Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (38 page)

So on 3 January 1746 Charles removed himself from hostile Glasgow to Chevalier Paterson’s seat between Stirling and Bannockburn.
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Once again the army marched in two columns. Lord George’s force (six clan regiments and Elcho’s Lifeguards) travelled to Falkirk via Cumbernauld.
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The prince took the rest of the army by Kilsyth. The purpose in taking up position on the Bannockburn–Stirling–Falkirk line was to link up with the new army under Lord John Drummond now marching down from Perth.
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Drummond had been joined by Lord Lewis Gordon. Mackintoshes, Frasers, Farquharsons and Mackenzies now mingled with the Irish veterans of the battle of Fontenoy.
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Elcho’s Lifeguards were thrown out as far as Falkirk to make it look as though Edinburgh was the objective.
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While the troops were cantoned in the towns and villages round about (St Ninian’s being a particular centre), the prince made his headquarters at Bannockburn House.
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Now finally removed from stress into a safe haven, his health broke down. The prince’s valetudinarian condition for most of the rest of the ’45 campaign has hardly been commented on, but is surely significant. Nothing could impair his vitality while he took events at the flood, all the way to Derby. But once he was back in relative safety in Scotland, all the pent-up anger since Derby broke loose. The ‘internal saboteur’ in the prince’s mind, responsible for his self-destructive behaviour on the march back through northern England, now manifested itself as illness. From 5–16 January Charles lay seriously ill with influenza and a high fever at Bannockburn House.
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The prince’s three major illnesses in the months January–April
1746
surely have to be regarded as stress-related. It is more than a little curious that his health should have held up so well from August to December 1745, and again from April to September 1746 during the flight in the heather, only to dip so alarmingly into this trough during the first three months of 1746.

The prince had already shown signs of a changed personality. In Glasgow, in contrast to his behaviour in Edinburgh in October, he made a determined effort to exploit his undoubted appeal for the ladies.
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He dressed in his most lavish French clothes, exhibiting finery that he had not been seen in before.
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Every night he supped in public, making a conspicuous display of his sumptuary splendour.
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Unlike at Edinburgh in October, he took part in the dancing. It was almost as though he was signalling the end of his period of heroic strenuousness, acknowledging that his warrior personality had failed.

The most significant event at Bannockburn was that Clementina Walkinshaw nursed him through his illness and became his mistress.
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She was the daughter of John Walkinshaw of Barrowfield, a Jacobite who had been out in the ’15 and escaped to join James Stuart in Bar-le-Duc.
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John Walkinshaw was one of the party who rescued Charles Edward’s mother from the Emperor in the famous Wogan escapade. He named his own daughter after Clementina Sobieska.

It is of the utmost importance to appreciate the significance of the open appearance of women in the prince’s life. The contrast between his behaviour in Glasgow and his earlier indifference to the ladies in Edinburgh suggests an inner psychic drama – as does his later dancing at Inverness after the pointed abstention from the ballroom floor at Holyrood. We shall see later too the remarkable difference between his austere, monkish life in France in 1744–5 and his hedonism during 1746–8. We cannot assume, as has been done too readily, that Charles was a male virgin before the ’45. But it is clear that in his positive phase, on the upward climb to the meridian at Derby, women were unimportant to him.

As the prince lay ill, pampered with the then fashionable cinnamon treatment, he was suddenly confronted with more immediate problems. Lord George Murray burst in on his retreat with a peremptory demand for a solution to the Jacobite decision-making process. Since the prince was not willing to summon any more full war councils, Murray proposed a committee of five or six regimental commanders who could take decisions in an emergency. That was reasonable enough. But relations between the prince and his lieutenant-general were so bad that Lord George could not resist throwing in a taunt. Collective decision-making was what had saved the army from
destruction
at Derby, he claimed. Had the council met at Lancaster also, the foolish decision to spend an extra day there would not have been taken.
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The prince’s reply is revealing at several levels and is therefore worth quoting at some length:

