At this point one of the Murray faction stormed out of the room in a glowering rage. Surprisingly, it was not Murray himself but his most successful military collaborator Cluny MacPherson.31 White with fury, outside the room Cluny railed bitterly at the prince’s self-destructive stubbornness. Realising the grave consequences of a continuing split on the council on this matter of the itinerary, Murray of Broughton prevailed on Sheridan to get the prince to reverse his decision.32
Still full of misgivings that once the clansmen were in their native hills, they would desert en masse, Charles Edward reluctantly agreed to accompany the clan regiments into the Highlands, while Murray, the cavalry and the Lowland regiments wound round the coast via Montrose and Aberdeen to Inverness.33 The latter arrangement was a compromise to meet the prince’s earlier objections and to provide him with a partial face-saver. A smaller third detachment of Ogilvy’s regiment and the Farquharsons were allowed to make for Speyside via Coupar-Angus, Glen Cluva and Glen Muick, so that the men could visit their homes.34 As a rebuke to Cluny for his intemperate departure from the council, the prince next day sent the MacPherson chief an order to use all methods of military execution, including the burning of houses, against those of his clan who deserted or refused to fight.35
The business of the council was now concluded. Later that same day Lord George Murray took his Athollmen on to Perth.36 The prince stayed at Fairnton, Lord John Drummond’s home, until the morning of the 4th.37 Then he pressed on to Castle Menzies at Weem and spent a day there before linking up with his rearguard at Blair Atholl.38 At Blair Castle he rested until 9 February.39
The dreadful winter weather ruled out any possibility of pursuit by Cumberland. After reaching Linlithgow on 1 February, Cumberland was detained when the old palace there was burned down through his soldiers’ carelessness (truly 1 February 1746 was a great day for destruction in Scotland!).40 He reached Stirling on the 2nd, Dunblane on the 4th, Crieff on the 5th and Perth on the 6th. There he halted, sending out garrisons to Dunkeld and Castle Menzies and strengthening the existing garrison at Fort William.41 He had no intention of following the Jacobites into the Highlands until he had solved the problem of provisioning his army. He intended to follow Lord George Murray’s column up the coast, meanwhile sending parties of irregulars into the Highland fastnesses.42
Lord George Murray proceeded from Perth through Cowpar-in-Angus and Glamis to Forfar.43 Joined there by Cromarty and John Roy Stewart, he pressed on to Brechin and Stonerine.44 At Stonerine Elcho’s Lifeguards and the Edinburgh regiment were detached to oversee the delivery of carriages, horses, stores and ammunition to Stonehaven.45 At Aberdeen (reached on the 10th), Murray paused for three days, waiting for the third column under Lord Ogilvy.46
Charles Edward, depressed at the turn events had taken, found himself at Blair having to boost the spirits of his dejected followers. Sheridan wrote to France to say that the Jacobite army was like the old man who felt fine but knew he had to die very soon.47 Despondency found expression in internecine disputes. The prince had to step in to mediate in a dispute between Lochiel and Robertson of Struan.48 With tongue firmly in cheek, he assured his men that they would surely be marching south in the spring with a larger army.49
A more positive sign was the capture of the barracks at Ruthven by Glenbucket.50 After spending two nights at Dalnacardoch, a public house on one of Wade’s roads, the prince took up his quarters in the Ruthven barracks at Badenoch on 12 February.51 The weather was cruel and snow-ridden.52 The going was so bad that horses were dropping dead of exhaustion on the road.53
After staying two days at Ruthven, the prince spent the night of the 15th at the house of Grant of Dalrachny. On the 16th he arrived at the Mackintosh seat at Moy Hall.54 Here he was entertained by the beautiful Lady Mackintosh, that ‘Colonel Anne’ of Jacobite legend who had raised her clan for the prince in defiance of her husband.55 The twenty-three-year-old Anne, a notable firebrand, provided a lavish supper for Charles Edward that night.56 She also sent four men in charge of the Moy blacksmith Donald Fraser to watch the road from Inverness for any telltale movement of Loudoun’s troops.57 This chance surveillance gave rise to what was later known as the ‘Rout of Moy’.
