The Last Highlander (33 page)

Bonnie Prince Charlie left Perth and headed south. By 16 September he was standing outside the walls of Edinburgh, demanding the city surrender. The Magistrates of Edinburgh rushed round to see Robert Craigie, the Lord Advocate, and pledged to levy enough money to pay for a thousand men for three months to defend them. But the next day, taking advantage of an open gate to walk in to Edinburgh, with ‘the Provost secretly helping’, Prince Charles’s forces took the capital of Scotland. He rode down the High Street and entered Holyrood, the palace of his forebears, the Stuart monarchs who ruled Scotland in an unbroken line for 300 years.

General Guest pulled his regular troops up into the castle at the other end of the Royal Mile from Holyrood. They barricaded themselves in. The Prince proclaimed his father James VIII, and his soldiers pitched camp on the fields surrounding Holyrood. An Edinburgh doctor came to have a look and commented that the ordinary Jacobite soldiers, ‘in general … were of a low stature and dirty, and of a contemptible appearance’, though their officers were ‘gentleman-like’, ‘civil,’ ‘polished and gentle’. The Prince rode among his men, ‘a good-looking man of about five feet ten inches; his hair dark red, and his eyes black. His features were regular, his visage long, much sunburnt and freckled,’ as you would expect from a Scottish skin nurtured in Continental heat, ‘and his countenance thoughtful and melancholy.’

Charles resupplied his army, and a few days later marched it to confront General Cope who was heading his way. Cope had consulted with the Lord President and other Hanoverians in Inverness. They had advised he leave by sea. Cope loaded his troops and left the Highlands, eventually arriving at Dunbar, to the east of Edinburgh, too late to try and prevent the city’s surrender. The two sides met at Prestonpans. Cope was decisively beaten within the first fifteen minutes, collapsing before a classic Highland charge. The Jacobites lost about 25 men, Cope around 300. Cope’s army, its nerves already shattered by the Highland experience before the battle, was utterly destroyed. The Jacobites took 1,500 prisoners and Cope fled to Berwick. It was to be the last victory gained by swords in Britain.

Loudon had brought his men from Inverness to fight and was fortunate to escape with most of his forces back to Dunbar. A fortnight later, he commandeered a ship and sailed with the rest of his men, arms and money back to Inverness. When Loudon docked at Inverness harbour, Duncan Forbes came out to meet him. They agreed Loudon must greatly strengthen the government’s hand in the north.

The Lord Advocate wrote that ‘this defeat will make it a dangerous experiment for his Majesty’s troops to engage the rebels a second time without a visible superiority’. Cumberland examined every report handed to him, until he grasped what happened and why. He concluded that the superiority they needed was tactical not numerical. British troops must study the Highland charge and develop a tactic to counter it. The shockwaves of the defeat ended meaningful British opposition to the Stuarts in Scotland. Prestonpans brutally dispelled the myth of the inability of irregular troops to meet a regular force in open combat. Some important fortifications held out against Charles at Dumbarton, Edinburgh Castle, Stirling, Fort Augustus and Fort William. The garrisons in these ancient forts were not enough by themselves to support George II’s position as King in Scotland. The soldiers needed to come out and engage the enemy in open combat; but after Prestonpans, British troops were understandably reluctant to come out and face the same treatment from Highland broadswords.

The Bailiff of Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders complained after Prestonpans, that ‘although our country must now be branded with disaffection, yet I’m sure the government has friends enough amongst us to have prevented things coming this length, if the Disarming Act had not bound up their hands and both deprived them of arms and the warrant to use them’. This was the point that many loyal Scots, including Lovat, made over the last twenty years. Walpole’s administration bore some responsibility for Charles’s successes.

The battle of Prestonpans shocked and terrified the people of England. Wade was raised to the rank of field marshal, though he feared ‘England is for the first comer, and if 6,000 French land before the Dutch
and English
are here, that London is theirs.’ Charles raced south.

*    *    *

MacDonald of Barrisdale and Glengarry galloped north from Edinburgh to Inverness and charged into the hall at Castle Dounie to bring news of the victory from two who had won it. ‘A victory obtained, not to be paralleled in history!’ Lovat shouted, and raised his glass again and again. Representatives from both sides streamed through his doors. Lord John Drummond came to press Lovat to bring out his clan for the Prince. A group of them talked urgently in Lovat’s room. A packet arrived. It contained James Stuart’s ‘Manifesto and Declaration’. Lovat unfolded it, handed it to his son and ‘ordered the Master immediately to read’ it. As he listened, Lovat sat in his chair and beat his hand against the arm, repeating, ‘his right master’ would prevail.

