In 1724, the government sent Marshal Wade into the Highlands to take measures to enforce law and order, and to facilitate military communication. Wade was a man of good common sense, and he did his work with tact and judgment. The clansmen were disarmed; but commissions were given to loyal chieftains to raise militia companies, to be disciplined and trained in the use of arms. Some of these companies, as the celebrated Black Watch, which became the 42nd regiment, were composed of men in good social positions, as farmers, tacksmen, and sons of highland gentlemen. And Wade employed his soldiers to construct, under skilful supervision, well-formed roads, connected together, and more direct. A memorable distich was posted up near Fort-William:—

On the surface the Highlands were quiet, and were being brought more and more within the pale of British citizenship. Sheriffs held their courts in all the northern shires; schools were established in every parish; farmers and breeders had better access to fairs and markets, and hillside cottars to their Kirks. But the embers of Jacobitism still smouldered; the chiefs had no liking for these German Georges, and the clansmen would still follow their chieftain’s leadership.

But there was no special agitation or disquietude in the Highlands when, on the 25th of July, 1745, Prince Charles Edward landed on the south-west coast of Inverness-shire, and asked the neighbouring chiefs to join him in a new rebellion. He came, personally a stranger in the land, with a suite of seven gentlemen, to conquer a throne from which, fifty-seven years previously, his grandfather had been driven with ignominy and disgrace. There must have been a charm of person and manners in the prince—now in his twenty-fifth year—by which he won the hearts, and, even against their judgments, the enthusiastic support of the chiefs, who met him with the intention of persuading him to return to France. He lives in Scottish song and story as “Bonnie Prince Charlie”—the idol of the clansmen.

Some leading chiefs as MacDonald of Sleat and MacLeod of MacLeod, declined to join the enterprise; but one man of foremost note—Cameron of Lochiel—declared for the prince, and sent out a gathering summons to arms. About two thousand men saluted the standard when, on August 19th, it was set up at Glenfinnan. On the 3rd of September, the prince entered Perth; a fortnight later he was in Edinburgh. The magistrates had tried to organize a volunteer defence of the city; but when the words passed round, “the Highlanders are in sight,” the gates were opened. But the castle held out for King George.

Sir John Cope, the Commander of the royal forces in Scotland had, at the news of the rebellion, gone with 1500 men into the Highlands; but, evading the prince’s forces, he took shipping at Aberdeen, landed at Dunbar, and with reinforcements, marched on Edinburgh. The prince met him at Prestonpans, eight miles east of Edinburgh, and a battle was there fought on the morning of 21st September. The rush of the highlanders, with broadsword and target, here, as at Killiecrankie, carried the day. The royal troops were completely routed, and their artillery, baggage, and military chest fell to the victors.

The prince returned to Edinburgh amidst popular acclamations. His adventure had now assumed a more serious aspect. For a time it seemed as if the whole of Scotland,—except the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling, and the highland garrisons—was at his feet. Dundee and Perth were held by highland contingents; Glasgow was subjected to a payment of £5,000. But it was six weeks before, from other highland clans coming in, and from lowland enlistments, his army mustered 5,500 men. At Holyrood balls and festivities, he courteously enacted the royal host. On October 31st, he began his march southwards, entering England by the western border. He took Carlisle, passed through Preston, Wigan, and Manchester, arriving at Derby on 4th December. The march was in two divisions; the front division was commanded by Lord George Murray, a thorough soldier in courage and ability. The rear division was led by the prince himself,—generally in highland garb, his target on his shoulder.

At Derby the prince might have said with Henry of Lancaster:—

But what next—and next? A larger and better appointed army than his own, commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, was at Lichfield, only twenty-five miles to the south-west; another army, equal in numbers to his own, under Marshal Wade, was marching down on his rear through Yorkshire. The general opinion of a Council of War was for retreat. The prince at first refused his assent; he sulked over it for a day, and then gave in with a bad grace, saying he would call no more Councils of War, but act entirely on his own judgment. Early next morning—the 6th of December—the cheerless retreat began.

