Bygone Scotland: Historical and SocialMaxwell, David
History
Bygone Scotland: Historical and Social
Maxwell, David
Scotland -- History
And not with the fever-madness of battle did the savageries terminate.
Cumberland had at Carlisle, where the prince had unwisely left a small
garrison, begun a course of atrocity; and he now went over the
Highlands, a very demon of cruelty and destruction. This prince of the
blood-royal of England gave his soldiery licence to shoot in cold blood
the male inhabitants, to plunder the houses of the chieftains, to drive
off the cattle and burn the huts of the peasants; to outrage the women.
His ducal title ought to have died with him; for what man of honour or
common humanity but would feel it a disgrace to bear an appellation made
for ever infamous by the _Butcher of Culloden_?
[Illustration: THE BLOCK, ETC., TOWER OF LONDON.]
And the penalties of law supplemented the work of the sword. Lords
Kilmarnock, Balmerino and Lovat, were beheaded on Tower Hill,—the last
deaths by decapitation in Britain. About a hundred persons were hanged
in Scotland, and fifty in England; hundreds were sent to the
plantations. Of course it had been rebellion, but so far as the rebels
were concerned, it had been a fair, stand-up fight; they had lost all
but honour. They had not been robbers, or guilty of violence towards
civilians; they had not maltreated their prisoners, but set them free on
parole, which was often broken. Humanity and sound policy might well
have spoken for mercy.
When the prince saw the enemy closing in upon his broken host, he may
have hesitated whether he should not stand and meet death, sword in
hand; but his friends took hold of his horse’s bridle and turned it from
the field. With few attendants he rode to Castle Downie, the residence
of Lord Lovat. On seeing the prince a fugitive, the crafty old man felt
the ground trembling under his own feet; so the prince had only a hasty
meal, and again rode on. He passed by Invergarry into the West
Highlands; there, and in the Western Isles, he was for over five months
a hunted outlaw. Government offered a reward of £30,000 for his capture;
yet, although one time and another hundreds knew of his whereabouts, not
one of these grasped at this, to them, fabulous amount, through
treachery. But the soldiery and unfriendly clansmen were vigilantly on
the outlook.
The prince had, in his wanderings, gone to the outer Hebrides, and was
lodged in a forester’s hut, in a cleft of the hills. General Campbell
landed at South Uist to make a minute search of the islands. The
MacDonalds of Skye were also there, engaged in the same task,—a hunt-
party of two thousand men. We can imagine the avidity of the search—the
warrant for a huge fortune might be found under any bracken bush on the
hillside,—within any clump of trees, or beneath any overhanging cliff.
When escape seemed impossible, a woman’s compassion and a woman’s wit
came to the rescue.
[Illustration:
FLORA MACDONALD.
_From a painting by Ramsay._
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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