Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

NARRATIVES

OF

PERIL AND SUFFERING.

PERILS AND SUFFERINGS OF CAPTIVITY AND FLIGHT, CONTINUED.

THE WANDERINGS OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD. THE venturous attempt of Prince Charles Edward to recover the throne of his ancestors, may perhaps justly be regarded as one of the most remarkable instances of the kind, when we take into account the scantiness of his means at the outset, the progress which he made, the rapid succession of events, and the final reverse of fortune which prostrated his family for eyer. Landing with only nine followers, he, in the course of nine short months, gained possession of the capital and part of the kingdom of his early progenitors; utterly routed a veteran army at Preston Pans; penetrated, in the depth of winter, nearly two hundred miles into England, and to within a hundred and twenty miles of its capital; effected a retreat with his forces unbroken, in the face of two armies; won another victory at Falkirk; and, lastly, sank under outnumbering enemies at "pale, red Culloden, where his hopes were drowned."

When the battle of Culloden was irrecoverably lost, the prince, with a party of horse, chiefly composed of

[blocks in formation]

his counsellors and friends, fled towards the river Nairn, which he crossed at the ford of Failie. Here, about four miles from the scene of his disaster, he rested for a short time in a cottage, and held a sort of council. The result of the deliberation was, that the routed army should be assembled at Ruthven in Badenoch, while he himself should traverse the country for the purpose of rousing those chieftains who had hitherto hung back, and prevailing on them to bring their forces into the field, in order to make another struggle against the reigning monarch. There was, indeed, some ground for believing that a stand might yet be made; in the course of a day or two a great part of the defeated troops were rallied under the Stuart banner at Ruthven, they held all the passes between Ruthven and Inverness, were more diminished in numbers than in courage, were soon reinforced by clans which had been on their march to join them before the fight of Culloden, and had the prospect of being strengthened by several clans which were absent on leave, and by others which dreaded the barbarity of the conquerors. But, influenced probably by his Irish counsellors, Charles seems to have lost all hope of accomplishing anything with his brave but irregular bands, and, accordingly, at the very moment when they were expecting his orders to take the field, he broke them up by the disheartening message that " every man must proyide for his own safety in the best manner he could." This was, of course, the signal for a general flight.

From the river of Nairn, meanwhile, Charles had continued his course to Gortuleg, a seat of one of the Frasers. Wishing, in case of pursuit, to divide and mislead the enemy's parties, he is said to have directed the major part of the gentlemen around him to disperse upon different routes. At Gortuleg, Lord Lovat was then residing. This wily and unprincipled personage,

traitor alike to the cause which he really loved, and to that which he had long pretended to espouse, was driven almost to madness, when he heard that Charles was approaching as a hopeless fugitive. All the ruin which he had brought upon himself and his family now stared him in the face, and he broke out into the bitterest execrations, reproaches, and bewailings. Charles, whom, however, Lovat received with the outward tokens of respect, endeavoured to console him, by exciting a hope of better days; "they had," he said, "had two days of triumph over the elector's troops, and he did not doubt that they should yet have a third." He at last succeeded, or seemed to succeed, in calming Lovat, and a discussion was entered into respecting his own future movements. Gortuleg was deemed too near to the royal army to be a safe abode for the princely fugitive; and, therefore, after having rested for two hours, taken some trifling refreshment, and changed his dress, he continued his flight, accompanied by several of his confidential friends.

It was ten o'clock at night when the prince and his followers quitted Gortuleg, to pursue their rugged and melancholy journey along the shore of Loch Ness. Invergarry, the seat of Macdonnel of Glengarry, a few miles beyond Fort Augustus, was the refuge which they were seeking. They reached it about five in the morning, but there was no one to give them a hospitable reception. The furniture had been removed, there were no provisions, and a solitary domestic was the only person who remained in the mansion. All the fugitives were, however, so exhausted by a ride of forty miles, and the perturbed state of their minds, that they were glad to sleep upon the bare floor. They must have departed without satisfying their hunger, had not the servant of Alexander Macleod caught two salmon in Loch Garry, on which they dined; to quench their thirst they had nothing but water. This was a foretaste

of what the wanderer was destined to endure. At Invergarry he dismissed all his adherents, except Sullivan, O'Niel, and Edward Burke, the servant of Macleod. The latter individual was to serve as his guide, and the prince now disguised himself in Burke's clothes.

A wearisome journey of seven hours brought the diminished party to Loch Arkeig, to the house of Donald Cameron of Glenpean, where Charles halted, so completely worn out, that he dropped asleep while Burke was loosening his spatterdashes. In the morning he resumed his flight to the westward. He stopped at Newboll, where he was liberally entertained, and, for the first time in five nights, enjoyed sound repose. He had need of it to strengthen him for the toil which he was to encounter. In expectation of hearing from some of their friends, he vainly waited for a few hours on the following day; but the fear of being overtaken by his enemies at last urged him forward. Hitherto he had travelled on horseback; he was now compelled to give up that accommodation, for the route lay over a chain of high mountains, where roads were unknown. The travellers crossed this almost inaccessible ridge, and in the evening reached the head of Loch Morrer, at a place called Oban. A miserable hut, which was situated on the verge of a wood, and was occasionally used for sheep-shearing, was their shelter for the night.

The next day, which was Sunday, was no sabbath-day for Charles. Accompanied by his three adherents, he, with infinite difficulty, made his way over another range of steep and rugged mountains, and penetrated into the district of Aresaig, where he found a temporary refuge at the village of Glenboisdale. There he spent four days, and was joined by several of his fugitive partisans, among whom were Clanronald, Lockhart the younger of Carnwath, and Æneas Macdonald. While he was staying

« FöregåendeFortsätt »