Mary Queen of Scots, and Bonnie Prince Charlie! How they live with us yet, casting their spell over the centuries!

If there is one figure in the past that still acts powerfully upon the tradition, literature, and imagination of Scotland,—in a word, upon that which remains and is imperishable, after stone and brass are but mouldering relics,—it is the figure and fortunes of Charles, the Young Pretender to the throne of Great Britain. With him ended Celtic Scotland, Scottish feudalism, and the age of Highland romance.

About the “Young Chevalier”—the image on the Scottish mind is that of the fair youth in the full splendor of manhood; not the wretched dregs of the human form that many years afterwards was cast out of memory like an abominable branch. It is of the bonnie young fellow that such songs as “Wae’s me for Prince Charlie,” “Charlie is my darling,” “Come o’er the stream, Charlie,” and “The White Cockade,” were written and are still sung. His full name was Charles Edward Louis Philippe Casimir Stuart.

This young man, of extraordinary beauty and fascinating manners, against the advice of his friends and most loyal supporters, landed in Scotland, and summoning the Highland chiefs, who, by affinities of blood, politics, and religion, were most attached to the Stuart dynasty, asked for their support. One and all, they declared against the uprising, but they, nevertheless, agreed to follow their liege lord.

Born at Rome, on December 31, 1720, grandson of King James II of England, and eldest son of James, the Old Pretender, who called himself James III, Charles was nominated by his family the Prince of Wales. Educated under brilliant tutors, he travelled through Italy. He was able to speak English, French, and Italian, but could never write well in English. Despite the previous failure, in 1715, of his father, and the loss at sea by storm of a French fleet, with seven thousand men who were to assist his Highlanders, Charles landed in Scotland when most of the British army was in the Belgic Netherlands. On August 19, 1745, in Glen Finnan, he unfurled his standard as “James VIII of Scotland and III of England” against George II and the Hanoverian dynasty of Great Britain. He wore the Highland costume and won the hearts of the women by his charming manners and manly beauty.

After a meteoric career, including a brilliant series of marches, victories, occupation of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, invasion of England almost to London, and sudden retreat, he had to face with his loyal clansmen the King’s son William, Duke of Cumberland, with an army specially trained to the use of the bayonet. The two forces met on Drummossie Moor, near Culloden, April 16, 1746. Cumberland’s men were in high spirits and fine condition, while the ill-fed followers of Charles, hungry and weary after a night march, numbered five thousand. His attempt to surprise the Duke and settle the issue with cold steel had failed!

Against the advice of his officers, Charles ordered the battle. After various manœuvres the armies faced each other for the bloody decision, on which depended the fate of the House of Stuart, the fortunes of the Highlanders, and the continuance of Scottish feudalism.

One dreadful surprise awaited the clansmen. Cumberland, trusting in the bayonet, had carefully drilled each of his men to have the nerve to neglect the man striking at him with his broadsword, but to stab at the fellow who, in expectation of dashing aside the bayonet of the soldier in front of him, would expose his body to the oblique thrust of his comrade on the right, duly fore-warned.

The day was one of chilly weather, with fitful winds and flurries of snow. Early in the afternoon, the battle was opened by discharges of cannon from the side of the rebels. But with this kind of work, the men from the glens never were satisfied. Indeed, all firearms and long-range weapons were unpopular with these brave fellows, who, like Indians and semi-barbarians, enjoyed most that action which was, as far as possible, independent and personal.

In several of their victories over the royal troops, as at Prestonpans, for example, they had felt little or no annoyance from the royal cannon, and had almost lost their fear of artillery.

Cumberland had nine thousand men and eighteen well-served guns. Here, for the first time, the Highlanders were under heavy fire of grape and round shot, to which they could not proportionately reply. It is thought that if Charles at Culloden had let his swordsmen rush at once upon the enemy the issue might have been different.

For half an hour the Duke’s cannon played effectively upon the clansmen, who saw scores of their kinsmen stretched upon the heath. After a few moments’ cannonade from their own side, and still under the withering fire of the enemy’s heavy guns, the Highlanders ranged themselves in masses, and according to their clans, made ready for the terrific onset, which they supposed would decide the battle. This it did, but not in the way they had hoped. It was the Mackintoshes, who, unable any longer to brook the unavenged slaughter of their comrades, broke from the centre of the line and rushed forward through the smoke and snow to mingle with the enemy. Yet the order to advance, though never delivered, had already been given by Charles, the bearer being killed by a cannon shot.

