The White Cockade E-Book

Stuart McHardy

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 395

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

An essential read for fans of Outlander During the first half of the eighteenth century, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his diehard supporters – the Jacobites – almost changed the course of British history. Their attempts to drive out the house of Hanover and restore the Stuarts to the British throne is one of the great epics of history. In this book, acclaimed storyteller Stuart McHardy retells over forty Jacobite stories which date back to the time of the prince himself and his bitter defeat at the Battle of Culloden. Featuring the exploits of real people and actual events, and including tales of love, loyalty, bravery and treachery, The White Cockade opens a window into a remarkable world and features a huge cast of colourful characters.

Leseprobe

The White Cockade

The White Cockade

Historical Tales of the Jacobites

by

Stuart McHardy

This edition published in 2020 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Stuart McHardy 2006

The moral right of Stuart McHardy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 78027 695 3

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

This book is dedicated to storytellers everywhere

Contents

Introduction

Battle Tales

The Battle of Killiecrankie

Disaster at Preston

Not the Battle of Inverary

The Battle of High Bridge

A siege of his own home

The Highland way

Glengarry and the cuckoo

Escapes

A great escape

A devoted wife

Seton’s escape

Breakout

Thriepland

The Ogilvies

A friend’s help

A sad end

The good ship Veteran

The Lighter Side

The white cockade

A Jacobite blackbird

Ye’ll tak a dram

Bareback riding

General Wade and Patrick Grant

How not to capture a castle

The main chance: the story of John Coutts

Courage to the end: Simon Lovat’s capture

The ultimate sacrifice

Father Munro

Better it burn

Appearances can be deceptive

A Highland cross dresser

Loyal officers of the law

Prince Charlie

Betty Burke

Lewie Caw

Prince Charlie and the milk pail

Jacobite Gold

Prince Charlie’s pilots

Gold in the Great Chanter

Duncan the Seeker

Loyalty to the Cause

Donald of Kinloch

Born to the cause

The Seven Men of Glenmoriston

The silver buttons

Son of a hero

A loyal lass

Dark Deeds

The word of an officer

The tragic tale of Lady Grange

Sergeant Davis

A curse on Little Alan

The Appin Dirk

A show trial

Introduction

In 1822 George IV visited Scotland; he was the first British monarch to do so in over a century. He asked if it was possible to meet any of the men who had fought against his grandfather. An old Knoydart man called Raonull Mor a’ Chrolen was amongst those brought to meet the sovereign. After some plea­santries, the king said, ‘Well, I suppose you must have often regretted your role in that sad affair many times since then.’

The reply was not slow in coming, ‘Your Majesty, I regret nothing of the kind.’

The king’s attendants were shocked, and George himself was a bit taken aback at such bluntness. No one was quite sure what would happen next; this grizzled old veteran had just insulted the king! The situation however was softened a bit when Old Raonull added, ‘What I did then for the Prince, I would have done as heartily for Your Majesty if you had been in the Prince’s place.’

From Sir Walter Scott onwards much has been written about the Jacobite cause and its Romantic figurehead Prince Charles Edward Stewart. However, it is sometimes forgotten that the Jacobites, and Prince Charlie himself, were still actively trying to regain the British throne as late as the 1760s. In 1759 a major invasion of Britain was only prevented by the British naval victory over the French at Quiberon Bay. Thirty thousand troops, a considerable number of them under Prince Charles’s command, were in the Channel ports ready to embark. There had also been a short invasion of Ireland a couple of years earlier, and various European states, Prussia and Sweden in particular, had given consideration to helping the Jacobites invade. As late as 1779, proposals were still being made for invasion, showing that the Jacobite threat was sustained for much longer than is generally acknowledged by British historians. This meant the Jacobite cause continued to have meaning in people’s hearts and minds in Scotland, where it had always been linked to the widespread resentment caused by the Act of Union of 1707, and is perhaps why Robert Burns, who was a political Radical, wrote so many pro-Jacobite songs. Such an apparent contradiction might well have had a lot to do with the fact that Bonnie Prince himself, after renouncing Catholicism and becoming a Protestant, put forward a political programme in the 1750s that was remarkably forward thinking. It included plans for reform of the notoriously corrupt British electoral process and was in favour of religious and civil liberties. A far cry indeed from the Divine Right of Kings!

