The Greatest Adventure Books - MacLeod Raine Edition. William MacLeod Raine

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СКАЧАТЬ reached the first line of the enemy. ’Twas claymore against bayonet. Another minute, and the Highlanders had trampled down the regulars and were pushing on in impetuous gallantry. The thin tartan line clambering up the opposite side of the ravine grew thinner as the grape-shot carried havoc to their ranks. Cobham’s and Kerr’s dragoons flanked them en potence. To stand that hell of fire was more than mortal men could endure. Scarce a dozen clansmen reached the second line of regulars. The rest turned and cut their way, sword in hand, through the flanking regiments which had formed on the ground over which they had just passed with the intention of barring the retreat.

      Our life-guards and the French pickets, together with Ogilvy’s regiment, checked in some measure the pursuit, but nothing could be done to save the day. All was irretrievably lost, though the Prince galloped over the field attempting a rally. The retreat became a rout, and the rout a panic. As far as Inverness the ground was strewn with the dead slain in that ghastly pursuit.

      The atrocities committed after the battle would have been worthy of savages rather than of civilized troops. Many of the inhabitants of Inverness had come out to see the battle from curiosity and were cut down by the infuriated cavalry. The carnage of the battle appeared not to satiate their horrid thirst for blood, and the troopers, bearing in mind their disgrace at Gladsmuir and Falkirk, rushed to and fro over the field massacring the wounded. I could ask any fair-minded judge to set up against this barbarity the gentle consideration and tenderness of Prince Charles and his wild Highlanders in their hours of victory. We never slew a man except in the heat of fight, and the wounded of the enemy were always cared for with the greatest solicitude. From this one may conclude that the bravest troops are the most humane. These followers of the Duke had disgraced themselves, and they ran to an excess of cruelty in an attempt to wipe out their cowardice.

      Nor was it the soldiery alone that committed excesses. I regret to have to record that many of the officers also engaged in them. A party was dispatched from Inverness the day after the battle to put to death all the wounded they might find in the inclosures of Culloden Park near the field of the contest. A young Highlander serving with the English army was afterwards heard to declare that he saw seventy-two unfortunate victims dragged from their hiding in the heather to hillocks and shot down by volleys of musketry. Into a small sheep hut on the moor some of our wounded had dragged themselves. The dragoons secured the door and fired the hut. One instance of singular atrocity is vouched for. Nineteen wounded Highland officers, too badly injured to join the retreat, secreted themselves in a small plantation near Culloden-house, to which mansion they were afterward taken. After being allowed to lie without care twenty-four hours they were tossed into carts, carried to the wall of the park, ranged against it in a row, and instantly shot. I myself was a witness of one incident which touches the butcher of Cumberland nearly. If I relate the affair, ’tis because it falls pat with the narrative of my escape.

      In the streets of Inverness I ran across Major Macleod gathering together the remnant of his command to check the pursuit until the Prince should have escaped. The man had just come from seeing his brave clansmen mowed down, and his face looked like death.

      “The Prince— Did he escape?” I asked. “I saw him last trying to stem the tide, with Sheridan and O’Sullivan tugging at his reins to induce a flight.”

      The Macleod nodded. “They passed through the town not five minutes ago.”

      I asked him whether he had seen anything of Captain Roy Macdonald, and he told me that he had last seen him lying wounded on the field. I had him describe to me accurately the position, and rode back by a wide circuit toward Drummossie Moor. I had of course torn off the white cockade and put it in my breast so as to minimize the danger of being recognized as a follower of the Prince. My heart goes to my throat whenever I think of that ride, for behind every clump of whins one might look to find a wounded clansman hiding from the riders of Cumberland. By good providence I came on Captain Macdonald just as three hussars were about to make an end of him. He had his back to a great stone, and was waiting grimly for them to shoot him down. Supposing me to be an officer of their party the troopers desisted at my remonstrance and left him to me. Donald Roy was wounded in the foot, but he managed to mount behind me. We got as far as the wall of the park when I saw a party of officers approaching. Hastily dismounting, we led the horse behind a nest of birches till they should pass. A few yards from us a sorely wounded Highland officer was lying. Macdonald recognized him as Charles Fraser, younger of Inverallachie, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fraser regiment and in the absence of the Master of Lovat commander. We found no time to drag him to safety before the English officers were upon us.

      The approaching party turned out to be the Duke of Cumberland himself, Major Wolfe, Lord Boyd, Sir Robert Volney, and a boy officer of Wolfe’s regiment. Young Fraser raised himself on his elbow to look at the Duke. The Butcher reined in his horse, frowning blackly down at him.

      “To which side do you belong?” he asked.

      “To the Prince,” was the undaunted answer.

      Cumberland, turning to Major Wolfe, said,

      “Major, are your pistols loaded?”

      Wolfe said that they were.

      “Then shoot me that Highland scoundrel who dares look on me so insolently.”

      Major Wolfe looked at his commander very steadily and said quietly: “Sir, my commission is at the disposal of your Royal Highness, but my honour is my own. I can never consent to become a common executioner.”

      The Duke purpled, and burst out with, “Bah! Pistol him, Boyd.”

      “Your Highness asks what is not fitting for you to require nor for me to perform,” answered that young nobleman.

      The Duke, in a fury, turned to a passing dragoon and bade him shoot the young man. Charles Fraser dragged himself to his feet by a great effort and looked at the butcher with a face of infinite scorn while the soldier was loading his piece.

      “Your Highness,” began Wolfe, about to remonstrate.

      “Sir, I command you to be silent,” screamed the Duke.

      The trooper presented his piece at the Fraser, whose steady eyes never left the face of Cumberland.

      “God save King James!” cried Inverallachie in English, and next moment fell dead from the discharge of the musket.

      The faces of the four Englishmen who rode with the Duke were stern and drawn. Wolfe dismounted from his horse and reverently covered the face of the dead Jacobite with a kerchief.

      “God grant that when our time comes we may die as valiantly and as loyally as this young gentleman,” he said solemnly, raising his hat.

      Volney, Boyd, and Wolfe’s subaltern uncovered, and echoed an “Amen.” Cumberland glared from one to another of them, ran the gamut of all tints from pink to deepest purple, gulped out an apoplectic Dutch oath, and dug the rowels deep into his bay. With shame, sorrow, and contempt in their hearts his retinue followed the butcher across the field.

      My face was like the melting winter snows. I could not look at the Macdonald, nor he at me. We mounted in silence and rode away. Only once he referred to what we had seen.

      “Many’s the time that Charlie Fraser and I have hunted the dun deer across the heather hills, and now——” He broke into Gaelic lamentation and imprecation, then fell as suddenly to quiet.

      We bore up a ravine away from the roads toward where a great gash in the hills invited us, for we did not need to be told that the chances of safety increased with our distance from the beaten СКАЧАТЬ