When I came into Scotland I knew well enough what I was to expect from my enemies, but I little foresaw what I meet with from my friends. I came vested with all the authority the king could give me, one chief part of which is the command of his armies, and now I am required to give this up to fifteen or sixteen persons, who may afterwards depute five or six of their own number to exercise it, for fear if they were six or eight that I might myself pretend to the casting vote. By the majority of these all things are to be determined, and nothing left to me but the honour of being present at their debates. This I am told is the method of all armies and this I flatly deny, nor do I believe it to be the method of any one army in the world. I am often hit in the teeth that this is an army of volunteers, and consequently very different from one composed of mercenaries. What one would naturally expect from an army whose chief officers consist of gentlemen of rank and fortune, and who came into it merely from motives of duty and honour, is more zeal, more resolution and more good manners than in those that fight merely for pay: but it can be no army at all where there is no general, or which is the same thing no obedience or deference paid to him. Everyone knew before he engaged in the cause, what he was to expect in case it miscarried, and should have stayed at home if he could not face death in any shape: but can I myself hope for better usage? At least I am the only person upon whose head a price has been already set, and therefore I cannot indeed threaten at every other word to throw down my arms and make my peace with the government. I think I show every day that I do not pretend to act without taking advice, and yours oftener than any body’s else, which I shall continue to do, and you know that upon more occasions than one, I have given up my own opinion to that of others. I stayed indeed a day at Lancaster without calling a Council, yet yourself proposed to stay another but I wonder to see myself reproached with the loss of Carlisle. Was there a possibility to carrying off the cannon and the baggage, or was there time to destroy them? And would not the doing it have been a greater dishonour to our arms? After all did
not
you yourself instead of proposing to abandon it, offer to stay with the Atholl Brigade to defend it?

I have insensibly made this answer much longer than I intended, and might yet add much more, but I choose to cut it short, and shall only tell you that my authority may be taken from me by violence, but I shall never resign it like an idiot.
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Anyone who still clings to the canard that Charles Edward Stuart was an unintelligent Italian princeling should ponder that letter: concise, lucid and shrewd. As if to reinforce the point that he still intended to command, he ordered the investment of Stirling Castle. This was eminently feasible now that he had been joined by his second army of 4,000 men.
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While Charles convalesced in Clementina’s arms, his officers bent their energies to this difficult task.

As ever, the town adjacent to the castle presented no problems. Stirling was called upon to surrender on 6 January and did so two days later.
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The problem was the citadel. It would be a tough nut to crack even if Hawley stood idly by. He soon showed he had no such intention.

The Jacobites’ initial problem was that they had to bring heavy siege artillery up the Firth from Alloa.
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But Alloa itself was dangerously exposed. The river at that point was too wide to be commanded by a battery. Indeed an enemy sloop sailed beyond Alloa and landed a force that came close to capturing Lord Elcho.
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If the Jacobites meanwhile erected a battery at a point farther up the river towards Stirling, so that they could command the whole river and blow enemy warships out of the water, it was conceivable that Hawley in turn could land forces at Alloa itself to destroy the Jacobite heavy artillery before it could be moved.
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This was in fact precisely what Hawley planned to do. At a crucial moment Lord John Drummond, guarding Alloa, received a stiffening from Lochiel’s regiment. Hawley’s landing force sheered off.
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The Jacobites then transported their heavy guns to Stirling. They had a battery that commanded the Forth approaches, so could (and did) beat off any enemy probes made in that direction.
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To relieve the castle, Hawley would now have to come overland.

