THE great event that rung down the
curtain on old-world Scotland was the ‘45. It has permanent interest. The
adventure of Charles Edward Stuart will never cease to charm because it
deals in a fascinating way with elemental human passions. The romantic
note struck at first vibrates to the end. Only as it affects Edinburgh and
the Lothians does it enter within our field. On 20th June 1745 Charles
left France on the Doutelle, a frigate of sixteen guns. He landed
on the 25th July at Moidart, a wild and lonely spot in the West Highlands,
accompanied by seven companions, known as the seven men of Moidart. On the
19th August he hoisted his flag at Glenfinnan. On the 15th September he
crossed the Forth at the Fords of Frew. On the 16th he entered the
Lothians, and that day he was at Linlithgow, where the Provost’s wife and
daughters, adorned with white cockades, met him at the Cross. The ancient
palace fountain flowed with wine in his honour. The dragoons fell back to
Kirkliston and then on Edinburgh, and Charles pressed on to Corstorphine.
The capital was in wild terror and confusion. It was the Old City, intact,
unspoiled, unimproved, hemmed in by walls, and no stone of the New Town
yet laid. The Highlands were a terra
incognita, the folk there were savages. The
citizens had vapoured and bragged when these were at a distance, but now
they trembled; they had some excuse. The dragoons, who were regular
troops, set them an example of cowardice. They had fallen back to
Coltbridge, where the Water of Leith cuts the road between Corstorphine
and Edinburgh. There was an interchange of shots and the retreat quickly
became a panic flight. The soldiers dashed along the Lang Dykes, full in
view of the citizens of the Old Town. Although they did not stop at
Bearford’s Park, where is now St Andrew Square, at least they drew up,
till a mischievous urchin shouted, "the Highlanders are coming!" when they
went off again by the sea coast to Musselburgh and Prestonpans. Here they
halted, but one of their number fell down a disused coalpit. He clamoured
so piteously for help that his comrades, in craven fear of the foe, bolted
to North Berwick and Dunbar, not without other false alarms by the way.
The commander, Colonel Gardiner, had slept in his house at Prestonpans
during the night. By the morning his troop had vanished. He tracked them
easily by the arms they had thrown away. At Dunbar he joined with Sir John
Cope, commander of the Government forces, who after rather a goose-chase
expedition in the Highlands had returned by sea to the Lowlands,
determined to crush the insurrection in one battle. This flight of the
dragoons is known as the Canter of Coltbridge. It destroyed what little
stomach for fight the citizens had. No doubt the substantial folk of
Edinburgh, good, honest Presbyterians, were in favour of the Established
order, but there was a strong Jacobite feeling both among the very high
and the very low. The Union was still a twitching sore, and the women were
all Jacobites. When Provost Stewart led out such forces as he could muster
from the West Bow towards the West Port, half the women-folk in the city,
with tears and sighs, embraced the warriors and urged them not to risk
their precious lives against wild savages; the other half, from the
windows of the street itself, jested and gibed with open scorn, and did
not hesitate with pert assurance to predict the result of the conflict. A
song of the time begins "The women are a’ gane wud." It had foundation in
fact. Thus everything depressed the courage of the hastily-collected town
levies. The Provost, douce man, suspected, though probably unjustly, of
Jacobite leanings, headed his men from the West Bow to the West Port, but
some drained away at every close, and at the end there were none worth the
leading. The hours passed in fruitless interchange of messages and stern
summons to surrender. The Blue Blanket fluttered from the steeple of St
Giles,’ but the old fighting spirit was clean gone. Charles crept ever
nearer, though he had moved from the direct road to the south to avoid the
Castle guns. On the 17th September a party of the Camerons under Lochiel
crossed the Boroughmuir by moonlight at five in the morning, and came
round to the Netherbow Gate. A coach was being let out; they rushed in and
the place was their own. The dawn was breaking as they marched up the High
Street with yells of joy, whilst their bagpipes skirled "We’ll awa to
Sherramuir, to haud the Whigs in order." The citizens gazed, some glad,
some sad, the most sleepily and stupidly, from their lofty windows, but
they did nothing else save submit to their fate, which was at least not
terrible. If the Highlanders piped and yelled they hurt nobody. They
seized all the coigns of vantage as quietly as if merely changing guard,
and the main body stood in the Parliament Close for hours in silent order,
although what seemed to their simple souls incalculable treasures were
within their grasp.
The romance of the day
was only beginning
with these stirring early morning adventures. Charles, still keeping to
the south of the city, passed along Grange Loan, entered the King’s Park
at Priestfield by a breach made in the wall, and led his forces through
the Hunter’s Bog, the valley in the midst, where they were for the time
encamped. Under a guard of Highlanders he moved to the eastward, and so by
the Duke’s Walk to Holyrood. There were thronging and cheering crowds all
round, and the Prince paused again and again at this great moment of his
life. There was everything to catch the popular fancy: the handsome form,
the young figure, the fair hair, the gallant bearing, the tartan dress, St
Andrew’s Cross on his breast, and more than all, the memories that
thrilled through every heart.
