Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (30 page)

Their joy went on long into the night. The streets of Inverness were full of government infantrymen dressed incongruously in the lace-trimmed coats and feathered Highland bonnets they had stripped from enemy corpses. They drank freely of the rum their commander had allotted them to celebrate their triumph, and shot off their muskets, and sang songs to serenade the subdued townspeople, while on Culloden Moor weeping women knelt to look into the faces of the naked dead by lantern-light, searching for the men they had lost.

Chapter 18

Dazed and unbelieving, Charles was led off the battlefield by a few of his intimates. They rode southward to Gorthleck on Loch Mohr, where they rested on the night of April 16. There had been little enough time to react, let alone time to regroup or think through what to do next.

The enormity of the Jacobite loss had yet to reveal itself. Incomprehending as he was, and taken aback by the rout of the army he had believed to be invincible, Charles nonetheless thought, at first, that it would be possible to go on with the campaign. His aide-decamp, Alexander Macleod, wrote soon after leaving the battlefield that "we have suffered a good deal, but hope we shall soon pay Cumberland in his own coin." Macleod was addressing Cluny Macpherson, an officer who had not been at Culloden and who was presumed to be hastening toward Inverness with his men. At least a third of the Jacobite army had not been present at the battle, and with these forces, still intact, and the regrouped survivors of Culloden, a counterattack might be launched. Macleod urged Cluny Macpherson to "make haste to join us, and bring with you all the people [
sic
] can possibly be got together." Charles, he said, had "something in view which will make ample amends for this day's rutiie."

Before long the Macpherson regiment arrived at Ruthven in Badenoch, to join with the Ogilvy regiment and a number of battle survivors—in all some fifteen hundred men. But they were never to discover what it was that Charles had had in mind for them, for by the time they assembled he had changed his mind. Even an army of only fifteen hundred men required provisions and ammunition, and neither were to be had. Cumberland's men had seized what supplies were stored at Inverness, grain was scarce and so was money to buy it. Officers too were scarce, so many having died at Culloden, and the only truly able commander, Murray, had decided that there was no point in going on.

Murray wrote to Charles asking for his demission, in a letter full of reproaches and recriminations. "As no person in these kingdoms ventured more frankly in the cause than myself," he began, "and as I had more at stake than almost all the others put together, so to be sure I cannot but be very deeply affected with our late loss and present situation." He could bear his own ruin and that of his family with equanimity, Murray went on, but was deeply grieved by "the loss of the cause and the misfortunate and unhappy situation of my countrymen." And for this unhappy situation he blamed Charles. It was Charles's fault that the campaign had been launched without adequate guarantees of French aid, and it was his fault too that the welfare of the men had suffered so greatly during the winter months at Inverness. Charles had chosen incompetent subordinates, and he alone was responsible for the consequences—which included, Murray insisted, the loss at Culloden.

Apparently Murray's letter, plus the dawning realization that it would be impossible to feed and arm any new force that might be raised, persuaded Charles that the best course of action for him would be to go back to France and try again to raise men and arms and money. He sent Macleod to Ruthven with a message for the men assembled there: "Let every man seek his own safety the best way he can." Then, seeking his own safety, Charles rode hard for the coast.

Over the next two and a half months, he and his small group of attendants did their best to avoid capture, fleeing across the storm-ridden Sound of Arisaig to Benbecula, and then wandering up and down from Loch Boisdale on South Uist to Stornoway on North Uist, taking shelter wherever they could and living from hand to mouth.
¹
The living was hard. Often there was nothing to eat but dried fish and a little brandy, plus whatever seabirds they could shoot. The near-constant rain squalls and bitter winds made foraging difficult, and on one hungry occasion they lived for a time on oatmeal mixed with salt water.

