The clansmen, now utterly exhausted, strayed back to Inverness in search of food. Many dropped in deep slumber upon the ground. In Culloden House the Prince sat in the deepest dejection. Not long after news reached him that the English forces were advancing. Once again the clans were gathered--messages were sent to Inverness to hasten the stragglers--everything was done to put as brave a face on it as possible. Lord George Murray again advised taking up a position more suited for the Highland charge, or retreating into the hills. But the Prince again rejected his counsel, and instead of seven thousand fresh troops only about five thousand exhausted men assembled on level country to meet Cumberland's veteran force. To Rob, who looked on the Highland claymore as irresistible, the approaching conflict was none too soon, to others it came as a relief after weeks of waiting and hardship. Of that ill-omened day everything is known, and little need be said: it was the inevitable conclusion of a forlorn hope. The English opened fire, and for long enough bullets rained and sang through the sullen Highland ranks. At last Lord George Murray resolved on an advance, but before he could give the order the Mackintoshes, with the heroism that had ever distinguished that clan, charged recklessly, and at that all the regiments on the right moved forward, and the action began in earnest. An aide-de-camp was dispatched to hurry the advance of the left wing, but he was shot on the way and this unhappy accident prevented the Highland advance concentrating its full shock. It has long been an established belief that the battle was lost largely owing to the defection of the Macdonalds, who refused to advance on a dispute of precedence. It is time that a story without historical foundation should be for ever discredited. The Macdonalds did not receive the command to charge until it was too late, and they found themselves faced by an impassable morass when they moved forward. When the battle was lost and the Prince in flight, they marched from the stricken moor in good order. The English soldiery meanwhile had awaited the attack with levelled muskets and fixed bayonets, reserving their fire until the Highlanders were almost upon them. At close quarters they raked the close ranks of the clansmen with deadly aim. The carnage was terrible. Whole ranks of the Highlanders were swept away. But it took more than that to stem that mad and dauntless charge. It broke through Barrel's and Monro's regiments, but farther they could not go, for they received a storm of grapeshot sufficient to decimate their numbers. Had the whole Highland line delivered its shock simultaneously the English army might have recoiled and taken to flight. But the failure of the extreme left to advance at all lessened the frail chance of such a tactic proving decisive, and within a few minutes the Jacobite cause was lost.