The brutal treatment that Cumberland’s troops handed out to the Scottish population, not only in the Highlands, also fed into continuing support for the Jacobite cause in Scotland. There is no doubt that a strong streak of Jacobitism continued in Scotland long after any possibility of the restoration of the Stewarts had passed. Some commentators have seen this as little more than a Romantic attachment to an essentially nostalgic view of the past – more Walter Scott than Rabbie Burns. However, the reality of ongoing guerrilla fighting in the 1750s, a further attempt at invasion at the close of that decade and the continuing paranoia of the British Government about rebellion in Scotland, lasting into the 1790s, all suggest something a bit more considered, and deep-rooted. The widespread brutality of the British Army, led by the Duke of Cumberland, lasting into the 1750s as a deliberate Government policy, is perhaps why so many different areas of Scotland have retained stories about Prince Charlie and why, despite a history of ineptitude and factionalism amongst the Jacobite plotters themselves, their cause still holds a cherished place in the Scottish psyche.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that British historians have rarely seen any need to treat Scotland as anything more than a northern district of the island of Britain, while many Scots remember that we were a country before England was, even if we do not all want to revert to our separate existence. From the historical perspective much remains to be done before we fully understand and come to terms with the Jacobite period of our history, and, for all its tragedy, we should remember that at the time of Culloden, and for a long time afterwards, no one thought that the Jacobites were finished. Indeed, recent research showing that the Battle of Culloden was a much closer-run thing than has been understood till now reflects the reality of a situation that was not clear-cut. True, there was a conflict between modern mer­cantile British society and the ancient, essentially tribal system of the Gaelic-speaking warrior clans. However, the Jacobites had support throughout Scotland and also in England, making the Jacobite rebellions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an ongoing civil war rather than a clash of civilisations. That the Scots resented British rule, as some still do, is reflected in the hold that the Jacobites still have in Scotland. A hold that is reflected in the diversity of the stories presented here.

BATTLE TALES

The Battle of Killiecrankie

I fought on land, I fought on sea

At hame I fought ma auntie-o

But I met the Devil an Dundee

On the Braes o Killiecrankie-o.

This verse from the famous Scots song ‘Killiecrankie’ sums up the feelings of a soldier on the Government side at the fateful battle of 27 June 1689. The outcome of this battle, if it had been but slightly different, might well have altered the subsequent history not just of Scotland but of the whole British Isles. When the English parliament deposed King James VII in 1688 and replaced him with William of Orange, the Jacobite cause came into being. One of the most prominent of the early Jacobites was John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. An experienced and able soldier, Claverhouse reminded many of an earlier protagonist of the Stewarts, the Marquis of Montrose, also a Graham and a kinsman, who had fought for King Charles II in the 1640s and 50s. John Graham was a bit of a Romantic and modelled himself on Montrose, though he hoped to escape the fate of his kinsman. Montrose had been executed and, in time-honoured fashion, parts of his body had been sent around the country to be displayed on spikes at the gates of major towns. In his youth, Claverhouse saw the dessicated leg of Montrose dis­played at Perth, and this is likely to have strengthened his loyalty to the Stewarts. He has come down in tradition and history as one of the great Scottish heroes for one particular reason: he gave his life to win the Battle of Killiecrankie.

By the time William of Orange was installed as king in 1689, Claverhouse was already an experienced soldier, having served in the French army in the 1760s. Ironically, one of his companions at that time was Hugh Mackay, who ended up commanding the Government forces at Killiecrankie! When the Lords of Conven­tion met in Scotland to accept William as king, Claverhouse stormed out, and the song ‘Up wi the Bonnets o Bonnie Dundee’ quotes him as saying ‘Ere the king’s crown go down/ There are crowns to be broke.’ At this point the Treaty of Union had not yet been foisted on the Scottish people, and, although the crowns of Scotland and England were conjoined, the two countries were still separate entities. Claverhouse was, of course, loyal to King James VII, who had been deposed in England, and when the Convention voted to accept William he knew what he had to do. He left Edinburgh and headed north to raise an army, which was com­posed almost exclusively of warriors from the Highland clans and Irish Catholics. On 26th July this Highland force met a British Government force under General Mackay at Killiecrankie, a narrow pass through the mountains north of Pitlochry.

The two armies were apparently mismatched: Mackay had four thousand trained soldiers, while Claverhouse had half that num­ber of Highlanders, who were in no way similar to the disciplined troops of the Government. The Highlanders were, however, on home ground, and the outcome of this battle between a force of armed clansmen led by a charismatic figure and the disciplined and more mundane army troops provided a romantic template for Jacobite song and story for the next century.

