But Carlisle was not done with trouble, even in the sacrilege of 1645. It escaped in 1715, for the rebels avoided coming to clashes with a fortified city; but it came to know intimately of the much more nearly successful rebellion of 1745. But what use are battlemented walls of stone, if they be manned with faint hearts? After all the brave doings of “merry Carlisle,” it is sad to think how low the martial spirit had sunk by 1745, when the militia, assembled in the city, declined to fight the rebels under Prince Charlie. A bold front would have compelled the invaders to leave Carlisle alone; but the broadswords of the Highlanders had so much of what military historians term “moral effect” that the militiamen positively refused to run the risk of being cleaved by that terrible cold steel. Poor Colonel Durand, in command—if we may still call that a command which will not obey orders—might rave, and implore, and even weep, but it was useless, and the city was surrendered. Prince Charlie was in camp at Brampton, eight miles away, and it must have been a proud moment for him—if a sorry humiliation for some—when mayor and corporation went out to him and on their knees offered the keys of the gates. The next day the Prince entered in triumph, on a milk-white horse, one hundred pipers piping before him. It must have been a fearful moment—for those who did not love the bagpipes. George the Second, at St. James’s, began to reconsider his position at hearing of this signal failure of his sworn protectors, and many excellent, though time-serving, people in high places began to explain away the disagreeable things they had said of the Stuarts. But in a few weeks, as we know, the Highlanders were retreating; and, trimming their sails anew, politicians and witlings were repeating again their protestations of loyalty to the House of Hanover, and refurbishing that old quotation from Revelation, chapter xvii. verse 11, first current in 1715, by which they affected to believe that James the Second of England and Seventh of Scotland, and his son, the Pretender (_de jure_ James the Third and Eighth) were the subjects of prophecy: “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” An ingenious find, it must be allowed, and sufficient, providing no one else could refer to Revelation and find another quotation, a little destructive of the first. But such an one was actually to hand in the preceding verse, which very curiously says, “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” There were those excellent Whigs who, reading this, were not entirely happy until events demonstrated that the rebellion was absolutely hopeless.