The Last Highlander (32 page)

As long as the King remained in Hanover, though, his throne stood empty. This made the ministry uncomfortable, but what they took seriously were events across the Channel in Flanders and France. To be safe, the Duke of Newcastle asked Prince William, the Duke of Cumberland, to send home some regiments. Newcastle was worried that ‘we have not left enough troops in this country’ to fight off ‘a smuggling party of one hundred men’ let alone an invasion by a foreign power. Cumberland thought there was little danger and the few already at home could deal with a boy and his band of men 600 miles away. Flanders loomed bigger in every way in the Duke’s mind.

The government proclaimed a reward for Charles Edward’s capture. Not that they really wanted him – what would they do with him? Chop off his head, as they had his great-grandfather? Eventually, the Lord Justices, who ran the country in George II’s absence, sent 500 stand-of-arms to Scotland, instructing that the new Duke of Argyll (Ilay) should have as many as he wanted, and ordered General Cope north to attack the Young Pretender. The 2nd Earl of Stair, a Scottish military expert, was sure ‘one has little to fear from irregular troops’. Many regarded this landing by Prince Charles as ‘romantic and chimerical’. The troops and military investment in the Highlands over the last twenty years should keep the Stuart Prince behind the Highland line. Stair did not realise how much the government had run down the military presence in the Highlands to supply men and arms for the Continental war.

Newcastle asked Cumberland to take the invasion of Charles a little more seriously. Cumberland admitted ‘I
am
surprised to see this romantic expedition revived again … But I don’t doubt that Sir John Cope will be able to put a stop
immediately
to this affair,’ and again refused to send any of his troops back to Britain.

On 14 August, a party of Hanoverian soldiers on their way to reinforce Fort William were ambushed. They were roughed up, two were killed and the rest seized by rebel soldiers on their way to join Prince Charles. The first blood of the invasion had been spilled on British soil. At once MacLeod wrote to Lovat to tell him to get the Master of Lovat out of the country before it was too late. Lovat must make a gesture like this to show his commitment to the Hanoverian regime. Or, he must send Sandy to join Loudon’s forces, as requested repeatedly. MacLeod said the nonsense about the boy’s stature was an insult. ‘If his figure is the only objection to his being in the army, if an officer’s head and heart be good it avails little what his person be. Marshall Luxembourg was a hump-backed dwarf of a body as ever was seen, but a very great man and officer for all that.’ He concluded with his compliments to his cousin Lovat and all with him – ‘which I suppose … is not a few, as I hear all the Country is in a moving disposition’. He was aware Castle Dounie thronged with both Jacobite conspirators and government Hanoverians. Lovat disliked the continuing Whiggish tenor of his co-conspirator’s letters, and did not reply.

At Glenfinnan, the Prince raised his standard and held a war council. They decided to attack Sir John Cope as soon as possible. A Highland skirmishing type of conflict, continually manoeuvring without engaging face-on, had weakened the Earl of Mar in 1715. It might even have lost him the rebellion, running from here to there, picking up and losing irregular troops. Sieges to take big forts, which Prince Charles was not equipped for, would lose them time and men for no great advantage. The Hanoverians’ tactics were based on their hope and expectation that the Jacobites would either skirmish or siege. General Cope left Edinburgh on 19 August and passed Stirling on the 21st, en route for Fort Augustus. He and the Prince were heading for each other.

The Earl of Stair wrote to the Earl of Loudon in Inverness that his course of action would have been, ‘preferable to everything, to have disarmed the Frasers, and to have secured my friend Lord Lovat’ as soon as news of the Prince’s landing reached them. It would have relieved Lovat of difficult decisions. Forbes had secured MacLeod and MacDonald. Securing Lovat as well would have drawn the teeth of Prince Charles’s Highland support.

The Lord Advocate, Craigie, added to the pressure on Lovat to use his well-known influence in the Highlands in the government’s favour. Craigie knew Lovat had ‘ground of complaint … against particular persons’. Surely Lovat could put his complaints aside in a general emergency? Lovat replied: ‘I could bring 1,200 good men to the field for the King’s service, if I had arms and other accoutrements for them … As you wish I would do good service … order immediately a thousand stand-of-arms to be delivered to me and my clan at Inverness, and then your Lordship shall see that I shall exert myself for the King’s service.’ They did not trust that the King he had in mind was George II.