Grant of Dalrachny, the prince’s unwilling Whig host of the 15th, sent word to Loudoun in Inverness that the ‘Young Pretender’ was at Moy with a very small bodyguard. Loudoun saw the chance to snuff out the rebellion and gain himself £30,000 into the bargain.58 Without revealing the true nature of the target, he assembled 1,500 men in Inverness and threw a cordon around the town to prevent any warning from reaching the prince.59
Luckily, a fourteen-year-old innkeeper’s daughter learned of the proposed raid on Moy from some officers she was serving in her father’s Inverness tavern. She ran barefoot to the house of the dowager Lady Mackintosh and alerted her.60 Lady Mackintosh sent a young lad, Lachlan Mackintosh, off to Moy with the warning. Evading the cordon and getting past the marching column proved difficult, but Lachlan got through to Moy Hall and raised the alarm.61
Young Lady Mackintosh and her guests had retired to bed and the boy’s arrival threw the household into confusion. Waking from his sleep, the prince thought the enemy was upon him. Throwing a bonnet over his head, he escaped in a dressing-gown and night-cap, with his shoes unbuckled.62 Lady Mackintosh was running through the house in her shift, ‘like a madwoman’, imagining the enemy was already within the house.63 Eventually the Jacobites got a grip on the situation. The prince was sent off to skulk by the lochside a mile away, together with Lochiel and the Camerons.64
While the prince ran through the wood to the south-western end of Loch Moy, the most remarkable single incident in the entire ’45 campaign was taking place. Donald Fraser, the Moy blacksmith, bluffed Loudoun into thinking that the clan regiments in their entirety were drawn up across the Moy road waiting to receive him. Fraser and his four men shouted out a series of orders to the phantom regiments of Clanranald’s, Keppoch’s and Lochiel’s.65 Keeping up a constant babel, they fired a number of volleys in Loudoun’s direction. In the utter darkness Loudoun took fright at the thought that he had wandered into an ambush.66 Perhaps Grant of Dalrachny was a double agent. A chance shot, which killed Donald MacCrimmon, piper to the Macleods who were accompanying Loudoun, seemed to confirm the ill omens. Panic and confusion spread through the ranks of the men who had already been routed at Inverurie.67 One of Loudoun’s officers saw the men in front of him running and marched his troops after them on the double, thinking they were the Jacobites.68 Finding his column in danger of breaking up, Loudoun ordered it back to Inverness.
The ‘Rout of Moy’ was a great psychological triumph for the Jacobites. Even d’Eguilles was caught up in the euphoria of the moment. He wrote back to France with a glowing testimony to Lady Mackintosh and her blacksmith.69 One thing only soured the triumph. As a result of his midnight flight in dressing-gown and slippers, the prince caught a chill that later developed into pneumonia.70 For the rest of February he was out of action.
The 17th of February was spent collecting 2–3,000 men for the assault on Inverness.71 At the approach of the Jacobites, Loudoun fled and Inverness opened its gates.72 Loudoun retreated in disorder. The prince’s army was already entering the town as the Hanoverian rearguard was stumbling across the Ness bridge.73 As this force withdrew, the Jacobites wheeled three pieces of cannon to Cromwell’s old fort and bombarded them.74 The salvo killed nobody, but it intensified both the panic and the desertion rate among Loudoun’s men.75 Loudoun’s losses when he reached Tain in Sutherland were found to be considerable.