The very audacity of the irruption into England fostered an idea in the minds of both friends and enemies that the prince had some secret but well-founded assurance of powerful support, which in due time would reveal itself. But the idea was seen to be baseless when the highland brogues began to retrace the northern roads. In passing through Manchester on the march, there had been bonfires, acclamations, hand-kissing, and a display of white cockades. Ten days later, in the retreat, there was in Manchester a mob-demonstration against the highlanders; when they left the town, their rear guard was hooted and fired upon.

When the Duke of Cumberland learned of the retreat of the rebels, he hastened against them with all his cavalry; but their rear-guard, under Lord George Murray, gallantly repelled all attacks; and on 20th December, the prince’s army was again on Scottish ground. After levying contributions on Glasgow and Dumfries, he proceeded towards Stirling, making the historical village of Bannockburn his headquarters. Here he was joined by considerable reinforcements, including the clans Frazer, Farquharson, MacKenzie, and Macintosh. Simon, Lord Lovat, the aged chief of the Frazers, had been playing fast and loose, negotiating with the Prince for a dukedom as the price of his support; at the same time assuring the government of his loyalty, and asking for arms to enable his clan to act against the rebels. In the end, he sent his son with 750 Frazers to join the princes standard; the crafty old fox himself remaining at home in pretended neutrality. By the middle of January the prince’s muster-roll reached its maximum—about 8,500 men.

The prince had opened trenches for a regular siege of Stirling Castle, when he learned that General Hawley with 8,000 men, most of them veterans from the French wars, was marching against him. Lord George Murray—knowing that with such an army as that of the rebels, the chances of success lay more in attack than defence—made a rapid march on Hawley. On the afternoon of January 17th, a battle was fought on Falkirk Moor. It was a wild fight, in a blinding storm of wind and rain. The darkening mists prevented combined operations on both sides. Divisions of each army drove back their immediate opponents, but themselves got into disorder in pursuit. Hawley in belief of defeat, fired his tents, fell back on Linlithgow, and next morning took his army to Edinburgh.

After the battle of Falkirk, the prince was for continuing the siege, but such plodding work did not suit the Highlanders, and the chiefs addressed a memorandum to him, advising retreat. He fumed and protested, but had again to yield. On February 4th, the Forth was forded, and the retreat began; it was a leisurely one, no royalist force of any magnitude being in the Highlands. Inverness was occupied by the prince on February 18th. Forts George and Augustus surrendered; Lord Loudon took what royalist troops he could collect into Ross-shire, where they were joined by the Whig MacDonalds.

The Duke of Cumberland came to Edinburgh, and organized an army. In addition to his British troops, 6,000 Hessians were landed at Leith. The army marched by Perth to Aberdeen. On the 8th of April, the Duke left Aberdeen; on the 14th, he was at Nairn, 16 miles north of Inverness. His troops numbered 9,000 men,—a compact, well-fed, well-disciplined army, with full confidence in their leader, as a man of courage and large military experience.

The prince had not expected that the duke would leave Aberdeen before May, and his troops were scattered about. They had been for weeks in a state of semi-starvation, and had to roam the country to find food for a bare subsistence. The men were discontented for lack of pay; the leaders were jealous and suspicious of each other; some of the clans claimed special rights and precedences. It was a divided, a disheartened, almost a demoralized army of 7,000 men which, on April 15th, stood, with barely one ration for each man in the commissariat, upon Culloden Moor, about four miles north-east of Inverness.

Unequally matched as the two armies would have been if they had met on the 15th, they were much more so on the next day, when the battle joined. For in the intervening night, a strategical misadventure prostrated the spirit and weakened the efficiency of the prince’s army. There was an abortive attempt at a night attack on the royalist camp. After a long weary march, the rebel army failed to concentrate in time for a night surprise; and, disheartened and fatigued, it marched back to Culloden Moor. Here, many at once lay down to sleep, others scattered in search of food. At noon of the 16th, the two armies confronted each other.

Lord George Murray was watching for the proper moment to attack, but, without waiting for orders, the clans in the centre and right wings rushed down with their broadswords, and in spite of a galling fire broke through the front line of the enemy. But the second line had been trained to resist a Highland onset; they reserved their fire until the clansmen had almost reached the points of the bayonets, and then it told with deadly effect. The broadswords could not penetrate the steady line of bayonets; for the assailants it was either flight or death.

