1746.] PROJECTED NIGHT-ATTACK ON THE KING'S CAMP. 6 167 Our word was king James the Eighth.' We were likewise forbid in the attack to make any use of our fire-arms, but only of sword, dirk, and bayonet; to cut the tent-strings, and pull down the poles, and where we observed a swelling or bulge in the fallen tent there to strike and push vigorously."* The project utterly failed. The darkness of the night made the way uncertain over the rough and swampy waste. The men were weary and half-famished. Lord George Murray had the command of the van. About two o'clock he halted; for there were four miles still to march, and there was a great interval between the two columns. A surprise had become impossible. "It was found impracticable," says lord George, "to be near the enemy till it was within an hour of daylight; and as our only hope was surprising them, and attacking them before day, we were forced to give it up and return to Culloden, where we got about five."+ On Monday, the 14th of April, says a narrative of the period, "the young chevalier mustered his troops in the town of Inverness, and marched along the lines, encouraging them as he passed. Never were men in more exalted spirits." On the 15th, writes the chaplain, MacLachlan, in his Journal, our prince royal had a review in the Muir of Culloden. And as I chanced to come close to him stepping up the hill, I saluted him in my ordinary way— 'God bless and prosper your royal highness.' To which he vouchsafed a reply in a familiar manner, and with a charming smile, 'It will be Gladsmuir, wherever it be.'' Never, under any circumstances, did this confidence in his destiny appear to have deserted the adventurer-a confidence that might have betrayed him earlier to his ruin, had he not been surrounded by men of judgment and experience. The projected surprise at Nairn would probably have terminated fatally, had the attack upon the royal camp been made after the sun had risen-if the desire of the prince to attack at any hour had been complied with. The jaded men who returned to Culloden Moor after that night march were in a very unfit condition for the final struggle of the morning of the 16th. Great exertions were made to procure them food upon the dreary waste; but many had gone to Inverness to seek refreshment for themselves. The duke of Cumberland was close at hand. Murray had been convinced the day before that the open muir "was certainly not proper for the Highlanders." He caused the ground "on the other side the water of Nairn" to be viewed. "It was found to be hilly and boggy, so that the enemy's cannon and horse could be of no great use to them there." § When it was proposed to take this better position, the old confidence in some miraculous success prevailed, and the insurgents prepared for battle. It was eleven o'clock when the king's army was seen advancing. It was formed in three lines, one of which was a reserve. The two foremost lines were so disposed that if the first line were broken by the Highland charge, the second line should stand firm. Cannon were placed between the battalions, and cavalry on the flanks. The men had been trained to remain steady under a rush such as that which had been so fatal at Preston-Pans; and they had been instructed to direct the bayonet against the right breast of each opposing Highlander, so as not to be met by his target. The battle-field, so unfavourable to "Lockhart Papers," p. 508. "Jacobite Memoirs," p. 122. § "Jacobite Memoirs," p. 121. 166 THE PASSAGE OF THE SPEY. [1746. The visions and the gold which were occasionally dispatched from France. The active and hardy mountaineers engaged in various expeditions; but the advantages which they gained were of little importance in the great issue which was approaching. Time was working to their destruction. Highland army was without pay; and they sold their allowances of oatmeal "for their other needs, at which the poor creatures grumbled exceedingly.' They were certainly not in the best fighting condition, when, on the 8th of April, the duke of Cumberland commenced his march from Aberdeen. As he advanced along the coast, his army of about nine thousand men were abundantly provided from the transports, which "moved along shore with a gentle breeze and a fair wind."+ On the 11th the army reached the Spey. As the duke approached, lord John Drummond, who was posted to guard the passage of the deep and rapid river, fell back. The Highland officer says in his journal, "to guard the Spey was ane easy matter." Volunteer Ray confirms this opinion, in his description of the passage of the English troops: "I was in my station at the head of the regiment, where I very narrowly escaped being shot; for some of the rebels fired at us across the river, kneeling and taking sight as at a blackbird. We entered the river with a guide wading on foot to show where the ford lay; which was bad enough, having loose stones at the bottom, which made it very difficult for man or horse to step without falling, the water belly-deep and very rapid. The ford not lying right across, we were obliged to go mid-way into the river, then turn to the right, and go down it for about sixty yards, and then turn to the left, inclining upwards to the landing-place. In this situation, had the rebels stood us here it might have been of bad consequence to our army, they having a great advantage over us, and might have defended this important pass a long time, to our great loss; but they wanted to draw our army over, and farther into their country, from whence, in their imagination, we were never to return. When we got up the banks on the other side of the river, the rebels were all fled, and appeared on a bill about half a mile distant, from which they retreated out of sight, as we advanced."