THE CULLODEN PAPERS.*

[Quarterly Review, January, 1816.]

EVERYTHING belonging to the Highlands of Scotland has of late become peculiarly interesting. It is not much above half a century since it was otherwise. The inhabitants of the Lowlands of Scotland were, indeed, aware that there existed, in the extremity of the island, amid wilder mountains and broader lakes than their own, tribes of men called clans, living each under the rule of their own chief, wearing a peculiar dress, speaking an unknown language, and going armed even in the most ordinary and peaceable vocations. The more southern counties saw specimens of these men, following the droves of cattle which were the sole exportable commodity of their country, plaided, bonneted, belted and brogued, and driving their bullocks, as Virgil is said to have spread his manure, with an air of great dignity and consequence. To their nearer Lowland neighbours, they were known by more fierce and frequent causes of acquaintance; by the forays which they made upon the inhabitants of the plains, and the tribute, or protection money, which they exacted from those whose possessions they spared. But in England, the knowledge of the very existence of the Highlanders was, prior to 1745, faint and forgotten; and not even the recollection of those civil wars which they had maintained in the years 1689, 1715, and 1719, had made much impression on the British public. The more intelligent, when they thought of them by any chance, considered them as complete barbarians; and the mass of the people cared no more about them than the merchants of New York

* On "Culloden Papers; comprising an extensive and interesting Correspondence from the Year 1625 to 1748. To which is prefixed, an Introduction, containing Memoirs of the Right Honourable Duncan Forbes," &c. 4to. 1815.

about the Indians who dwell beyond the Alleghany mountains. Swift, in his Journal to Stella, mentions having dined in company with two gentlemen from the Highlands of Scotland, and expresses his surprise at finding them persons of ordinary decorum and civility.

Such was the universal ignorance of the rest of the island respecting the inhabitants of this remote corner of Britain, when the events of the remarkable years 1745-6 roused them, "like a rattling peal of thunder." On the 25th of July, 1745, the eldest son of the Chevalier Saint George, usually called from that circumstance the young Chevalier, landed in Moidart, in the West Highlands, with seven attendants only; and his presence was sufficient to summon about eighteen hundred men to his standard, even before the news of his arrival could reach London. This little army was composed of a few country gentlemen, acting as commanders of battalions raised from the peasants or commoners of their estates, and officered by the principal farmers, or tacksmen. None of them pretended to knowledge of military affairs, and very few had ever seen an action. With such inadequate forces, the adventurer marched forward, like the hero of a romance, to prove his fortune. The most considerable part of the regular army moved to meet him at the pass of Corry-arrack; and here, as we learn from these papers, the Chevalier called for his Highland dress, and, tying the latchet of a pair of Highland brogues, swore he would fight the army of the government before he unloosed them.* But Sir John Cope, avoiding an action, marched to Inverness, leaving the low countries open to the Chevalier, who instantly rushed down on them; and while one part of the government army retreated northward to avoid him, he chased before him the remainder, which fled to the south. He crossed the Forth on the 13th Septem-. ber, and in two days afterwards was master of the metropolis of Scotland. The king's forces having again united at Dunbar, and being about to advance upon Edinburgh, sustained at Prestonpans one of the most complete defeats recorded in history, their cavalry flying in irretrievable confusion, and all their infantry being killed or made prisoners. Under these auspices, the Highland army, now about five

* Culloden Papers, p. 216.

or six thousand strong, advanced into England, although Marshal Wade lay at Newcastle with one army, and the Duke of Cumberland was at the head of another in the centre of the kingdom. They took Carlisle, a walled town, with a castle of considerable strength, and struck a degree of confusion and terror into the public mind, at which those who witnessed and shared it were afterwards surprised and ashamed. London, says a contemporary, writing on the spur of the moment, lies open as a prize to the first comers, whether Scotch or Dutch; and a letter from Gray to Horace Walpole, paints an indifference yet more ominous to the public cause than the general panic:-"The common people in town at least know how to be afraid; but we are such uncommon people here (at Cambridge) as to have no more sense of danger than if the battle had been fought where and when the battle of Cannæ was.-I heard three sensible middle-aged men, when the Scotch were said to be at Stamford, and actually were at Derby, talking of hiring a chaise to go to Caxton (a place in the high-road) to see the Pretender and Highlanders as they passed." A further evidence of the feelings under which the public laboured during this crisis, is to be found in these papers, in a letter from the well-known Sir Andrew Mitchell to the Lord President.

