An Ancient Strife

by Michael Phillips

  After a scant hour or two of what fitful sleep might be had on the open ground, the shrill skirl of bagpipes blared through the morning. Exhausted and hungry to faintness, crawling and struggling up on frozen feet, they groped their way into clan groups. A few men were sent into nearby villages to see what food they could buy. Then, as if in final insult, the sleet and rain and a few flakes of snow finally began to empty from the sky.

  It had been a miserable night and would prove an even more miserable day. How many were left of the six thousand that might have been on the moor two days ago no one could say—perhaps four thousand, at most five. Many still slept or had scattered into the surrounding countryside.

  As the Jacobite troops stood frozen to the bone, stomachs empty, wind pelting their cheeks with specks of ice, rain gradually drenching kilts and tartan cloaks, sleet and an occasional slashing attack of hail pummeling bare legs beneath the knee, the Highlanders were as dispirited an army of men as ever had rallied for a cause whose meaning had long since abandoned it.

  Murray and Gordon knew it was madness to fight thus. Not merely their own personal forebodings, but reasonably accurate scouting reports told them that they were seriously outnumbered. Yet the prince rode among his sleepy men on his gray gelding trying to buck up their spirits as if victory were sure. His judgment and maturity had proven itself wanting at this final desperate hour of his cause. But no one, not even his enemies, could deny his courage and determination.

  As they watched him try this one last time to prepare his men for what lay ahead, both Murray and Gordon could not but admire this prince of the House of Stuart to whom they had given their allegiance, though inwardly they also cursed his foolhardy obstinacy.

  All morning the Highland army stood on icy legs, with blocks of ice for feet, staring into the icy wind that gusted into their faces . . . waiting.

  Thirty-One

  Around eleven in the morning, the roll of drums, beginning faintly, then steadily increasing, could be heard some distance away through the stormy air.

  What terror the sound struck into the hearts of the Highlanders as they stood waiting, none would divulge to those next to them. All knew what the sound meant—that ten or twelve thousand well-fed and rested Englishmen and Campbells were coming to kill them. But stoically they stood their ground. If they must die, they would not die cowards.

  By infinitesimal degrees the ominous sound grew. The crisp beat of a hundred drums was rhythmic, unending, maddeningly efficient and precise, echoing the cadence of seventy-five paces a minute at which Cumberland’s army had pursued the Bonnie Prince all the way from England and around the opposite sides of Scotland.

  At last the first glimpses of red appeared in the east.

  After many long months, the prince and the duke—each a mere boy alongside most of the men whose lives they held in their hands—met face-to-face. Each sat astride their respective royal mounts behind their front lines, peering toward one another in the distance. They were two cousins of twenty-five years—the slight handsome Italian rogue and the fat German son of a King, both descendents of Mary, Queen of Scots, and both commanding armies that on this day would achieve immortality in their fight for control of Britain.

  Steadily the thick red line advanced.

  Between noon and one, the massive red-coated army drew close enough that individual soldiers could be seen across the moor. The English King’s drums grew louder. The Scottish King’s pipers blared out a shrill call to readiness.

  The drums rolled. The pipes screamed.

  Suddenly the drums ceased. The bags of the pipes replied, gasping and wheezing to emptiness.

  A moment of stillness. Only the sleet peppering the hats and bonnets of both armies sounded in the ears of the fifteen thousand men about to make history.

  Sandy Gordon gazed at the line of red across the moor at a distance of two or three hundred yards. He stood among one of two Gordon regiments of three hundred men, made up of recruits from the region of Strathbogie under the command of seventy-two-year-old John Gordon of Glenbucket.

  As suddenly as had fallen the silence, now erupted a soundless puff of white smoke tinged with yellow against the low black sky. Almost instantly, several more bursts followed. All across the line now the deafening explosions of Cumberland’s artillery reached Jacobite ears. At the same instant, the volley of iron balls began blasting through the front lines. The cannon fire quickly accelerated into continuous succession, its explosions relentless as smoke rose from the field in a dense, lung-burning cloud.