Claverhouse’s immediate aim as he approached the Pass of Killiecrankie from the north was to get through the pass and head on to Perth. This would allow him to consolidate his hold on Scotland north of the Tay and build up his power base from there. Mackay, of course, had the explicit task of stopping this from happening. On the day of the battle Mackay managed to get through the Pass of Killiecrankie itself but found that Graham had taken command of much of the high ground just north of the pass. Throughout the day gunfire was exchanged between the two forces, but Dundee had no intention of letting his Highland and Irish troops charge on the enemy with the sun shining in their faces. So it was that it was late in the day before he used the most formidable weapon he had – the Highland charge. This was a brutal and effective form of hand-to-hand combat, and for centuries it had carried all before it. The Highlanders divested themselves of everything but their shirts and weapons and charged down a slope against their enemies. Those who had guns fired them, then dropped them in favour of a technique that had been honed over centuries of use. In the right hand they carried a broad-bladed, double-edged sword, usually with a basket hilt. The left forearm was threaded through two leather loops on the back of a targe – the Highland leather and wood shield which had an iron or steel spike, up to a foot long, in its centre. The left hand held that ubiquitous Highland weapon/tool the dirk, triangular-bladed, razor sharp and also up to a foot in length. Aided by the momentum of the charge, the targe was used to deflect swords, muskets with bayonets, pikes or any other weapon brandished by the man directly in front, while the right hand swept the sword at the man to the right. Once the man in front’s weapon was deflected, if the spike of the targe had not already injured him, the dirk was used to stab him. The success of this tactic relied on several factors: the skill of the men with their weapons, their ability to run downhill over rough ground at full speed and, most importantly, the presence of a slope to run down. It was a tactic designed for, and perfected in, the glens of the Scottish moun­tains, and, as was shown all too well in the later battle of Culloden, it was of less effect on flat ground against firearms. However, it also had the further advantage of being terrifying, a psychological effect that played havoc with enemy resolve, even that of the battle-hardened Lowland troops of General Mackay at Kill­iecrankie.

The traditional behaviour of the Highland warrior manifested itself in other ways that day. Ewen Cameron of Lochiel was leading his own clansmen and was shadowed by the son of his foster-brother. Fostering was the system by which sons of leading families were brought up in the households of other kinsmen. This meant that, in addition to any brothers of their own, they had the added bonus of foster-brothers, a considerable advantage for those who were destined to become chiefs. In effect, the young chief was being given a second family and it was said that the loyalty of foster-brothers was unsurpassable. Lochiel was in the thick of the battle and realised that his faithful companion was no longer by his side. In a brief break in the hand-to-hand fighting he turned to look around. There, a few yards behind him, lay his loyal kinsman, on his back with an arrow sticking out of his chest. Lochiel ran back to where he lay, knelt down and lifted his head gently.

‘Ochone, ochone,’ he said, ‘they have shot you my good friend.’

‘Ach, well,’ gasped the dying man, ‘I saw that one of those damned Government men, a Highlander like ourselves, had nocked his arrow and had you in his sights. I could not let him shoot you Locheil, now could I?’

And, saying that, he gave a last gasp and died in the arms of his chief. If he had been furious in battle till then, Locheil was now like a berserker of old and he and his Cameron kin swept through the Government forces like a wind of death. It was a costly attack though, for they lost over a hundred men in that fierce battle. Before the battle itself started, Claverhouse had asked Lochiel who should have the victory. Like many Highlanders, Lochiel had the gift, or, more truly, the curse, of the second sight – the ability to discern the future. His reply was simple: ‘He who draws the first blood, shall win the day.’

Now, with the Jacobite army being almost completely formed of Highlanders, who had a great respect for the second sight and those who had the gift of it, Lochiel’s words ran through the ranks like wildfire. When his words reached the contingent from the Grant clan, Grant of Glenmoriston knew what to do.

‘Where’s Iain Beg?’ he cried to his men.

Iain Beg MacRae, famed among his kin for his skill with the gun, was called for and came running to where Glenmoriston stood.

‘Here I am,’ he said, ‘what would you have me do?’

Glenmoriston pointed towards the enemy rank. There, riding along the enemy lines, was an officer on a white horse.

‘Well, Euan, does that white horse not make its rider a good target?’ he asked with a grim smile. ‘Aye, so it does,’ replied the other. And, lifting his gun to his shoulder, he sighted along the barrel. All the Grants held their breath. He fired. His aim was good. The rider in the distance threw up his arms, his horse reared and he fell to the earth, still. All along the Highland line the cheers rang out. The first blood was theirs, and they now had no doubt that victory would follow. Who could argue with fate? A nearby well, Fuaran u trupar, the Trooper’s Well, was renamed later to show where the horseman fell. Soon the battle was being fiercely fought, hand-to-hand, over a considerable area. One of Mackay’s officers in the pass itself, Brigadier-General Balfour, a Lowland Scot, saw his men fall around him under the onslaught of the Highland troops. One after another the men with him fell, till at last he was on his own, forced back against a tree fending off two assailants with his sword. One of these was Alastair Ban Stewart. As the general bravely defended himself against his assailants, Alastair Ban’s son came up. Seeing the soldier putting up such a good fight against two enemies, he called out in Gaelic. ‘Shame, shame on you father, give the brave man his life.’

