by Alan Gold
“But . . .”
“Does your muddle-brain not understand what that will mean, love? Can’t you see the dangers of me taking side with Prince Charlie? As sure as the mist will rise above the sea in the morning, if I take the field beside the Stuart, I’ll eventually be on the losing side, and our lives will be over. Fat George in London is just looking for a reason to march into Scotland and put an end to the truculence up here against his reign. But while so ever I’m commander of his militia in Skye, and we remain loyal to England, we have a chance of being left alone if disaster befalls the mainland and the isles.”
He returned to eating his breakfast oatmeal but knew that both his wife and daughter were looking at him. Wondering.
Flora, too, didn’t want any further argument, but since her return from Edinburgh and especially as a result of her long discussions with Mr. Hume and Mr. Smith, she had decided that her politics must enable her to be a covert supporter of the Jacobite cause and just pray that young Charles Stuart was successful. But with her stepfather’s attitude, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s success could mean disaster for her family. It was a murderous dilemma.
“Father, whilst you feel you must do your duty, surely in your heart you want an end to the oppression of Scotland? Don’t you want to breathe free Highland air and not have English lords and generals tell you what you may and may not do?”
Before he could answer, she continued, “Whilst ever there’s a chance that Prince Charlie could succeed, surely we Scots must support the rightful claimant to our throne. Can’t you see that?”
Hugh Macdonald looked at his intelligent and handsome stepdaughter. All those years ago, when he’d abducted her mother as a young widow-woman, Flora had come to him as a young stripling, and it had been the delight of his life to watch her every moment as she grew into one of the most respected and talked-about young women of the Isle. She was attractive, assertive, feisty, and forward. She breathed the air of resolution and carried a demeanor of audacity, whether she was in conversation with her equals or her betters. Hugh prayed that when she wed, if she ever wed, it would be to a man who was strong and determined in order to temper her brazenness, for if she married a chicken-hearted caitiff, she’d become a shrew before the cock had stopped crowing, and people avoided shrews like the plague.
Ever since he’d carried her mother off kicking and screaming, punching his chest and swearing Hugh’s eternal damnation for all eternity, these past twenty years had grown into a time of quiet and unending love between them. And every day of his life with his wee girl, Hugh had looked on in amazement as Flora had grown from a stripling full of wild excitement into an educated, comely black-haired black-eyed beauty, pursued by all the young bucks and giving herself occasionally and then only to the bravest and most gallant.
Of course he knew that she was right; Hugh’s heart and soul lay in the success of the Stuarts and ridding the Scottish hills and vales of the heavy boot of the English, but the impetuous boy had come to Scotland without an army, without money, and with only the slimmest of chances of winning against one of the mightiest armies in the world. No matter what the romance of joining his fellow Scots in the adventure, Hugh more than any others had to use reason in place of the patriotic fervor that was rampaging through the clans like some disease.
“It’s a pity that you stayed in Edinburgh those few days after Sir Alexander returned to the Isle, Flora, for the people that you met have turned your head and filled it full of dreams,” he told her softly. “Those in the University or in the great Castle can sit on their silken trews and take sides and no harm will come to them; they can plant their chairs on the edge of the battle field and cheer on whom they want, and only shed a tear if the result goes against them. They’ll write their sonnets and poems and rue their misfortune.
“But it’s a very different matter for those of us in the middle of the battle, for it’s our guts that will be skewered, our limbs torn off, and our lives destroyed. And when our blood is seeping into the ground and the birds are plucking out our sightless eyes, your perfumed university friends can go back to their fine houses and their salons, and they can drink their coffees and say ‘tut tut what an awful thing to have happened.’ But remember lass that it’s women like your mother who’ll have to drag home the corpses of the men they love out of the stinking mud of the battlefield and bury them or try to find their bodies in unmarked graves. No, Flora darling, romance soon evaporates when there’s a bullet flying toward your head or a cannon ball ripping out your innards. And it’s for that reason and that reason alone, that I am staying as I am and not transferring my allegiances to the side of the Stuarts. When this boy’s rash adventure is over, I want my family intact and living, not dead and glorious.”
“But what life is worth living if we have to live in disgrace?” Flora asked quietly.
“There’s no disgrace in living, lass. If the boy wins, we’ll continue to prosper on Skye. If he loses, the same will happen. We Hebrideans have lived on these rocks, man, and boy, for more generations than there are blades of grass. We owe nothing to anybody and that’s the way it’ll stay, regardless of whether a Stuart or a Hanoverian rules in England. But while so ever I’m master of this household, I’ll continue to do what’s right for my family, and if that means commanding the royal militia in these Isles and fighting the insurgency, then so be it.”
“And if it means that our branch of the Macdonalds will be hated and our name will be spat whenever it’s mentioned?”
Hugh shrugged and returned to his oatmeal. There was much he had to organize and he had no more time for such discussions.