Major Grant of Inverness Castle was at first tempted to emulate his superiors Preston and Blakeney in Edinburgh and Stirling. But as soon as he saw Jacobite sapping and mining work commence, he surrendered.76 Loudoun meanwhile continued his flight via the Kessack ferry to Black Isle.77
While the prince lay ill at Inverness, Lord George Murray and the Lowland regiments ran into the worst patch of weather yet in their tr
ek across country from Aberdeen to Inverness. From Aberdeen they cut off the north-eastern corner of the Scottish coast by marching inland to Old Meldrum; their eventual destination was Banff.78 The conditions they experienced on this march were well summed up by John Daniel:
When we marched out of Aberdeen, it blew, snowed and hailed and froze to such a degree that few pictures ever represented winter, with all its icicles about it, better than many of us did that day. For here men were covered with icicles hanging at their eyebrows and beards; and an entire coldness seizing all their limbs, it may be wondered at how they could bear up against the storm, a severe contrary wind, driving snow and little cutting hail bitterly down upon our faces, in such a manner that it was impossible to see ten yards ahead of us. And very easy it was to lose our companions; the road being very bad and leading over large commons, and the paths being immediately filled up with drifting snow.79
When they came out on to the coast road conditions improved slightly. They picked their way gingerly along the eastern shore route, through Cullen, Fochabers, Elgin, Forres and Nairn, before linking up with the prince at Inverness on 19 February.80 Lord George visited the prince at his sick-bed in Culloden House the day before Inverness Castle capitulated.81 He had satisfactory news about the conduct of the retreat. Garrisons had been left at Elgin and Nairn to prevent Loudoun from linking up with Cumberland.82 The Lowland regiments were cantoned in the towns and villages of the north-eastern counties.83 And just before Aberdeen was evacuated, a detachment of Berwick’s cavalry had arrived from France, though without horses. The next move seemed to be Cumberland’s.84
But Cumberland had problems of his own. He could not advance into the Highlands until he had secured adequate food supplies. Even to progress north of Perth carried with it the dangers of starvation.85 He remained at Perth, building up his commissariat, until 20 February, when he began his march to Aberdeen via Montrose. The van of his army reached the town three days after the last Jacobite soldier had left, on 25 February. Cumberland himself came in two days later.86
Food and equipment were not the Hanoverian duke’s only problems. His barbarism and insensitivity had already seriously upset his ally the Prince of Hesse, who arrived with his forces at Leith on 8 February.87 The immediate issue was Cumberland’s categorical refusal to agree to a cartel for prisoners, on the ground that he was dealing with ‘rebels’.88 The Hessians, for their part, refused to fight without one. Beyond that, Cumberland regarded having extra mouths to feed as a burden and was inclined to consider the Hessians a nuisance.89
There was also a clash of temperament between the two commanders, to some extent echoing the friction between Charles Edward and Lord George Murray. The Prince of Hesse’s civilisation and the barbarism of Cumberland and his henchmen had already been in collision.90 The German prince hit back. While Cumberland was campaigning, the prince made a point of giving a number of balls in Edinburgh to which ‘none but Jacobite ladies’ were invited.91 Cumberland’s behaviour was not only insensitive but positively injudicious, since he could have had 6,000 Hessians with him at Culloden if he had been prepared to rein in his own savage instincts. Doubtless he did not want another ‘old woman’ (as he contemptuously dubbed Duncan Forbes) at his side when he put down the rebellion.92
The enforced stay at Aberdeen, while Cumberland replenished his supplies and built up his numbers to compensate for the absence of the Hessians, transferred the military initiative to the Jacobites. Their position was strengthened by a pact with the Grants. After long negotiations, the Grants concluded what was in effect a treaty of neutrality with Charles Edward.93 With the prince lying ill at Culloden House, the way was open for the clan chiefs to pursue the specifically Highland strategy after which they had always hankered. Their approach was a fourfold one. They wanted to detain Cumberland at Aberdeen, retaining the coastal supply line for aid from France, while they besieged the Highland forts, dispersed Lord Loudoun’s forces, and beat off any Hanoverian reinforcements coming up through the central Highlands. Lord George Murray was in buoyant mood. He claimed he could carry on the war in Scotland for several years and eventually force the English to come to terms; Highland cattle plus periodic raids into the Lowlands would provide the food.94
For a while the Jacobites achieved remarkable results with their new strategy. Maxwell of Kirkconnell rated the glorious late flowering of Jacobite military success in March 1746 as their finest achievement, ahead of Prestonpans, Clifton or Falkirk: ‘The vulgar may be dazzled with a victory, but in the eyes of a connoisseur, the Prince will appear greater about this time at Inverness than either at Gladsmuir [Prestonpans] or at Falkirk.’95 O’Heguerty, the prince’s biographer in the 1750s, agreed with this assessment, as did some of the Whigs.96 It seems not to have occurred to Maxwell or O’Heguerty to note the irony that this Indian summer took place while the prince was laid up with illness.
