The Last Highlander (31 page)

Lovat dabbled in local political sport. At a meeting in Inverness, Lovat challenged Lord Fortrose, Seaforth’s heir, to a duel. The old chief shouted and slapped the young man for spreading treasonous gossip about the Fraser chief, a man twice his age and three times his quality. In the end, Lovat struck him with his cane. Fortrose stormed from the meeting, unwilling to be forced to duel with an old man and the most senior chief in the north. Some of Lovat’s Stratherrick lairds followed Fortrose and set upon him in the streets of Inverness. Nothing obviously amiss could be observed among the leaders of the Highlands, but there was terrible tension between them that erupted like this every now and then.

Rain poured down ceaselessly during the summer of 1744. Lovat sat in his room at home while his mind roved abroad. He was semi-invalided and could not walk much unaided, due to arthritis and gout. He heard rumours that General Keith, the best of the Jacobite generals, was going to lead a descent into northern Scotland. Yet he was just as pleased to hear his son-in-law Cluny had a remunerative commission in a new Hanoverian Highland Regiment, which was being raised to defend the Highlands. Wade and Forbes should have asked why no Fraser or Cameron presented themselves as officer material in the Highland Regiment. They thought Lovat was feeling bitter. The dreadful summer weather just went on and on.

In July 1744, Charles Stuart wrote to his cousin Louis XV. He argued that the large-scale despatch of English troops to the Continent had made England vulnerable and asked for support to lead an invasion to Scotland. The following spring, in May 1745, Marshal de Saxe defeated the Duke of Cumberland, Prince William Augustus, George II’s youngest son, at the battle of Fontenoy. The British government despatched more troops to the European front line, including Highlanders. British garrisons at home now functioned at dangerously low levels.

In the Highlands, MacLeod of MacLeod kept up a steady correspondence with his cousin and most important constituent. Duncan Forbes also kept in touch, asking Lovat to chase Cluny to make up his company quickly. Lovat did as he was asked. In some ways, even the Jacobite lords hoped this crisis would pass like the others. Lovat was old and settled and ready to hand on his estate to Simon, who was now nineteen. ‘Only the arrival of a royal Stuart in their midst was likely to shake’ the most important Highland chiefs from their established network of alliances and political alignments, said one historian. Without French support, this divinely appointed apparition was very improbable and totally unwelcome. Therefore, when the Prince’s Secretary, Murray of Broughton, in Scotland to stir up the Jacobites, received a letter from Charles saying he ‘was fully resolved and determined to come into Scotland … He was to set out in June; and proposed to come to the west of Scotland; and appointed signals for his landing,’ Broughton sent the letter to Lord Perth, one of the Association. It soon found its way into Lovat’s hands. He turned the scheme down flat. This was a ‘foolish and rash undertaking … he should not land; and if he did … none of the men would join him,’ Lovat replied. ‘He should
not
land, but return,’ Lovat repeated, until he brought the French with him. He spoke for all of them. Charles should be aware ‘of the bad situation that their country lay under’ after too many bad harvests. Lovat was about seventy-three, Charles in his early twenties. At his age, on his mission from St Germains, Lovat would have jumped the gun to shock the Scottish Jacobites into action; but he was older and wiser, and the country had been at peace for thirty years.

Disliking what he heard, Charles ignored them and embarked. He kept his movements a secret from the French and from James, his father. He left Paris and travelled to the French coast near Nantes. There, on 3 July 1745, he embarked on a frigate, the
Doutelle
. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion had begun, and hardly anyone had noticed.

TWENTY-NINE

Rebellion, July–December 1745

‘To have bloodshed in our bowels is a horrible thing, to any man that loves Scotland’

– LOVAT TO DUNCAN FORBES

Imprecise intelligence arrived in London that some Jacobites were embarking from France. General Guest, commanding Edinburgh Castle, wrote to Lord Lovat. Sir Hector MacLean, chief of the MacLean clan, had just passed through his hands, summoned to London for questioning. His two fellow travellers went along with him. ‘If they are plotters against his Majesty’s government or not I am no judge, but if they are, they are very poor ones, for he had no money to pay for his linen washing the few days that he was here.’ MacLean was lame in both feet, and his companion was ‘a tall, black man, whose strength does not seem to lie in his head’. Quite likely, thought Lovat, he spoke Gaelic not English, and could not understand what Guest said to him. ‘The French King must certainly have a low opinion of us if he thinks
these
are fit to overturn a state,’ Guest laughed, ‘with Lord John Drummond and his family at their head. If he employs no better, I don’t think but the brave Frasers and the best of their friends will be able to give them battle, come when they will!’

Guest called for a postbag, sealed his letter and strolled off to enjoy the sense of superiority he felt from his elevated position on top of the plug of an extinct volcano, one hundred feet above the city. It was impossible to see how a crippled Hebridean bankrupt, his dumb helper, and a motley crew of Jacobite Drummonds in Perth might stage a coup d’état.