Flora looked imploringly at her mother. She knew that her sympathies lay with Prince Charles, yet she had been surprisingly quiet during the conversation, unlike the time she’d shouted for joy on Flora’s return from Edinburgh when her daughter had given her all the latest news and gossip concerning Charles’ landing and the gatherings of the clan at Glenfinnan. It was all the talk of Edinburgh that thousands of Highlanders had rallied to his flag and were slowly gaining supplies from crofters, and they were arming themselves with guns by attacking the English forts; now they were marching toward Prestonpans near Edinburgh.
The early victories of the Stuarts had seemed all but too easy, and while she was still in Edinburgh, Flora had queried those who knew of such things. She’d asked why it was that the English troopers were in such short supply in the Highlands, and why there were so few Scotsmen loyal to England to hold back the Stuart march. She was told that many Scotsmen had been co-opted into the English Army as the Black Watch when they were told by their commanders that they would only fight in their own country. But in a duplicitous fashion typical of the English, the Scottish regiment had been withdrawn down to England two years previously, where they were needed to fight a threatened French invasion that never materialized. The clever people of Edinburgh were now taking wagers on how quickly the Black Watch would be sent back up north to defend their own territory against the invasion of the Stuarts.
All of this information was like manna from heaven for her mother. She relished every word Flora told her and not just about Prince Charles and his adventures but also of the food she’d eaten, the cafes she’d entered, the houses into which she’d been invited, the parties at which she’d been a guest, and especially the new fashion of dances from London and Paris that Flora had been taught.
For Flora and her mother, Edinburgh was the very epicenter of the universe. The young woman had brought back bolts of the latest and most fashionable cloth to make dresses, and she’d also returned with newspapers and pamphlets, some in Gaelic and some in English, which she and her mother would consume for weeks on end to find out what was happening in the rest of the world.
But when all the gossip had finished being discussed and she was satisfied as to the details of Edinburgh society, Annie Macdonald asked her daughter to repeat the information she most wanted to hear, the latest news of the advance of Prince Charles.
/> Yet now, just when Flora most needed her mother to argue by her side and stand firm against Stepfather Hugh, she was almost silent. Normally a woman of powerful emotions who expressed her feelings vehemently, Annie Macdonald was obviously torn between two of the four people she loved most in the world and unwilling to fall to one side against the other. She felt like Flora in regard to the need for Scotland to be ruled by a Stuart, well, anybody but the fat Germans from Hanover, but she knew in her heart that it was a doomed enterprise, and so her rationality demanded that she sit on her husband’s side of the table. Yet to do so would be to alienate her daughter, so Annie decided that silence was the most prudent adventure.
Not that the argument was clear-cut for Flora. Listening to her stepfather defending his decision to fight on behalf of the Hanoverians, she had suddenly become very angry at his rationalizations and it had sealed her determination as a supporter of the prince. When she’d returned home from Edinburgh, she too had been torn between emotion and rationality, but now her path was set. She was not normally antagonistic toward Hugh Macdonald, but in this case, she truly believed that it was one thing to remain neutral, but another thing entirely for her family to be a traveling companion of the Hanoverians. For then they would be hated by their friends, and that was something she could not countenance.
PRESTONPANS, SOUTHEAST OF EDINBURGH
SEPTEMBER 21, 1745
It was late at night, well past the hour when he normally retired, but nothing he could do would induce sleep. He’d tossed and turned and stared at the ceiling of his tent, but his mind would not settle. The young woman from Edinburgh who’d tried to bring him comfort had cheered him, but when his needs had been satisfied and she was sound asleep snoring gently, he found that the lass in his bunk was more irritation than consolation.
The question that plagued his mind, as it addled the minds of his generals, was whether or not his carefully constructed plan would work. Since the English commander, General Sir John Cope, had landed at Dunbar a few days earlier, it had become obvious that Prestonpan would be where his battle was to be fought. Charles’ scouts told him that they were opposed by only two thousand, five hundred soldiers, most of them shabby and marching in ill-formed routine. It was a ragbag collection of men, barely an army at all. Yet they had amongst their rabble some well-armed foot soldiers and a battery of fierce looking dragoons. But the real threat came from the six 1½-pounder galloper guns along with six small mortars that could do horrible damage against an army of sword-waving foot soldiers charging across a field.
Prince Charles and his three thousand men had come to within sight of General Cope’s army the previous afternoon. The Scot’s Quartermaster and Adjutant-General, John William O’Sullivan made the unilateral decision to send a small contingent of the Camerons into a nearby Churchyard on the northern corner of Prestonpan in order to scout out what the English were doing. It was folly, and the men were immediately fired upon by the 1½-pounder cannon.
Furious, Prince Charles and his advisor, Lord George Murray ordered the troops’ immediate withdrawal until the morning when Charles, looking at the lay of the land, decided that the attack must come from the west. It was a potentially murderous and well-chosen battlefield, which gave very great advantage to the English. They had two high stone walls on the right of where they were encamped, a bog on their left and the sea behind them. And as if these obstacles weren’t enough, there was some sort of a moat in front that would slow down and delay any headlong attack and cause terrible injuries to the prince’s men. But the English had drawn the battle lines, and only a fight to the end could now ensue.
