All the King’s Men, page 14
At Falkirk, Hawley established a strong camp while he considered his next move. So certain was he that the camp was safe from attack that he left it in the morning of 16 January to breakfast in nearby Callendar House, the home of the staunchly Jacobite Lady Kilmarnock. He was still there at 11 a.m. when outposts at the camp spotted the Highlanders’ approach. At first his deputy ordered the men to arms, but then changed his mind when it was reported that the Jacobites had halted and lit their fires. Unconcerned by the contradictory reports, Hawley continued with his breakfast. It was only when a third message warned that the enemy was nearing Falkirk Moor, which dominated the royal camp, that Hawley realized the danger and called for his horse.
Arriving back in camp hatless and sweating, he sent his dragoons up the steep slope of the moor in a desperate race for the high ground, with the slower-moving infantry and artillery toiling behind. The guns got stuck in a bog, but the infantry trudged onwards in the teeth of an icy gale. ‘As we march’d, all the way up hill,’ wrote General James Cholmondeley, Hawley’s second-in-command, ‘and over very uneven ground, our men were greatly blown.’11
They were also too late, the lightly equipped Jacobites having reached the summit before them, forcing Hawley to form his troops up on slightly lower ground. So wild was the storm that it was ‘difficult to see or hear’, recalled the government commander.12 Undeterred, he ordered his cavalry to charge the right wing of an army that, at 9,000-strong, was marginally superior to his own. Nor was it any less disciplined, the Highlanders unleashing a devastating close-range volley that emptied many saddles and, after a brief mêlée, caused the surviving horsemen to flee the field, taking an indignant Hawley with them. Abandoned by their cavalry, exhausted from the climb and with many of their cartridges soaked and useless, most of the demoralized government foot soldiers put up an equally feeble resistance. They ‘gave a feint fire’, wrote Cholmondeley, ‘and then faced to the right about, as regularly as if they had the word of command, and could not be rallied, ’till they got a considerable distance’.13
Only on the right of the government line did a handful of battalions, protected by a ravine, hold their ground and stop the Highland charge in its tracks. Barrell’s Regiment was among them, as was Ligonier’s and Cholmondeley’s (later the 59th and 34th Foot respectively). Commanded by Cholmondeley and Brigadier-General John Huske, they prevented a rout by covering the army’s retreat to Linlithgow, themselves departing the battlefield to the beat of drums and with flying colours. It is likely that Wolfe himself was serving with Barrell’s that day, and if so he would have shared in the praise that Cholmondeley lavished upon the officers of Barrell’s and Ligonier’s ‘for the spirit they shew’d’; without their example, the army would have been ‘cut to pieces’.14 And yet Hawley’s casualties of 650 killed, wounded and missing were almost five times greater than the Jacobite losses, and he had lost his camp and two cannon. Once again, some of King George’s redcoats had fled before a Highland charge, and Cholmondeley was right to dub the battle a ‘scandalous affair’.15 Hawley put the blame squarely on his troops, accusing both officers and men of cowardice, and underlining this with a spate of courts martial that cashiered some and hanged others. Only partly convinced by this explanation, George II was quick to demote Hawley to cavalry commander and make his own son, the Duke of Cumberland, the new commander-in-chief.
Cumberland joined the army at Edinburgh on 30 January 1746, by which time Wolfe, much to his disgust, had been appointed one of Hawley’s aides-de-camp. Wolfe wrote later of the loser of Falkirk: ‘The troops dread his severity, hate the man, and hold his military knowledge in contempt.’16 Cumberland, by contrast, was a welcome relief. No tactical genius – as he showed at Fontenoy – he was nevertheless hard-working, dogged and fearless. The troops loved him and he them. On 31 January he marched on Stirling with 7,800 men, causing Bonnie Prince Charlie to raise the siege and withdraw to Inverness. Cumberland followed as far as Perth, but then paused to await the arrival of 5,000 Hessian troops, needed to guard the rivers Tay and Forth.