Alastair Ban and his companion stepped back, turned and looked at the young man as Balfour took the opportunity to suck in great breaths of air.

Coming closer, the younger Stewart complimented the officer in English on his skill as a swordsman. Like all Highland lads, he had been brought up with the notion of cothrom na Feinne, the fair play of Finn McCoul, and Highland tradition had long focused on fighting one to one. In the heat of battle, however, such niceties were easily forgotten. He had merely been trying to remind his father of the right way of doing things when he called out. The reaction of the Lowlander to this intrusion was not at all what he had expected.

‘To hell with you, you Highland dog,’ cried Balfour, who was fired up by the battle conditions as much as his opponents were, and he lunged at the young Highlander.

At this, young Stewart moved nimbly to one side and swung his great claymore down on Balfour’s collar bone, slicing through his body as far as his waist.

‘Now there was a man who did not know when he was well off,’ his father said to him before they headed off back to the battle. Not far from the scene of the battle is a large flat stone known as the Balfour Stone, where it has been said the unfortunate Brigadier-General was buried afterwards.

A Government sentry had been stationed near the south end of the pass, and the first he knew of the outcome of the battle was when he saw a group of Highlanders rushing towards him. He immediately took to his heels and ran for the River Garry. His pursuers were catching up, and he was sure that they had him as he was running towards a rock jutting out over the river below; in fact one of them had scratched his shoulder with his sword. In his desperation to escape, the trooper leapt out from the rock over the river. As he fell on the other side, he reached out and grabbed a bush to stop himself falling back. Behind him the Highlanders had stopped, and there are those who say that one of them tried to shoot the fleeing soldier. His companions stopped him, reckoning that his bravery in leaping out over the river entitled the soldier to escape; cothrom na Feinne still mattered. From then on the local people referred to this spot as the Soldier’s Leap.

The Government troops were routed, and many of them were killed on the battlefield, or in the following pursuit, although about five hundred of them were taken prisoner.

The battle was going well for the Jacobites when Claverhouse stood up in his stirrups to signal his horsemen to charge the Government troops of Leven’s regiment, who were still standing firm. As he lifted himself up a bullet entered under his raised arm and he was thrown from his horse. He fell to the ground, mortally wounded, and, even as his men triumphed over their enemies, he breathed his last on the heather. With the loss of such a talented and charismatic leader the Jacobite cause itself suffered a terrible blow. A few days later the Highland army was driven back from a fire-fight at the town of Dunkeld, fifteen or so miles south of Killiecrankie, and the rebellion was effectively over. Again a Highland army dispersed like smoke into the hills and glens. Yet even victory was not enough for some of Claverhouse’s enemies, and the story was soon going the rounds that he had, in fact, been killed by one of his own men, who wanted to rid the country of Popery and the Stewarts who supported it! Some incurable Romantics also like to believe that beneath his iron breastplate Graham was wearing Knights Templar uniform! Stories gather round heroes, and, in defeating a larger Govern­ment force only to die in the heather, Claverhouse left a legend that has inspired many a story and song since.

Disaster at Preston

In the history of the Jacobite rebellions in Britain there have been some notable victories, but there have also been more than a few absolute disasters. In the 1715 Rising the indecisive leadership of John Erskine, the Earl of Mar, known as Bobbing John for his habit of changing sides – he had been the British Government’s chief representative in Scotland – led directly to the shambles of the Battle of Sherrifmuir. However, he was not the only ditherer and was matched by another Jacobite Leader, Thomas Forster, the Earl of Derwentwater and Member of Parliament for North­umberland. Like many of the Jacobites in Scotland and England, Forster was an Episcopalian, and he ended up in command of a combined Scottish and English force in the Borders at the end of September. The Scottish contingent consisted of both Lowlan­ders from Lothian and a detachment of over a thousand High­landers, under the command of Mackintosh of Borlum, who had been sent south by Mar to increase the effectiveness of what was a second, if small, Jacobite army. Mar stayed at Perth with the rest of the troops, doing nothing. From the very beginning there was disagreement between the Scots and English. While the Scots wanted to secure the Borders, Forster and his compatriots insisted on heading south to raise further support for the rebellion. Forster, in particular, no doubt inspired by the fact that many northern English cities had seen riots when George I was installed on the throne after the death of Queen Anne, was certain that great numbers of Episcopalians would flock to the cause as they passed down through Lancashire towards his intended target, Liverpool. Having been given command, as the only non-Catholic amongst the leadership, in the hope that English Episcopalians would rally to the cause, he eventually had his way, although not before creating a considerable amount of ill feeling amongst the Scots and destroying the morale of his command.

