A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume II Part 10

His education was, from a religious point of view, curiously mixed. He was intrusted to the especial care of Murray, Mrs. Hay's brother, and a Protestant, much to the grief and anger of his mother. But he professed the tenets of the Catholic Church, and satisfied Pope Clement, in an interview when the young prince was only thirteen, that his Catholic education was sound and complete. For the rest, he was a graceful musician, spoke French, Spanish, and Italian as readily as English, and was skilled in the use of arms. As far as the cultivation of mind or body vent, he might fairly be considered to hold his own with any of the preceding sovereigns and princes of the House of Stuart. When in 1737 he set out on a kind of triumphal tour of the great Italian towns, he was received everywhere with enthusiasm, and everywhere made the most favorable impression. So successful was this performance, so popular did the prince make himself, and so warmly was he received, that the Hanoverian Government took upon itself to be seriously offended, ordered the Venetian amba.s.sador Businiello to leave London, and conveyed to the Republic of Genoa its grave disapproval of the Republic's conduct. The zealous energy of Mr. Fane, our envoy at Florence, saved that duchy from a like rebuke. Mr. Fane insisted so strongly that no kind of State reception was to be accorded to the travelling prince that the Grand Duke gave way. Yet the Grand Duke's curiosity to meet Charles Stuart was so great that he had prevailed upon Fane to allow him to meet the stranger on the footing of a private individual; but sudden death carried off the poor Grand Duke before the interview could take place.

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[Sidenote: 1734-1737--The omen accepted]

When Charles Stuart, as a general of fourteen, was helping to besiege Gaeta, he had been hailed by Don Carlos as Prince of Wales, and as Prince of Wales he was invariably addressed by those outside the little circle of the sham court who wished to please the exiled princes or show their sympathy with their cause. The young Charles soon began to weary of being Prince of Wales only in name. It seems certain that from a very early age his thoughts were turned to England and the English succession. There is a legend that at Naples once the young prince's hat blew into the sea, and when some of his companions wished to put forth in a boat and fetch it back he dissuaded them, saying that it was not worth while, as he would have to go shortly to England to fetch his hat. The legend is in all likelihood true in so far as it represents the bent of the young man's mind. He was sufficiently intelligent to perceive that masquerading through Italian cities and the reception of pseudo-royal honors from petty princes were but a poor counterfeit of the honors that were his, as he deemed, by right divine.

So it was only natural that with waxing manhood his eyes and his thoughts turned more often to that England which he had never seen, but which, as he had been so often and often a.s.sured, was only waiting for a fit opportunity to cast off the Hanoverian yoke and welcome any lineal descendant of the Charleses and the Jameses of beloved memory.

More than one expedition had been planned, and one expedition had decisively failed, when in the summer of 1745 Prince Charles sailed from Belleisle on board the _Boutelle_, with the _Elizabeth_ as a companion vessel. He started on this expedition on his own responsibility and at his own risk. Murray of Broughton, and other influential Scottish friends, had told him, again and again, that it would be absolutely useless to come to Scotland without a substantial and well-armed following of at least six thousand troops, and a substantial sum of money in his pocket. To ask so much was to ask the impossible. {204} At one time the young prince had believed that Louis the Fifteenth would find him the men and lend him the money, but in 1745 any such hope had entirely left him. He knew now that Louis the Fifteenth would do nothing for him; he knew that if he was ever to regain his birthright he must win it with his own wits. It is impossible not to admire the desperate courage of the young aspirant setting out thus lightly to conquer a kingdom with only a handful of men at his back and hardly a handful of money in his pocket. Judging, too, by the course of events and the near approach which the prince made to success, it is impossible not to accord him considerable praise for that instinct which makes the great soldier and the great statesman, the instinct which counsels when to dare. The very s.h.i.+ps in which he was sailing he had got hold of, not only without the connivance, but without the knowledge, of the French Government. They were obtained through two English residents at Nantes. On August 2d the _Boutelle_ anch.o.r.ed off the Hebrides alone. The _Elizabeth_ had fallen in with an English vessel, the _Lion_, and had been so severely handled that she was obliged to return to Brest to refit, carrying with her all the arms and ammunition on which Prince Charles had relied for the furtherance of his expedition. So here was the claimant to the crown, friendless and alone, trying his best to derive encouragement from the augury which Tullibardine grandiloquently discerned in the flight of a royal eagle around the vessel. Eagle or no eagle, augury or no augury, the opening of the campaign was gloomy in the extreme.