‘We see a nation always famous for valour … reduced to the condition of a province, under the specious pretence of an Union with a more powerful neighbour; in consequence of this pretended union, grievous and unprecedented taxes have been laid on, and levied with severity … and these have not failed to produce that poverty and decay of trade, which were easily foreseen,’ James wrote.

‘We will, with all convenient speed, call a free Parliament … to redress all grievances … which have been the consequence of the pretended Union … We will preserve right of worship to Protestants, and schools and colleges … We are resolved to act always by the advice of our Parliaments, and to value none of our titles so much as that of common father of our people.’

Lovat said that ‘whoever looked the Pretender, his lawful King, in the face, he would own he was his only rightful King, as he himself owned him to be’. His loyalty was amazing in some ways, considering the treatment he had received from James in France.

A servant opened the doors to announce supper, and they went through to the great hall to dine. The room teemed with Frasers, Drummonds, MacDonalds, Mackenzies, dogs and servants. Pipers screamed the battle cries of the clans. Gaelic toasts of ‘Confusion to the White Horse and all the generation of them’ roared round the room. They dipped and soared in and out of English and Gaelic as the subject demanded. Barrisdale and Glengarry kept up the tales of their miraculous triumphs. Young Alexander MacLeod, who had come out in spite of his chief MacLeod’s order to stay at home, turned to Lovat. ‘All would be well if my Lord Lovat would pull off the mask,’ he appealed to him.

Lovat drew himself to his feet. All eyes turned to him. MacShimidh swept off the loose soft cap he wore at home to cover his shaved head, and hurled it to the floor. ‘There it is then!’ he cried. He was a slightly shocking sight.

Next morning, Lovat entered his room. His secretary, Robert Fraser, looked up from his Lordship’s desk. Lovat asked what he was doing. Robert sat back and showed him. Lists of names trailed up and down the page. John Fraser of Byerfield, Lovat’s factor, ‘ordered me to make a list of the names of all the men capable of bearing arms north of Loch Ness’, Robert said. Lovat nodded in satisfaction.

Lovat’s lookouts came to say British soldiers were riding towards them. The rebels in the castle quickly withdrew. Duncan and Loudon sent British officers every other day, to make sure the Fraser chief was safe, they said. He expressed his fears due to lack of arms so often, they came to reassure him their eye was always on him and his kindred. Loudon again offered to garrison some men in the Aird, for his better safety. Lovat again declined, but thanked him.

Orders for supplies to be delivered to Dounie arrived daily at the Fraser merchants in Inverness. The town was very unsettled. Hugh Inglis, skipper of the Inverness boat,
Pledger
, was a Jacobite and yet resented the uprising because it ruined his trade. He complained it was absurdly expensive to get insurance for cargos, with the heightened risk of privateering. Lovat’s trading partner, Bailie Steuart, was also Jacobite, but would never rebel. This type of sentiment was what Duncan hoped accounted for Lovat’s continued peacefulness; Lovat could indulge his passion for the Stuarts as a comforting pastime. He believed they would hold off civil war. The Reverend MacBean, the Forbeses’ favourite preacher and minister in the town, was staunch Hanoverian and Presbyterian, and he was observed chasing his daughter through the streets and physically tearing the white Jacobite cockade off her hat which she had been parading through Inverness.

A blacksmith and a tinker was called out to Castle Dounie and stayed for a fortnight. The clang of arms being repaired and horseshoes beaten into shape, tolled out across the courtyard. Lovat ordered his agent in the town to send out a man to make bell tents – little ‘lodges to keep arms dry from the rain’. Lovat’s chamberlain, Fraser of Byerfield, ordered that Lovat’s crest be painted on them. The tent maker did not see his chief until the last day of the job. He thought Lovat looked very sick and walked slowly between the tents, taking a colour in his hand and examining it for quality. Lovat was under the most enormous pressure. What should he do?