As the combined force headed south they were being shadowed by local militia groups, who had been mobilised by magistrates in the area on Government instructions. They did not have enough force to attack the Jacobites, but their presence no doubt helped to prevent Jacobite recruitment. On 7 November, Forster and the Jacobites marched into Lancaster in great style, their colours flying and swords drawn, to the sound of bagpipes and drums. They made a tremendous spectacle, still remembered fondly in Lancaster, and the Old Pretender was proclaimed King James III of England at the town cross. They were welcomed by a con­siderable number of local notables, and five local gentlemen publicly joined the force. This was a great deal less than Forster had been hoping for, but while they occupied the town they managed to obtain half-a-dozen small cannon from a ship moored in the harbour. Two days later, after this pleasant diversion, they marched out of the town towards Preston. Heading south, Forster got reports that a large force was in his path, as many as ten thousand men. In fact, this was a force of local people, forced out by the Bishop of Carlisle and Lord Lonsdale, most of whom were armed with no more than agricultural tools. On seeing the High­landers approach, most of them turned and ran; the rest were simply swept out of the way.

The upshot of this skirmish was that the Jacobites simply confiscated what little decent weaponry, horses and stores this ragged mob had with them and pressed on south. On 9 November the force marched into Preston, a thriving town with many substantial houses and quite a few narrow alleys separating the blocks of houses. While the troops were being billeted throughout the town, some more gentlemen came forward to offer their services to the Jacobite cause. Just as had happened in Lancaster, they were all Catholics. The Episcopalians and High Tory An­glicans Forster was hoping would join up kept themselves to themselves. The Catholics were a persecuted minority and had reason to rise, but, without the support of a much broader base in the population, the whole prospect of victory in England was clearly fading. The fact that two companies of dragoons had left Preston without putting up a fight gave little comfort: it was clearly a tactical decision. There was no doubt that Forster would soon be hearing of larger numbers of Government troops. The situation was grim, and it seems that the leader responded by retiring to his bed. However, he still had a considerable number of troops, nearly two thousand, including Borlum’s Highlanders, who were eager to get to grips with the enemy.

They soon had their wish, for on 12 November scouts brought word that General Wills was approaching from the south with a considerable force. It was decided to put up a fight in Preston itself, and soon trenches were being dug and barricades erected in the main streets. All at once, the situation seemed to be improving. Action is always preferable to waiting, and the town provided a good defensive position. Troops were appointed to their positions and reserves were deployed in the centre of the town, ready to support any part of the defences as needed.

When the Government troops mounted their first assault they suffered heavy fire from the muskets of Borlum’s Highlanders, who were shooting from windows, while the cannon appropriated in Lancaster, directed by a sailor from the ship that had provided them, poured vicious and deadly grape-shot into the advancing attackers. Despite the fact that this sailor had celebrated joining the Jacobite cause by getting drunk every day since, the cannons had a deadly effect, and by the time the Hanoverian forces reached the first barricades on Church Street their numbers were sorely depleted. Their first attack was repulsed with severe losses, and the Jacobites cheered as they retreated. This was what so many of them had been waiting for, and their first engagement with the enemy forces appeared to have gone very well.

The Government army’s next attack was a bit more successful than the first. Troops were sent to try and set fire to the houses and other buildings to the east of the Church Street barricades. The Hanoverians managed to do this, but the wind veered and the smoke under which they had hoped to mount another attack was blown back in their faces. Some of them, though, did manage to get into the wynds and alleys of the south end of the town, where a group of over a hundred men gathered under the command of a captain. They stormed Patten House, which provided a commanding position over the barricades at the head of Church Street. This was a serious problem. If they could fire down on the Jacobites at the barricades it would make it much easier for their comrades to mount a successful assault on them and get into the town itself.