  Antiquated Jacobite cannons attempted to answer the barrage, but without effect. A few rounds went off, then Charles’s cannons fell silent—powder, touchholes, cords, and linstocks all soaked from the rain.

  What had always been the Highlanders’ most devastating weapon—the frenzied attack—never came. From such an open position, the Highland charge could have no effect. In their mustered ranks, the Highlanders stood helplessly awaiting orders, while the screaming iron from Cumberland’s artillery fell in such unrelenting assault that neither escape nor charge could prevent it from decimating their ranks. The three-pound roundball shot killed and maimed in a single blow, blasting arms and legs from above and below the kilt, gruesomely pelting those who survived with flying human limbs. The smaller accompanying grapeshot—which spread out after leaving the cannon’s forty-inch barrel—peppered the ranks and sprayed the clans with the warm blood of their own kith and kin.

  Within twenty minutes, five hundred, perhaps a thousand Highlanders were dead.

  The clans could wait no longer. Brave men of their number were dropping by the second. They would attack without an order from prince or chief. They must attack or die where they stood!

  One clan, now another, broke ranks toward the enemy. With left hands maintaining shields as well as could be managed, they yanked kilts to the thigh and surged forward, swords aloft, their lungs erupting into frenzied Gaelic war cries. But the slaughter was on, and no ferocious charge by scattered clan groups could now stem it.

  As the belated attack finally broke upon the field, it was answered with the musket fire that made the thick red line of the orderly British infantry such an effective killing machine, feared on the continent and wherever the wars of its nation took it.

  The musket of the eighteenth century was an inaccurate weapon at more than a hundred or hundred and fifty yards. But when a hundred muskets were fired simultaneously, the collective onslaught of shot could halt almost any attack in its tracks.

  As the Highlanders came flying toward them came the command, Make ready!

  The first rank of musket infantry dropped to one knee.

  Present!

  Rifles jerked to the shoulder and squinting eyes sighted down the barrel. What they saw was a charging line from Clan Chattan, the first to sprint across the moor.

  Fire!

  No more than a second passed after a hundred triggers had been squeezed before the first rank had sprung back to its feet even as the second rank heard its Fire! and unleashed another hundred rounds. The first rank hurried to the back to reload, prime, and cock their weapons while rank three now took the knee, aimed, and . . . Fire!

  Along the red line of six battalions, company by company, platoon by platoon, ranks one, two, and three sprayed their shot into the Highland charge—the discharges kept orderly by the beat of the drum. They released such a massive volley of tiny iron, with grapeshot and cannonballs continuing to soar overhead from the cannons, that a Highland force of three times the size could not have survived.

  At the first crack of musket, dozens from Clan Chattan fell. At the second, dozens more collapsed. Their kilted lines sprinted hopelessly into a hailstorm of mutilating iron shot unleashed by the alternating ranks of musket fire.

  Clan Chattan and the others behind them ran bravely, choking on the white-yellow sulphurous smoke, stumbling over their dead as they fell. Those few who chanced to reach the enemy faced a solid wall of bayonets ready to plunge th
em through if close-range musketry missed. Of several hundred Chattans who had led the Highlanders in attack, only a dozen or two survived.

  Within minutes of the charge, the clans staggered, then spun about into frantic and scattered retreat. The charge had been hopeless, and they knew it. Now the English dragoons, waiting astride their horses on the west flank along with two regiments of Campbells, swept in from the side to slaughter with sword and hoof those attempting to get away. As the horsemen bore in from the west, the regiments of musketry rose from the knee to pursue on foot—to shouts of “After the dogs!”—with five thousand shiny bayonets thirsty for blood. The infantry soon swarmed the moor toward the Highland position like a surging tide of red in pursuit of the fleeing tartan remnant.

  Kendrick Gordon sat astride his horse beside Lord George Murray watching the butchery unfold. The hearts of both men were breaking. Both knew the cause was lost. Cumberland’s army had overrun and scattered the lines of the clans a mere twenty minutes after the lines had broken. All around, the Highlanders fled in panic. The entire rout had taken less than three-quarters of an hour.

