. John MacDonell, patriarch of Glengarry’s, sent his second son Angus to lead the clan regiment, while the Clanranald chief gave the command of his clansmen to his son Ranald.

This ambivalence among the clan leaders was a common phenomenon. Alexander MacDonell of Barisdale refused to compromise himself but kept his options open by sending his son Coll to head a contingent. The small unit of Chisholms from Strathglass was under the command of Roderick Og, fifth son of the chief Roderick, who stayed at home.
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Alexander, chief of the Robertsons of Struan (who served in the Atholl brigade), gave ambiguous instructions to his kinsman Robertson of Woodshiel that his men could join Charles Edward ‘if they please’.
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The Farquharsons of Monaltrie were also led by a kinsman of the chief rather than the chief himself (in this case the head of the family, Finla, was a mental defective). Led by James Farquharson of Balmoral, this sept had been dubious about joining the rising and came out only after Lord Lovat had given a lead.

Lovat of course is the very epitome of the ambivalent Jacobite. A byword for cunning, the very fact of his joining the prince after years of playing off Whig against Jacobite indicated to more perceptive observers that the rising must be a very serious affair indeed and have a well above average chance of success.
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For all that, although Lovat sent Charles Edward a message in August 1745, it was not until December, when all the omens for Jacobite success were propitious, that he sent out the Frasers under his nineteen-year-old son, Simon, master of Lovat. And so well were Lovat’s tracks covered that it took the testimony of John Murray of Broughton, who possessed unimpeachable evidence of Lovat’s complicity, to consign him finally to the executioner’s axe.
⁵⁹

Another important clan, the Stewarts of Appin, were not led by their chief Dugald Stewart but by his kinsman Charles Stewart of Ardshiel. The latter, one of the more colourful leaders in the Jacobite army with a reputation as an expert swordsman, was in any case in a favoured position as a laird and suffered less than most non-chieftain clansmen when in exile in France. While paying their rents to the new incumbent on the Ardshiel estates, his tenants continued
to
send an equivalent amount across the water to their attainted lord.
⁶⁰

Where a clan had risen and the chief stayed at home, the commitment of those who served in the chief’s name was not all that Charles Edward required. There was always some kind of a question mark about the reliability of the Glengarry men, whose indiscipline was second only to Keppoch’s. Angus MacDonell, the nominal commander did not lead his regiment into England, but gave the command to his kinsman Donald MacDonell of Lochgarry.
⁶¹
Lochgarry was thus a proxy of a proxy. Although he had a seat on the prince’s council, his voice counted for little.
⁶²

It is not true that the clans rose out of sentiment for the House of Stuart when it was against their interest to do so, despite the fact that it has become (through reiteration rather than sustained argument) the orthodox view of the ’45 in Scotland. If it was loyalty to James and Charles Edward that brought out the clans, why did they not rise with a greater display of devotion to their rightful kings? Why is there not a single example of a major clan leader unequivocally committing himself out of ideological conviction to Charles Edward? Why, in the case of those who participated, can it never be demonstrated that participation was against a chieftain’s interest? If we accept that the clans rose purely out of loyalty to the Stuarts, how was it that the principles of the chiefs overcame their interests to the point where they sent out their warriors but not to the point where they went out themselves?

All the evidence concerning the clan chiefs – and particularly in the case of ambivalent leaders like Lovat and Cluny, who weighed up with practised skill the likely outcome of the rebellion – demonstrates that the chieftains sent out their Highlanders because they were involved in a life-and-death struggle with the Whigs and their acolytes in Scotland. In this struggle they could score a devastating victory if the Stuarts were restored to the Scottish throne. At the heart of the struggle in Scotland was an irreconcilable conflict between the clan system, of land tenure and the feudal – or in political terms between the Jacobite clans and the Campbells. Beyond this was the threat to the hereditary system in the Highlands posed by the mercantilist/capitalist influences spreading north from the Lowlands. The Jacobite rising of 1745 was the occasion rather than the cause of the destruction of the clan system that the pro-Stuart chieftains had felt to be in danger ever since the Revolution of 1688.
⁶³
It is true that the heritable jurisdictions were anachronistic, but James had promised his followers that the old ways would be phased out only
gradually
, over generations.
⁶⁴
In any case, the general expectation that the Stuarts would ’put the clock back’ led to a feeling that the threat to the Highlands from incipient Lowland capitalism would be removed.

The failure of many chiefs to appear in the field themselves was more in the nature of an insurance policy, in case the rising, which truly did answer to their interests, ended in failure.
⁶⁵
The fact that by and large the Jacobite clans committed their manpower but not their leadership is the clearest possible demonstration that their support was for the movement of revolt primarily, not attachment to the personality of Charles Edward Stuart. Calculation of this sort makes a lot of sense if we posit that the rising fulfilled ‘objective interests’; it makes none at all if the sole motivating factor was loyalty to the Stuarts. Ideological principles are more likely to weigh with the leaders than the led, yet the notion that the clans rose out of dynastic sentiment would carry with it the implication that the tenants were more influenced by ideology than their lords.

This consideration helps to explain some of the paradoxical features of the rising. The most ideologically committed Jacobites, like Lord George Murray, Pitsligo, Glenbucket, Balmerino, experienced the most difficulty in raising men. Those who were clearly not committed, like the chiefs of Grant and Mackintosh, found their men defying them and joining the prince in large numbers.
⁶⁶
Those who were ideologically pro-Stuart tended to be pessimistic about the outcome of the rising; those who had joined in purely for reasons of interest tended to be the optimists. On all counts, then, loyalty to the Stuarts alone, without consideration of interest, was likely to have produced exactly opposite results from those which obtained in 1745.