Fighting was vicious by now, and the Highlanders mounted a direct assault on this Government force, attacking via a back lane just as night fell. Yet again the Highland forces proved their effectiveness at close quarters, and the soldiers were driven back, leaving nearly a hundred and fifty dead behind them. By now, though, the policy of firing buildings was taking effect and the night sky flared with flames. General Wills’s men now had a toehold in the town, and, as most of them were well-trained and battle-hardened, the battle raged fiercely. The order then came for the Government troops to put lighted candles in the houses they had captured so their officers could see what progress was being made. The canny Jacobites soon noticed this, and candles began appearing in so many windows that the intention of the Hano­verian forces was totally thwarted. Soon after this the fighting died back to sporadic outbursts of gunfire as the men on both sides lay down where they were and tried to snatch whatever sleep was possible before dawn and the inevitable resurgence of hostilities. By this time, Thomas Forster, instead of inspecting the defences and thus instilling a bit of morale in his force, had gone to his bed.

Come the morning, though, things had changed. Overnight, a further contingent of Government troops had arrived from New­castle under the command of General Carpenter, over two and half thousand of them, and this gave Wills enough men to totally surround Preston. The choices for the Jacobites were now stark. They had made no preparations for a long siege – Forster’s optimistic assessment of the situation had led to them planning to be in Preston for no more than couple of days – and there was no way of holding out for any protracted period. They would have to fight their way out through the Government troops or surren­der where they were. It was that simple. To the Mackintosh clansmen who had come down from Scotland there was no question. They had done alright against these trained soldiers of the regular army up to this point and wanted only to be organised for a rush on the troops to the north of the city. Borlum, along with the Earl of Wintoun, agreed with this position. They had already inflicted major casualties on their enemy, morale among their troops was high and they were still in command of their strongest positions, which would allow them some room for manoeuvre. The answer was simple: to lay plans accordingly and get ready to fight their way out! Their commander, however, did not agree.

Forster, having already shown himself as almost incapable of decisive action, now acted decisively, but disastrously. One of his companions from the start, Oxburgh, who had been given the rank of general during the fiasco of the southern campaign, was sent out, unknown to the Scots contingent, under a flag of truce to General Wills. His orders were simple: get whatever terms you can and we will surrender! Wills at first had no intention of dealing with any ‘damned rebel’ but was prevailed upon by Scottish officers in his regiment to at least listen to Oxburgh. He heard him out then gave his terms.

‘I will spare your lives if you all surrender. You have one hour then I will send in my men with orders for no quarter,’ he said in a harsh voice.

When Oxburgh returned with the offer Forster caved in im­mediately. The news spread like wildfire. The Scots, and in particular the clan Mackintosh, were outraged. They well knew that they would be tried as rebels and that their lives would probably be forfeit. One of the officers, Captain Dalzell, then went to General Wills to try and get specific terms for the Highlanders. He was spurned out of hand. Both Borlum and Wintoun, having sworn to follow Forster’s orders, seemed to think, reluctantly or not, that they had to accept. Not all felt the same way. Before anything else transpired, one of the Lowland Scots, Murray, went to Forster’s apartments. Bursting in, he levelled his pistol at the supposed general and pulled the trigger. Just at that point, one of Forster’s companions, one Patten, intervened and knocked Murray’s arm up. Murray was immediately seized by other officers. It is not difficult to imagine the words chosen by Murray as his attempt on Forster’s life failed. Like many others, he knew his fate was sealed. And his actions were no different from what was in the hearts of many of the other Scots that day. As for Patten, he turned King’s Evidence at Murray’s trial and later left his own account of the happenings of 1715, for what they are worth.

The Jacobite army laid down its weapons in Preston on 14 November. On the same day, a couple of hundred miles to the north, another battle was being fought. This was the battle of Sheriffmuir, after which the Earl of Mar made his excuses and left Scotland for the Continent. It was indeed a black day for the Jacobite cause, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. All the more bitter because the casualties at Preston were seventeen dead for the Jacobites against over two hundred on the Hanoverian side.

And as for the men who surrendered at Preston, betrayed by their leadership, their fate was harsh indeed. Although both Mackintosh and Wintoun managed to escape after they were condemned to death and jailed, the lot of the ‘common’ soldiers was dreadful. Most of them were locked up in churches in Preston, guarded by troops, but reliant on the locals for food, and not even given blankets or extra clothing as the winter closed in. According to local contemporary accounts, they were forced to tear the linings from the pews to try and make coverings for themselves. Dozens of them died then, either of starvation or brutality, in various English prisons. The majority of the rest were sent off as slaves to the plantations in the West Indies. Mackintosh managed to escape from Newgate and went to France, returning to take part in the further abortive Jacobite Rising in 1719, after which he again escaped to the Continent. However, he could not keep away from his beloved Highlands and returned once more. He was captured in 1727 and spent the rest of his days, till his death in 1745, as a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle.

