stroke for 't, but unless the French land, perhaps none. As matters stand, I must either conquer or perish in a little.” His English adherents did not come in, and, after marching to Derby, his council insisted that enough had been done for honour, that Wade was on their flank and rear, the duke of Cumberland in their front, and an army was gathered to defend London. A broken-hearted man, Charles was compelled to acquiesce in retreat (5th of December). If the chiefs had possessed information now accessible to us, they might not have made “the great refusal,” but with only the intelligence which they possessed they could not have followed their audacious prince to the south. Their force was not more than 5000 men; and they were wholly unskilled in the use of the guns which they had captured at Prestonpans. The retreat was admirably conducted; Lord George and Cluny fought a gallant and successful rear guard at Clifton; they escaped from Cumberland across the border, but Charles, against advice, left a doomed garrison in Carlisle. After a stay to re-fit at Glasgow, Charles moved to besiege Stirling castle, and to join a force from the north, almost as numerous as that with which he had invaded the heart of England.
Cumberland had returned to London, but Hawley marched from Edinburgh with an army which Charles drove to the winds on Falkirk Moor. Hawley's guns were never in action, the Macdonalds charged and scattered his cavalry on the right wing, but pursued too far, and as the pipers Culloden. had gone in sword in hand, they could not be recalled. On the left the prince's men could not load their pieces, their powder being ruined by the tempestuous rain. They were checked by two steady regiments; many fled, all was darkness and confusion, but, on returning into Falkirk, Charles found that Hawley had decamped in a disgraceful rout. He could not pursue; the whereabouts of his right was unknown, and after the battle his best officers felt rather dismayed than encouraged by the conspicuous lack of discipline. In place of advancing on Edinburgh, they dallied round Stirling castle in futile siege, and, on the news of Cumberland's advance, alarmed by desertions which they appear to have greatly exaggerated, the chiefs compelled Charles to a fresh retreat. His expostulations perhaps prove him to have been “the best general in his army,” but he was dragged northwards to Inverness, and with depleted ranks of starving men, outworn by the fatigue of a long night's march to surprise Cumberland at Nairn, he stood on Culloden Moor in defence of Inverness, his base and only source of supplies (16th of April 1746). Charles had some 5000 men, Cumberland had nearly 9000 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 reply, and though the right wing and centre, Camerons, Atholl men, Macleans, Clan Chattan, Appin Stewarts, under Lord George and Lochiel, fought with even more than their usual gallantry and resolution, the Macdonalds on the left, discouraged by the death of Keppoch, Scotus and other officers in the advance, never came to the shock. Though outflanked, enfiladed and met by heavy musketry fire in front, the right wing broke Barrel's regiment and passed the guns, but the attack was checked by the bayonets of the second line and a rapid retreat became general. Charles did not leave the field till all was lost; so much seems clear from Yorke's evidence; but the price on his head, and probably suspicions urged by some of his Irish officers, induced him to desert his army and hurry secretly to the West coast and the western isles. He was rewarded by five or six months of dangerous and distressful wanderings, and would certainly have been taken at one juncture but for the courageous and wise assistance of Flora Macdonald, while on all hands the highlanders displayed the most devoted loyalty.
Into the ferocious conduct displayed by Cumberland after the victory, and in the suppression of the clans, we need not enter; nor is the list of executions of rebels alluring. The spirit of the clans remained true indeed, but their prince became “a broken man”: his clemency, and courage, and all that had endeared him to his people, perished under the disgusts and vices engendered by many years of a secret fugitive existence, after he was driven from France in 1749 (see A. Lang's Pickle, the Spy, and Life of Prince Charles).
As far as the rising had a political aim and reason for existence, apart from mere dynastic sentiment, that aim was “to break the Union”; in the prince's words, “to make Scotland once more a free and happy people.” But the vast majority of Scots, though not in love with the Union, Modern Scotland. preferred it to the rule of a Catholic king—Charles probably, for James had every desire to abdicate. The failure of Charles had, in fact, the result of assimilating Scotland much more closely to England. A disarming act, and the prohibition of the highland dress, did not indeed break, but it transferred to other fields the military spirit of the clans. The chiefs first raised the highland regiments which have covered themselves with glory from Ticonderoga to Dargai and Elandslaagte. The reward which many of the clansmen of the Peninsula and Waterloo received may be appreciated by those who read the introduction to Scott's Legend of Montrose. They returned to glens desolate of men, deserted, first, by the voluntary emigrations of the clans, and later by forced emigrations in the interests of sheep farms and deer forests. The abolition of hereditable jurisdictions and of the claims of feudal superiors to military service, after Culloden, broke the bond between chiefs and clans, and introduced new social and economical conditions, bequeathing the Land Question to the 20th century. The “planting” of ministers in the highlands, which had since the Reformation been almost destitute of religious instruction, bred a populace singularly strict in the matter of “Sabbath observance,” and, except in districts still Catholic or Episcopalian, eager supporters of the Free churches. In outlying places the old popular beliefs linger; second sight is common in some glens; and the interesting poetical traditions, like Jacobite sentiment, survive in the memories of the people, despite cheap newspapers and modern education.
With the failure of the last armed attempt to “break the Union,” Scottish history is merged in that of Great Britain; it was a British force that routed the Jacobites at Culloden. After 1745 the men of letters of the country continued with intense eagerness the movement initiated by John Knox, when he wrote in English, not in the old Scots that he learned at his mother's knee. Hutchinson, David Hume, Home and Robertson were assiduous in avoiding Scotticisms as far as they might; even Burns, who summed up the popular past of Scotland in his vernacular poetry, as a rule wrote English in his letters, and when he wrote English verse he often followed the artificial style of the 18th-century. The later famous men of letters, Scott, Carlyle and R. L. Stevenson, appealed as much to English readers as to their countrymen, patriotic as each of them was in his own way. As early as 1730–1740, the great English public schools and universities began to attract the Scottish youths of the wealthier classes, and now good Scots is seldom heard in conversation and is not always written in popular Scottish novels. Scotland and England, however, will always remain pleasantly distinct by virtue of their historical past and inherited traditions.
Bibliography.—The best general History of Scotland is that by Patrick Fraser-Tytler (1841–1843). It ends, however, with the Union of the crowns in 1603, and though it is based on thorough research in MSS., many documents now available, such as the dispatches of Spanish ambassadors to England, were not accessible to the learned author. The History by John Hill Burton (Edinburgh, 1867–1870) ends with the Jacobite Rising of 1746. It is of unequal merit, being best in places where the author was most interested, especially in points of the development of law. Here the works of Cosmo Innes are valuable, Lectures on Scotch legal antiquities (Edinburgh, 1872); and Scotland in the middle ages (Edinburgh, 1860). Burton's anti-Celticism, and scepticism as to archaeology, make his work inadequate in the earlier parts. On the Celtic beginnings the best books are E. W. Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings (Edinburgh, 1862) and W. F. Skene's Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1876–1880), with his Highlanders of Scotland in the edition edited by A. Macbain (Stirling, 1902); other views are maintained in Rhys's Celtic Britain (1884). David Stewart of Garth's Sketches of the Highlanders (Edinburgh, 1822) is interesting, though the author leans too much on tradition; and Dr Gregory's History of the Highlands (1881) is excellent, but closes with the Union of the crowns. Scott's Tales of a Grandfather is, of course, full of interest, but is inevitably somewhat behind the mark of later years
