صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

person, went no small length in confirming his partisans in those feelings towards their leader. There were exceptions amongst them however. Some of those who followed Charles to France, thought that he looked cold on them, and the Memoirs of Dr. King, lately published, tend to confirm the suspicion that (like others of his unhappy race) he was not warmly grateful. His courage, at least, ought to be beyond suspicion, considering the manner in which he landed on an expedition so desperate, and the opposition to his undertaking which he met with from the only friends upon whose assistance he could have counted for the chance of bringing together 1500 or 2000 men. A few sentences on this subject from Home's Narrative will probably vindicate what we have said, and at the same time give a specimen of the historian's peculiar style, which, if neither flowery nor eloquent, as might have been expected from his poetical vein, is clear, simple, expressive, and not unlike the conversation of an aged man of intelligence and feeling, recalling the recollection of his earlier

years.

To introduce these extracts, we must previously remark, that the chiefs of the Highland clans had come to a prudent resolution, that notwithstanding their attachment to the cause of the Stuarts, they should decline joining in any invasion which the exiled family might attempt, unless it was supported by a body of regular French troops. It was on the dominions (as they might then be called) of the Captain of Clanronald that Charles first landed. He did not find the chief himself, but he summoned on board the vessel which he brought with him to the Hebrides, MacDonald of Boisdale, the brother of Clanronald, a man of considerable intelligence, and who was supposed to have much interest with the chief. Boisdale declared he would advise his brother against the undertaking, remarking that the two most powerful chieftains in the vicinity, MacDonald of Sleate and MacLeod of MacLeod, were determined not to raise their men, unless the Chevalier should bring with him a sufficient foreign force.

"Charles replied in the best manner he could; and ordering the ship to be unmoored, carried Boisdale, whose boat hung at the stern, several miles onward to the main-land, pressing him to relent, and give a better answer. Boisdale was inexorable; and, getting into his boat, left Charles to pursue his course, which he did directly for the coast of Scotland; and, coming to an anchor in the Bay of Lochnanuagh, between Moidart and Arisaig, sent a boat ashore with a letter to young Clanronald. In a very little time Clanronald, with his relation Kinloch Moidart, came aboard the Doutelle. Charles, almost reduced to despair in his interview with Boisdale, addressed the two Highlanders with great emotion, and summing up his arguments for taking arms, conjured them to assist their prince, their countryman, in his utmost

need. Clanronald and his friend, though well inclined to the cause, positively refused; and told him, one after another, that, to take arms without concert or support, was to pull down certain destruction on their own heads. Charles persisted, argued, and implored. During this conversation, the parties walked backwards and forwards upon the deck; a Highlander stood near them, armed at all points, as was then the fashion of the country: He was a younger brother of Kinloch Moidart, and had come off to the ship to enquire for news, not knowing who was aboard. When he gathered from their discourse that the stranger was the Prince of Wales, when he heard his chief and his brother refuse to take arms with their prince, his colour went and came, his eyes sparkled, he shifted his place, and grasped his sword. Charles observed his demeanour, and, turning briskly towards him, called out, 'Will not you assist me?'-'I will, I will,' said Ranald; though no other man in the Highlands should draw a sword, I am ready to die for you.' Charles, with a profusion of thanks and acknowledgments, extolled his champion to the skies, saying, he only wished that all the Highlanders were like him. Without further deliberation, the two MacDonalds declared that they also would join, and use their utmost endeavours to engage their countrymen to take arms. Immediately Charles, with his company, went ashore, and was conducted to Boradale, a farm which belonged to the estate of Clanronald."

The conversion of the good Lochiel, for whom some friendly Presbyterian drew up an epitaph, declaring he

'is now a Whig in heaven,"

to this rash undertaking, shall be our last quotation from this history, so interesting in spite of its imperfections. This model of a Highland chief and Scottish gentleman met with the Chevalier at MacDonald of Boradale's, a very few days after he landed.