As for Thomas Forster, the Earl of Derwentwater, his wishy-washy behaviour and rank cowardice in the end did him little harm. He escaped from Newgate in the following April in circumstances that hinted at Government collusion. By then, a suitable postscript to the disaster of Preston and the fiasco of Sheriffmuir had already taken place. James III had landed in Scotland in December, come at last to rally his support in the country of his ancestors, but, as all too often with the Jacobites, it was too little, too late.

Not the Battle of Inverary

There are many examples of rather pathetic leadership skills amongst the Jacobites in 1715, but they were not alone. As it was still the norm in those days for aristocrats to advance to the most senior military ranks with little or no regard for actual tactical or strategic skills, this is hardly very surprising. In Octo­ber, General Alexander Gordon of Auchintool was sent to the west of Scotland by the Earl of Mar. He marched on Inverary, the chief seat of the Campbells in their Argyll homelands, with a force of four thousand men. The Duke of Argyll’s brother, Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Islay, was in charge of the forces loyal to the Hanoverians in the west, and he had fortified the town itself by digging trenches and gathering in nearly two and a half thousand men, including regular troops and Campbell clansmen. Some of his forces were cavalry.

Gordon made his camp a mile or so to the north-east of Inverary. Whether or not he was eager for battle is unclear for it seems that, on the advice of the Jacobite Campbell of Glendaruel, he was hoping to gather a number of new recruits from Argyll and the adjoining areas. Gordon thought that if he could keep Islay and his troops cornered in Inverary the chances of men flocking to join him would be that much greater. Islay, meanwhile, having found out that the Jacobite army was con­siderably larger than the numbers of troops at his command, was reluctant to sally forth and close with the enemy. So, matters stood at a bit of a standstill for a few days with neither side doing very much at all.

Following Campbell of Glendaruel’s advice, Gordon decided to send out a recruiting party. A force of about two hundred men was sent out under the leadership of Campbell of Glen-lyon, another of his clan that was siding with the Stewarts. It was thought that a Campbell would have the best chance of attracting new men in the district of Lorn: Campbell country. The Duke of Islay soon got word of what was happening. To counteract this effort he sent out a troop of seven hundred clansmen under the leadership of one of the most experienced soldiers of his clan, Colonel Campbell of Fonab. He set off north to try and intercept Glenlyon. Right enough, he came alongside the Jacobite force near a wee village or clachan at the foot Loch Nell, a few miles east of Oban. When they saw the Hanoverian men approaching, the Jacobite forces drew them­selves up in line of battle across the side of small hill. Fonab’s men drew up opposite them, and it was immediately clear that the Jacobites were outnumbered at least three to one. As he was mulling over whether to fight or flee, Glenlyon saw a horseman detach from the opposite ranks. Obviously this was to be an attempt at having a parley. Spurring his own horse, he moved forward, recognising as he did so that his opposite number was Fonab.

The old soldier rode up to him and the pair of them stopped midway between the two forces.

‘Well then, Glenlyon, are you well?’ said Fonab politely.

‘I am indeed, Fonab, are you keeping well yourself?’ he replied, pleased to see the older man despite the situation.

‘Och well, this is a pretty pass we have come to,’ Fonab went on, ‘and I think it would be great disaster if we were to see Campbell fighting Campbell this day.’

‘I would agree with that,’ relied Glenlyon slowly, ‘but what have you in mind?’

At that, Fonab told his younger kinsman what he thought should happen. The two of them sat on horseback between their respective forces then Glenlyon turned and rode back to his men to tell them of what was proposed. Well, not just proposed, but proposed and accepted. In order to avoid the horror of the clansmen fighting their own kin, Fonab suggested that Glenlyon’s men should hand over their arms, he could ask no less. For his part, he and his men would convoy them out of Argyll and then release them to return to their own army. Glenlyon, well aware that there were plenty of arms back with the main body of the Jacobite army at Perth, saw the sense in this; he, too, had no wish to see Campbells spilling Campbell blood and so happily ac­cepted the terms. Accordingly, Fonab’s men accompanied the Glenlyon’s men to the edge of Argyll, where they happily waved farewell to their cousins, who headed back to join the Jacobite army. On hearing of this from Fonab, the Earl of Islay was furious, and he loudly berated the old soldier in front of a group of other officers. It was precisely this sort of behaviour that led many of the Campbells at Inverary to decide that Islay was getting above himself, and there was a consequent outbreak of desertion, amongst both officers and men. The quality of leadership on both sides was clearly no match for the courage, commitment and, in this case, intelligence of the men under their command.

