It was the necessity of withdrawing troops for the defence of England which had rendered the campaign in Flanders after the partial defeat of Fontenoy so disastrous. Prince Charles Edward, though bitterly disappointed by the failure of the expedition in the preceding year, did not leave France; and as the French ministry, occupied with their continental affairs, refused him further assistance, he determined to go alone and unsupported to Scotland, and throw himself on the loyalty of his friends there, although in all his previous negotiations with them they had refused to think of a rising unsupported by foreign troops and arms. Scraping together what little money he could, and purchasing a small supply of firearms, the Prince embarked at Nantes in a privateer. He was escorted, without the knowledge of the Government, by a French man-of-war, in which his stores were placed. On the passage to England they encountered an English vessel, which, though unable to capture the French man-of-war engaged it so vigorously that it had to withdraw to France to refit, and it was in the little privateer, 'La Doutelle,' thus stripped of his supplies and with only seven companions, that the Prince reached the Hebrides. In this plight he met but a cold reception, and it was not without considerable persuasion that Macdonald of Clanranald and other gentlemen of that tribe joined him. Their chief, Sir Alexander Macdonald, and the head of the Macleods, on whose assistance he had relied, kept aloof. Of more importance even than the Macdonalds was the adhesion of Cameron of Lochiel. This chief seems to have been won, against his better judgment, by the persuasive power of Charles, who undoubtedly had in an unusual degree the art of attracting adherents. While still in the extreme west of the mainland Charles was joined by Murray of Broughton, who had been his chief agent, and whom he appointed his Secretary of State. The Prince had reached the mainland on the 25th of July; it was not till the 30th that information was received by the Government that he had left Nantes, and he had been three weeks in Scotland before it was known in London. On the 19th of August the insurrectionary standard was raised in the solitary valley of Glen Finnan, where the aged Marquis of Tullibardine, the rightful heir to the dukedom of Athol, read Prince Charles's Commission of Regency. This ceremony was graced by the presence of a considerable number of English prisoners, who had been captured a few days previously by Lochiel's followers as they were marching to reinforce Fort William.