MSS. ii. 196, Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. v.)
His general orders show that he tried to maintain strict discipline, but troops employed in this way were sure to misbehave in some cases. The driving in of cattle caused widespread suffering; but, as Lord George Murray had declared, resistance might be kept up ‘as long as there were cattle in the highlands or meal in the lowlands.’ Nor was all risk of such resistance past. In the middle of August Lochgarry was assuring Charles Edward that he could ‘very soon make a flying army of about two thousand men,’ and was offering to surprise Fort Augustus (Blaikie, p. 125; cf. Murray of Broughton, p. 435). The stories of the duke's personal brutality collected by Bishop Forbes (Lyon in Mourning) are mere hearsay, and only prove the hatred he had inspired [see Wolfe, James]. The cases of Stewart of Invernahyle and Macdonald of Kingsburgh show that, hard as he was, he was not always deaf to appeals. Duncan Forbes wrote of him to Sir John Cope on 21 June: ‘His patience, which surprises in such years, is equal to his fire, and in all probability will do very great service to the public’ (Culloden Papers, p. 280).
His tone became harsher as time went on. On 29 June he wrote: ‘I find them a more stubborn and villainous set of wretches than I imagined could exist;’ and on 17 July: ‘I am sorry to leave this country in the condition it is in; for all the good that we have done has been a little blood-letting, which has only weakened the madness, but not at all cured; and I tremble for fear that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of our family’ (Addit. MS. 32707, f. 380; Coxe, i. 303). He underrated his success; the clan system, crushed under his heavy heel, never raised its head again.
He left Fort Augustus on 18 July, and reached London on the 25th, when he was received with general rejoicing (Doran, London in the Jacobite Times, ii. 148–65). The thanks of parliament had been voted for Culloden on 29 April, and on 4 June an act had been passed settling 25,000l. a year on him and his heirs, in addition to his income from the civil list. The freedom of the city of York was presented to him on 23 July, and that of London on 6 Aug. He was made ranger of the great park at Windsor on 12 July, and colonel of the 15th dragoons (a regiment newly formed out of Kingston's horse, and disbanded in 1749) on 6 Sept. He had been elected chancellor of the university of St. Andrews in March. Handel's oratorio, ‘Judas Maccabæus,’ was written in his honour. A gold medal was struck to commemorate the victory of Culloden, and issued to the principal officers engaged, but whether this was done by the government is doubtful. On the obverse was a bust of the duke, on the reverse a figure of Apollo pointing to a dragon pierced with an arrow, with the legend, ‘Actum est, ilicet, periit.’ Among the many verses written, only those of Collins need be named, ‘How sleep the brave,’ and the ode on the popular superstitions of the highlands. Tyburn Gate of Hyde Park was renamed Cumberland Gate, and the duke's head became a tavern sign in every country town (Wright, England under the House of Hanover, p. 227).
But the stream of satire and invective, of which there are many specimens in the ‘Lyon in Mourning,’ soon spread from Scotland to London. It was encouraged by the Prince of Wales, who was very jealous of the duke. It did its work most effectively by fastening on him the nickname of ‘the butcher.’ According to Horace Walpole, when the proposal was made to elect him a freeman of some city company, an alderman said, ‘Then let it be of the Butchers’ (1 Aug. 1746, Letters, ii. 43). In a caricature which bears the date 19 Dec. 1746 he is represented as a calf in the gear of a butcher (Brit. Mus. No. 2843), and others, perhaps earlier, picture him as a butcher. When he lost his sword in a disturbance at the Haymarket Theatre in 1749, some one cried out: ‘Billy the butcher has lost his knife’ (Lyon in Mourning, ii. 226).
He had hoped to resume his command in Flanders, but Prince Charles of Lorraine was sent unexpectedly from Vienna to take his place. The campaign of 1746, like the previous one, went ill for the allies, and they were pushed back to the Dutch frontier. In December the duke went to the Hague to concert operations, as he was to command in 1747. He again embarked for Holland on 1 Feb., and towards the end of March the allied army was assembled east of Breda. It was to have numbered 140,000 men, but was in fact under a hundred thousand. A French army of about the same strength, under Saxe, lay facing it, between Malines and Louvain; while there was a detached corps of fifteen thousand men at Namur under Clermont, and another of twenty thousand at Ghent under Löwendahl. By the middle of May the latter corps had taken possession of all Dutch Flanders, and prepared the way for the invasion of Zeeland.
The alarm which this caused among the
