The disorder and exhaustion of those gallant but unfortunate men, must have left them an easy prey to the superior forces which were now on their track, when the pursuit was suddenly stopped by an alarm of French invasion. Twelve thousand men had suddenly been collected; the Duke of Richelieu, with the Pretender’s second son, had come to Dunkirk; transports were gathered along the coast; and the invasion would probably have been attempted, but for a storm which drove many of their ships ashore near Calais. The troops in London were but six thousand! The 16th of April, at Culloden, closed this most unhappy struggle, and gave an internal peace to England which has never been broken. The remarks in the memoir on this daring enterprise seem to be imperfect. The first is, that if England was to have been invaded at all, the effort should have been made before the army could be brought from Flanders. The second is, that the retreat from Derby should have been exchanged for a march on London. But the former would have required a totally different plan of operations. The Prince should have landed in Kent, if his object was to take London by surprise. But, as his only troops must be the clans, he must look for them in the North; and it would have been impossible to march an army from the Highlands to the metropolis in less than a fortnight. On the second point, the retreat from Derby was obviously necessary. The clans were already diminishing—every step must be fought for—they were but half armed—and the King’s troops were increasing day by day. In one remark we agree, that the Chevalier should never have attempted more than the possession of Scotland. He should have remained in Holyrood House. There he had a majority of the nation in his favour,—the heads of the clans, and the old romantic recollections of his ancestral kings, all tending to support his throne. A French force might have been easily summoned to his assistance, and for a while he might have maintained a separate sovereignty. It is, on the other hand, not improbable that the Scottish nation might have looked on the sovereignty of a son of James, the persecutor, with jealousy; Protestantism would have dreaded a French alliance; and the expulsion of the Chevalier would have been effected in Scotland on the model of the English expulsion of James. Still, the experiment was feasible for the claimant of a crown; and the success of the adventure might have continued long enough to produce great evil to both countries.