This was the heir of many and famous forefathers, and
that was the house of many and famous memories.
"He travels far from other skies,
His mantle glitters on the rocks,
A fairy Prince with joyful eyes,
And lighter footed than the fox."
Perhaps not "joyful eyes," however.
They say that the Stuart sadness was dark on his brow at the very moment
of triumph; or perhaps men in after years, then knowing the sadness of the
end, read their knowledge into the remembered impressions of the day. An
ominous sign was not wanting. As he entered the porch of the palace of his
ancestors a shot from the Castle struck James V.’s tower, and stones and
rubbish rumbled at his feet. Inside the quadrangle, James Evan O’Keith,
the very ideal of a Jacobite gentleman, stepped from the crowd, did homage
to the Prince, and holding before him his naked sword upright marshalled
him into what was now his home. Even yet the people were not satisfied
with seeing. Charles needs must show himself at the window and smile and
bow to an enthusiastic and cheering populace; and still there was more,
for the Heralds, in all their old-world finery, marched in solemn
procession to the Cross, and there with every pomp of circumstance
proclaimed father and son as King and King’s Regent, and there round the
Cross was a bevy of ladies, chief among them the beautiful Mrs Murray of
Broughton, who sat on horseback, a drawn sword in her hand, a white
cockade on her bosom. Even Edinburgh in its long annals had seen no more
romantic sight. That same evening there was a great ball in Holyrood. The
murmur of a crowd, surely the bravest of the brave and the fairest of the
fair, echoed through its long, silent, historic halls. The gleam of torch
and taper, the noise of the old Scots music of fife and pipe, rolled far
and late into the summer night. To some shepherd on the neighbouring hill,
or some peasant watcher in the not distant fields, the vision must have
seemed eerie and uncanny, like a magic story of some ruined castle
tenanted by ghostly revellers with spectral light and music and feasting.
In three days the Prince was off to
Duddingston, which was his chief camp. Here it was determined to fight,
and on the 20th September he moved on to Fisherrow, and over the Esk by
the old bridge at Musselburgh, and then south-east to Tranent. Cope in the
meantime had left Dunbar on the 19th September and marched to Haddington.
His army and baggage occupied several miles of road. The country folk
flocked from far and wide to gaze on a spectacle so unwonted as war in the
Lothians. Cope continued along the high-road till he came to Huntington,
where he took the low road to the sea, a road that leads you through
exquisite fields and unfrequented ways, by streams and woods, and gentle
hills and dales, with a friendly inland sea to bound the near view. Not
these things occupied poor Cope’s solid wits. You fancy the look of
perplexity and bewilderment which men noted in him after the battle was
already there. Anyhow, he sought rather safety than vantage. He got down
by the sea among old-world villages and houses, and there with the Firth
at his back, and his wings stretching from Tranent to Seton, and a marsh
before him, he fondly believed himself secure. He had 2100 men as against
his opponents’ 2400, but of these latter only 1456 were engaged in the
battle. The Highlanders had found a way over the morass. They had moved
from the west to the east side of Tranent, and at 3 a.m. on the morning of
21st September they advanced in the darkness on the other army. They got
across the morass and formed in line. A strange scene! The sun rose, it
was light on the Firth and the hills, but the mist lay heavy over the two
armies. No sound save the rush of the Highland brogues on the stubble, and
now and again a drum beat in Cope’s camp. On the stone dykes that divided
the fields were perched crowds of silent spectators, whom the rising of
the mist made ever more clearly visible. The yards of a Government vessel
on the Fifth were also crowded with anxious lookers-on. This is what they
saw. When the mist at length clean vanished the Highlanders presented
their guns. A flash, a crash, and loud yells of battle, and from out the
smoke, right in the enemy’s lines, the Highlanders falling upon the foe
swift and terrible as lightning, in the right hand the sword, in the left
the buckler and dirk! Then came the shock, and the armies seemed fused in
one, but in five or six minutes the English soldiers were streaming in hot
flight in every direction and the Highlanders already collecting prisoners
and plunder. The victory was complete. The defeated lost baggage and
renown alike. None now resisted. Those who were not dead or prisoners were
hopeless fugitives. Cope could not believe himself safe till he was within
the walls of Berwick; everywhere he brought the news of his own defeat. A
touch of the ridiculous lay in every action of the Government forces. A
Highland boy disarmed a whole troop and drove them before him prisoners; a
Highland chieftain, single handed, hunted a band of horse into and through
the streets of Edinburgh, and right up to the very guns of the Castle.