‡ On the 15th the duke's army reached Nairn, and there halted. The prince's army was encamped on Culloden Moor, about twelve miles distant. The greater part of the moor is in the parish of Daviot. The district is not mountainous. "The land rises like a broken wave from the sea, in some places with a bank of considerable steepness and height; then sinks into a vale of moss land (from which, till reduced to cultivation, the town of Inverness used to be supplied with rushes); thence it ascends again to the parish of Croy and the Moor of Culloden, which extends along the ridge."§ On this flat moor, so unsuited to their peculiar tactics, the Highland army awaited the coming struggle. But doubts came over their leaders, and something bolder might be attempted. In the afternoon of the 15th a night attack upon the royal army was resolved upon. The English, it was deemed, would be sleeping, after the drunken revels of the duke's birthday, which they had halted at Nairn to celebrate. The Highland officer says, "We set out about eight o'clock that night, with express orders to observe the profoundest silence in our march. * "Lockhart Papers," vol. ii. p. 508. + Ray, p. 312. § "Statistical Account of Scotland"-Inverness-shire. 1746.] BARBARITIES AFTER CULLODEN. 169 hear it, my Lord Duke; I fear all is lost.' The prince, knowing of the disaster, stepped on, and a good number of retreaters followed him." This battle, which conclusively ended a dynastic contest of fifty-seven years, did not continue for fifty-seven minutes. If we could here close the narrative of the battle of Culloden, and of the military proceedings which resulted from the victory of the established government, we should not have necessarily to excite the indignation of every reader against the author of barbarities which, happily, very rarely occur in the wars of civilized nations. We scarcely know how to deal with the details of those atrocities which a young prince of the house of Brunswick deemed it necessary to perpetrate. In the valuable collection of "Jacobite Memoirs," there are a hundred and seventeen pages headed "Barbarities after Culloden." To enter minutely into a view of these disgusting occurrences, is scarcely necessary for any lessons of historical importance. To slur them over, would be a vain attempt to cancel a very black page in our country's annals. We doubt, however, whether a rapid summary, or a minute exposition, of these facts, can have its use "in showing how liable an improved system of government, like that of the Brunswick family, is to fall into the worst errors of that which preceded it; and how liable the people are to be disappointed in their most sanguine expectations of political perfection." The editor of these memoirs would compare the atrocities after Culloden with "the tyrannical barbarity of the latter Stuarts," upon the principle of the one being "a good offset" to the other. It appears to us that the only real advantage to be derived from such narratives, is to make us grateful that we live in times when "an improved system of government" has gradually produced such a state of public opinion, that the ordinary tyrannies of the days of James II., and the exceptional cruelties of the days of George II., could not be repeated without more danger to the throne than the revolts which they sought to crush. The national prejudices of the English at that period, and at subsequent times when these prejudices were even more intense, never led them to countenance the barbarity after Culloden. It is some satisfaction to know that William of Cumberland was "during many years one of the most unpopular men in England." The alderman of London, who, when it was proposed to present the duke with the freedom of some city company, exclaimed, "then let it be of the Butchers," anticipated the feeling of a better time, when bravery and compassion would be held as inseparable in the character of the great soldier. The people of the duke of Cumberland's day dreaded that he might be the man to subject them to a military despotism. His nephews feared him. He was compared with the Crookback Richard, who murdered his nephews in the Tower. All this was unjust enough, no doubt, but it showed the feelings of the English nation with regard to the great blot upon the character of one who was blunt, brave, and honest, but who believed too much in the power of brute force in countries under military government. He lived for many years in the retirement of Windsor Great Park. He amused himself by planting hills with Scotch firs, and in making an artificial lake and a cascade, as if to produce a miniature resemblance of * Introduction to this Section of "Jacobite Memoirs," by the Editor, Mr. R. Chambers. + Macaulay-" Essay on Chatham." VOL. VI. N 170 BARBARITIES AFTER CULLODEN. [1746. the scenery in which he had earned his glory and his twenty-five thousand a year. Perhaps in some moments his favourite Virginia Water, then a wild and unenclosed tract, might have suggested a compunctious remembrance of the solitary lakes, the woods and the wastes, amongst which he had hunted Highlanders as beasts of prey. The slaughter of the wounded rebels upon the field of Culloden, the atrocious treatment of the prisoners, and the cold-blooded murders committed on the first and second days after the battle, are much too circumstantially detailed by many witnesses, to allow us to believe that the odium which ultimately rested upon the duke of Cumberland, was the effect of national or party violence. Indifferent to the disgrace he was bringing upon the English nation, he looked at the Rebellion as a crime against his house, to be dealt with in a spirit of revenge. "I tremble," he wrote from Scotland, "for fear that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of our family." In another letter he says that "a little