A day or so after the Jacobites had arrived, the Campbells in Inverary were wakened in the night by a great noise of thundering hooves. The immediate suspicion was that the Jacobites were attacking with cavalry, and men quickly formed up around the castle with their arms, ready to repulse the enemy. As they stood ready to fire, the hooves got louder, and suddenly there in front of them was herd of horses. Not one had a saddle, a bridle, or a rider. This was the herd of horses brought by Campbells and MacEacherns from Kintyre to provide Islay with some cavalry. Ever since Roman times, when the local tribe was known as the Epidii, or horse warriors, the Kintyre men had been famous for their skill with horses, the name MacEachern itself meaning son of the horse. In this case, however, they had not looked after their stock well and had left them on a poor bit of grazing close to the town. The horses, dissatisfied with their location, had simply decided to move and look for better grazing! While moving across the river to a better meadow, something spooked them, setting off a stam­pede. With all the rattling of drums and the shouting of the officers, the horses speeded up and headed off westwards into the night. A report of the time said, ‘At last the whole was found only to be a plot among the Kintyre horse to desert not to the enemy, but to their own country; for, ’tis to be supposed, the horses, as well as their owners, were of very loyal principles.’ This put an end to Islay’s cavalry for the meantime, and once the horses had gone the majority of the men went back to sleep.

Later the very same night, a sergeant was doing the rounds of the sentries at Inverary. The sergeant had spent some hours in a tavern in the town during the evening and was somewhat the worse for wear. As he approached one of the sentries in the dark, the sentry called out, ‘Who goes there? State the password.’

The sergeant, due to the amount of drink he had taken, had completely forgotten the password and simply called out. ‘It is Sergeant Dougal Campbell . . .’

He got no chance to say any more. The sentry was already nervous because of the earlier incident with the horses, and, not receiving the password, raised his musket and fired at the indistinct figure he could see. The sergeant threw himself to the ground.

Pandemonium broke out. Up in the castle, Islay heard the shot and called at once for the drummer to beat the call to arms. All around the town, men grabbed their muskets and headed for the mustering point on the castle green. The drunken sergeant, sobering up quickly, realised what he had done and, to cover his tracks, gave a great shout, ‘The rebels. The rebels are coming!’ At once, several other sentries began firing in the general direction of the Jacobite camp.

The main body of the Government force was assembled on the castle green, where the troops were ordered into the trenches adjoining the town and ordered to start firing, platoon by platoon, in the direction of the rebels. No one had any doubt that there was a night attack under way from the north-east. So, volley after volley rang out and orders were shouted by the officers, the majority of whom, it seems, had retired behind the thick walls of Inverary Castle! Up in the Jacobite camp everyone was awa­kened by the noise, and, looking towards the town, they saw the flashes of the persistent firing. Gordon knew he had not ordered a night attack and took the firing to be a celebration of the arrival of reinforcements for the Hanoverian forces. Deciding that discre­tion was the better part of valour, he at once put an order round that his men were to march back east as soon as the dawn rose.

Eventually, Islay realised that there was no returning fire, and orders were given to his men to cease firing. Such was the tenseness of the situation that they all stood to arms through the hours of darkness. Come the dawn, it was obvious that there had been no attempted assault by the Jacobites. Only a short while later, word came in that, in fact, the forces of General Gordon were heading back east towards Perth.

The Battle of High Bridge

On 16 August 1745, three days before Prince Charlie raised his standard at Glenfinnan, the Governor of Fort Augustus heard that there was trouble brewing among the people of Moidart and decided to send two companies of troops to Fort William, twenty eight miles south, to reinforce the garrison there. The troops were recent recruits, with no battle experience, and were under the command of a Captain Scott. They had gone some twenty or so miles of their journey and were approaching the High Bridge over the Spean River, which had been erected by General Wade nine years earlier. As they came near to the bridge, they saw a group of armed Highlanders guarding it, with a piper playing a rousing tune. Captain Scott halted his troops at once. He looked and saw that there was great deal of movement, with men coming in and out of the woods beside the bridge. Judging by the noise that they were making, there seemed to be a considerable number of armed clansmen, and he sent two of his men forward to have a better look and to try and figure out just how many men there were at the bridge. The two soldiers were cautiously approaching the bridge, sticking close to the edge of the trees along the road, when, suddenly, they were leapt on by two men. They were thrown to the ground and looked up to see themselves facing the barrels of a pair of pistols. They were hustled along the road to the bridge, an event seen by Captain Scott further back up the road.

Having lost two of his men already, and unwilling to advance