No more could he imagine the
Doutelle
, carrying Charles Edward Stuart towards him. On 12 July, the
Doutelle
had rendezvoused with the
Elisabeth
, a 64-gun warship, carrying arms and 700 men of the Irish Brigade. Both ships sailed on towards Scotland. On 20 July, a hundred miles west of the Lizard peninsula they encountered the
Lion
, a British sixty-gunner. The
Lion
and the
Elisabeth
closed on each other for four hours. At the end the
Lion
drifted, a dismasted wreck, 45 dead, 107 wounded out of a complement of 400. The
Elisabeth
, also crippled, could not even heave to against the
Doutelle
to transfer across the 1,500 muskets and 1,800 broadswords she carried, nor, as importantly, the 700 battle-hardened soldiers she had on board.

Charles shrugged this off too. It was just another setback. They were a fact of his life. He sailed on up the coast of Britain, heading for the Hebrides, and the hundred fingered inlets of the coastline of Western Scotland. Not expecting an invasion sailing his way, Sir Norman MacLeod MP sat in Dunvegan Castle on Skye and kept up his gossipy correspondence with his old friend and cousin, Lovat. MacLeod’s clan had been out in 1715 for Prince Charles’s father, James. Thirty years later, it was not armed rebellion but the usual moans and groans that occupied their chief. It was typical, MacLeod said, a great heap of friends arrived and he, their host, immediately fell ill with a ‘feverish disorder’. ‘It seems we are to be always out of order in company,’ he sighed. I suffered ‘a vast feebleness in all my joints and a great disorder in my stomach’. He got better, then relapsed, and now he was better again and thought he must be over it. The friends had gone.

Lovat questioned him sharply about the lack of commissions offered to Frasers in the 4th Earl of Loudon’s new regiment, the 64th Regiment of Foot, raised on 28 August 1745. Once accoutred, they would defend the Highlands and also march to support General Cope, commander-in-chief of British forces. The main reason was that Lovat had declined a commission for his son, Sandy, MacLeod explained. ‘Want of timeous application’ by the rest of Lovat’s kin was the other reason. MacLeod promised to try and get an ensign’s commission for Fraser of Foyers, but not for ‘your Pimp Churgeon’, Fraser of Achnagairn, Lovat’s bibulous family physician and brother-in-law of Lord President Forbes.

Lovat told Duncan he had wanted an officer’s commission for the sixteen-year-old Sandy, to command one of the new companies, but on getting the boy home Lovat was amazed to find the boy was a midget. Forbes dismissed the feeble excuse. He offered not only a commission for Sandy, but was waiting for ‘a list from you of the person’s names to whom you would have the commissions for Captain, Lieutenant and Ensign given’. Duncan banged the real point home. ‘My labour for the best part of thirty years is lost, if I need to employ many words to convince you that I wish your family heartily well.’ They were sparring partners, but very old acquaintances. Duncan was desperate for the Frasers to join this Hanoverian regiment. It would send out loyal signals to the disaffected Highland chiefs, many of whom deferred to Lovat, and calm the whole region. Duncan also hoped to protect the old chief.

More important than Sandy Fraser, Forbes wondered what Lovat’s intentions were for his son and heir, the Master of Lovat. The Frasers, thanks only to their chief’s lifelong effort, now sat firm in the heart of the establishment in the Highlands. The Lord President and many of the Fraser elite wanted the Master to be sent out of harm’s way to Leyden, in the Netherlands, fiercely Protestant and a great seat of learning. Fraser of Balnain offered to pay for his first year’s expenses if his father did not have the money. After the first year, Lovat could reimburse Balnain, and take over the financing of Simon’s Continental education if needs be. Lovat listened, hesitated, and agreed. Next day, he changed his mind. He was in at least two minds and could not act.

The government was confident the French intended this flurry of invasion gossip to divert their attention from Cumberland’s campaign in Flanders. As a precaution though, ministers requested Cumberland to send home some troops to discourage the French. No one, including the Association, could see beyond France and did not consider seriously the freelance enterprise darting towards the Western Isles of Scotland.

‘That mad and unaccountable gentleman!’ Lovat exploded to Lochiel when he was at last informed that Charles had landed, on the tiny island of Eriskay on 25 July, with no evidence he acted in concert with the French. Barely able to stand, Lovat could not contain his excitement and irritation. He hobbled up and down his room at Dounie, letter in his hand, hearing the place and manner of the Prince’s arrival from the Jacobite soldier in front of him. No, the Bonnie Prince had no troops: he had had to leave them floating around on the disabled
Elisabeth
. No, he had no strategy or plans to show the arrival and disposition of French support. Most of his weaponry was with the abandoned troops. He had some men, about twenty-five he thought, a very light war chest and a few hundred sword and guns.

MacLeod of MacLeod moved from his fortress on Skye to his house at Glenelg on the mainland, and put his ear to the ground. Completely unknown to his ‘dearest friend’, Lord Lovat, MacLeod passed his intelligence to Duncan Forbes as well. ‘I know from Lovat his forwardness to serve the government,’ MacLeod said to Forbes. Yes and no, thought Duncan. Since they all believed this landing was a fiasco, MacLeod was confident he could keep his fellow conspirator at home. Lovat was sure MacLeod would rise if and when French back-up arrived.

