Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/271

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PRINCE CHARLES STUART 181 who had been out in the fifteen ; Sheridan, the prince's tutor ; Sir John Mac- donald ; Kelley, a parson who had been in Atterbury's affair ; Strickland, an Englishman ; and Buchanan. Young Lochiel was disinclined to join, but yielded to the fascination of the prince. With his accession the rising was a certainty. But Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the lord president, had influence enough to hold back the Macleods of Skye, to paralyze the shifty Lovat, and to secure the. Sutherland house for the Hanoverian cause. Charles left Boisdale for Kinlochmoidart, " the head of Loch Moidart," where an avenue of trees, the prince's walk, is still shown, though the old house was burned after Culloden. Keppoch cut off a small party of Scots Royal ; this was first blood for the Jaco- bite cause. The wounded were hospitably treated by Lochiel ; the English captain was released on parole. Charles now crossed the steep hills between Kinloch- moidart and the long narrow lake of Loch Sheil, there he took boat, and rowed past the lands of Glenaladale and Dalilea to Glenfinnan, where Tullibardine raised the standard, inscribed Tandem Triumphans. A statue of the prince, gazing southward, now marks the spot. The clans came in, and as Charles marched southeast, each glen sent down its warriors to join the stream. The clansmen, as a rule, had probably little knowledge of or interest in the cause. They fol- lowed their chiefs. The surviving Gaelic poetry speaks much of the chieftains ; of Tearlach, righ nan Gael, but little is said. It was the middle of August be- fore the rulers of England received the news of the landing. They at once set a reward of ,30,000 on Charles's head, a proceeding " unusual among Christian princes," said Charles, who was compelled by his forces, and their threats of de- sertion, to follow the evil example. Sir John Cope was sent with an English army to stop the prince. It appeared likely that the armies would meet about Dalwhinnie, now the highest and bleakest part of the Highland Railway. The path then led over Corryarrack ; Charles and his men raced for the summit, but Cope was not to be seen. He had marched east and north, to Inverness, and all the south of Scotland lay open to the prince. He passed by Killiecrankie and Blair Athol to Perth ; Cluny came in, with the Duke jof Perth, and Lord George Murray, Charles's most skilled general, who had been out at Glensheil, in 1719, and had learned the lesson of war in the Sardinian army. How easily he won Edinburgh, how he held court at Holyrood, how he routed Cope (who returned by sea) at Preston Pans or Gladsmuir, is familiar to all. His clemency was conspicuous ; he wrote to James that he would give up Holyrood to the wounded, rather than see them homeless. Home, a Whig volunteer, and the author of a Whiggish history, acknowledges the nobility of his conduct, and his "foolish lenity" (he would not permit the execution of several persons who tried to assassinate him) is blamed by the fanatics who, in 1 749, issued a wild Cameronian manifesto, "The Active Testimonies of Presbyterians." The con- trast with the savage brutalities of Cumberland is very notable. In the battle the chiefs refused to let Charles lead the charge, but he was at the head of the second line, " a pistol shot behind " the first. Preston Pans was fought on Sep- tember 2 1. 1 745. That Charles dallied before Edinburgh Castle till October 2 ist