"The conversation began on the part of Charles, with bitter complaints of the treatment he had received from the ministers of France, who had so long amused him with vain hopes, and deceived him with false promises: their coldness in his cause, he said, but ill agreed with the opinion he had of his own pretensions, and with the impatience to assert them, with which the promises of his father's brave and faithful subjects had inflamed his mind. Lochiel acknowledged the engagements of the chiefs, but observed that they were no ways binding, as he had come over without the stipulated aid; and, therefore, as there was not the least prospect of success, he advised his Royal Highness to return to France, and to reserve himself and his faithful friends for a more favourable opportunity. Charles refused to follow Lochiel's advice, affirming that a more favourable opportunity than the present would never come; that almost all the British troops were abroad, and kept at bay by Marshal Saxe, with a superior army:

that in Scotland there were only a few new-raised regiments, that had never seen service, and could not stand before the Highlanders; that the very first advantage gained over the troops would encourage his father's friends at home to declare themselves; that his friends abroad would not fail to give their assistance; that he only wanted the Highlanders to begin the war.

"Lochiel still resisted, entreating Charles to be more temperate, and consent to remain concealed where he was, till he (Lochiel) and his other friends should meet together, and concert what was best to be done. Charles, whose mind was wound up to the utmost pitch of impatience, paid no regard to this proposal, but answered, that he was determined to put all to the hazard. 'In a few days,' said he, 'with the few friends that I have, I will erect the royal standard, and proclaim to the people of Britain, that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, to win it, or to perish in the attempt; Lochiel, who, my father has often told me, was our firmest friend, may stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the fate of his prince.'—'No,' said Lochiel, 'I'll share the fate of my prince; and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune hath given me any power.' Such was the singular conversation, on the result of which depended peace or war. For it is a point agreed among the Highlanders, that if Lochiel had persisted in his refusal to take arms, the other chiefs would not have joined the standard without him, and the spark of rebellion must instantly have expired."—

It is singular that we should have to exculpate the unfortunate prince, who thus persisted, at the utmost risk, to instigate his followers, and to rush himself upon an undertaking so utterly desperate, from the imputation of personal cowardice; and yet such is the fact. The strongest evidence on this point is that of the Chevalier Johnstone's Memoirs of the Rebellion in 1745 and 1746. These have been published under the care of a sensible and intelligent editor, who has done a great deal to throw light upon the subject, but has been occasionally misled into giving a little too much credit to the representations of his author, who wrote under the influence of disappointment and ill-humour. A great part of the work is very interesting, because Johnstone, having been a military man, and having some turn for observation, has made better professional remarks on the Highland mode of fighting, and mere tactics, than we have observed in any other work. But then we happen to know that some of his stories are altogether fictitious, such as the brutal piece of vengeance said to have been practised by Gordon of Abbachie, upon a Whig minister [Johnstone's Memoirs, 4to, 1820, p. 183]. It will also surprise such of the few readers as might have been disposed to interest themselves in the love affair between the Chevalier and his charming Peggy, which

makes such a figure in the conclusion of his work, to learn that Chevalier Johnstone was all this while a married man—an absolute Benedick—a circumstance which he nowhere hints at during his Memoirs, and that the amour, if such existed, was not of a character to be boasted of in the face of the public. There are legitimate grandchildren of the Chevalier Johnstone now alive.

James Johnstone, the father of the Chevalier, by courtesy of Scotland "merchant in Edinburgh," was a grocer in that city. Not that we mean to impeach his gentility, because we believe his father to have been of the ancient and once powerful family of Wamphray, though, like many sons of Jacobite families, he was excluded from what are called the learned professions, by his reluctance to take the oaths of the Hanoverian dynasty. Accordingly, the heir of the noble family of Rollo, who have been before allied with the Johnstones of Wamphray, did not derogate in marrying Cecilia, daughter of James Johnstone, grocer, as before said. But when the Chevalier talks big about his fears of being disinherited, we cannot but remember that a petty shop, such as shops in the Cowgate of Edinburgh were in 1745, indifferently stocked with grocery goods,

"Was all his great estate, and like to be."