The first clansmen whose aid the prince solicited were indifferent, reluctant, and obstinate in their indifference and reluctance.

Macdonald of Boisdale first, and Clanra.n.a.ld of that ilk afterwards, a.s.sured the prince, with little ceremony, that without aid, and substantial aid, from a foreign Power, in the shape of arms and fighting-men, no clansman would bare claymore in his behalf. But the eloquence and the determination of the young prince won over Clanra.n.a.ld and the Macdonalds of {205} Kinloch-Moidart; Charles disembarked and took up his headquarters at Borrodaile farm in Inverness-s.h.i.+re. A kind of legendary fame attaches to the little handful of men who formed his immediate following. [Sidenote: 1745--The Seven Men of Moidart] The Seven Men of Moidart are as familiar in Scottish Jacobite legend as the Seven Champions of Christendom are to childhood. Tullibardine; Sir Thomas Sheridan, the prince's tutor; Francis Strickland, an English gentleman; Sir John Macdonald, an officer in the service of Spain; Kelly, a non-juring clergyman; Buchanan, the messenger, and Aeneas Macdonald, the banker, made up the mystic tale. Among these Seven Men of Moidart, Aeneas Macdonald plays the traitor's part that Ganelon plays in the legends of Charlemagne. He seems to have been actuated, from the moment that the prince landed on the Scottish sh.o.r.e, by the one desire to bring his own head safely out of the sc.r.a.pe, and to attain that end he seems to have been ready to do pretty well anything.

When he was finally taken prisoner he saved himself by the readiness and completeness with which he gave his evidence. No more of him.

There were, happily for the honor of the adherents of the House of Stuart, few such followers in the Forty-five.

The position of the young prince was peculiar. His engaging manners had won over many of the chiefs; his presence had set on fire that old Stuart madness which a touch can often kindle in wild Highland hearts; his determination to be a Scotchman among Scotchmen, a determination which set him the desperate task of trying to master the Gaelic speech, insured his hold upon the affections of the rude chivalry whom his presence and his name had already charmed. But some of the greatest clans absolutely refused to come in. Macdonald of Sleat, and Macleod of Macleod, would have none of the "pretended Prince of Wales" and his "madmen."

Though these chieftains were appealed to again and again, they were resolute in their refusal to embark in the Stuart cause. They pledged themselves to the House of Hanover, they accepted commissions in the royal army; {206} the cause of Charles Stuart must sink or swim without them. With them or without them, however, Charles was going on. The number of clans that had come in was quite sufficient to fill him with hope; the little brush at Spean's Bridge between two companies of the Scots Royal, under Captain Scott, and the clansmen of Keppoch and Lochiel, had given the victory to the rebels. The Stuarts had drawn first blood successfully, and the superst.i.tions saw in the circ.u.mstance yet another augury of success. The time was now ripe for action. All over the north of Scotland the Proclamation of Prince Charles was scattered. This proclamation called upon all persons to recognize their rightful sovereign in the young prince's person as regent for his father, invited all soldiers of King George, by offers of increased rank or increased pay, to desert to the Stuart colors, promised a free pardon and full religious liberty to all who should renounce their allegiance to the usurper, and threatened all who, after due warning, remained obdurate with grave pains and penalties. Everywhere through the west this doc.u.ment had been seen and studied, had inflamed men's minds, and set men's pulses dancing to old Jacobite tunes. In Edinburgh, in Berwick, in Carlisle, copies had been seen by astonished adherents of the House of Stuart, who were delighted or dismayed, according to their temperaments. Scotland was pretty well aware of the presence of the young prince by the time that it was resolved to unfurl the flag.