The first target was Fort Augustus. The capture of this fort was entrusted to Brigadier Walter Stapleton of the Irish brigade, who had come from France with Lord John Drummond. On 3 March trenches were opened.97 Since Mirabel was in disgrace and no longer employed as chief engineer, the siege prospered. The new director of siege operations, Grant, showed how the job should be done. Aided by an explosion of the magazine inside the fortress, he compelled the surrender of Fort Augustus in just two days.98 The fort was systematically pillaged by the Highlanders. According to Stapleton, the wholesale rapine surpassed anything he had seen in a long career of warfare.99
Two days later, on 7 March, virtually the same forces appeared outside Fort William.100 Lord John Drummond was left as Jacobite governor of Fort Augustus. Motivation to compass the fall of Fort William was high, for this was Cameron country, and the Hanoverians’ premier fortress had long dominated Lochaber. During the prince’s invasion of England, the Fort William garrison had sortied to burn and plunder Lochiel’s country.101 Cumberland agreed with the Jacobites in their estimate of the fort’s importance: ‘I look upon Fort William to be the only fort in the Highlands that is of any consequence. I have taken all possible measures for the securing of it … for the preventing it falling into the rebels’ hands.’102
Grant immediately set out to open trenches. With a good eye for terrain, he suggested establishing a battery on a hill to the south-east, dominating Fort William.103 But by sheer bad luck he was killed almost immediately by a chance cannonball. Reluctantly, Stapleton had to send for Mirabel. Immediately jettisoning Grant’s imaginative approach, the Frenchman soon showed that he had learned nothing and forgotten nothing since Stirling. Once again a Jacobite siege quickly settled into stalemate.104
At about this time, a courier arrived at Inverness for the prince, who was alternately staying at Castle Hill and Culloden House, still recovering from the pneumonia contracted on the night of the ‘Rout of Moy’.105 This emissary brought news that further units of the Irish brigade were on their way to Scotland. For a while it looked as if Lord George was right, and the Jacobites would very soon have an army 8,000 strong with which to face Cumberland.106 The good news relieved the prince’s worst anxieties. He was persuaded to accept the more relaxed convalescence provided in the Inverness home of the dowager Lady Mackintosh.107
After the Highland forts, the Highlanders’ next objective was the persistent gadfly Lord Loudoun. Loudoun had foreseen the possibility of a seaborne Jacobite pursuit and had seized all available boats in the Cromarty and Dornoch Firths.108 These, of course, were fishing vessels, not suitable for a sea-going voyage; for this reason Loudoun could not heed Cumberland’s increasingly shrill summonses to join him in Banffshire.109
Following the capture of Inverness, Cromarty was sent with Glengarrys, Clanranalds, the Appin Stewarts, Mackinnons and some Mackenzies in pursuit. Having no boats, they were obliged to go round the head of the Firth. At their approach Loudoun retired across Dornoch Firth to Dornoch.110 When Cromarty attempted to pursue him by land, Loudoun recrossed the Firth into Ross-shire.111
Wi
th all boats at his disposal, Loudoun appeared to be a very superior mouse dodging a lumbering and ponderous cat. Cromarty momentarily gave up and returned to Tain, upon which Loudoun again crossed to Dornoch.112
Cromarty’s supersession by Perth as Jacobite commander in this theatre of war brought changes. It was quickly obvious to Perth that land operations were going to be impossibly protracted. He instituted an extended dragnet for fishing boats. Moir of Stoneywood got together an impressive flotilla at Findhorn, north of Forres on the North Sea coast.113 These were then sailed across the Moray Firth during a thick fog which concealed them from Royal Navy cruisers.114
Knowing that there was no shipping for an army on the other side of Dornoch Firth, Loudoun felt himself secure. Suddenly, on 20 March, as if by sorcery, Perth’s men were ashore and Loudoun’s army surrounded. The Jacobites came in under a pall of thick wet mist that restricted visibility to one hundred yards. The operation ended with the total dispersal of Loudoun’s forces.115 Loudoun, Sutherland, Forbes of Culloden and the other leaders made their escape by sea to Skye.116 Whatever Cumberland did now, the Jacobites could be confident of having no enemy in their rear.
The third Jacobite operation was the most spectacularly successful of all. On 15 March Lord George Murray marched south from Inverness with the Atholl brigade. At Ruthven he was met by Cluny MacPherson and his regiment, who had remained in Badenoch to guard the passes there.117 At dusk Cluny and Lord George led their seven hundred clansmen from Dalwhinny to Dalnaspidal. There for the first time Murray let his troops into the secret of the operation.118 There were thirty posts or blockhouses (some houses, some inns) scattered around the Atholl country: all were to be taken out simultaneously by thirty Highland detachments, the raids to be carried out before daylight. The thirty detachments would then rendezvous shortly after dawn at the Bridge of Bruer, two miles north of Blair.119
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