blood-letting has only weakened the madness and not cured it." The "little blood-letting" is the opprobrium which a century of equal justice to Scotland has scarcely yet obliterated. The accursed story may be thus briefly told. On the day of the battle, the wounded rebels that lay on the field received none of that aid which brave men usually offer to their vanquished enemies. The soldiers went up and down, knocking such on the head as had any remains of life in them. The weather was cold; the dead, and those supposed to be dead, had been stripped. But, naked and starving, some wretched creatures were still alive on the morning of the 17th of April. A resident in Inverness, who claims to be regarded as a supporter of the government, writes to bishop Forbes, that although the report of the cruelties was much aggravated, "it is certain that a resolution was taken, that it was not proper to load or crowd this little town with a multitude of wounded and incurable men of our enemy's; and, therefore, a party was ordered to the field of battle, who gathered all the wounded men from the different corners of the field, to one or two parts; and there, on a little rising hillock or ground properly planted, they were finished, with great despatch; and this, as you and everybody else must own, was, as to them, performing the greatest act of humanity, as it put an end to many miserable lives, remaining in the utmost torture, without any hopes of relief." * This "greatest act of humanity" is termed a most bloody and ruthless deed by a more modern authority, † by whom it is stated that the wounded men still alive were collected in two heaps, and a six-pounder applied to each heap. The following evidence to the fact is then adduced: "One Mac Iver, a private, though mutilated in several parts of his body, survived this massacre, a dismal memorial of Cumberland's tender mercies. The man died near Beauly, about the year 1796, where many are still living, who may have known him. But to put the bloody deed beyond the shadow of doubt, the writer of this account knew for several years a John Reid, who fought that day in the second battalion of the Royal Scots, and heard from his lips that he saw the cruel deed, and thanked God that he had nothing to do with the black wark. "Statistical Account of Scotland-Parishes of Croy and Dalcross." 1746.] IMPOLICY OF THE TREATMENT OF THE REBELS. 171 John fought at the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, and only died about the year 1807, in the 105th year of his age, and in the full enjoyment of all his mental faculties. He was a lively little man, and retained a correct and vivid recollection of what he had seen and heard." The slaughter of the miserable survivors found in the field, was not the only atrocity of that week of triumph and of shame. To a little cot-house, where goats or sheep used to shelter, about a quarter of a mile distant from the battle-ground, many of the wounded men had crawled in the night-time. They were found by the soldiers. The door of the hut was shut; fire was put to the frail building; and thirty-two persons, including some beggars who had come to the field for plunder, perished in the flames. On the 18th, parties were sent to search the houses in the neighbourhood of the battle; to remove the wounded, and to kill them. John Fraser, called Mac Iver, an officer in Lovat's regiment, with eighteen other officers, had been carried wounded to Culloden House, the residence of the lord president Forbes. They were treated with kindness by his agent, "who performed acts of beneficence to the wounded in and about the house of Culloden, at the hazard of his life." These nineteen men were tied with ropes; thrown into a cart; carried some distance; and shot under the park-wall. Fraser, though left for dead, after some hours, dragged his mangled carcase to a little distance. Lord Boyd riding by, espied him; had him removed and concealed; and the poor fellow recovered, to remain a crippled memorial of these atrocities. To go over the afflicting details of military executions ;-of men whipped to extort confession ;-of boys, women, and old men murdered and maltreated; -of prisoners left to perish upon insufficient allowance in filthy dungeons ;would be as disgusting to our readers as the perusal of the documents has been to ourselves. The folly of these proceedings is as manifest as their wickedness. A Londoner, who travelled in the north of Scotland in 1750, writes to his friend, "I happened to fall in with a venerable old gentleman, an honest Whig, who, looking me seriously in the face, asked if the duke of Cumberland was not a Jacobite ? A Jacobite!' said I, 'how comes that in your head?' 'Sure,' replied the old gentleman, 'the warmest zealot in the interest of the prince could not possibly devise more proper methods for sowing the seeds of Jacobitism and disaffection, than the duke of Cumberland did." The same letter-writer relates two circumstances sufficiently characteristic of the temper and manners of some commanders of that day-their contempt for civilians, and for civil authority. We must indeed receive with the doubt that ought always to attach to hearsay evidence the anecdotes thus related. But if not strictly to be relied upon, they show something of the prevailing opinions of the time. The provost and aldermen of Inverness went to the levee of the duke of Cumberland. One of their number, Mr. Hossack, a friend of Duncan Forbes, presumed to say, that he hoped mercy would be mingled with judgment; upon which Hawley cried out, "D-n the puppy! does he pretend to dictate here? Carry him away." Another cried, "Kick him out," -- and he was kicked out. Duncan Forbes himself the wisest and truest friend of the Hanoverian government, who expended "Jacobite Memoirs," p. 274. |