[Sidenote: 1745--An auspicious opening]

The royal standard of crimson and white was raised by Tullibardine on August 19th in the vale of Glenfinnan, in the presence of Keppoch and Lochiel, Macdonald of Glencoe, Stuart of Appin, and Stuart of Ards.h.i.+el, and their clansmen. No such inauspicious omen occurred as that which shook the nerves of the superst.i.tious when James Stuart gave his banner to the winds of Braemar a generation earlier. Indeed, an invading prince could hardly wish for happier conditions under which to begin his enterprise. Not only was he surrounded by faithful clansmen, prepared to do or die for the heir to the House of Stuart, but the {207} stately ceremony of setting up the royal standard was witnessed by English prisoners, the servants and the soldiers of King George, the first-fruits of the hoped-for triumph over the House of Hanover. "Go, sir," Charles is reported to have said to one of his prisoners, Captain Swetenham, "go and tell your general that Charles Stuart is coming to give him battle." That clement of the theatrical which has always hung about the Stuart cause, and which has in so large a degree given it its abiding charm, was here amply present. For a royal adventurer setting out on a crusade for a kingdom the opening chapter of the enterprise was undoubtedly auspicious reading.

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CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE MARCH SOUTH.

[Sidenote: 1715-1716--The chances in his favor]

The condition of Scotland at the time of the prince's landing was such as in a great degree to favor a hostile invasion. Even educated Englishmen then knew much less about Scotland, or at least the Highlands of Scotland, than their descendants do to-day of Central Africa. People--the few daringly adventurous people--who ventured to travel in the Highlands were looked upon by their admiring friends as the rivals of Bruce or Mandoville, and they wrote books about their travels as they would have done if they had travelled in Thibet; and very curious reading those books are now after the lapse of something over a century. The whole of the Highlands were wild, unfrequented, and desolate, under the rude jurisdiction of the heads of the great Highland houses, whose clansmen, as savage and as desperately courageous as Sioux or p.a.w.nees, offered their lords an almost idolatrous devotion. Nominally the clans were under the authority of the English Crown and the Scottish law; actually they recognized no rule but the rule of their chiefs, who wielded a power as despotic as that of any feudal seigneur in the days of the old regime. The heroes of the Ossianic poems--the Finns and Dermats whom colonization had transplanted from Irish to Scottish legend--were not more unfettered or more antiquely chivalrous than the clansmen who boasted of their descent from them. Scotland was more unlike England in the middle of the last century than Russia is unlike Sicily to day.

There were several things in Charles's favor. To begin with, the disarmament of the clans, which had been insisted {209} upon after "the Fifteen," had been carried out in such a fas.h.i.+on as was now to prove most serviceable to the Young Pretender; for the only clans that had been really disarmed were the Mackays, Campbells, and Sutherlands, who were loyal enough to the House of Hanover, and gave up their weapons very readily to prove their loyalty. But the other clans--the clans that ever cherished the lingering hope of a Stuart restoration--were not in reality disarmed at all. They made a great show of surrendering to General Wade weapons that were utterly worthless as weapons of war, honey-combed, crippled old guns and swords and axes; but the good guns and swords and axes, the serviceable weapons, these were all carefully stowed away in fitting places of concealment, ready for the hour when they might be wanted again. That hour had now come. So that, thanks to the Disarming Act of 1716, the Government found its chief allies in the north of Scotland practically defenceless and unarmed, while the clans that kept pouring in to rally around the standard of the young invader were as well armed as any of those who had fought so stoutly at Sheriffmuir. Yet another advantage on the adventurer's side was due to the tardiness with which news travelled in those times. Charles had been for many days in the Highlands, preparing the way for the rising, before rumors of anything like an accredited kind came to the Court of St. James. The Highlands and islands of Scotland were then so far removed from the great world of government that it had taken something like half a year on one occasion before the dwellers in the stormy Shetlands had learned that their sovereign, King William the Third, was dead and buried; and in the years that had elapsed since William of Orange pa.s.sed away the means of communication between London and the far north were little if at all better. Charles had actually raised his standard and rallied clan after clan around him before the Government in London could seriously believe that a Stuart in arms was in the island. There were other and minor elements of success, too, to be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing.