‘He did not come like a Prince,’ Lovat wrote with contempt. The boy should go home. Or, go to France. Go anywhere. He should not come back without serious military support, and until his appearance looked less likely to get them all killed than it did right now. But Charles had no ears for this negative chatter from his family’s ancient Jacobite warhorses. He had ‘come to make his people happy’, he announced in heavily accented English to an assembled group at Glenfinnan, half of whom only spoke Gaelic and did not understand him. He sent out letters ordering all the chiefs to rise and rally to him, to help him bring this happiness to everyone. MacDonald of Boisdale delivered the answer from the Skye chiefs, MacLeod of MacLeod and MacDonald of Sleat. If the ship was still there, could they ‘beg’ that he ‘go back to France’?

‘Return home, sir,’ MacDonald of Boisdale advised.

‘I am come home, sir,’ Charles said, and ordered his ship back to France.

Lovat dismissed the man Charles sent to summon him with the reply that when the French embarked, the Frasers would rise for the Stuarts. Lovat contacted some of the leading clansmen, including his son Simon, the Master of Lovat, and Charles Fraser of Inverallochy, and started to put his clan on a fighting footing. This was exactly the move men like Fraser of Balnain and Duncan Forbes expected and dreaded. If Lovat were unwaveringly loyal, Duncan thought he would have accepted commissions for his sons and gentlemen, ordered the clan to go and muster under Loudon, as repeatedly requested – not have them muster at Dounie under a known Jacobite chieftain, Inverallochy. In the face of great opposing forces, Charles Stuart and his Highland supporters on one side, and government men like Duncan Forbes and the Earl of Loudon on the other, Lovat hung fire.

MacLeod wrote to him. He must have heard ‘some of our unlucky neighbours are up in arms in order to support the Pretended Prince of Wales. The consequence as to them must be fatal,’ MacLeod said. ‘As for you, your loyalty and prudence is so well known that it’s easy to guess the part you will act.’ MacLeod and Sir Alexander MacDonald resolved, he said, ‘as we are armless … to sit quiet at least till we have orders to the contrary, and are enabled to exert our strength if required, in support of the government’. Lovat did not believe this was MacLeod’s real sentiment. It was a front. In all their conversations at Dounie and in Edinburgh, the Skye chiefs promised to bring out a couple of thousand men between them, and influence others to bring out more. Yet Lovat did not like this level of explicit rejection of Charles when they could just shuffle about, like him.

They were all ‘armless’ at present, Lovat agreed, but they waited to rise
for
the Prince, not
against
him when arms came from France. That was what all the hosting and feasting at Dounie over the last six or seven years had been for – preparations for this moment, and agreement on how to act. Lovat wrote a letter roasting his fellow chief. He had put himself in enormous debt to get this man made MP, and keep him loyal to the Highland confederation.

What Lovat could not know was that Duncan Forbes had been blackmailing MacLeod and MacDonald of Sleat. Five years earlier, strapped for cash, the two of them had decided to sell some of their humbler kindred into slavery to American plantation owners. Women and children suddenly disappeared from beaches and hillsides. When the outcry reached the authorities, Duncan Forbes threatened to prosecute and ruin MacLeod and MacDonald. The two chiefs appealed to Duncan, old friend, Lord President of the Court of Session. ‘A prosecution would be attended with a multitude of inconveniences,’ MacLeod opined. Therefore, it ‘ought in my weak judgement to be shunned’. Duncan was ‘the only person on earth we would mostly, nay entirely, rely on. Therefore in God’s name, do what you think best for us,’ he appealed. Duncan thought it best, looking at the wider situation, to stop proceedings, and close the two chiefs in his fist, protected, unable to escape. When Lovat began to question MacLeod and MacDonald now, he could not see that Duncan held these two powerful Highland chiefs in his grip, and was calling in his favour.

Lovat looked out from the battlements of Dounie across the Aird of Lovat. In the closing years of his life, all he had to do was clear the debts from his country and hand everything over to his beloved son. Looking west, where the backs of the hills unfolded like a herd of giant ancient beasts, he knew it was one thing to feel resentment and frustration, and to plot a utopia of restoration to change the balance of things. The reality was terrible to contemplate, win or lose. It would happen here, up against his house sides. Civil war was a monumental clan feud. It would slip all bounds of decency. ‘To have bloodshed in our bowels is a horrible thing, to any man that loves Scotland,’ he said to Duncan, sombrely. Forbes agreed it was hellish. ‘I pray God we may not have civil war in Scotland,’ Lovat said, though he prepared for it. Lovat was not a coward. He would face the coming crisis if it did not march around him. This too was his duty.

*    *    *

In England, Flanders and Hanover, news of the landing provoked more irritated anxiety than panic. After thirty years of peace, the news from Scotland was incredible to think of, but the authorities in the Highlands seemed to be handling it efficiently. The arrival of a few mad papists did not threaten a major power. Few could even picture where the menace was. In London there was a run on maps that showed the location, very roughly, of Western Scotland.