Madrid in great festal rejoicing. Alberoni was proud to let the English government see that he had the power of annoying them. The pretender was received as king of England, and his residence was fixed in the palace of Buen Retiro, where the Spanish monarch and his queen visited him in state. The armament was immediately put in motion; it was to sail from Cadiz, and to consist of five men-of-war and twenty transports, carrying five thousand troops, many of them Scotch and Irish refugees, who were eager to obtain one more chance of regaining a footing on their native soil. Several of the leading insurgents of 1715 were amongst them. Ormonde was to take the command on the arrival of the fleet at Corunna, with the title of captain-general of the king of Spain. The last time Ormonde had been in Spain it was at the head of an English fleet and army to storm Vigo and bombard Cadiz for the queen of England; now he was leading back a Spanish force to attack his own monarch and country! Yet he does not seem to have had much faith in the enterprise, for he wrote from Corunna to Alberoni, informing him that the English were well aware of the expedition, and prepared both by sea and land to resist it; and that, under the circumstances, to invade England with only five thousand men was madness. The cardinal, however, does not seem to have paid any regard to this prudent statement. The command continued to sail, and Ormonde was provided with a proclamation to publish on landing in England, announcing the king of Spain's determination to support the just cause of king James, and bidding every one have no fear of the result, for that, in case the enterprise did not succeed, all who took part in it were promised a secure retreat in Spain; that every sea and land officer should retain the rank he had enjoyed in his own country, and all the soldiers be received and treated as his own.
But, as Ormonde had intimated, England had made a vigorous preparation for the enemy. The regent of France had offered George the aid of any number of troops; but, as if too proud to owe the safety of England to France, these tenders were courteously declined; yet the same feeling did not prevent the government accepting the service of six battalions from the Austrians in the Netherlands, and of two thousand men from the Dutch. These and the English troops were disposed so as best to meet any invasion in the north or west, and Sir John Norris rode with a powerful squadron in mid-channel. A reward of ten thousand pounds was set on Ormonde's head in London, and five thousand pounds upon it in Dublin — as if he were of less consequence in Ireland than in England; and thus Great Britain awaited this new Spanish armada.
But it was no more destined to reach these shores than the grand armada. It has always been the fate of invading squadrons to encounter providential tempests in coming hitherward, and the usual hurricane was ready to burst. Scarcely, indeed, had the fleet lost sight of cape Finisterre before the storm swooped down upon it. For twelve days the terrible Bay of Biscay was swept by a frightful wind, which drove the vessels in all directions, and rendered it impossible to manage them. The struggling and confounded crews threw overboard cannon, ammunition, arms of all kinds, and horses, to save the ships, but in vain. Many were lost, and those which managed to regain the port returned mere shattered wrecks.
Fortunate would it have been if every vessel had failed to reach the shores at which they aimed; but two vessels, on board of which were the earls Marshal and Seaforth, and the marquis of Tullibardine, accompanied by about three hundred Spanish soldiers, reached Scotland, and landed, on the 16th of April, at Kintail, in Rosshire. In the hope that Ormonde would still reach England, this small force lay quiet for some time, and so little did they excite notice, that the government imagined that they had re-embarked. Their presence there, however, had the mischievous effect of exciting some few of the Highlanders to join them. They seized Donan Castle, and thus attracted the attention of the English. Some vessels of war arrived upon the coast. The castle was speedily retaken, and lord Carpenter, the commander of the forces in Scotland, sent some troops from Inverness against them. General Wightman, the officer thus dispatched, was attended by about a thousand men, and found the enemy, now swollen to about two thousand, strongly posted at Glenshiel. He immediately attacked them, and the miscellaneous force speedily dispersed. The Highlanders, who knew the country, rapidly disappeared amongst the hills, and the Spaniards had no other resource than to lay down their arms. They were conducted as prisoners to Edinburgh, where the Jacobites did all in their power to succour their distress and relieve their necessities, which were great. Wightman meantime pursued the flying Highlanders through the hills, chastising — probably with no very correct or merciful hand — the rebels by burning their houses and laying waste their fields. The three lords, Tullibardine, Seaforth, and Marshal, made their escape to the Western Isles, and after some time succeeded in again reaching Spain instead of the block, which would have been their goal if taken. Seaforth lived to return to Scotland, and ended his days there in retirement, having received a pardon in 1726; Tullibardine to engage again in the enterprise of 1745, and die of a broken heart in the Tower. The earl Marshal, with his brother, James Keith, entered the Prussian service, where he was engaged in various diplomatic missions to France and Spain, and is mentioned by Rousseau, in his "Confessions," with great euloginm. His brother became a marshal in the army of the great Frederick, and was killed in the bloody battle of Hochkirchen.
Such was the winding up of the mighty schemes of Alberoni against France and England. His puppet, the pretender, was now no longer of any use to him, and he was anxious to be rid of him, and fortune, in this one point, favoured him James heard that his betrothed, the princess Sobiesky, had contrived, by the aid of Charles Wogan, a devoted partisan of his, who had been one of the prisoners of Preston, to make her escape from Innspruck, and to reach the state of Venice. He therefore took leave of Spain, and hastened to Italy to complete his marriage.
Alberoni now found himself in turn attacked by France. Whilst busying himself to repair a few of the shattered ships which had escaped from the tempest, in order to harass the coast of Brittany in conjunction with the malcontents there he beheld an army of thirty thousand French menacing the