The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever made high office ridiculous. The King was away in Hanover. England was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy. There were very few troops in England to employ against an invasion, and the Scottish commander-in-chief, Sir John Cope, whose name lives in unenviable fame in the burden of many a Jacobite ballad, was as incapable a well-meaning general as ever was called upon to face a great unexpected emergency. It must be admitted that all these were excellent points in the prince's favor, and that they counted for much in the conduct of the campaign.

From the first, young Charles Stuart might well have come to regard himself as the favorite of fortune. The history of the Forty-five divides itself into two distinct parts: the first a triumphant record of brilliant victories, and the picture of a young prince marching through conquest after conquest to a crown; the second part prefaced by a disastrous resolution, leading to overwhelming defeat, and ending in ignominious flight and the extinction of the last Stuart hope. From the moment when the Stuart standard fluttered its folds of white and crimson on the Highland wind it seemed as if the Stuart luck had turned. Charles might well conceive himself happy. Upon his sword sat laurel victory. Smooth success was strewn before his feet. The blundering and bewildered Cope actually allowed Charles and his army to get past him. Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a terrible blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon Inverness Charles was triumphantly entering Perth. From Perth the young prince, with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, marched on Edinburgh.

[Sidenote: 1745--The advance of the clans]

The condition of Edinburgh was peculiar: although a large proportion of its inhabitants, especially those who were well-to-do, were stanch supporters of the House of Hanover, there were plenty of Jacobites in the place, and {211} it only needed the favor of a few victories to bring into open day a great deal of latent Jacobitism that was for the moment prudently kept under by its possessors. The Lord Provost himself was more than suspected of being a Jacobite at heart. The city was miserably defended. Such walls as it possessed were more ornamental than useful, and in any case were sadly in want of repair.

All the military force it could muster to meet the advance of the clans was the small but fairly efficient body of men who formed the Town Guard; the Train Bands, some thousand strong, who knew no more than so many spinsters of the division of a battle; the small and undisciplined Edinburgh regiment; and a scratch collection of volunteers hurriedly raked together from among the humbler citizens of the town, and about as useful as so many puppets to oppose to the daring and the ferocity of the clans. Edinburgh opinion had changed very rapidly with regard to that same daring and ferocity. When the first rumors of the prince's advance were bruited abroad, the adherents of the House of Hanover in Edinburgh made very merry over the gang of ragged rascals, hen-roost robbers, and drunken rogues upon whom the Pretender relied in his effort to "enjoy his ain again." But as the clans came nearer and nearer, as the air grew thicker with flying rumors of the successes that attended upon the prince's progress, as the capacity of the town seemed weaker for holding out, and as the prospect of reinforcements seemed to grow fainter and fainter, the opinion of Hanoverian Edinburgh concerning the clans changed mightily. Had the Highlanders been a race of giants, endowed with more than mortal prowess, and invulnerable as Achilles, they could hardly have struck more terror into the hearts of loyal and respectable Edinburgh citizens.