In short, we suspect our friend the Chevalier to be somewhat of a gasconader, and we are not willing to take away the character of Charles for courage upon such suspicious authority. When we therefore find that this unfortunate prince is accused-1st, of having entered into this expedition without foreseeing the personal dangers to which he must be exposed,—2nd, of taking care, in carrying it on, not to expose his person to the fire of the enemy-3rd, of abandoning it when he had ten times more hope of success than when he left Paris, we are inclined to compare what the Chevalier has averred on these three points with what is elsewhere stated by himself and other authorities.

And, first-After reading the foregoing arguments used by Boisdale, Clanronald, and Lochiel, in order to detain the Chevalier, by the strongest representations in their power, from venturing on the expedition, the Chevalier may be censured for foolhardiness, but he cannot surely be considered as a person ignorant of the dangers of the undertaking-in other words, as one too timid to venture had he known the perils he was to encounter.

Secondly-That Charles avoided placing himself in such situations of personal danger as became a prince and a general, is inconsistent with what has been registered by almost all authorities, and with what is narrated by Johnstone himself. Beginning with the battle of Prestonpans, Home states, and we have heard it corroborated by eye and ear witnesses, that "Charles declared he would lead the clans on himself, and charge at their head;" and only relinquished his purpose when the general re

• །,།

monstrance of the chieftains deterred him from leading the van. But notwithstanding this precaution, the prince conducted the second line of the Highland army; and the Chevalier Johnstone tells us, that the battle was gained with such rapidity, "that, in the second line, when I was still by the side of the prince, we saw no other enemy on the field of battle than those who were lying on the ground killed and wounded, though we were not more than fifty paces behind our first line, running as fast as we could to overtake them." Now we submit, that a general who brought up a reserve within fifty paces of his advance, when, as Sir Lucius O'Trigger says, there was light enough for a long shot, and when the said advance was made upon a line of trained infantry and artillery, cannot be truly charged with keeping himself out of gun-shot. At Falkirk, we do not know exactly where the Prince was placed during the conflict, but it appears that he must have been in the advance, since at seven o'clock in the evening he led in person the troops which pursued the English army, and took possession of Falkirk at half-past seven at night, while the Chevalier Johnstone did not even know that the victory was won until half an hour later. In the whole course of this strange levée des boucliers, the Chevalier Johnstone accuses the prince of what he calls a childish desire of fighting battles, a propensity rather inconsistent with personal cowardice, especially in the circumstances of Prince Charles, as, according to our Chevalier's authority, orders were issued to kill him on the spot if he should fall into the hands of the Government troops.

At the battle of Culloden, the Prince remained upon an eminence, with a squadron of horse. But from what Johnstone states himself, he did give the orders necessary for the occasion; in particular, when he saw the English, and the Campbells their auxiliaries, about to force an enclosure which protected the right flank of his army, he "immediately repeated orders to place some troops in that enclosure, and prevent the manœuvre of the English, which could not fail to prove fatal to us. Lord George paid no attention to this order," and the English introduced both horse, musketry, and artillery into that enclosure, to attack the Highland right wing on flank and rear, and did so with such deadly effect, that they swept away whole ranks. This manœuvre completely decided the battle, and it was when the right wing was absolutely broken that Chevalier Johnstone proposes that Charles should have rushed down to renew the fight. This would, doubtless, have been the course to ensure a soldier's grave, but that, as is expressed in the last stanzas of poor Byron, is more "often found than sought; " nor are we entitled to praise the chief who rushes upon inevitable death because he has sustained a defeat. No effort of the squadron of horse, which was all that Charles had around his person, could dispossess the English cavalry, infantry, and artillery from the position

« السابقةمتابعة »