The three MacDonald regiments had been placed in the left wing of the rebel army. They claimed the right wing, and even in the supreme moment of battle, Highland pride predominated over military duty. They did not respond to the order to advance, and retired upon the second line. And now, a boundary wall on the prince’s right had been thrown down by the Argyleshire Campbells, and a way made for the duke’s cavalry to operate on the flank and rear. His main army advanced in compact order, and it became a panic, and “save himself who can,” with the clansmen. The MacDonalds and a portion of the second line retired in fair order; but the duke’s cavalry cut off all stragglers; and all the wounded rebels on the battlefield, even those who were next morning found alive, were—by the duke’s orders it is said—savagely put to death.

And not with the fever-madness of battle did the savageries terminate. Cumberland had at Carlisle, where the prince had unwisely left a small garrison, begun a course of atrocity; and he now went over the Highlands, a very demon of cruelty and destruction. This prince of the blood-royal of England gave his soldiery licence to shoot in cold blood the male inhabitants, to plunder the houses of the chieftains, to drive off the cattle and burn the huts of the peasants; to outrage the women. His ducal title ought to have died with him; for what man of honour or common humanity but would feel it a disgrace to bear an appellation made for ever infamous by the Butcher of Culloden?

And the penalties of law supplemented the work of the sword. Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino and Lovat, were beheaded on Tower Hill,—the last deaths by decapitation in Britain. About a hundred persons were hanged in Scotland, and fifty in England; hundreds were sent to the plantations. Of course it had been rebellion, but so far as the rebels were concerned, it had been a fair, stand-up fight; they had lost all but honour. They had not been robbers, or guilty of violence towards civilians; they had not maltreated their prisoners, but set them free on parole, which was often broken. Humanity and sound policy might well have spoken for mercy.

When the prince saw the enemy closing in upon his broken host, he may have hesitated whether he should not stand and meet death, sword in hand; but his friends took hold of his horse’s bridle and turned it from the field. With few attendants he rode to Castle Downie, the residence of Lord Lovat. On seeing the prince a fugitive, the crafty old man felt the ground trembling under his own feet; so the prince had only a hasty meal, and again rode on. He passed by Invergarry into the West Highlands; there, and in the Western Isles, he was for over five months a hunted outlaw. Government offered a reward of £30,000 for his capture; yet, although one time and another hundreds knew of his whereabouts, not one of these grasped at this, to them, fabulous amount, through treachery. But the soldiery and unfriendly clansmen were vigilantly on the outlook.

The prince had, in his wanderings, gone to the outer Hebrides, and was lodged in a forester’s hut, in a cleft of the hills. General Campbell landed at South Uist to make a minute search of the islands. The MacDonalds of Skye were also there, engaged in the same task,—a hunt-party of two thousand men. We can imagine the avidity of the search—the warrant for a huge fortune might be found under any bracken bush on the hillside,—within any clump of trees, or beneath any overhanging cliff. When escape seemed impossible, a woman’s compassion and a woman’s wit came to the rescue.

No feminine name is in Scotland more honoured or awakens higher thoughts of courage and devotion than that of Flora MacDonald. She belonged to the MacDonalds who were inimical to the prince, and was—when she came to know of his straits—on a visit to the house of Sir Alexander MacDonald. But she boldly asked the chief for a passport for herself, a man-servant, and a maid-servant, to enable her to visit relatives in a neighbouring island. The prince, dressed up as maid “Bridget,” shewed awkward enough, but without detection the party reached the house of MacDonald of Kingsburgh, to whom Flora was afterwards married. From there the prince again reached the mainland.

Here he had, in a closely-watched district, several hair-breadth escapes, and found that misery does acquaint a man with strange bedfellows! One refuge was a robber’s cave, the other occupants being outlawed cattle-stealers. They knew the prince, and treated him with the same loyal respect as, ten months previously, had been shewn him in the halls of Holyrood. He was at length able to join Lochiel and other outlawed adherents. Friends along the coast were watching for a French vessel. One appearing on September 20th, nearly a hundred persons were safely embarked. The prince is described as looking like the spectre of his former self,—pale, haggard, and ragged. But his companions received him with bonnets doffed and loyal salutations. Although chased by an English cruiser, the vessel got safely to Marlaix, in Brittany.