THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. JANUARY, 1816. ART. I.-Culloden Papers: comprising an extensive and inte resting Correspondence from the Year 1625 to 1748; including numerous Letters from the unfortunate Lord Lovat, and other distinguished Persons of the Time; with occasional State Papers of much historical Importance. The whole published from the Originals in the Possession of Duncan George Forbes, of Culloden, Esq. To which is prefixed, an Introduction, containing Memoirs of the Right Honourable Duncan Forbes, many Years Lord President of the Court of Session in Scotland. Illustrated by Engravings. 4to. pp. 479. 1815. EV! London. VERY thing 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 about the Indians who dwell beyond the Alleghany mountains. Swift, in his Journal to Stella, mentions having dined in company with with two gentlemen from the hghlands of Scotland, and expresses his surprize 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. In the beginning of August, 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-arig; and here, as we learn from these papers, the Chevalier called for his Highland dress, and, tying the latchets 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 Firth on the 18th September, 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 Preston-pans 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 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 surprized 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 Canne 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 venture 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-establish U 2 ment ment 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 retreating 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 mean while, 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 Preston-pans. 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 C-e; he was never seen in the field during the battle; and every thing would have gone to wreck, in a worse manner than at Preston, if General Huske had not acted with judgment and courage, and appeared every where. 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 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 attack, which was hastily and rashly adopted, and as inconsiderately abandoned; and at length drew up in an open plain, exposed to the fire of artillery, and protected from the charge of cavalry only by a park wall, which was soon pulled down. This they did, though they themselves had no efficient force of either description; and in such a hopeless position they awaited the encounter of an enemy more than double their numbers, fully equipped, and in a complete state for battle. The result was what might have been expectedthe loss, namely, of all but their honour, which was well maintained, since they left nearly the half of their army upon the field. What causes, at this critical period, distracted those councils which had hitherto exhibited sagacity and military talent, it would be difficult now to ascertain. An officer, deep in their counsels, offers no better reason than that they must have expected a continuation of the same miraculous success which had hitherto befriended them against all probable calculation and chance of war— a sort of crowning mercy, as Cromwell might have called it, granted to the supposed goodness of their cause, and their acknowledged courage, in defiance of all the odds against them. But we believe the truth to be, that the French advisers who were around the Chevalier had, by this time, the majority in his councils. They were alarmed at the prospect of a mountain war, which presented a long perspective of severe hardship and privation; and being, at the worst, confident of their own safety as prisoners of war, they urged the adventurer to stand this fearful hazard, which, as we all know, terminated in utter and irremediable defeat. It was not till after these events, which we have hastily retraced, that the highlanders, with the peculiarity of their government and habits, became a general object of attention and investigation. And evidently it must have been matter of astonishment to the subjects of the complicated and combined constitution of Great V 3 Britain, |