Once the Hessians were in position, Cumberland continued on to Aberdeen, entering the Granite City on 28 February. Again he halted, this time for six weeks, while his army replenished its supplies, clothing and equipment – much of which had been lost at Falkirk – from ships sent from England. He also took the opportunity to drill his foot soldiers in a new bayonet exercise that, he hoped, would combat the threat of the Highlanders’ claymore. Each soldier was ordered to thrust his bayonet not at the man immediately opposite him, but at the exposed underarm of the clansman attacking his comrade on the right, and to trust that his comrade on the left would do the same for him. That way the enemy would not be able to use their target shields to protect themselves.
Wolfe, meanwhile, was worried about the redcoats’ morale. ‘I know their discipline to be bad and their valour precarious,’ he wrote, presumably with Falkirk in mind. ‘They are easily put into disorder and hard to recover out of it. They frequently kill their officers through fear, and murder one another in confusion.’17
While the men were drilled, Cumberland and Hawley enjoyed the comforts of two large requisitioned houses in Aberdeen. The owner of Hawley’s quarters, a Mrs Gordon, later accused Wolfe of failing to keep his promise that ‘everything would be restored’ to her after they departed.18 In the event, Hawley had most of her movable possessions – including china, bed and table linen, books, clocks, clothes – packed up and sent in his name to Edinburgh. According to Mrs Gordon, Hawley also consumed large quantities of her tea, sugar, chocolate, beef, pork, hams, sweetmeats, honey, ‘with many things ’tis impossible to mention’.19 Looting on such a scale was not unusual, particularly from civilians who were known to be Jacobite supporters (as Mrs Gordon was); and it may be that Wolfe wanted to keep his word but was overruled by his superior. Even so, it was not an episode that reflects much credit on Wolfe.
On 8 April, Cumberland finally left Aberdeen with 6,400 foot and 2,400 horse, pausing a week later to celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday at Nairn on the coast. That night, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s smaller army of 6,000 attempted a surprise attack on the English camp, confident that Cumberland’s soldiers would still be drunk after toasting their commander’s birthday with an extra issue of grog. But the 12-mile march from Inverness took longer than expected as the men toiled in the dark across a broken and waterlogged terrain; and, once it became clear they would not reach their destination before dawn, the attack was called off amidst scenes of recrimination and bickering. The exhausted and hungry Highlanders fell back to the boggy expanse of Culloden Moor, 4 miles east of Inverness, where they would make their stand.
At dawn on 16 April, Cumberland’s men approached the moor in three columns of infantry, each of five battalions, flanked by a column of artillery and one of horse, the latter comprising three regiments led by Hawley and his staff (Wolfe among them). The infantry marched to the beat of the drum, each battalion led by its grenadier company in their mitre caps, and preceded by two junior officers called ensigns whose job it was to carry the battalion’s unfurled colours: the King’s Colour, or Union Flag; and the Regimental Colour, which was blue, yellow, green or buff to match the facings on the redcoats’ uniforms (the facings of Barrell’s, for example, were blue). Threaded on the colours in silk, or painted, were the devices of each battalion: a lion for Barrell’s, a thistle or saltire for the Scots’ regiments, and the King’s cipher for those that were ‘Royal’.
Following the columns were the bat-wagons, bread-wagons, sutler-wagons (carrying provisions and liquor) and the carriages of the senior officers. Seated on or marching beside the bat-wagons, with their skirts hitched to their knees, were soldiers’ wives and doxies, a motley crew liable to be whipped if they moved ahead of the transport. They were subject to the same harsh discipline that applied to the men: one woman convicted of petty theft in 1745 had ‘her tail immediately turned up before the door of the house, where the robbery was committed, and the Drummer of the Regiment tickled her with 100 very good lashes’.20
Among the foot soldiers marching through the damp heather that day, at the regulation 75 paces a minute, was Private Alexander Taylor of the Royals (later the 1st Foot). ‘It was a very cold, rainy morning,’ he recalled, ‘and nothing to buy to comfort us. But we had the ammunition loaf, thank God, but not a dram of brandy or spirits had you given a crown for a gill; nor nothing but the loaf and water.’ Another private, Edward Linn of Campbell’s (later the 21st Foot), had the Divine Presence on his mind for a very different reason, and would later write to his ‘beloved spouse’ asking her to ‘give praise to Almighty God’ that he had emerged from the battle unscathed.21
By late morning, scouts reported that the Highlanders were forming in line across the spine of Culloden Moor. ‘We marched on a mile or two,’ recalled Private Michael Hughes of Bligh’s (later the 20th Foot), ‘before we could discern the terrible boasting Highlanders, and upon first sight of them we formed into line of action, which was done with great beauty of discipline and order.’22
But seeing no forward movement from the enemy, Cumberland advanced once more. ‘We marched up to our knees in water,’ wrote Hughes, ‘over a bog that brought us to the perfect sight of them. We kept advancing with drums beating and colours flying, with fixed bayonets till we came within gunshot.’23 There Cumberland arranged his troops into three lines of infantry – the first two of six battalions, the third a reserve of three – with cavalry on either flank and two 3-pounder guns between each of the front-line battalions. Their left flank rested on the corner of a stone-wall enclosure that extended the length of the 600-yard battlefield; their right on a marshy bog. Facing them across the gently sloping moorside, laced with dead heather and pocked by bog-holes, were two lines of Jacobites, the Highland clans mostly in the first line, protected by three four-gun batteries.
