Lord Kilmarnock was carried from the moor, which already, to use the
words of an eyewitness among the Government troops, "was covered with
blood; the men, what with killing the enemy, dabbling their feet in the
blood, and splashing it about one another, looked like so many
butchers."[341] Never, did even their enemies declare, was a field of
battle bestrewn with a finer, perhaps with a nobler race. "Every body
allowed," writes one of Cumberland's officers, "that men of a larger
size, larger limbs, and better proportioned, could not be found." The
flower of their unhappy country; hundreds of these had not yet been
blessed with the repose of death, but were left to languish in agony
until the next day, when they were butchered by the orders of
Cumberland. One of them, John Alexander Fraser, in the Master of Lovat's
regiment, was rescued by Lord Boyd from destruction. A soldier had
struck him with the butt of his musket, intending, according to the
orders given, to beat out his brains. The poor wretch, his nose and
cheek-bone broken, and one of his eyes pierced, still breathed when this
young nobleman passed him. He observed the poor creature, and ordered
his servants to carry him to a neighbouring kiln, where, in time, his
wounds were cured. "He lived," observes Mr. Chambers, "many years
afterwards, a dismal memorial of the cruelties of Culloden."[342]
According to one account, Lord Kilmarnock owed his escape from the field
of battle with his life to the brave and generous Lord Ancrum, who
delivered him to the Duke of Cumberland; and the same narrative adds,
that the Duke issued orders that no one should mention the Earl's
imprisonment to his son, but considerately imparted the intelligence to
the young man himself. It is only fair to mention this redeeming trait
in a man who had so many awful, and almost inexpiable sins to answer for
at the last day, when not our professions of kindness, but our acts of
mercy or of wrong will be placed before a solemn and final account.
After his surrender at Culloden, the Earl of Kilmarnock was conveyed to
London. That metropolis, in some of its most attractive features, was
well known to him: he had frequently resided there for several months
during the year, and had associated with the friends of government who
were near the court. He was now to view it under a very different
aspect; and during the period which elapsed between his surrender and
his trial, he had ample time to weigh the respective value of that
society which had formerly so much delighted him, and in which, it is
said he "had affected to talk freely of religion;" and of those great
truths which were now his only source of support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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