About 700 men rendezvoused outside Dounie, to see ‘who was capable of bearing arms, and who had any’. Women of the clan went about pinning white cockades and yew sprigs on each Fraser bonnet, uniting the Jacobite and Fraser badges – madness if Lovat still intended to signal loyalty to the Crown. The groom from the castle, going out to catch some of Lovat’s horses, was amazed to see so many men. The MacDonalds of Barrisdale and of Kinlochmoidart galloped in with their dragoons. Barrisdale’s horse’s saddlecloth had ‘GR’ on it. Lovat’s groom guessed he had stolen it at Prestonpans. All through the Aird, Jacobite officers lodged in ‘farmers’ houses, change houses and ale houses’, sometimes riding up in the evenings to dine at Dounie.

The Earl of Cromartie and his men arrived to consult him as he lay in his bed. These days Lovat was often bedridden. Fraser of Byerfield never left his chief’s side. Lovat asked the MacDonald and Mackenzie chieftains what kind of man was Prince Charles. Barrisdale was tired of anecdotes and pushed impatiently for the old chief to give the order to march, that would finally commit the Frasers. Lovat was waiting for Sir Norman MacLeod from Skye, still unaware he had changed sides. MacLeod had made Lovat promise to wait for the arrival of the MacLeods before he let the Frasers go.

It was now October and the campaigning season was officially over. Impatient, Barrisdale pulled out, and some of Lovat’s Frasers followed a couple of days later. Lovat had not given the order, and he brought them all back again. He found these young chieftains hot headed and hard to control. They were fierce and loyal and mad for the excitement of action with no idea of the consequences. From Holyrood, Prince Charles tried to force Lovat’s hand, and make it impossible for him not to come out. ‘Charles, Prince of Wales, and Regent of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, and the Dominions thereunto belonging’ ordered ‘Lord Lovat to apprehend and secure the person of Duncan Forbes of Culloden … We now judge it necessary hereby to empower you to seize upon the person of the above-named Duncan Forbes,’ commanded Charles, ‘to carry him prisoner to us at Edinburgh.’ The order was issued at Holyroodhouse on 23 September 1745. It was addressed to Fraser of Foyers, head of some aggressively Jacobite Stratherrick men. If Charles could force Lord Lovat to come to him with the Lord President in tow, the effect would be explosive.

Lovat wrote to Duncan, fuming about the rumour the Lord President was about to be kidnapped. ‘There has been several villainous, malicious and ridiculous reports that vexed me very much.’ Lovat truly wanted nothing to do with the kidnapping of his old friend. Duncan answered miserably and angrily. The tales made no more impression on him ‘than to induce me to take that sort of care of myself, without which I should have been laughed at’, he said. He had fortified and garrisoned Culloden House.

Nevertheless, on the night of 15 October, 200 men descended from Stratherrick, under the leadership of Fraser of Foyers and Lovat’s aggressive chamberlain, Fraser of Byerfield. (Foyers’s father had gone out with Simon’s older brother to fight for James II in 1688.) They crossed behind Inverness, and halted at the bushes by the gates of Culloden House. Some of Loudon’s Independent Company were on sentry duty. Out of the scrub charged the caterwauling Frasers. Duncan woke in his bed with a jump to the sound of muskets. The sentries returned fire and turned a cannon on the would-be kidnappers. On both sides, the men dived behind scrub and sniped at each other in the pitch dark. As cannon balls tore into their cover, the kidnappers fled.

Duncan wrote to Lovat a couple of days later. He knew Lovat would have heard all about it. He said he would have written sooner, but for the anguish he knew it would give him to hear of it. It was true. When Lovat heard of the attack ‘he was like to go mad; he cursed for a matter of two hours, and we had no peace with him’. Lovat groaned as he read the Lord President’s pained and dignified letter. ‘No man of common equity,’ Duncan said, would think Lovat had anything to do with it. But now Duncan was ‘teased every hour’ by reports that the failed kidnappers were going to ‘pillage, burn and destroy my innocent tenants’ to vent their frustration. Duncan said he was only telling him all this so Lovat could do what he needed to ‘prevent such hurt to me and my tenants as I undoubtedly should to prevent damage to your Lordship, or to anyone that belongs to you’.

MacLeod wrote to Dounie in appalled amazement. The ‘scandalous attempt on the President’, Duncan, ‘has given me great pain, especially if Stratherrick men were the actors’. Over the years, all his friends had heard Lovat’s boasts about the loyalty of his Stratherrick kindred. ‘However innocent you are, it has a very ugly aspect,’ MacLeod said. ‘You owe yourself and the world a more public vindication … and that is to bring the offenders to public and condign punishment … So much for a most disagreeable subject!’ He added that Lovat was welcome at Dunvegan, were he capable of travel.