  But it was not just for the failed Stuart cause that Kendrick Gordon wept. Fear for his son, whom he had not seen since morning, nearly consumed him. His heart dreaded what might already have happened. If only he could catch sight of—

  Suddenly in the distance he saw what might be the familiar form. The next instant he was galloping over the battlefield toward it.

  “Where are you going?” shouted Murray after him.

  “To my son!” cried Gordon.

  Neither did Lord George sit observing the catastrophe any longer. He now urged his horse into the thick of combat with sword in hand. He was a commander no more, but merely one man among those who remained, ready to give his own life if he might thereby save one of his fellows.

  Thirty-Two

  For twenty minutes, Sandy Gordon had been fighting for his life.

  After the third wave of musket fire fell upon the Gordon ranks, he had joined the charge toward the enemy.

  Clutching sword in his hand, he knew he would never reach the impenetrable red wall. All around him, those who made the attempt were falling over the bodies of those who had preceded them into the blistering musket fire. That he was about to die did not actually enter his mind as a definite thought, only the vague sense that he would never again see his father or mother or Culodina. He felt no sense of courage as he flung himself into the battle, screams of men falling and dying on his right and left, the explosion of musket and cannon fire rending the air in continual barrage. He ran only because he was here and he must do what soldiers did—fight the enemy and die when the bullet split his skull or, should he survive the musket fire, when an English bayonet plunged through his heart.

  He was afraid, not of death but of pain, not of being dead—he had already reconciled himself to that—but of dying.

  Suddenly amid the cacophony of death and mayhem, he heard his name called. The voice was familiar but strange, like some long-forgotten memory from another life.

  “So, young Sandy Gordon of Cliffrose,” came the words, “how fitting that we should meet like this.”

  Sandy paused in flight and glanced toward the sound. A horseman was approaching.

  Murdoch Sorley, he thought. Momentary confusion rushed in upon his sleep-starved brain. His heart leapt in brief recognition. Was Culodina here too! If only it might be. The hint of a welcoming smile broke upon his lips.

  But just as suddenly his brain cleared. Culodina’s father was riding toward him from the ranks of the enemy!

  Sorley saw the bewilderment pass over Sandy’s face. A wide smile spread over his own lips, and he broke into laughter. The sound was bitter, cruel, mirthless. The next moment he raised the pistol in his hand and aimed it toward the ground.

  “It should have been I who had the son,” he cried. “It was I who deserved an heir, not your cowardly father! But what he had will soon be mine!”

  Suddenly the truth of the man’s treachery was clear.

  Inflamed by the words, Sandy rose up and burst toward the horse in a frenzied charge. If he was going to die by the hand of his father’s cousin, he would not do so without a fight!

  Through the ranks of death Kendrick Gordon galloped, urging his horse over bodies, galloping where possible toward the middle of the moor where the remains of the rebel army was battling sword against bayonet.

  Suddenly he saw his cousin before him in the colors of the enemy, pistol raised against the son whose birth they had celebrated together. He reached across his body and pulled out his long Highland dirk.

  “Tullibardglass!” came a great roar across the ground separating them. So fierce was the sound that it echoed even above the dwindling explosions of musket fire.

  Culodina’s father looked up to see the Gordon mount pounding across the turf. An evil glint came into his eye as he saw his mad Highland cousin attacking in full flight, dirk waving.

  He took his aim off the son, and slowly raised his arm.

  At the cry from his father’s mouth, Sandy turned. Behind him the shattering report from the pistol intended for him exploded. A splotch of red spewed out from his father’s chest. The eyes of father and son met but for an instant. Then the light faded from the rider’s face. He toppled backward off his horse onto the reddened moor, adding his own to the blood of thousands.

  “Father!” cried Sandy in horror, sword falling from his hand. He ran forward in desperation. Behind him sounded a wicked laugh. He glanced over his shoulder. But already Murdoch Sorley had wheeled his mount and was galloping back toward the English line.