The inhabitants of the Long Island were willing enough to warn the fugitives when Cumberland's men were near, or when royal navy frigates were at hand, but they dared not take them into their homes. One Hanoverian loyalist on Scalpay actually mustered a body of men intending to capture Charles and exchange him for the thirty-thousand-pound reward promised by the government, but he was foiled in the attempt. Sailing from island to island in borrowed boats, risking their lives whenever they approached the rocky, windswept shore, endlessly pursued by hundreds of regular soldiers and in constant fear of betrayal, Charles and his handful of men were always on alert. They posed as Orkneymen, with Charles calling himself Mr. Sinclair and O'Sullivan pretending to be his father. When toward the end of June the number of soldiers on the Long Island rose to more than two thousand, Charles escaped to Skye, relying on the aid of Flora Macdonald who dressed him as a woman and convinced the soldiers that he was her maid.

The episode has taken on the lineaments of legend. Charles, after stripping to his breeches and waistcoat, put on a woman's underclothes, a quilted petticoat and calico gown sprigged with lilacs, adding to these an Irish mantle, cap, and headdress. He wanted to wear a pistol under his petticoat, but Flora advised him not to. If they were stopped and searched, she said, the pistol would betray him.

"Indeed, Miss," he is said to have answered, "if we shall happen with any that will go so narrowly to work in searching me as what you mean, they will certainly discover me at any rate."

Thus disguised as the Irish maidservant Betty Burke, Charles Stuart made the crossing to Skye in a small boat, narrowly escaping capture. Once there he continued the pretense, though his height and the length of his stride caused suspicion, as did his "awkward way of managing the petticoats" and his constant adjustments to his headdress, "which he cursed a thousand times."

It was an interval of farce in an increasingly dangerous situation, for the islands were inundated with soldiers and only the remoter reaches of the mainland could be expected to offer safety. He managed to return there in the first week of July, to begin another odyssey of desperate wanderings, hairbreadth escapes and extreme discomfort. Hiding in caves by day, walking at night, always keeping to the high ground on the assumption that there would be fewer soldiers there, Charles and his little party kept on the move, afraid for the most part to stop lest their presence be betrayed. They knew that there were spies among the clansmen, and that even those clansmen who were loyal to the Stuarts and hated King George were susceptible to threats and torture.

More than once the fugitives had to break through an enemy cordon, coming within a few hundred feet of their patrols, so close that they could overhear the militiamen's conversations and monitor the cries of the sentries as they called out to one another. They forded swift streams, clambered up the steep faces of bare hills, slept on the ground and drank whiskey or brandy—when they could get it—to revive themselves. There were some convivial times, especially when they reached the remote mountain cave of Coir a'Chait and joined the outlaw "Glenmoriston men," eight Jacobite adventurers who were sworn enemies of Cumberland. The Glenmoriston men hid them, fed them on freshly killed game and made surprisingly comfortable beds for them in their wilderness grotto. For once Charles was able to rest and to feel relatively safe.

But the periods of respite and relative comfort were brief. For most of his long months in hiding, Charles was dirty, weary and extremely uncomfortable. When walking at night, one of his companions recalled later, "not being used with such rough and plashy footing as is commonly to be found in the hills, braes, and glens of the Highlands of Scotland, he was every now and then (through the darkness of the nights) slumping into this and the other clayhole or puddle." Often he was up to his navel in mud, with no way to wash or to keep his clothes and linen clean. One of Charles's companions, seeing that he was restless and uneasy, found that the cause was lice, and picked eighty of the voracious creatures off the royal skin.

By this time Charles was all but indistinguishable from the men he was living among. Though some, seeing him through the lens of their own adoration, insisted that he could never quite disguise his princeliness, he must have presented a shabby figure in his muddy fillibeg and dirty shirt, his old black coat and unkempt red beard. He no longer bothered with his wig, having snatched it off and stuffed it in his pocket in order to pose as a servant with a filthy handkerchief tied around his head. He carried a gun in one hand, with a pistol and dirk at his side. Altogether he must have looked more like an outlaw than like an aristocratic leader of men, heir apparent to the throne his father claimed as James VHI.

