procure him those honours and rewards which were showered upon him for his easy victory over an army so inferior in numbers to his own, and who, moreover, were labouring under every possible disadvantage. The ferocity and vindictiveness which he displayed towards his unfortunate opponents, who,-mistaken though we may admit them to have been, had committed no crime but that of bravely defending their principles, and chivalrously supporting the cause of a Prince whom they conscientiously believed to be their rightful master,—will ever deservedly continue to be a blot on his name. It is impossible, indeed, to reflect on the promiscuous slaughter of the flying and unresisting Highlanders after the battle of Culloden, on the numerous murders which were subsequently committed in cold blood, and on the numbers which were sacrificed on the gallows, without execrating the authors of these detestable barbarities.

There were unquestionably persons in the ranks of the insurgent army-men of influence and family-who adopted the cause of their unfortunate master as much from motives of self-interest as from any principles of duty, and who, as the instigators of others, and as the more active and prominent disturbers of peace and good order, might with propriety have been made severe examples of by the Government. But there could be neither justice nor policy in hanging up, in almost countless numbers, the brave and devoted clansmen, who were not competent, either by education or any other means, to form a proper estimate of what might be the consequences of their embarking in a rash but gallant cause, or of the true merits of the quarrel in which they were unhappily engaged. They knew little more than what they had heard from their fathers-that the Stuarts were their he

own.

reditary and rightful sovereigns; while both duty and inclination told them to follow the orders of their chieftains, whose principles almost invariably regulated their The strange and almost ridiculous stories which at this period were generally current, of the wild habits and ferocious character of the Highland clansmen, had unquestionably the effect of turning aside much of that generous commiseration which would otherwise have been excited by the illegal massacres of the Duke of Cumberland and his executioner-in-chief, General Hawley. When the world, however, came to reflect more dispassionately on the frightful effusion of blood of which these persons were the principal authors, they naturally viewed the conduct, as well as the military abilities of the Duke in their proper light, and grew to execrate that man under the name of "the Butcher," whom, only a few months before, they had nearly exalted into an idol.

It has already been mentioned, that for as long as two days after the battle of Culloden, many of the wounded were inhumanly allowed to remain mingled with the dead, and enduring, as they must have done, all the hor. rors of bodily pain, of intolerable thirst, and the agonies of hope deferred. The greater number of the wounded, indeed, were despatched by parties of the victors who traversed the field after the battle, stabbing some with their bayonets, and cutting down others with their swords; and through this frightful scene, the Duke of Cumberland not only calmly passed with his staff, but even took his share in the painful tragedy. As he rode along among the dying and the dead, he perceived a young man-Charles Fraser, the younger of Inverallachy, who held a commission as Lieutenant-colonel in Fraser of Lovat's regiment--who was lying wounded on the ground, but who raised himself up

on his elbow, as the Duke and his followers passed. The Duke inquired of him to whom he belonged. 66 To the Prince!" was the undaunted reply. The Duke instantly turned to Major Wolfe, who was near him, and desired him to shoot "that insolent scoundrel." 66 My commission," said Wolfe, "is at the disposal of your Royal Highness, but I cannot consent to become an executioner." After one or two other ineffectual attempts to induce some officers who were near him to pistol the unfortunate Highlander, the Duke, perceiving a common soldier, inquired of him if his piece was loaded? The man replying in the affirmative, he commanded him to perform the required duty, which was instantly done. How widely different was the conduct of the Duke of Cumberland and the English after the battle of Culloden, to the humanity and consideration which Charles and his gallant Highlanders displayed towards their wounded enemies, when they found themselves victors at Falkirk!

As some palliation for the frightful scenes which were enacted after the battle, it was alleged that the order for massacring the wounded originated in the humane purpose of putting them out of pain! It was insisted also, as a further justification of the indiscriminate slaughter which took place on the road to Inverness, that a regimental order was found on the person of one of the insurgents, signed by Lord George Murray, in which the Highlanders were enjoined, in the event of their gaining the victory, to give no quarter to the King's troops. No such order, however, was ever seen or heard of by any of the insurgents, nor is there the slightest reason to believe that it, in fact, ever existed.

It might have been advanced by the Duke of Cumberland and his admirers, with some appearance of reason, that

the excesses which disgraced the victory of Culloden were the result of a stern but necessary policy; a policy which was called for, in order to strike terror into the surviving followers of Charles, who, though defeated, were still formidable, and were capable of being re-assembled and arrayed against the King's troops. It might also have been argued, with the same show of reason, that the carnage which took place was partly the result of the exasperated feelings and brute-like propensities of the common soldiers, who, inflamed by the victory which they had obtained over a foe who had lately been their conquerors, were not unlikely to wreak their vengeance in too summary and merciless a manner.

But none of these arguments hold good, as regards the terrible catalogue of ravages, slaughters, and executions, which were subsequently perpetrated in cold blood. The victors carried havoc and bloodshed, and all the frightful extremities of war, into the castle of the chieftain and the cabin of the peasant; they spread ruin and desolation among a free, a gallant, and warm-hearted people, whose only crime was their loyalty to their legitimate Prince; women and children, whose husbands and brothers had been murdered, and whose homes had been burned to the ground, were seen shivering in the clefts of the rocks, dying of cold and hunger; and it is a fact, that at Fort Augustus women were stripped of their clothes, and made to run races naked on horseback for the amusement of the

brutal garrison. "When the men were slain," says Sir Walter Scott," the houses burnt, and the herds and flocks driven off, the women and children perished from famine in many instances, or followed the track of the plunderers, begging for the blood and offal of their own cattle, slain for the soldiers' use, as the miserable means of supporting a wretched life."

One of the first acts of severity committed by the Duke of Cumberland, was to hang thirty-six deserters from the royal army who had joined the standard of the adventurer. Nineteen wounded officers belonging to the Highland army, were dragged from a wood in which they had sought refuge, and carried into the court-yard of Culloden House, where the greater number were shot, and the rest, who showed any symptoms of life, had their brains knocked out by the soldiery. In one instance, a hut, which contained a number of wounded Highlanders, was set fire to by the soldiers, when not only was every individual who attempted to escape immediately bayoneted, but when the building was burnt to the ground, as many as thirty corpses were found blackened by the flames.

The fate of such of the survivors of the battle of Culloden, who were dragged to prison, was scarcely less terrible. Great numbers were confined in the church and tolbooth of Inverness, where, deprived of clothes,, and allowed only so small a quantity of meal daily as was scarcely sufficient to support life, they passed a miserable existence, till they were carried on board ship, in order to be sent to London and placed at the disposal of the Government. Their condition at sea was even worse than on land. They were thrust half naked into the holds of the different vessels, where they slept on the stones which formed the ballast; their sole allowance of drink being a bottle of cold water, and their amount of daily food being no more than about ten ounces of an inferior kind of oatmeal to each man. Even at this distance of time the heart almost sickens with the details of the horrors and privations to which these faithful and gallant people were subjected. Of a large number of human beings who were shipped to Barbadoes, many died on shipboard; and of