  Sandy reached his father, knelt beside him, and gently eased his hand under the beloved head. The eyes opened a feeble crack. “Sandy . . . oh, Sandy . . . my son,” came a gasping whisper.

  Tears streamed down the young man’s mud-caked cheeks.

  “I . . . I love you, Sandy, my boy . . . tell your mother . . .”

  The voice was weak. He choked, struggling for breath, “ . . . tell her that—”

  The final moments were too few for all that was in the good man’s heart to say. The memory of his life would have to speak for him now.

  Sandy burst into a howl of agony. Slowly the echo of his wailing voice was swallowed up in a thousand other cries of death this evil day had brought. He leaned down and kissed the warm dead face.

  But the tender moment of farewell could last but a moment. Before the son could utter a whispered I love you, another of the enemy was upon him.

  Sandy jumped to his feet and glanced about for his sword. But there was no time to find it. He broke into a run away from the scene even as piercing pain slashed through his leg from the tip of a bayonet thrust behind him.

  He struggled another three steps. Vaguely the thought filled his seared brain that death would now be welcome. Any instant he expected the full bayonet to split his back and puncture through to his chest. But ahead of him two kilted Highlanders tore past, screaming and wildly waving their claymores. In seconds they had dispatched the owner of the bayonet that had just crippled him.

  Sandy did not look back again. He was heedless of the fight now. His only thought was to flee this terrible place.

  His life was over. There was nothing to do but run until he dropped . . . and then hope he would never wake.

  Thirty-Three

  When Culodina Sorley rode into Inverness in the drizzly cold of early afternoon, chilled to the bone from the rain and sleet that thankfully now had stopped, she sensed an ominous stillness. Something was wrong. No soldiers were to be seen. Somewhere in the distance sounded an occasional ominous rumble of cannon and a faint thudding crackle as of gunfire.

  The first thing she must do, she thought, was find an inn. She had ridden that day from Tomatin, which had not been so very far, but she was tired and cold. Perhaps she would have something to eat. Then she would find out where Culloden House was located—or the place called Cairngorm Arms. She had to find
Kendrick Gordon. She could not hope to locate Sandy among thousands of men, but his father was sure to know his whereabouts.

  An hour later, warmed and fed, her horse stabled, and with directions to the Cairngorm Arms, Culodina walked back out into the town.

  She had not gone far before she heard shouts.

  Two men on foot raced past her with looks of terror on their faces. Both were caked with dirt and blood. Looking right and left, they darted into a nearby well house. Moments later a rider galloped toward her, nearly skidding his horse to a stop at the point where he had seen the rebels run in to hide.

  “Come here!” he shouted at her. Culodina ignored his command and backed away in terror.

  “Girl . . . hey, you!” he shouted to a servant girl who had just emerged from a house. He leapt to the ground. “Take my reins and don’t move from this spot.”

  Too surprised and terrified to refuse, the girl stood paralyzed to the spot. The rider ran into the well house, knife in hand. Screams sounding from inside moments later brought the girl to her wits. She dropped the bridle and ran away. The next thing Culodina saw was the same man running back out, blood dripping from hands and wrist and knife.

  Her stomach wrenched at the sight. By now dozens of galloping horsemen were entering the town. Commotion broke out everywhere. Highlanders were running frantically, kilts and bodies splattered with blood, desperately trying to hide from the shouting red-coated English soldiers.

  “After the rebels!” cried the riders. “Cut the Highlanders down!”

  Then there were more soldiers . . . the clatter of hooves on cobblestones, now in greater numbers . . . breaking down doors, rudely searching houses and inns and hotels.

  “I saw two or three this way!” yelled a soldier to the riders behind him, yanking his reins to the right along an adjacent street. His companions galloped after him.

  As she watched in shock, Culodina slowly crept toward the shadows of an alleyway. Suddenly before her a young man who could not have been more than sixteen darted past. He glanced toward her, eyes wide in terror, then dashed across the street.