reached any height. It is very probable 5 that this advice was dictated by a feeling of humanity towards the insurgents, many of whom were the intimate friends and associates of the advisers. Forbes seems to have wished, by this means, at once to quiet those who had risen, before Government should become exasperated against them, and to prevent as many as possible from joining, who he was sure would soon do so if the enterprise was not immediately checked. We cannot but regret that a piece of counsel so honourable in its motive should have been so imprudent in policy. The Royal army was not only inferior in numbers to that which Charles was believed to have drawn together, but had all the disadvantages of a campaign in an enemy's country, and on ground unsuitable for its evolutions-would first have to drag its way slowly over rugged wildernesses, with a perpetual clog of baggage and provisions behind it, and then perhaps fight in a defile where it would be gradually cut to pieces, or what was as bad, permit the enemy to slip past and descend upon the Low country, which it ought to have protected. The advice was even given in defiance of experience: the Duke of Argyll, in 1715, by guarding the pass into the Lowlands at Stirling, prevented the much superior army of Marr from disturbing the valuable part of the kingdom, and eventually was able to paralise and confound the I whole of that unhappy enterprise.

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Cope is conjectured by Mr Home, though the fact is not so obvious, to have been confirmed in his desire of prompt measures by a piece of address on the part of the Jacobites. These gentlemen, who were very numerous in Edinburgh, re

membering perhaps the precedent alluded to, and knowing that Charles, for want of money, would not be able to keep the Highlanders long together in their own country, conceived it to be their best policy to precipitate a meeting between the two armies. They therefore contrived, it is said, that Sir John Cope, who seemed to have no opinions of his own, but consulted every body he met, should be urged to perform the march he proposed, as the measure most likely to quell the insurrection, which, it was hinted by these insidious advisers, wanted nothing but a little time to become formidable.

Thus advised, and thus perhaps deluded, Sir John Cope rendezvoused his raw troops at Stirling, and sent off a letter to the Scots Secretary, requesting permission to march immediately against the rebels. The reasons which he gave for his proposal seemed so strong in the eyes of the Lords Regent, that they not only agreed to it, but expressly ordered him to march to the north, and engage the enemy, whatever might be his strength, or wherever he might be found. This order reached Sir John at Edinburgh on the 19th of August, the very day when Charles reared his standard; so that war might be said to have been declared by both parties simultaneously. Cope set out that very day for Stirling, to put himself at the head of his little

army.

CHAPTER V.

COPE'S MARCH TO THE NOrth.

Duke F.-Come on; since the youth will not be en-
treated, his own peril on his forwardness.
As You Like It.

THIS unfortunate Commander-in-chief commenced his fatal march on the 20th of August, the day after he had received the orders of the Lords Regent. His force consisted in twenty-five companies of foot, amounting in all to fourteen hundred men, for he had left the two regiments of dragoons behind, on account of their uselessness in a Highland campaign. He carried with him four pieces of cannon (one and a half pounders), as many cohorns, and a thousand stand of arms, to be given to the native troops, which he expected to join him as he went along. Besides a vast quantity of baggage, he was followed by a train of black cattle, with butchers to kill them as required: and he had as much bread and biscuit as would serve for twenty-one days; for the production of which all the bakers in Edinburgh, Leith, and Stirling, had been incessantly working for a week. 1

It was Sir John's intention to march to Fort Augustus, the central fort of the three which are

pitched along the great glen. He considered this the most advantageous post that could be occupied by the King's army, because it was in the very centre of the disaffected country, and admitted of a ready communication with the adjacent places of strength. He accordingly adopted that military road through the middle of the Highlands, which, stretching athwart the great alpine region of the Grampians, is so remarkable in the memory of all travellers for its lonely desolation in summer, and its dangerous character when the ground is covered with snow. His first day's march was to Crieff, where he was obliged to halt till he should be overtaken by an hundred horse-load of bread that had been left at Stirling. Having previously written to the Duke of Athole, Lord Glenorchy, and other loyal chiefs, desiring them to raise their men, the first of these noblemen here visited him, in company with his younger brother Lord George Murray, afterwards so celebrated as the Generalissimo of Charles's forces; but the chief of Athole, though disposed to preserve his estate by keeping on good terms with Government, was by no means so hotly loyal as to take arms in its defence. Cope was then, for the first time, shaken in his hope of gaining accessions of strength as he went along— the hope which had mainly induced him to go north with so small an army; and he would have gladly returned to Stirling, had not the orders of government, as he afterwards acknowledged, * been so peremptory for a contrary course. Lord Glenorchy waited upon the disconcerted general on the afternoon of the same day, and gave him additional pain, by the intelligence that he could not

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gather his men in proper time. He then saw fit to send back seven hundred of his spare arms, to the place which he would so gladly have retreated to himself.

Advancing on the 22d to Amulree, on the 23d to Tay Bridge, on the 24th to Trinifuir, and on the 25th to Dalnacardoch, the difficulties of a Highland campaign became gradually more and more apparent to the unhappy general, whose eyes were at the same time daily opened wider and wider to the secret disaffection of the Highlanders. His baggage-horses were stolen in the night from their pastures, so that he was obliged to leave hundreds of his bread-bags behind him. Those who took charge of this important deposit, though they promised to send it after him, took care that it never reached its destination, or at least not until it was useless. He was also played upon and distracted by all sorts of false intelligence; so that he at last could not trust to the word of a single native, gentleman or commoner. In short, he soon found himself in a complete scrape-emancipation from which seemed impossible but at the expense of honour.

When at the lonely inn of Dalnacardoch, he, was met by Captain Sweetenham, the officer already mentioned as having been taken by the insurgents; who, after witnessing the erection of the standard, had been discharged upon his parole, and now brought Cope the first certain intelligence he had received, regarding the real state of the Sweetenham had left them when their numbers were fourteen hundred; he had since met many more who were marching to the rendezvous; and as he passed Dalwhinnie, the last

enemy.