Charles marched triumphant into the capital, and the Jacobites went mad
with joy, and there were gallant parades and reviews, and meetings of the
Council every morning, and balls in the old Picture Gallery; and the old
portraits of old Kings, that long line of shadowy monarchs of the house of
Fergus, looked down on a Prince and his Court that to us seem not less
shadowy than they. And yet, though the women were ready with everything,
the men hung back, and the only new levies were from the Highlands. From
the Forth to the Thames folk, unless they were in the Government employ,
seemed to think, "well, this is no business of ours," they were mere
spectators. Even professed Jacobites held their hands. What on earth was
Allan Ramsay doing, I wonder? How is it we never even hear the name during
all this stirring time of that reputable and prosperous citizen and sentimental
Jacobite? Life in Edinburgh went on very much as usual. Business was
interrupted, it was true, paper money and bills useless and credit
unprocurable, but it was a time indifferent, it would seem, to such dull
matters, and no one was in a desperate hurry, and there were compensations
in speculation and adventure. The citizens had one decided crook in their
lot. The Castle held stoutly out for the Government. The commander had
been General Preston of Valleyfield, an old experienced soldier, but he
was a Scot, and as such held suspect, and Guest, an Englishman, was
appointed in his place. Guest had Jacobite sympathies, or perhaps he was
only affected by the prevailing terror. At any rate he suggested
surrender. His officers agreed, but Preston would not hear of it, and was
allowed to resume the command. He was eighty-six years of age, and, too
infirm to walk, was carried every two hours in his armchair from port to
port to examine the positions. He mercilessly bombarded the town whenever
the Highlanders proved troublesome. Nay, when he believed himself pressed
hard, his cannon raked the High Street so ferociously that many citizens,
with their wives and children, fled towards Leith; but they were met by
the folk of Leith fleeing towards Edinburgh. Cannon from a Government
warship in the Forth were raking
their streets with equal ferocity. A plague
on both their houses must have been in the hearts, if not in the mouths,
of the burghers. A sort of informal truce was patched up: the Highlanders
left the Castle unassailed; the Castle ceased to fire on the town.
Charles spent six weeks in Edinburgh. He held a review
on Portobello sands before his departure. He left Edinburgh on Thursday,
the 31st October, for Pinkie House. The next day he rode to Dalkeith. It
is not needful to follow the various routes by which his army drained out
of the Lothians. On Friday, 8th November, he crossed the Border near
Longtown. Many of the Highlanders were afraid of the
terra incognita
of South Britain. They deserted him in large numbers, yet he took Carlisle
without much difficulty, but now he is beyond our ken. On the 16th
November the Officers of State returned to the capital and things were as
they had been. The Castle was soon the prison of Jacobite captives, and
after Culloden their numbers were much increased. The standards of the
clans taken at that battle were burned at the Cross by the hangman and his
assistant with every detail of ignominy. The wheel of fortune had indeed
come full circle!
Could Charles have succeeded under
any circumstances? He wished to move straight on southward direct from
Prestonpans, and that maybe was his only chance. Had he caught London
napping a considerable part of England might have risen in his favour, and
yet the hero of romance was neither a great general nor a great man. The
‘45 gets its pathetic interest from its very hopelessness. Such an event
left a huge mass of legend and tradition behind it. Much was garnered by
after historians, much has perished for ever. The Highlanders behaved very
well in Edinburgh. Their wildness lay mainly in their looks, and it was
the necessary theory of their leader that the city was full of his own,
his very own, subjects. Many stories are told of the simplicity of the
Highlanders. They plundered Cope’s army and strutted about in incongruous
habiliments. One sold a watch for a trifle; it had stopped ticking and he
judged that "ta crater was deid." Another changed a horse for a horse
pistol. Some were seen cheerfully speeding towards their distant homes
with a military saddle on each back. Chocolate taken from the General’s
carriage was sold as Johnny Cope’s salve. Even the rascals among them had
an air of amusing simplicity. One, pistol in hand and threatening in
demeanour, stopped a prosperous burgher in the High Street. The trembling
citizen gasped, "What would he?" "A bawbee" was the moderate demand. True,
some ingenious rogues disguised themselves as Highlanders and did a fair
amount of plundering, but these were presently seized and fusiladed. There
are many instances of their kindness to captives, and there is no instance
of hurt to a non-combatant — at least willing hurt one must add. During
the occupation a Highlander shot off a loaded musket in his glee. The ball
grazed the forehead of Miss Nairn, a Jacobite lady, as she waved her hand
from a High Street balcony. "Thank God it did not touch a Whig or it were
judged done on purpose," quoth the courageous damsel. Tradition records
(apparently erroneously), how Charles was at a banquet in Provost Stuart’s
house in the West Bow, and was well nigh seized by a surprise party from
the Castle. The guests escaped through a secret passage, the entrance to
which a cabinet concealed. The sturdy minister of St Cuthbert’s, a certain
MacVicar, continued to pray for King George during the occupation, and
expressed a not altogether pious wish that the young man who was seeking
an earthly crown might rather find a heavenly one.
The whole episode of the Prince in Edinburgh is
admirably told in Waverley, though the affair was too recent for
Scott to allow himself to go as far as his sympathies had suggested in
favour of the lost cause.
And so the curtain falls on this exciting drama. As the
pipe music died in the distance on that autumn day when the Highlanders
left Edinburgh, the historic and romantic interest of the city died with
it. How can she ever bulk large again on the stage of time?