"If I had not lived long enough in England to know the natural bravery of the people, particularly of the better sort, I should, from their behaviour of late, have had a very false opinion of them; for the least scrap of good news exalts them most absurdly; and the smallest reverse of fortune depresses them meanly."-P. 255.

In fact the alarm was not groundless;-not that the number of the Chevalier's individual followers ought to have been an object of serious, at least of permanent alarm to so great a kingdom,—but because, in many counties, a great proportion of the landed interest were Jacobitically disposed, although, with the prudence which distinguished the opposite party in 1688, they declined joining the invaders until it should appear whether they could maintain their ground without them. If it had rested with the unfortunate but daring leader of this strange adventure, his courage, though far less supported either by actual strength of numbers or by military experience, was as much "screwed to the sticking-place" as that of the Prince of Orange. The

history of the council of war, at Derby, in which Charles Edward's retreat was determined, has never yet been fully explained; it will, however, be one day made known;-in the mean time, it is proved that no cowardice on his part, no wish to retreat from the desperate adventure in which he was engaged, and to shelter himself from its consequences, dictated the movement which was then adopted. Vestigia nulla retrorsum had been his motto from the beginning. When retreat was determined upon, contrary to his arguments, entreaties, and tears, he evidently considered his cause as desperate: he seemed, in many respects, an altered man; and from being the leader of his little host, became in appearance, as he was in reality, their reluctant follower. While the Highland army advanced, Charles was always in the van by break of day;-in retreat, his alacrity was gone, and often they were compelled to wait for him;-he lost his spirit, his gaiety, his hardihood, and he never regained them but when battle was spoken of. In later life, when all hopes of his re-establishment were ended, Charles Edward sunk into frailties by which he was debased and dishonoured. But let us be just to the memory of the unfortunate. Without courage, he had never made the attempt -without address and military talent, he had never kept together his own desultory bands, or discomfited the more experienced soldiers of his enemy;-and finally, without patience, resolution, and fortitude, he could never have supported his cause so long, under successive disappointments, or fallen at last with honour, by an accumulated and overwhelming pressure.

When the resolution of retreat was adopted, it was accomplished with a dexterous celerity, as remarkable as the audacity of the advance. With Ligonier's army on one flank, and Cumberland's in the rear-surrounded by hostile forces, and without one hope remaining of countenance or assistance from the Jacobites of England, the Highlanders made their retrograde movement without either fear or loss, and had the advantage at Clifton, near Penrith, in the only skirmish which took place between them and their numerous pursuers. The same good fortune seemed for a time to attend the continuation of the war, when removed once more to Scotland. The Chevalier, at the head of his little army, returned to the north more like a victor than a retreat

ing adventurer. He laid Glasgow under ample contribution, refreshed and collected his scattered troops, and laid siege to Stirling, whose castle guards the principal passage between the Highlands and Lowlands. In the meanwhile, General Hawley was sent against him; an officer so confident of success, that he declared he would trample the Highland insurgents into dust with only two regiments of dragoons; and whose first order, on entering Edinburgh, was to set up a gibbet in the Grass Market, and another between Leith and Edinburgh. But this commander received from his despised opponents so sharp a defeat, at Falkirk, that, notwithstanding all the colours which could be put upon it, the affair appeared not much more creditable than that of Prestonpans. How Hawley looked upon this occasion, we learn by a letter from General Wightman.

"General H▬▬▬y is in much the same situation as General Ce; he was never seen in the field during the battle; and everything would have gone to wreck, in a worse manner than at Preston, if General Huske had not acted with judgment and courage, and appeared everywhere. H- --y seems to be sensible of his misconduct; for when I was with him on Saturday morning at Linlithgow, he looked most wretchedly; even worse than C-e did a few hours after his scuffle, when I saw him at Fala."-P. 267.

Even when the approach of the Duke of Cumberland, with a predominant force, compelled these adventurers to retreat towards their northern recesses, they were so far from being disheartened that they generally had the advantage in the sort of skirmishing warfare which preceded their final defeat at Culloden. On this occasion, they seem, for the first time, to have laboured under a kind of judicial infatuation. They did not defend the passage of Spey, though broad, deep, rapid, and dangerous; they did not retreat before the duke into the defiles of their own mountains, where regular troops pursuing them could not long have subsisted; they did not even withdraw two leagues, which would have placed them in a position inaccessible to horse and favourable to their own mode of fighting; they did not await their own reinforcements, although three thousand men, a number equal to one half of their army, were within a day's march, but, on the contrary, they wasted the spirits of their people, already exhausted by hunger and dispirited by retreat, in a forced march, with the purpose of a night