Still there were some stout hearts in Edinburgh who did their best to keep up the courage of the rest and to keep out the enemy. Andrew Fletcher and Duncan Forbes were of the number. M'Laurin, the mathematician, turned his genius to the bettering of the fortifications. Old {212} Dr. Stevenson, bedridden but heroic, kept guard in his armchair for many days at the Netherbow Gate. The great question was would Cope come in time? Cope was at Aberdeen. Cope had put his army upon transports. Cope might be here to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, to-day, who knows? But in the mean time the King's Dragoons, whom Cope had left behind him when he first started out to meet the Pretender, had steadily and persistently retreated before the Highland advance. They had now halted--they can hardly be said to have made a stand--at Corstorphine, some three miles from Edinburgh, and here it was resolved to do something to stay the tide of invasion.

Hamilton's Dragoons were at Leith. These were ordered to join the King's Dragoons at Corstorphine, and to collect as many Edinburgh volunteers as they could on their way. Inside the walls of Edinburgh it was easy enough to collect volunteers, and quite a little army of them marched out with drums beating and colors flying at the heels of Hamilton's Dragoons. But on the way to the town gates the temper of the volunteers changed, and by the time that the town gates were reached and pa.s.sed the volunteers had dwindled to so pitiable a handful that they were dismissed, and Hamilton's Dragoons proceeded alone to join Cope's King's Dragoons at Corstorphine.

But the united force of dragoons did not stay long at Corstorphine.

The fame of the fierce Highlanders had unhinged their valor, and it only needed a few of the prince's supporters to ride within pistol-shot and discharge their pieces at the Royal troops to set them into as disgraceful a panic as ever animated frightened men. The dragoons, ludicrously unmanned, turned tail and rode for their lives, rode without drawing bridle and without staying spur till they came to Leith, paused there for a little, and then, on some vague hint that the Highlanders were on their track, they were in the saddle again and riding for their lives once more. Dismayed Edinburgh citizens saw them sweep along what now is Prince's Street, a pitiable sight; saw them, b.l.o.o.d.y with spurring, fiery hot with {213} haste, ride on--on into the darkness. On and on the desperate cowards scampered, sheep-like in their shameful fear, till they reached Dunbar and behind its gates allowed themselves to breathe more freely, and to congratulate themselves upon the dangers they had escaped. Such is the story of the famous, or infamous, "Cantor of Coltbrigg," one of the most disgraceful records of the abject collapse of regular troops before the terror of an almost unseen foe that are to found in history. Well might loyal Edinburgh despair if such were its best defenders. The town was all tumult, the Loyalists were in utter gloom, the secretly exulting Jacobites were urging the impossibility of resistance, and the necessity for yielding while yielding was still an open question.

[Sidenote: 1745--Edinburgh parleys]

On the top of all this came a summons from the prince demanding the immediate surrender of the city. A deputation was at once despatched to Gray's Mill, where the prince had halted, to confer with him.

Scarcely had the deputation gone when rumor spread abroad in the town that Cope, Cope the long expected, the almost given up, was actually close at hand, and the weatherc.o.c.k emotions of the town veered to a new quarter. Perhaps they might be able to hold out after all. The great thing was to gain time. The deputation came back to say that Prince Charles must have a distinct answer to his summons before two o'clock in the morning, and it was now ten at night. Still spurred by the hope of gaining time, and allowing Cope to arrive, if, indeed, he were arriving, the deputation was sent back again. But the prince refused to see them, and the deputation returned to the city, and all unconsciously decided the fate of Edinburgh. Lochiel and Murray, with some five hundred Camerons, had crept close to the walls under the cover of the darkness of the night, in the hope of finding some means of surprising the city. Hidden close by the Netherbow Port, they saw the coach which had carried the deputation home drive up and demand admittance. The admittance, which was readily granted to the coach, could not well be refused to the {214}

Highlanders, who leaped up the moment the doors were opened, overpowered the guard, and entered the town. Edinburgh awoke in the morning to find its doubts at an end. It was in the hands of the Highlanders.

