Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  The prince remained convinced to his dying day that an earth-shattering victory that would have realised his destiny had been snatched from his hands at Derby by the cowardice, defeatism and treachery of his officers. This attitude has often been dismissed as the delusion of a sick, autocratic mind. Yet once again, a close examination of the situation reveals much more rationality in the prince’s position than his critics give him credit for. To disentangle all the skeins in the decision at Derby, we need to make an important distinction between the subjective perceptions of the actors involved, and the facts available to the later historian with a privileged Olympian overview.

  The first point to note is that Lord George Murray and the Scottish leaders made their decision in the dark. They did not know what the military situation of their enemies was. It is not an unfair criticism of Murray to say that he postulated the worst-case scenario for his own army, while giving the benefit of the doubt to the Hanoverians. Murray’s argument was that an army of 5,500 was in danger of being gobbled up by the three armies, each in close proximity and each of 10,000 men. But in fact there was no third army. As Bradstreet admitted: ‘Observe that there was not nine men at Northampton to oppose them, much less 9,000.’46 Wade was far to the north at Wetherby and posed no danger. There was an ill-trained rabble of perhaps 4,000 at Finchley. That left Cumberland.

  The desperate situation that George II’s second son was in cannot be better conveyed than in this dispatch, written to the duke of Newcastle on 5 December by his aide the duke of Richmond:

  Are we all mad, that you don’t send for 10,000 more forces, be they Hessians, Hanoverians or devils if they will but fight for us.… The whole kingdom is asleep. Our cavalry can’t be here before February and the Pretender may be crowned in Westminster by that time.47

  In London Henry Fielding spoke of ‘a panic scarce to be credited’.48 Even the incurably eupeptic Horace Walpole allowed himself a scintilla of doubt: ‘There never was so melancholy town (sic) … nobody but has some fear for themselves, for their money, or for their friends in the army.… I still fear the rebels beyond my reason.’49

  The military situation was grave enough to warrant these panicky reactions. By his own admission and that of the duke of Richmond, Cumberland could have got no more than 4,000 troops from Lichfield to Northampton to contest the passage to London.50 There was no serious doubt about the outcome of a battle between 4,000 of Cumberland’s exhausted soldiers and 5,500 eager Scots. The clansmen’s morale had never been higher than at Derby.51 In his obsession with the total numbers facing him, Lord George Murray forgot the vital military principle of concentration of force.

  It is often said that the decision to retreat from Derby was ‘the merest common sense’.52 But even if we accept the sovereignty of common sense, Lord George’s decision did not fall into that category; it could not have done, since he did not know the facts. Nor did the prince. However, his intuition was sounder than his lieutenant-general’s.

  The distinction between subjective perceptions and objective circumstance also illuminates the position of the Hanoverians and the French. The panic both of the authorities in London and of their field commanders is too well documented to be shrugged off or dismissed lightly.53 Lord George Murray had used the seemingly telling point at the council that if the Jacobites raced Cumberland to London, the duke would pick up numbers all the time, while the prince’s strength remained the same or diminished as a result of skirmishes. Knowing the uncertain temper of the common people and especially of the London mob, the Whig grandees were not at all certain that the fresh accession of strength would not accrue to the other side.54 The Lord Mayor of London told Aeneas MacDonald later that if the Jacobites had advanced, no more than five hundred men in London would have volunteered for the Hanoverian militia.55

  Naturally, great stress is laid by pro-Hanoverian historians on the copious professions of loyalty before the invasion of England. But there is not much evidence of this loyalty in the crucial month 8 November–5 December 1745. What is certain is that all ‘loyal’ forces set up to oppose the clansmen melted away with amazing rapidity once the prospect of a real fight loomed. The Cumberland militia, the Liverpool Blues, the Manchester militia, the Derbyshire Blues: the story was the same everywhere; reluctance to fight.56 How else indeed could the Highlanders have penetrated to just 120 miles from London and then retraced their steps to Scotland almost without loss, if they had faced a determined and hostile population, irrevocably loyal to the House of Hanover?

  Significantly, even George II, who at the beginning of the rising had been inclined to dismiss it as a trifle, by December acknowledged that Charles Edward was a deadly foe. He even toyed with asking for reinforcements from Maria Teresa of Austria to deal with the threat to his dynasty.57 None of this suggests a rebellion ‘inevitably’ foredoomed and fighting vainly against the tides of history.

  The calamitous effect on the French of the decision at Derby must also be considered. At Versailles Louis XV had finally ordered an invasion of England in support of the prince. His favourite, the duc de Richelieu, was put in charge of the project, 15,000 men were assembled in the Picardy ports, and theoretically the expedition was ready to sail at the end of December 1745.58 Ironically, news of the retreat from Derby reached Richelieu just as he arrived in Boulogne to take command. Although he did not immediately abandon the projected Channel crossing, in a psychological sense Derby blunted Richelieu’s appetite. The French in late 1745 were playing an opportunistic game, looking for an easy victory.59 This is not to say that they were insincere, simply that like the would-be invaders who came after them they were neither willing nor able to throw all available resources into a descent on England.