Still, he remained cheerful, jokey and optimistic in even the worst circumstances. The hard life, the danger and challenge brought out the best in him. He sang, he played with the children he encountered, he was affable and familiar. His life had been very trying in recent months, he told one of the men, but he would rather live as a fugitive, with all the hardships that entailed, for ten years than be taken by his enemies. "Since Culloden," he said, "I have endured more than would kill a hundred. Sure Providence does not design this for nothing." Providence had carried him and his remarkable army through their campaign; Providence had preserved him from his enemies though they crowded around him in their thousands. He had reason to be cheerful—and to expect ultimate vindication in the future.

For his people, though, he mourned. His own fatigues and distresses were of little importance compared to theirs. For "when he reflected upon the many brave fellows who suffered in his cause," one of his attendants remembered hearing him say, "that, he behoved to own, did strike him to the heart, and did sink very deep within him."

The Highland Scots paid a terrible price in the aftermath of the rebellion. Cumberland and his lieutenants, aided by the militia and ships of the royal navy, set out to find, capture and punish every person who had helped the Jacobite cause in any way, either directly or indirectly. The rebels were guilty of treason, the worst of crimes; they deserved no mercy or leniency. They had not only to be punished for what they had already done, they had to be deprived of the will and the means to rebel in future.

The destruction and bloodletting began in the days immediately following Culloden, when the Jacobite wounded were killed where they lay or hunted down and slaughtered like beasts. A slower death from untreated wounds and fevers came to many of the soldiers taken prisoner and shut up in the jails of Inverness. And not only the jails: barns, attics, churches, even ships were crowded with manacled men lying in their own filth. In all, nearly thirty-five hundred prisoners were taken, including the Irish and Scottish soldiers fighting in the French service who gave themselves up and expected to be returned to France. They were eventually shipped south to London, where most of them lay in their prison ships in the Thames, half starved, sickening from typhus and dysentery, until they died or were chosen for trial. Lots were cast and every twentieth prisoner was tried. Of these, the majority were convicted and sentenced to be transported to the British colonies in North America or to the West Indies; fewer than a hundred accepted forced enlistment in the British army. About a hundred and twenty were executed. Those who managed to survive in prison until 1747—an exceptionally hardy remnant—were released.

Among the released rebels was Flora Macdonald, who had been captured shortly after her escapade with Charles and imprisoned in the Tower. Later she was allowed to move to a private home where she paid for her board and enjoyed considerable freedom, though still in government custody. She became something of a celebrity, and Jacobite sympathizers raised a very generous subscription fund of fifteen hundred guineas for her which was given to her on her release in July of 1747.
²

Cumberland invested the Highlands with soldiers, with large concentrations in the Great Glen and on the outer islands. The navy kept watch at the ports, and patrolled the sea lochs for French frigates and small boats like those Charles and his party used. People's movements were restricted, passes were issued by the militia to authorize travel in the zones where rebels were believed to be in hiding. The duke himself traveled widely, bringing to villages and hamlets written proclamations demanding that all arms be surrendered to the local authorities, and the locations of all known rebels disclosed. And having been authorized by the king to do "whatever was necessary for the suppressing of this unnatural rebellion," Cumberland ordered his officers to oversee the systematic destruction of the Highlanders' property, shelter and means of survival.

At first the plundering was orderly and properly supervised. Soldiers moved into an area and burned all the houses, from the spacious dwellings of the clan chiefs to the rude huts or shielings that gave shelter when the cattle were in their summer pastures. Everything was burned—growing things, food stores, furniture, clothing, even plows and wooden farm implements. The cattle were run off to be driven south and sold, or else slaughtered to feed the government troops. Valuables saved from destruction were divided among the plunderers according to their rank and rate of pay.

The brutal work was carried out with pitiless efficiency, leaving the devastated villagers with no shelter, no food and no means of growing any, no animals, and of course no money. With so many men killed or imprisoned, it was largely the elderly, invalids, women and young children who suffered on the land. They wandered through the barren hills in search of food, fearful of the soldiers, coming together in starveling groups when they found a cave or a shieling which had somehow escaped destruction. Many died. One officer told his superiors that he had found two women and four children "dead in the hills who perished through want, their huts being burnt." A minister wrote a pathetic letter to a Scottish newspaper telling how his parish had been "burnt to ashes" and how women and children came to him begging for food, though he had nothing to give them.
³