But the details of Cumberland’s inhuman cruelty did not come out for years after, and meanwhile on his return to London, he was fêted, received the thanks of Parliament, and was given a pension of twenty-five thousand pounds per annum for himself and his heirs, but fortunately he had none. Truly the wicked flourish in this world like the bay tree! But truth will out, _magna est veritas et prevalebit_; little by little came to England the evidence of eye witnesses, to the savage cruelty of this royal Prince of five-and-twenty to the poor, half-starved, maimed Scots; bit by bit the reputation of the “Butcher” was built up, and it will stand while the memory of Culloden lasts. As for Prince Charlie, he was forced from the field, whilst trying to charge with the remnant of his men, by an Irish officer in the French service, named O’Sullivan; he fled to Gortuleg, where that ancient sinner, Lord Lovat, was residing at the time, and who gave him but a cold welcome so that they parted in anger, the Prince not even receiving a meal. On to Glengarry’s Castle of Invergarry, rode Charles through the night with the last few of his followers, arriving before dawn, only after a brief rest, to go on and on, with the shadow of the axe ever hanging over him, till, five months after, he was taken off by a French ship at Lochnenuagh, the very same spot where he had landed over a year before. But it would not be possible to conclude even this imperfect sketch of the Prince’s campaign without paying a tribute to Flora Macdonald, “a name,” says Dr. Johnson, “which will ever live in history.” The “little woman of genteel appearance, and uncommonly well bred.”[71] When Charles was being run down on Long Island with a price of thirty thousand pounds upon his head, did not this noble young lady, at the risk of her life, obtain a pass from her stepfather, a captain in King George’s militia, for herself, a manservant and a maid, and did she not smuggle away the Prince under the very eyes of his pursuers in the character of the latter, dressed in petticoats? An achievement on Charles’s part which called forth from old Macdonald of Kingsburgh the following dry remark when he saw him crossing a brook and in difficulties with his petticoats: “Your enemies call you a Pretender, but if you be, you are the worst of your trade I ever saw!” It is a pleasure to know that when Flora Macdonald paid the penalty of her heroic act, and was brought a prisoner to London, our Prince Frederick obtained her release.[72] What a different disposition to his brother, the Butcher’s! “And would not you, Madam,” asked Frederick of his wife, who had spoken against Flora in the fashion of the time, “would not you in like circumstances have done the same? I hope--I am sure you would.” It is pleasant to think that Flora Macdonald went home from London with a present of fifteen hundred pounds from the Jacobite ladies of that place in her pocket. FOOTNOTES: