The young Prince Charley was in the field by an early hour on the
morning of the 15th, and being all alive to the critical nature of
his circumstances, and by no means certain as yet how near the enemy
might by this time be to him, he judged it important to collect,
and to draw up his army on the most favourable ground he could find
in the neighbourhood. He therefore marched them up the high, partly
flattish, and partly sloping ridge, which, though commonly called
Culloden Moor, from its being situated immediately above the house and
grounds of that place, has in reality the name of Drummossie. He led
them to a part of this ground, a little to the south eastward of their
previous position in the wood of Culloden, and there he drew them up
in order of battle. There they were most injudiciously kept lying on
their arms the whole day, and if Captain M'Taggart's men had feasted
tolerably well the previous night, their commons were any thing but
plentiful during the time they occupied that position. It was not in
the nature of things, that subordination could be so strictly preserved
in the Prince's army, as it was in that of the Duke of Cumberland. I,
who am well practeesed in the discipline of boys, gentlemen, know
very well that it would be impossible to bring a regiment of them
under immediate command, if the individuals composing it were to
be collected together all at once, raw and untaught, from different
parts of the district. It is only by bringing one or two at a time,
into the already great disciplined mass, that either a schoolmaster,
or a field-marischal can promise to have his troops always well
under control. By the time evening came, the officers, as well as
the men of the Prince's army, began to suffer under the resistless
orders of a commander to whom no human being can say nay. Hunger,
I may say, was rugging at their vurra hearts, and as they all saw,
or supposed that they saw, reason to believe that there was no chance
of the enemy coming upon them that night, many of them went off to
Inverness and elsewhere, in search of food. M'Taggart himself could
not resist those internal admonitions, which his stomach was so
urgently giving him from time to time, and accordingly, John Smith
conceived he was guilty of no great dereliction of duty, in strictly
following the first order which his captain had given him, viz., to
"stick by his side," which he at once resolved to do, as he saw him
go off to look for something to support nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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