But the siege of Stirling quickly lurched from difficulty to disaster. The so-called French expert on siege warfare, M. Mirabel (who had come over with Drummond), proved to be a spectacular incompetent.
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The men conducting the siege were overworked and poorly fed.
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There was particular strain on Ogilvy’s regiment. Since clan regiments detested siege work, there was little relief for the Lowland
battalions
.
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It was as much as Lord George Murray could do to get the Atholl brigade to guard the trenches.
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And the whole operation was hampered by heavy, driving rain.
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At this point Hawley made his move overland. He sent ahead an advance screen of cavalry to Linlithgow.
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Hearing this, Lord George Murray took five battalions of Athollmen with Pitsligo’s and Elcho’s cavalry to intercept them and deny them forage and provisions.
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Arriving at dawn, they surprised an advanced patrol of Hawley’s dragoons and took possession of the magazine and military supplies.
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Pursuing Hawley’s outriders beyond the town, Elcho’s Lifeguards collided with a further body of dragoons and chased them off. Yet it was obvious that the main force was not far behind. Retiring for the night to Falkirk, Murray’s forces joined the rest of the army at Bannockburn on the 14th.
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Nettled by what he considered his own failure to achieve very much, Lord George gave vent to his irrational side. He complained to the prince that the Linlithgow operation could have been successful if he had had the Camerons along with him, forgetting that their presence at Alloa was necessary to force Hawley to come overland in the first place. He also complained that the prince’s idyll at Bannockburn was a strain on manpower: it stretched his Athollmen thin, since they had to do guard duty both at Falkirk and Bannockburn.

Hawley’s army marched from Edinburgh to Linlithgow on 15 January. The Hanoverian vanguard under General Huske was at Falkirk on the 16th, to link up with 1,500 Argyllshire militia under Colonel Campbell.
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During these two days the Jacobite army stood to, drawn up in line of battle on a plain to the east of Bannockburn.
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On the 16th the Jacobites dispersed from the field at 3 p.m., again disappointed that the enemy had not come. Their dispersal was carelessly arranged. As Elcho pointed out, a better general than Hawley would have chosen this moment to attack; he could have picked the Jacobite regiments off piecemeal.
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On the morning of the 17th, the implications of this carelessness became clear. Despite precise orders issued the night before, it was almost midday before the entire Jacobite army was assembled. Such a state of affairs could not be allowed to persist into a third day. Since Hawley would not come to them, it was time for the Jacobites to take the offensive. Lord George Murray suggested seizing the high ground to the south-west of Falkirk, a ridge of moorland about a mile from Hawley’s camp.
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For once the prince agreed with Murray.

To camouflage the movement, Lord John Drummond and the Irish
troops
were sent along the main road from Bannockburn to Stirling. Marching by detours, side roads and across fields, the Jacobite army approached the high ground. It was now about 8,000 strong, roughly the same size as Hawley’s. The only units of the prince’s troops not engaged were the 1,200 men left with Perth to continue the siege of Stirling.
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The approach of the Highlanders was noticed by the enemy but, amazingly, Hawley considered it inconceivable that his army was in any danger of being attacked.
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At Callendar House (his headquarters) he sat down to his dinner unconcerned, confident with the folly of arrogance.

Between one and two o’clock graver intelligence came through. It was clear that this was no feint. The entire Jacobite army was ascending the high ground. At last Hawley realised the seriousness of his position. Leaving the table in a fluster, he galloped hatless up to the head of his troops. Hurried orders were given to forestall the Highlanders in the occupation of the summit of the moor.
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Falkirk Muir rose steeply from the town. It was a moorland plateau of scrub and heather. Halfway up the hillside a deep ravine cut across the moor. The preliminaries of the battle resolved themselves into a race for the summit. The race was won by the Jacobite right, but Hawley’s dragoons got to the plateau minutes behind them.
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The consequence was that when both armies drew up they were in slanting formation.

The Jacobite centre and left extended down the hillside from the fairly level ground near the summit occupied by the right. Here were the MacDonalds in the front rank, with the Atholl brigade in the second line and Ogilvy’s in the centre. Elcho’s and Balmerino’s horse provided the cavalry reserve in this sector.
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The extreme left was posted near the mouth of the ravine. Here were the Camerons with Lord Lewis Gordon’s cavalry in the second line and Kilmarnock’s behind them. To the south was boggy ground, making encircling movements by Hawley impossible. To the north, towards Falkirk, the salient feature was the ravine or gully that separated the Jacobite left from Hawley’s.
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