Yet, Lovat refused Lochiel’s call to arms for the Jacobites as well. ‘I pray God we may never see such a scene in our country, as subjects killing and destroying their fellow subjects. For my part, my Lord, I am resolved to live a peaceable subject in my own house and do nothing against the King or government.’ He had to mean George II here. ‘And if I am attacked by the King’s guards and his Captain General at their head, I will defend myself as long as I have breath in me: and if I am killed here it is not far to my burial place; and I will have, after I am dead, what I always wished, the
coronach
of all the women in my country, to convey my body to my grave; and that was my ambition when I was in my happiest situation in the world.’ He sensed he would lose all if he got involved again, because the Stuarts could never really come back now. For all Lovat’s sedition in Jacobite clubs, this arrival showed him that the recent rebellious talk was only a protest to which this landing was not the answer.

The English commander, General Cope, was struggling. Of an original 4,000 troops he brought to Scotland, the force he marched to the Highlands numbered barely 1,400. He had left garrisons in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. Neither the Duke of Atholl nor Lord Glenorchy turned up at Crieff in Perthshire with reinforcements, as arranged. Cope carried a thousand weapons for men that never came. He lost his nerve and retreated to Inverness. He disliked this alien terrain, and lack of reliable information on enemy troop numbers. He believed himself hugely outnumbered. Camped outside Inverness on 29 August to rest ‘after so many fatiguing marches’, Cope had put himself in a corner.

Prince Charles had observed Cope’s movements, and changed his mind about challenging him. Deciding to leave the British Army where it was, he bypassed it, and marched south. By 31 August, Charles was at Blair Castle, the Atholl–Murray stronghold. He was out of the Highlands, and the army sent to crush him was cut off behind him in Inverness. It was a brilliant tactical move. By 4 September, Charles was in Perth, ancient crowning place of the Kings of Scotland. He proclaimed his father, James VIII, King of Scotland. ‘The Pretender’s son,’ Cope told Duncan Forbes, ‘is in a fine Highland dress, laced with gold; wears a bonnet laced; wears a broad sword; had a green ribband … a well-made man, taller than any in his company’. Even the British commander sounded overwhelmed by Charles’s physical presence. Duncan
had
to prevent his Jacobite neighbours from encountering the Pretender’s son.

With Cope on his doorstep, and the Prince 110 miles to the south, Duncan Forbes alerted Westminster to the dangers of shrinking from tackling the rebels. ‘As there is no body of forces in their way to oppose them, it is to be feared that their reputation will grow, and with it their numbers.’ Recruits flocked to Perth, but not the Frasers. Lovat watched and waited, convinced still of the need for French aid.

In London, at last they reacted with alarm, immediately taking on board the seriousness of allowing Charles to break out of the Highlands. The government demanded troops from Flanders. Cumberland agreed. The first British soldiers reached Gravesend at the end of September. The authorities ordered Catholics to leave London and its environs. Those who would not take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Test Act Declaration had their arms and horses confiscated. Short of interning them, they treated dissenters as hostile aliens. The Lord Lieutenants set about implementing all this across the counties of England.

Intelligence reported tens of ships ready in France and Spain: the British confidently expected a concerted pincer movement now. ‘We have hardly any regular force between Berwick and London,’ Newcastle revealed. ‘There are not in all England of all kinds 6,000 men, guards included … I think people begin now to be alarmed. I heartily wish they had been so a little sooner.’ They still did not believe Charles Stuart’s mission was personal, not agreed to by his father, let alone the great Bourbon powers of France and Spain. This had coloured their whole reading of it until it was too late to prevent this tiny landing becoming a major rebellion.

In Inverness, Lovat made a great show of his zeal for the government, even as he watched the growth of this enthralling uprising. Duncan requested intelligence from him about the rebels’ movements and plans. Lovat said he had made secret enquiries. His information was that all but three clans would rise. He also ‘discovered’, he said, his own people beginning to stir. ‘I have a strong report that mad Foyers is either gone, or preparing to go,’ he said, implying he was furious and confiding to Duncan what he knew the Lord President would already know from his own intelligence. Duncan communicated ceaselessly with the chiefs who led out their clans for the Stuarts in previous rebellions. He sent letters every other day to Castle Dounie. A rider delivered them and awaited a reply.

