The infantry stood firm; but all the efforts of the Highlanders were now concentrated upon it; the axes of Lochaber crushed in skulls and hacked away limbs. Before this savage onslaught the English soldiers at last gave way. James MacGregor, son of the famous Rob-Roy, himself pierced with five wounds, cried out to his followers, "I am not dead, my lads; I shall see if any of you does not do his duty." Everywhere the chieftains plunged into the thickest of the fight, at the head of their men. "Do you believe our troops will be able to resist the regulars?" the prince had inquired of Macdonald of Keppoch, who had served long in France. "I do not know," said the Highlander; "it is a good while since our clans have been in action; but what I do know is this, the leaders will go forward, and the men will not long leave them alone."

The attack and the victory occupied but a few minutes. General Cope followed his dragoons, and himself carried to Berwick the news of the disaster. "I have seen some battles, and heard of many," said old General Mark Kerr to him, sarcastically, "but never before of the first news of defeat being brought by general officers." The fugitives had not been pursued, the Highlanders being engrossed in the division of the spoils. The prince had looked carefully to the protection of the wounded, and he wrote on the morrow to his father, expressing his poignant grief at the effusion of so much English blood, and his determination to convert the palace into a hospital rather than that the wounded should suffer from neglect.

Just at this time King George II. had returned to England, recalled by the dissensions in his cabinet. The Marquis of Tweeddale, charged with Scottish affairs, himself undecided and anxious, complained that he was neither obeyed nor seconded; the inhabitants of the Lowlands possessed no weapons,

the Whig clans of the Highlands having been disarmed after the rebellions of 1715 and 1719; public spirit was not yet awake in England; there existed only shameful timidity or the excess of indifference. "England is for the first comer," wrote Henry Fox, himself a member of the administration; "and if you can tell whether the six thousand Dutch and the ten battalions of English we have sent for from Flanders, or five thousand French or Spaniards, will be here first, you know our fate." And a few days later, September 19: "The French are not come, God be thanked! But had five thousand troops landed in any part of this island a week ago, I verily believe the entire conquest would not have cost them a battle."

The patriotic sentiment, even when it is slow in awaking, is more powerful than statesmen are sometimes led to believe; in this respect the prudent indifference of the French ministry made no mistake. In spite of the ardor of his warlike enthusiasm, Charles Edward felt how precarious were his successes, and how necessary to him was foreign support. He had many times repeated his appeals to the court of Versailles ; they had sent over some supplies of arms and money; there was even talk of placing the young Duke of York at the head of the Irish brigade; but the wonted delays of a weak government hindered operations. The assistance so many times promised by Spain as well as France, had thus far amounted to no more than the private enterprises of a few brave adventurers. The Duke de Richelieu was to put himself at their head, it was asserted. "As to the embarkation they talk of at Dunkirk," writes the Advocate Barbier, at the end of the year 1745, "there is much uneasiness, for it is now the last of December and nothing has yet occurred, which gives every one opportunity to invent news according to his taste. This uncertainty discourages the' French, who

declare that our expedition will not take place, or, at least, that it will not succeed."

The expedition did not take place. The prince was eager to march upon London, fatally attracted, like his predecessors in the Scottish insurrection, to seek in the very centre of Great Britain the support and success which always failed them. The Scottish leaders protested, extremely opposed to leaving Scotland. The prince was intolerant of contradiction, and at once grew angry in the presence of the council. "I see, gentlemen," he exclaimed, "you are resolved to remain in Scotland and defend your country. I am no less determined to try my fortune in England; I shall go, even though I should be alone."

The Highlanders yielded regretfully and with distrust. "We have undertaken to re-establish the kingdom, as well as the king, of Scotland," they had often said, and Charles Edward had solemnly announced that his father would never ratify the Union; he had even thought of convoking a parliament at Edinburgh, but the practical difficulties in the way had deterred him from the execution of the plan. Before turning his steps towards England, the prince published an appeal, as judicious as it was impassioned, to his subjects of the three kingdoms.

"Let me now expostulate this weighty matter with you, my father's subjects," he said, referring to the question of religion. "Do not the pulpits and the congregations of the clergy, as well as your weekly papers, ring with the dreadful threats of Popery, Slavery, Tyranny, and Arbitrary Power, which are now ready to be imposed upon you by the formidable powers of France and Spain? But listen only to the naked truth. I with my own money hired a vessel, ill provided with money, arms, or friends; I arrived in Scotland, attended by seven persons; I publish the king my