Jacobite Edinburgh went wild with delight over its hero prince. He entered Holyrood with the white rose in his bonnet and the star of Saint Andrew on his breast, through enthusiastic crowds that fought eagerly for a nearer sight of his face or the privilege of touching his hand. The young prince looked his best; the hereditary melancholy which cast its shadow over the faces of all the Stuarts was for the moment dissipated. Flushed with easy triumph, popular applause, and growing hope, the young prince entered the palace of his ancestors like a king returning to his own. James Hepburn of Keith, with drawn sword, led the way; beautiful women distributed white c.o.c.kades to enraptured Jacobites; the stateliest chivalry of Scotland made obeisance to its rightful prince. The intoxicating day ended with a great ball at the palace, at which the youthful grace of Charles Stuart confirmed the charm that already belonged to the adventurous and victorious Prince of Wales. September 17, 1745, was one of the brightest days in the Stuart calendar.

The conquest of Edinburgh was but the prelude to greater glories. Cope was rallying his forces at Dunbar--was marching to the relief of Edinburgh. Charles, acting on the advice of his generals, marched out to meet him. Cope's capacity for blundering was by no means exhausted.

He affected a contemptuous disregard for his foes, delayed attack in defiance of the advice of his wisest generals, was taken unawares in the gray morning of the 21st at Prestonpans, and routed completely and ignominiously in five minutes.

[Sidenote: 1745--Bore the news of his own defeat]

Seldom has it been the misfortune of an English general to experience so thorough, so humiliating a defeat. The wild charges of the Highland men broke up the ordered ranks of the English troops in hopeless confusion; almost all the infantry was cut to pieces, and the cavalry {215} escaped only by desperate flight. Cope's dragoons were accustomed to flight by this time; the clatter of their horses' hoofs as they cantered from Coltbrigg was still in their cars, and as they once again tore in shameless flight up the Edinburgh High Street they might well have reflected upon the rapidity with which such experiences repeated themselves. General Preston of the Castle refused to admit the cowards within his gate, so there was nothing for them but to turn their horses' heads again and spur off into the west country. As for Cope, he managed to collect some ragged remnant of his ruined army about him, and to make off with all speed to Berwick, where he was received by Lord Mark Ker with the scornful a.s.surance that he was the first commander-in-chief in Europe who had brought with him the news of his own defeat.

The victorious army were unable, if they had wished, to follow up the flight, owing to their lack of cavalry. They remained on the field to ascertain their own losses and to count their spoil. The losses were trifling, the gain was great. Only thirty Highlanders were killed, only seventy wounded, in that astonis.h.i.+ng battle. As for the gain, not merely were the honorable trophies of victory, the colors and the standards, left in the Highland hands, but the artillery and the supplies, with some two thousand pounds in money, offered the prince's troops a solid reward for their daring. It is to the credit of Charles that after the fury of attack was over he insisted upon the wounded enemy and the prisoners being treated with all humanity. An incident is told of him which brings into relief the better qualities of his race. One of his officers, pointing to the ghastly field, all strewn with dead bodies, with severed limbs and mutilated trunks, said to the prince, "Sir, behold your enemies at your feet." The prince sighed.

"They are my father's subjects," he said, sadly, as he turned away.

The battle of Prestonpans is enshrined in Jacobite memories as the battle of Gladsmuir, for a reason very characteristic of the Stuarts and their followers. Some {216} queer old book of prophecies had foretold, more than a century earlier, that there should be a battle at Gladsmuir. The battle of Prestonpans was not fought really on Gladsmuir at all: Gladsmuir lies a good mile away from the scene of Charles's easy triumph and Cope's inglorious rout; but for enthusiastic Jacobite purposes it was near enough to seem an absolute fulfilment of the venerable prediction. A battle was to be fought at Gladsmuir; go to, then--a battle was fought at Gladsmuir, or near Gladsmuir, which is very much the same thing: anyhow, not very far away from Gladsmuir.

And so the Jacobites were contented, and more than ever convinced of the advantages of prophecy in the affairs of practical politics.