Cumberland’s troops, seeing the dark masses moving up the slope, as in a great wave, stood in steady line. As the Highlanders came to shock, the oblique thrust of the bayonets was a dreadful surprise, for it prevented hundreds of clansmen from wielding their favorite weapon, as most of them were thrust through before they could swing their broadswords, or make the terrible double-handed sweep with their claymores, on which they had counted. Soon the moor of Drummossie had proved itself to be the valley of decision for the hopes of the House of Stuart.

Within two minutes the charge was general along the whole line. Yet it was as if advancing into semi-darkness of whirling snow and powder smoke. One survivor of the battle, a Highlander, said that after rushing forward the first glimpse he received of the Duke’s troops was, when the cloud of smoke and snow lifted, he saw the white gaiters of the soldiers. The Duke’s cannon, now loaded with grapeshot, and the musketry of his solid columns swept the field as with a hailstorm. The three ranks in the front line of English Hessians delivered simultaneous volleys, while the regiments of Wolfe—of whom we Americans have heard in his later career at Quebec—poured in a flank fire. Nevertheless, the right wing and centre of the Highlanders fought with even more than usual gallantry and resolution.

Notwithstanding the fact that they were outflanked, enfiladed, and met by a heavy musketry fire in front of them, the right wing of the Highlanders broke Barrel’s regimental front and passed the guns; but their attack was checked by the bayonets of the second line.

Of the Highlanders who first rushed forward the majority were hardly able to see their enemy for the smoke, until involved inextricably among their weapons. Tn their onset, nearly all in the front ranks fell before either bullets or the piercing weapons used obliquely, as directed by the Duke, almost every bayonet being bent or bloody with the strife. Nevertheless, the Highlanders, despite their impending annihilation, kept on, line after line pushing forward, even though only a few of those charging last reached the front files of the royal troops. In parts of the plain, the dead lay three and four deep.

During all this time the Macdonalds, who, because their ancestors at Bannockburn had fought on the right wing, had ever afterwards, except on this occasion, occupied this position, would not fight. They made no onset, and even received the fire of the English regiments without flinching. They were dissatisfied because they had been put on the left wing. At last, when the moment of decision and defeat had come, there being no hope, they also fled with the other clans.

Charles had yet in reserve his foreign troops, and these, after the mountaineers had been ruined, he hoped, as he looked on from the mound at some distance off, would redeem the day. But though there were instances of bravery among these men, yet, demoralized by the wreck of the clans coming as fugitives among them, and seeing the Duke’s army getting ready to charge with the cold steel, they fled in a body. Thus the rout was complete. Charles, who had made his last cast for a crown, seemed now unable to realize what had happened. Confounded, bewildered, and in tears, he seemed unable to act. His attendants were obliged to turn his horse’s head and compel him to retreat, Sullivan his friend seizing the horse’s bridle and dragging him away.

During the uprising of 1745–46, the local clans wore a red or yellow cross or ribbon, in order to distinguish themselves from the Stuart Highlanders, who were all dressed in about the same way, except as to their bonnets. The Jacobites all wore the white cockade, like that of the Bourbons of France, friends of the Stuarts. One of the liveliest tunes played by the Highland pipers was “The White Cockade.” It was the same air, with different words, which the fifers and drummers of the Continental army played when the flag of the Revolution was raised in the War of Independence. In fact, in looking over the American musicians’ repertoire, from 1775 to 1783, one might almost imagine that the chief music sounded under “the Congress flag” of thirteen stripes and, after 1777, under “Old Glory” of later Revolutionary days, was Scottish. Even the strains of mournful music, over the graves of the slain American patriots, was “Roslyn Castle.”

One fifth of the Highland army was lost at Culloden. Of the five regiments which charged the English, almost all the leaders and front rank men were slain. These numbered nearly a thousand in all. The actual battle lasted about forty minutes, much of it in distant firing; but the charge and the crossing of the cold steel were all over in a quarter of an hour. The number of killed, wounded, and missing of the royal army was three hundred and ten. The victory was mainly attributable to the effect of the artillery and musketry of the royalists; but in Munro’s and Barrel’s regiments, many of the soldiers put to death one, two, or more Highlanders each, with their bayonets, and several of the dragoons, sent in pursuit, were known to have cut down ten or twelve fugitives each in the pursuit.