  The retreat from Derby obviously meant that Richelieu would have a much tougher fight on his hands. Most crucially, psychological superiority was thrown away. French expectation of success had been predicated on the jittery state of nerves in London, with the authorities hypnotised by the speed of the Highlanders’ advance and imagining all the time that the prince and the French were acting in concert.

  ‘Black Friday’, 6 December 1745, gave the game away to the Whigs in spectacular fashion.60 It freed Newcastle from his nightmare of having to fight on two fronts at once. Even more important, it alerted him that there had been no collusion between France and the prince. Lord George Murray failed to understand that the psychological fillip given to George II and his ministers by this intelligence was worth several brigades. As for the French, did it not now seem that all their forebodings about the English Jacobites, that they existed on paper only, were borne out? If there really was an English Jacobite party, the prince would not be retracing his steps to Scotland.

  Having had his best cards snatched from his hands, Richelieu lacked a psychological incentive to rise above the problems that then beset his expedition: adverse weather, the leaking of his battle plan, the depredations of the Royal Navy. The project to invade England was finally wound up in early February 1746 (NS).61

  Derby also made it plain that Lord George’s strategy was more conventional than the prince’s in another sense. The prince realised that the English Jacobites would not rise while there were powerful undefeated Hanoverian armies at hand. Not only had the use of arms fallen into disuse, so that any levies the pro-Stuart squires brought out would be untrained rabble; it was even doubtful whether such levies could be brought out in the first place.62 Quasi-feudal bonds in England were by now so weak that it was difficult for the gentry even to raise a sympathetic, intimidating mob at election time. As for raising men to fight regular troops, the clan leaders themselves, with the power of life and limb over their kinsmen, had found this difficult enough.

  It was clear that the English Jacobites would rise only when a French army had landed or when there was no longer any military threat from London. They had no confidence in the Highlanders, regarding them as mere militia and (wrongly) far inferior to Cumberland’s regulars.63

  In ot
her words, while the prince was taking risks, the English Jacobites were playing safe. The open adherence of just one English Jacobite leader might have had a multiplier effect, perhaps causing significant troop desertions in the Hanoverian armies, perhaps snow-balling into a general revolution.64 But no one was willing to take the risk. In the absence of gamblers in the English Jacobite ranks, there had to be secret co-ordination of their efforts. This never happened.

  Even if such mobilisation had been attempted in advance of the prince’s invasion, it is unlikely that it could have been kept secret. The only other theoretical possibility for the prince was to consolidate his position in Lancashire, systematically raising and training recruits. But this, even if possible, would have destroyed the momentum of his onward march. And it was this purposeful speed and thrust that so panicked the Hanoverians.

  The invasion of England by the western route, then, only made sense from the beginning if all this had been foreseen and compensated for. The obvious way to cut the Gordian knot was to seek out Wade at Newcastle and defeat him there – exactly what the prince wanted to do. As he correctly foresaw, a victory on English soil was crucial, to make it safe for his secret sympathisers to show themselves. Failing this, the Jacobites had to seek out and destroy Cumberland. Yet Lord George’s strategy was expressly based on the avoidance of battles, almost as if he thought the army could simply walk to London. When, naturally enough, the enemy armies appeared in force, all Lord George could think of was retreat. Doubtless, as he himself claimed, he feared the impact of large-scale casualties in such a small army. And in terms of eighteenth-century military thought, if he could have got to London by constantly outflanking the enemy, he would have attained his objective. In modern terms, of course, to leave two armies in the field behind him was the biggest risk of all.

  The irony of Lord George’s strategy was that if Wade had proved even half-way competent, he would have moved across the Pennines from Newcastle when the Jacobites moved south, and cut off their retreat.65 After the return to Newcastle from the snow-bound passes of the Pennines, Wade commenced a ponderous southerly march through Yorkshire. Had he crossed the Pennines farther south to block the retreat to Scotland, Lord George and the Scots would then have been left with no choice but to march south from Derby. It says a lot for Wade’s influence with the Whig élite of the time that, where lower-ranking generals and officials of all kinds were haled before court-martials and inquiries on slender evidence of cowardice or incompetence (Cope, General Oglethorpe, General Durand, commandant of Carlisle Castle, Provost Stewart of Edinburgh), the Marshal himself escaped censure for what can only be described as gross military ineptitude.