Some busy days were pa.s.sed in Edinburgh in which councils of war alternated with semi-regal entertainments, and in which the prince employed his ready command of language in paying graceful compliments to the pretty women who wore the white c.o.c.kade, and in issuing proclamations in which the Union was dissolved and religious liberty promised. One thing the young prince could not be induced to do: none of the arguments of his councillors could prevail upon him to threaten severe measures against the prisoners fallen into his hands. It was urged that unless the Government treated their prisoners as prisoners of war and not as rebels, the prince would be well advised to retaliate by equal harshness to the captives in his power. But on this point the prince was obdurate. He would not take in cold blood the lives that he had saved in the heat of action. Then and all through this meteoric campaign the conduct of Charles was characterized by a sincere humanity, which stands out in startling contrast with the cruelties practised later by his enemy, the "butcher c.u.mberland." It prevented the prince from gaining an important military advantage by the reduction of Edinburgh Castle. He attempted the reduction of the castle by cutting off its supplies, but when the general in command threatened to open fire upon the town in consequence, Charles immediately rescinded the order, although {217} his officers urged that the destruction of a few houses, and even the loss of a few lives, was in a military sense of scant importance in comparison with the capture of so valuable a stronghold as Edinburgh Castle. The prince held firmly to his resolve, and Edinburgh Castle remained to the end in the hands of the Royal troops. Charles displayed a great objection, too, to any plundering or lawless behavior on the part of his wild Highland army. We learn from the Bland Burges papers that when the house of Lord Somerville, who was opposed to the prince, was molested by a party of Highlanders, the prince, on hearing of it, sent an apology to Lord Somerville, and an officer's guard to protect him from further annoyance.

[Sidenote: 1745--In the heart of England]

But time was running on, and it was necessary to take action again.

England was waking up to a sense of its peril. Armies were gathering.

The King had come back from Hanover, the troops were almost all recalled from Flanders. It was time to make a fresh stroke. Charles resolved upon the bold course of striking south at once for England, and early in November he marched. He set off on the famous march south. In this undertaking, as before, the same extraordinary good-fortune attended upon the Stuart arms. His little army of less than six thousand men reached Carlisle, reached Manchester, without opposition. On December 4th he was at Derby, only one hundred and twenty-seven miles from London. Once again, by skill or by good-fortune, he had contrived to slip past the English general sent out to bar his way. c.u.mberland with his forces was at Stafford, nine miles farther from the capital than the young prince, who was now only six days from the city, with all his hopes and his ambitions ahead of him, and behind him the hostile army of the general he had eluded.

Never perhaps in the history of warfare did an invader come so near the goal of his success and throw it so wantonly away; for that is what Charles did. With all that he had come for apparently within his reach, he did not reach out to take it; the crown of England was in the hollow of his hand, and he opened his hand {218} and let the prize fall from it. It is difficult to understand now what curious madness prompted the prince's advisers to counsel him as they did, or the prince to act upon their counsels. He was in the heart of England; he was hard by the capital, which he would have to reach if he was ever to mount the throne of his fathers. He had a devoted army with him--it would seem as if he had only to advance and to win--and yet, with a fatuity which makes the student of history gasp, he actually resolved to retreat, and did retreat. It is true, and must not be forgotten, that Charles did not know, and could not know, all his advantages; that many of the most urgent arguments for advance could not present themselves to his mind. He could not know the panic in which Hanoverian London was cast; he could not know that desperate thoughts of joining the Stuart cause were crossing the craven mind of the Duke of Newcastle; he could not know that the frightened bourgeoisie were making a maddened rush upon the Bank of England; he could not know that the King of England had stored all his most precious possessions on board of yachts that waited for him at the Tower stairs, ready at a moment's notice to carry him off again into the decent obscurity of the Electors.h.i.+p of Hanover. He could not know the exultation of the metropolitan Jacobites; he could not know the perturbation of the Hanoverian side; he could not know the curious apathy with which a large proportion of the people regarded the whole proceeding, people who were as willing to accept one king as another, and who would have witnessed with absolute unconcern George the Elector scuttling away from the Tower stairs at one end of the town, while Charles the Prince entered it from another. These factors in his favor he did not know, could not know, could hardly be expected even to guess.