Be sensible and calm, Duncan advised. Lovat should just do what he did in the 1715. Then it was much worse. The Fraser men had already gone out; Lovat’s word recalled them. Lovat should prepare his men to march south to join General Cope. It would save the clan. Duncan’s heart lurched with dismay when his rider came back without a reply. The Lord President sighed and hoped he could fill Lovat’s ears with loyal messages and reminders long enough to prevent him hearing the siren call from the Young Pretender. If the critical moment passed, Lovat would stay true. Nevertheless, the news from Edinburgh was so seductive. Many Highlanders who had gone to see Charles to tell him to go home, had not come back. Something about him, or his cause, or both, put these hardened negotiators under his spell when they came into his presence.

Two days later, Duncan received a letter typical enough to make an old friend, who knew his ancient chiefly neighbour and competitor, smile – but also shudder with apprehension. Lovat informed Duncan: ‘My dear cousin Lochiel … contrary to his promise to me, engaged in this mad enterprise.’ On the surface he meant simply that. Beneath the surface, Lovat meant that he and Lochiel had agreed not to engage
until the French landed
. Should Charles defeat Cope, Lovat said prophetically, then he ‘will be the occasion of much bloodshed … I have sent my officers this day with orders to them to be ready. I ordered them to make short coats and hose, and to put aside their long coats, and to get as many swords and dirks as they could find out.’ Duncan could not pin him down and make Lovat send them to Loudon, who offered repeatedly to come and secure Dounie and take command of the Fraser fighting men.

Lovat’s exchanges with Lochiel told the missing half of the story. ‘I fear you have been over rash in going ’ere affairs were ripe. You are in a dangerous state.’ Lovat spoke tersely. Cope has 3,000 men ‘hanging at your tail … We have no force to meet him … If the MacPhersons would take the field I would bring out my lads to help the work and twixt the twa we might cause Cope to keep his Xmas here. But only Cluny’ – Cluny MacPherson, Lovat’s son-in-law – ‘is earnest in the Cause … Look to yourselves, for you may expect many a sour face and sharp weapon in the south. I’ll aid when I can. But my prayers are all I can give at present. My service to the Prince, but I wish he had not come here so empty-handed. Silver would go far in the Highlands. I send this by Ewen Fraser, whom I have charged to give it to yourself; for were Duncan to find it, it would be my head to an onion. Farewell.’ Under a certain kind of pressure, Lovat cut to the quick. Had Duncan seen the letters to Lochiel, he would not have been surprised. However, actions were the thing, and Lovat did not act.

Reviewing the progress of the rebellion, the government gave the Lord President power to raise and dispose of new Independent Companies. Did his old friend Lovat want one back, Duncan asked him? Too late, too late, thought Lovat when he read the offer. The right thing came at the wrong moment. He had been increasingly overlooked in the last decade, dealing mortal blows to Lovat’s pride and loyalty. The government had left him a laughing stock with his enemies; but they were likely not laughing now.

Duncan pressed on, refusing to lose hope. If Lovat did want a company, he should give the bearer of this letter a list of men the Lord President could commission as captains and subalterns. In the bygoing, Duncan mentioned a rumour. It was bound to be nonsense, but Lovat ought to be fully apprised of events in his own territories. Duncan’s sources told him the Stratherrick men were on the point of marching to the rebels. Could Lovat please confirm this was without foundation?

Lovat ignored him and answered that he was retiring from the everyday running of his estates. He, Lord Lovat, was determined to go to ‘France for the benefit of my health’. The words rang hollow to the Lord President. ‘Sir Robert Walpole and Mr Wade used me so much like a scoundrel or a
banditti
, that I am ever since disgusted at the political world,’ Lovat insisted; ‘and as I am old and infirm the only desire I have now is to live quietly and peaceably, and to retire to some place where living is cheap and reasonable, where I may spare as much money as will assist to pay my debts, or the portions of my children.’ He protested too much, even if there was a corner of him that did feel too old and had had enough of fighting and probably did think like this. Still, his old heart stamped and snorted to charge out, restore the Stuarts and break the Union.