With battle imminent, Cumberland rode before his men to embolden them with a final address. He was immensely fat, yet sat his charger well. His scarlet frock coat had lapels and cuffs of blue edged with gold, and on his left breast twinkled the distinctive star of the Order of the Garter. His face, framed by the white curls of his wig, was bloated and red, his eyes dark and protruding. Adonis he was not, yet his men knew him to be a capable commander, personally brave and not prone to panic. A general, in short, they could trust.
‘If there is any man,’ he cried, tricorne hat in hand, ‘who, from disinclination to the cause from having relations in the rebel army, would now prefer to retire I beg him in God’s name to do so, as I would rather face the Highlanders with 1,000 determined men at my back than have 10,000 with a tithe of them lukewarm.’24
The redcoats’ response was unanimous. ‘Flanders! Flanders!’ they roared, hats on bayonets in salute of the British infantry’s valour at Fontenoy. ‘We’ll follow you!’25
The first shot was fired by Jacobite artillery, 4- and 6-pounders poorly served by inexperienced Highlanders. It was badly aimed and whistled over the heads of the leading battalions, killing a soldier in the rear. The Jacobite gunnery would not improve. Cumberland’s artillerymen, on the other hand, were veterans of Dettingen and Fontenoy, and their first salvo of round-shot scythed through the front rank of Highlanders with deadly effect. Some guns targeted Bonnie Prince Charlie himself, killing his groom, wounding his horse and forcing the Young Pretender to move to the left of the Jacobite rear. For thirty minutes this unequal dual continued, until, able to stand it no longer, the clans in the centre and right of the Jacobite front line broke ranks and charged.
By now Cumberland had reinforced his front line with two extra battalions, one on each flank, and sent his loyalist Campbell militia and five squadrons of dragoons into the stone enclosure on the left flank. As the charging Highlanders came within range – a blood-curdling sight that one soldier likened to a horde of ‘hungry wolves’26 – the kneeling front rank and flanking grenadiers of each infantry company fired first, followed by the second rank and then the third. In this way the rolling fire from six battalions was almost continuous. ‘We kept up a continual closs [storm of fire],’ remembered Edward Linn of Campbell’s, ‘firing upon them with our small-arms … We gave them a closs with grape-shot which galled them very much.’27
Most of the Jacobite officers were killed before they got within 20 yards of Cumberland’s first line. A few of their men broke through, but were shot or bayoneted by the second line. The only serious contest took place on the left, where the right wing of the Jacobite army – composed of the Atholl, Cameron and Stewart clans – closed with the three regiments near the corner of the stone enclosure, Munro’s (later the 37th Foot), Barrell’s and Wolfe’s* (later the 8th Foot). Wolfe’s – assisted by flanking fire from the Campbell militiamen, who, by this time, were lining the stone wall that ran the length of the battlefield – stopped the Atholl men in their tracks. But to their right rear the fight, for a brief moment, was in the balance. Only the left platoons of Munro’s were attacked, yet still they lost 19 killed and 63 wounded in a matter of minutes. ‘Our lads fought more like devils than men,’ remembered their grenadier captain.28
It was fortunate, then, that the heaviest blow fell on the battalion that had fought so well at Falkirk: Barrell’s. Wolfe wrote the following day:
They were attacked by the Camerons (the bravest clan among them), and ’twas for some time a dispute between the swords and bayonets; but the latter was found by far the most destructable weapon. The regiment behaved with uncommon resolution, killing some say almost their own number … They were, however, surrounded by superiority, and would have been all destroyed had not Col. Martin with his regiment [later the 25th Scottish Borderers] mov’d forward to their assistance, prevented mischief, and by a well-timed fire destroyed a great number of them and obliged them to run off.29