[Sidenote: 1745--How London felt]

That the news of the rising produced very varied emotions in London we may learn from the letters of Horace Walpole. In one of September 6th to Sir Horace Mann, mixed with much important information concerning "My Lady O" and the Walpole promise of marriage "to young {219} Churchill," comes news of the Pretender's march past General Cope, and very gloomy forebodings for the result. Another letter, which talks of the Pretender as "the Boy," and of King George "as the _person_ most concerned," presents the Hanoverian Elector as making very little of the invasion, answering all the alarms of his ministers by "Pho, don't talk to me of that stuff." Walpole's spirits has risen within the week, for he is much amused by the story that "every now and then a Scotchman comes and pulls the Boy by the sleeve, 'Preence, here is another mon taken,' then, with all the dignity in the world, the Boy hopes n.o.body was killed in the action."

London at large vacillated very much as Horace Walpole vacillated.

While on the one side Jacobites began to come out of the corners in which they had long lain concealed, and to air their opinions in the free sunlight, rejoicing over the coming downfall of the House of Hanover, authority, on the other hand, busied itself in ordering all known Papists to leave the capital, in calling out the Train Bands, in frequently and foolishly shutting the gates of Temple Bar, and, which was better and wiser, in making use of Mr. Henry Fielding to write stinging satires upon the Pretender and his party, and hint at the sufferings which were likely to fall upon London when the Highlanders imported their national complaint into the capital. A statesman is reported to have said that this disagreeable jest about the itch was worth two regiments of horse to the cause of the Government.

Yet, if London was excited, there was a tranquil London as well. Mr.

George Augustus Sala, in that brilliant novel of his, "The Adventures of Captain Dangerous," draws a vivid picture of this London with the true artist touch. "Although from day to day we people in London knew not whether before the sunset the dreaded pibrochs of the Highland clans might not be heard at Charing Cross--although, for aught men knew, another month, nay, another week, might see King George the Second toppled from his throne--yet to those who lived quiet {220} lives and kept civil tongues in their heads all things went on pretty much as usual. . . . That there was consternation at St. James's, with the King meditating flight, and the royal family in tears and swooning, did not save the little school-boy a whipping if he knew not his lesson after morning call. . . . So, while all the public were talking about the rebellion, all the world went nevertheless to the playhouses, where they played loyal pieces, and sang 'G.o.d save great George, our King'

every night; as also to b.a.l.l.s, ridottos, clubs, masquerades, drums, routs, concerts, and Pharaoh parties. They read novels and flirted their fans, and powdered and patched themselves, and distended their petticoats with hoops, just as though there were no such persons in the world as the Duke of c.u.mberland and Charles Edward Stuart." Fiction, that most faithful and excellent handmaiden of history, here shows us no doubt very vividly what London as a whole thought and did in face of the rebellion. It is an old story. Were not the Romans in the theatre when the Goths came over the hills? Did not the theatres flourish, never better, during the Reign of Terror?

Nor was London the only place which displayed a well-nigh stoical indifference to the progress of the rebellion. If Oxford had a good deal of Jacobitism hidden decorously away in its ancient colleges, if there were a good many disloyal toasts drunk in the seclusion of scholastic rooms, there was apparently only a feeling of curious indifference at the rival university, for Gray has put it on record that at Cambridge "they had no more sense of danger than if it were the battle of Cannae," and we learn that some grave Dons actually were thinking of driving to Camford to see the Scotch troops march past, "as though they were volunteers out for a sham-fight, or a circus procession."