  The panic in London on ‘Black Friday’ could conceivably have had other momentous consequences if the Highlanders had not turned back. Those who applaud the wisdom of the Derby decision usually concentrate very narrowly on the military situation on paper. Yet there is also the question of general political confidence to consider. One of the reasons the French cursed themselves in later years for missing a great opportunity in 1745 was that they came to realise the catastrophic impact Derby threatened to have on the financial system in London.66 The index of Bank of England stock fell from 141 in October 1745 to 127 in December.67 Because of the general uncertainty engendered by the rising, bank stock did not rise above 125 in the early months of 1746.68 It was the French view that an advance from Derby could have had two possible consequences.69 One was a total collapse of business confidence and the disintegration of the administration into chaos. The other possibility was that National Debt fundholders, seeing their investment in danger of annihilation, might have colluded with Charles Edward’s London supporters, possibly supporting his restoration in return for a binding guarantee that the National Debt would not be cancelled. Such a deal might even have led to a coup d’état in London ahead of the arrival of the Jacobite army.70

  Such speculation on the might-have-been may appear otiose, but is of supreme importance in the quest for historical causality.71 Some ingenious critics of Charles Edward have suggested that even if the prince had reached London and been restored, the train of events would very soon have led to his unseating.72 A coronation with Catholic rites, a few examples of autocratic behaviour towards Parliament: it would not have taken much to precipitate another 1688. All one can say in answer to this is that Charles Edward’s most detailed political testament shows that he had anticipated these objections and planned to build a power base on the common man to offset the expected backlash.73 All of this is doubtless in the realm of remote speculation. But it is a travesty of Charles Edward’s character and intelligence to say that he had no conception of the problems he would face if restored.

  The debate about Derby can never be satisfactorily resolved. The fact remains, as one historian of the issue has shrewdly pointed out, that in their actual state of mind, the Scottish leaders would never have agreed to continue to London, whatever the cogency of the prince’s arguments.74

  States of mind were to be all-important after Derby. ‘It is all over, we shall never come again,’ was Sheridan’s despondent conclusion.75 The prince, who had trekked at the head of his army on the way south, now rode depressed and sullen on horseback in the rear.76 Where on the march south he went to bed regularly at 11 p.m., often sleeping fully clothed, and was up again at 3 a.m., on the retreat he slept late, drank a lot, and often delayed the day’s march.77 He never truly recovered from the trauma of Derby. There were to be other, in some ways greater, shocks to his psychic system, but after Derby the prince was never the same person again, except perhaps for a brief period when his very survival was at stake in the heather. Just as the journey south fuelled the positive side of his personality, so that like a sun-god he waxed stronger and stronger until the meridian at Derby, so on the withdrawal north the negative charges in his shaky ego seemed to increase exponentially. By the time he reached Scotland the prince was psychically exhausted.

  He can hardly be blamed for this. Even men with the strongest core of personal identity were shaken by the retreat from Derby. Discipline among the clansmen, which on the way south had been so extraordinarily good that at Manchester the prince was able to forbid female camp followers (bona fide wives only!)78 and have the order accepted, now broke down; never entirely, but to a worrying extent.

  Once they realised they were heading back towards Scotland (for the march north had commenced in darkness), the clansmen’s morale visibly plummeted.79 Ululations and cries of despair rent the air; some clansmen threw down their guns in disgust and vowed to quit the army once safely across the border.80 Murray of Broughton’s wife was seen crying like a baby.81 To assuage the men’s feelings, their colonels distributed powder and ammunition as if for a battle with Wade.82 To camouflage reality still further, a story was put out that the second Jacobite army, commanded by Strathallan, was coming into England and that Wade was trying to place himself between the two armies.83

  As the clansmen’s discipline declined, the insolence of the English townspeople increased. On the march south, the Jacobite army looked like a possible victor, the prince a possible future king. On the retreat no such illusions could be entertained. Cumberland and Wade now had the whip hand, and the onlookers knew it. As it trudged wearily back through Ashbourne, Leek, Macclesfield and Stockport, the army had to put up with sniper fire and the summary execution of stragglers. At Manchester the prince’s patience snapped. He had protected recalcitrant citizens from the wrath of the clansmen, prevented Ashbourne being put to the torch, even pardoned Cumberland’s ace spy Vere. But disloyalty in Manchester was too much. A levy of £2,500 was exacted from the town for its contumacious behaviour.84

  Lord George Murray had feared that the greatest danger to the Jacobite army would come from Wade. In fact Wade once again made no attempt to intercept them. All he did was to send a squadron of horse across the Pennines under General Oglethorpe to harry the retreating Highlanders.

  The threat, unexpectedly, came
from Cumberland, who had originally intended to follow the Jacobites no farther north than Macclesfield.85 False rumours of a panic-stricken rabble throwing down their weapons in a mad rush for the Scottish border encouraged him to press on with the pursuit.

  News of this chase brought out all the stubbornness in the prince’s nature. He had been forced to retreat against his will; that was one thing. But he would not accept this further humiliation of seeming to flee before Cumberland. To Lord George’s alarm, the prince began to slow the march up.

  He was narrowly persuaded out of spending a second night in Manchester.86 But, quoting back at Lord George his confident assurances at the Derby council that the army would be safe once it crossed the Ribble, the prince dug in his heels at Preston and insisted on spending an extra day there.87

  The danger now was that Cumberland would catch up with the retreating army well before the Scottish border. In fact he would have done so, had he not also lost a day attending to a false report that the French had landed on the south coast.88

  Fuelled by arguments from both Perth and d’Eguilles, the prince was already increasingly inclined to turn and face his pursuers. At Lancaster his irritation at retreating so fast in face of ‘the son of a usurper’ came to a head.89 Come what might, he decided that Saturday 14 December would see a battle.