The Road to Culloden Moor by Diana Preston

Author:Diana Preston [Preston, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2014-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘… VERY ABUSIVE LANGUAGE’

Derby was a Whig stronghold and all the charm in the world was not going to secure Charles a rapturous reception. Many of the leading citizens amongst its six thousand population had followed the example of the Duke of Devonshire and decamped towards Nottingham ‘with the utmost precipitation’. Whig propaganda and disinformation had sown the seeds of panic and the appearance of the Jacobite army was not reassuring to the townsfolk. The vanguard may have looked respectable enough ‘clothed in blue faced with red, and scarlet waistcoats with gold lace’. So did Elcho and his Lifeguards when they rode in with many of the chiefs, similarly attired and self-consciously ‘the flower of their army’.

But when the main body marched in under the Duke of Perth, six or eight abreast with their banners flying and bagpipes playing, the spies and journalists gave free rein to their indignation. ‘Most of their main body,’ wrote one, ‘are a parcel of shabby, lousy, pittiful looking fellows, mixed up with old men and boys.’ He described their dirty plaids and dirty shirts and lack of breeches with disgust, and their plaid stockings reaching barely half way up their legs. Some were without shoes or next to none, and all were so worn out with the march that ‘they commanded our pity rather than our fear.’ Yet to most onlookers they were a despicable crew — short, wan, meagre and carrying their arms with difficulty. A gentleman wrote indignantly to the press, describing how the Gaelic tongue made them sound like ‘a herd of Hottentots, wild monkies in a desert, or vagrant gipsies’. It was only in the field that their sneering critics discovered how terrifying these shoeless, stockingless warriors could be. Before Charles arrived to claim the city, the ceremony of the Proclamation was enacted in the Market Place. Most of the city dignitaries obeyed the summons to appear in their robes, though some had fled and others pleaded rather lamely that they could not find their gowns. Charles entered at the head of the last body of the Jacobite force towards evening. As usual he was marching on foot and as usual he made an impression, even on a hostile audience. An eye-witness wrote: ‘It is justice to say that he is a fine person, six foot high, a very good complexion, and presence majestic. He had a Scotch bonnet with a white silver rose … Another gentleman described him as ‘tall, straight, slender and handsome, dressed in a green bonnet laced with gold, a white bob-wig, the fashion of the day, a Highland plaid and broadsword’.

His reception was warmer than he might have expected. O’Sullivan described how Charles was ‘perfectly well received. Bonfires on the roads, the Bells ringing … it was really a fine sight to see the illuminations of the Town.’ There are even tales that the ladies of fashion — always susceptible to Charles — were soon busy making white cockades. Some of them were to

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