Barrell’s lost more than a third of its 350 men, including its captain of grenadiers and commanding officer (the latter losing his hand and sword to a cut from a broadsword). Some of the platoons fell back in the face of the Camerons’ ferocious onslaught, only to re-form on the flank of the Border Scots. ‘There was scarce a soldier or officer of Barrell’s,’ wrote one of them, ‘and of that part of Munro’s which engaged, who did not kill one or two men each with their bayonets and spontoons. Not a bayonet but was bent or bloody and stained with blood to the muzzles of their muskets.’30
As the survivors of the right and centre of the Jacobite front line withdrew, taking their supports with them, the left wing made its own ill-timed and half-hearted assault. They were Macdonalds, sore at having been deprived of their usual post of honour on the right of the line, and had the furthest distance to cover. ‘They came down … several times within a hundred yards,’ recalled Cumberland, ‘firing their pistols and brandishing their swords, but the Royals and Pulteney’s [later the 13th Foot] hardly took their firelocks from their shoulders.’31
Their honour satisfied, if not their bloodlust, the Macdonalds joined the rest of the Jacobite infantry in flight. ‘What a spectacle of horror!’ wrote one their officers. ‘The same Highlanders who had advanced to the charge like lions, with bold and determined countenance, were in an instant seen flying like trembling cowards in the greatest disorder.’32 He joined them.
Wolfe himself, meanwhile, was with Hawley’s cavalry on the left. ‘As soon as the Rebels began to give way and the fire of the Foot slackened,’ he wrote a day later, ‘[Hawley] ordered Genl Bland to charge the rest of them with three squadrons, and Cobham to support him with the two. It was done with wonderful spirit and completed the victory with great slaughter. We have taken 22 pieces of brass cannon or near it, a number of colours, and near 700 prisoners …’33
What Wolfe failed to mention, however, was that the cavalry could and should have played a decisive role much earlier in the battle. But, having outflanked the first two Jacobite lines, and with just a shallow ravine, a weak battalion and a tiny force of rebel horse between him and the rebel rear, Hawley chose to stay his 500 riders until victory was certain. Their chief contribution to the battle, therefore, was in the pursuit. They ‘cleared all the country for three miles before them’, noted their proud commander, ‘and … made great slaughter every way’.34
A famous anecdote, written many years after the battle, is that Wolfe stayed aloof from the slaughter, refusing Cumberland’s order to shoot a wounded Jacobite officer with the words: ‘I never can consent to become an executioner.’35 But there is no reliable evidence for such an exchange, and it flies in the face of Wolfe’s admiration for the duke’s conduct at Culloden (‘a great and gallant General’)36 and his belief that the butchery was justified. ‘Orders were publicly given in the rebel army, the day before the action,’ he wrote to his uncle, ‘that no quarter should be given to our troops. We had an opportunity of avenging ourselves, and I assure you as few prisoners were taken of the Highlanders as possible.’37
According to Wolfe, the government suffered 320 killed and wounded at Culloden, while Jacobite fatalities alone were ‘nearly 1,500’.38 Many more would die in the brutal occupation of the Highlands by Cumberland’s troops as they searched for the Young Pretender and his supporters. In theory only those found with arms were to be executed and their property confiscated or destroyed. But such niceties were often ignored as the innocent suffered with the guilty in a spate of beatings, rapes and murders that earned for the duke the soubriquet of ‘Butcher’. Wolfe played his part, informing a captain of dragoons on 19 May that Hawley ‘approves of everything you have done, and desires you will continue that assiduity in apprehending such as have been in open rebellion or are known abettors, and that you will be careful to collect all proofs and accusations against them’.39 In a subsequent letter, he told the captain that the duke was happy for him to dispose of a suspected rebel’s property, and that the soldiers involved would receive a share of the proceeds in proportion to their pay.40 This principle of dividing up loot according to rank would continue well into the nineteenth century.