He had been in a state of inertia and depression, ruminating on the casualties and losses his men would suffer until Lord George Murray entered his tent and nodded. Prince Charles wondered why Murray had a grin all over his face. He told the prince that a certain Mr. Robert Anderson from the village of Prestonpans had approached him and told him that he had known the area since his childhood and that there was a secret path through the bog, which would take the prince’s men behind the English where they could attack in surprise and without the artillery guns being used against them.
The decision was to set off before dawn, at four in the morning, and by sunrise, they would be behind the English. The Scots had no advantage of cannon or other artillery, and so this subterfuge would enable Charles to let loose the fury of Scotland at the Englishmen’s backs. There would be no time for the English to turn around their artillery, and even if they did, they would be firing their heavy guns into the English as well as the Scots.
It was a good plan, reliant only on whether the information from Mr. Anderson was correct and whether an entire army could march in the pitch black of night through a bog in total silence so as not to alert the enemy and then be ready at first light to blast them to kingdom come.
Which was why the Prince of the Stuarts couldn’t sleep.
THE PALACE OF ST. JAMES, LONDON
OCTOBER 1, 1745
It was a mood that pervaded the entire palace, one that nobody could breach. Even the estranged and hated heir to the throne, Frederick, Prince of Wales, had said that he was willing to try to speak with his father for the first time in months, despite the fact that he relished the misery that his father King George was currently suffering.
Courtiers tried to distract him with suggestions that they go hunting together or that they play cards; his mistresses had whispered suggestive and immoral proposals into his ear, but they were received unheard, as his mood was so deep, his depression so great, that nobody was able to alleviate his suffering.
Every time a member of the prime minister’s council made a suggestion, it was met by a shrug of the king’s shoulder, and the hapless man was dismissed with a curt warning to wait until the return of the Duke of Cumberland. Every time food was served, the king sampled morsels and wondered aloud what his son, the Duke of Cumberland, was eating at that moment.
During periods of quiet in the audience chamber, when the only hint of a sound was the noise of whispers behind fans, the king would suddenly shout out “You are all fools and knaves and the only real man in my kingdom is my beloved son the Duke of Cumberland, and while he is on the continent fighting the French you’re all here trying to gain greater advantage from me.”
Shocked, the court would stare at the monarch, who would then slump back into his throne and retreat into his enveloping silence, mumbling occasionally to himself.
It had been two days since a messenger had brought the news to the prime minister. Pelham immediately sought an audience with King George and informed him that the army of General Sir John Cope had been soundly defeated on a battlefield outside the Scottish city of Edinburgh by the army of the Pretender to the throne of Scotland and England. The king looked as though he was suffering an apoplectic shock as Pelham informed him that the Scots army had come up in the middle of the night behind Cope’s emplacement and as the sun rose, had opened fire with their few guns, but that the vast majority of death and destruction had been occasioned by the use of the Scot’s claymores, vicious double sided broadswords that hacked and slashed through the ranks of the English soldiery. In utter fear and terror, the English soldiers had run away, leaving only a handful of officers and their men to fend off the Scottish attack. It had been a rout, and General Cope had escaped and was now hiding his head in shame and disgrace. The Scots, Pelham told the king, were now in charge of Edinburgh and were heading south to cross the border intent upon rousing the treasonous English Jacobites to their cause and marching on London with the intent of laying claim to the throne.
Pelham had experienced only a few monarchs in his time of service and didn’t know what to expect when such bad news was brought. Fat old Queen Anne would have flown into a blue funk and have been comforted by Marlborough. The first king George wouldn’t have understood because he only spoke German and French, but his advisors would probably have advised him to abandon England and return to the home of his he
art in Hanover. So Pelham had no idea how the second George would react. But no matter what anticipation he might have conjectured, he would never for a moment have imagined that the king would mumble some inaudible words and then retreat into a catatonic state as though he was looking into the very jaws of hell itself. It was even more of a mystery, for this very king himself had led the English Army on the continent and been seen to be a man of valor and action. Yet now he looked like a man who had seen a ghost, and no matter what the prime minister said or did, George wouldn’t or couldn’t speak; and so in the end, Pelham had to rise without leave and retreat back to his offices to discuss with his Cabinet and his advisors the growing menace posed by the unexpected forward thrust of the Jacobite.
Everything changed in an instant when the Duke of Cumberland, the second son of George and the late Queen Caroline, burst through the doors of the audience chamber of St. James’s Palace in the Mall, and marched without leave or announcement to the plinth upon which the monarch’s throne was placed.
“Majesty,” he shouted theatrically as he drew near to his father, “I am returned from Flanders to save England from the Scottish barbarians and quash the Pretender’s ambitions for your throne.
As though the king was suddenly awakened from a deep slumber, he opened his eyes, looked up, and saw his favorite son William Augustus walking rapidly toward him.
“A miracle,” the king whispered. “England is saved. My military genius son has returned.”
The king stood, an amazing sight to the assembled court, and opened his arms as the duke paced toward him. “Everybody, sing Hosanna and shout hurrah in reverence at the arrival of the saviour of England.”