his march he found himself coming close upon the Highlanders. They had taken post at Coryarrak, a mountainous defile, which it was impossible for the bravest troops to force without being exposed to certain destruction. If they had advanced beyond it, or if Cope had been able to get possession of it before them, he might have encountered them with reasonable hopes of success. It was not his fault that they had advanced thus far and no farther; he could not foresee that they would chuse this route, and advance precisely to this point. To go on was impossible; he had therefore only the alternative of retreating or of turning aside. The former of these plans was liable to two objections; it exposed the royal army to the seeming humiliation of not daring to encounter the rebels; and if the country people, whose disaffection there was strong reason to suspect, should break down the bridges, it might be accompanied with considerable danger. To have remained stationary would have been madness, for his provisions would soon have failed; and he had before him an army, which though little more than half of what, according to the intelligence he then had, he supposed it to be, was even in fact more numerous than his own. Cope therefore wisely resolved to turn aside towards Inverness; and consequently the road to Edinburgh was open to the rebels.

As some have blamed Cope for not marching northwards more speedily, so others have condemned him for making any movement in that direction. The Chevalier de Johnstone, after having found fault with him on the former ground, attacks him on the latter too: "By shutting up the Prince in the mountains," says he, "General Cope would have prevented him from performing any of those brilliant achievements, which were so essential in the beginning of his enterprise to ensure its success: and the Prince would never have attempted to pass the Forth by force, had entrenchments, lined with field artillery, been thrown up at all the fords." This scheme, though entertained by wiser heads than Johnstone, and, among others, by some of the ministers for the time, would, in all probability, have terminated in a complete failure. The Forth is fordable in many places, so that it would have been impossible, especially with so small an army as Cope's, to prevent the rebels from passing it. The entrenchments lined with field artillery make a shew in a sentence, but Cope was not fortunate enough to be able to call them into existence. At the time when he began his march there was only one old gunner in the castle of Edinburgh, and three soldiers, belonging to the invalids, who served as matrosses. These, with six gunners, borrowed from the naval service, constituted his corps of artillery in the battle of Preston Pans; we should rather have said before the battle, for in the beginning of the action they

ran away with the powder flasks. It is ridiculous to talk of preventing the passage of a fordable river with an army in such a state of equipment.

In the brilliant commencement, therefore, of the Prince's career, there is nothing to excite astonishment-neither superior wisdom, nor distinguished courage, nor even a strange succession of lucky accidents. The only thing that can reasonably occasion a moment's wonder, is the defenceless condition of the country; and even for this it would be unjust to blame the ministers severely. The troops were engaged on foreign service; it was not the fashion of the times to maintain a large standing army for domestic purposes; and though there was reason to apprehend that an attempt might, ere long, be made to restore the house of Stuart, yet wise men might well believe that the means would be proportioned to the ends, and that the preparations of France to escort and aid the Pretender would serve as a signal of the approach of danger, and would give us timely notice to prepare.

By the time that the rebels were in possession of the capital, Cope had returned from the north by sea, and now approached close to Edinburgh. He chose his ground with great judgment:

"The camp of the enemy was fortified by nature, and in the happiest position for so small an army. The general had on his right two inclosures, surrounded by stone-walls, from six to seven feet high, between which there was a road of about twenty feet broad, leading to the village of Preston Pans. Before him was another inclosure, surrounded by a deep ditch filled with water, and from ten to twelve feet broad, which served as a drain to the marshy ground. On his left was a marsh, which terminated in a deep pond; and behind him was the sea so that he was thus inclosed as in a fortification, which could be attacked in no other manner than by a regular siege. We spent the afternoon in reconnoitering his position: and the more we examined it, the more our uneasiness and chagrin increased, as we saw no possibility of attacking it, without exposing ourselves to be cut to pieces in a digraceful manner. At sun-set our army traversed the village of Tranent, which was on our right, and took a new position opposite to the marsh. General Cope, at the same time, ordered his army to take a new front, supporting his right by the ditch of the inclosure, and his left by the sea, and having his front towards the lake.

"Mr. Anderson, proprietor of the marsh, came to the Prince in the evening, very à propos, to relieve us from our embarrassment. He assured him that there was a place in the marsh where we could pass it with safety, and that he himself had frequently crossed it when hunting. The Prince, having instantly caused the place to be examined, ascertained that this account was correct; and that General Cope, not deeming it passable, had neglected to station a guard

there. He caused the army to pass through the place in question during the night; the Highlanders moving along in files, without meeting with any opposition from the enemy, forming themselves as soon as they came out of the marsh, and extending their line towards the sea.

"At break of day, General Cope took our first line, which was formed in order of battle, at the distance of two hundred paces from his army, for bushes. It consisted of twelve hundred men; and our second line, of six hundred men, was composed of those who were badly armed; many of them, as we have already observed, having only staves or bludgeons in their hands. Captain Macgregor, of the Duke of Perth's regiment, for want of other arms, procured scythes, which he sharpened and fixed to poles of from seven to eight feet long. With these he armed his company, and they proved very destructive weapons.

"When our first line had passed the marsh, Lord George dispatched me to the second line, which the Prince conducted in person, to see that it passed without noise or confusion. Having examined the line, and found that every thing was as it should be, on my return to Lord George, I found the Prince at the head of the column accompanied by Lord Nairn, just as he was beginning to enter the marsh, and I passed it a second time along with him. We were not yet out of the marsh, when the enemy, seeing our first line in order of battle, fired an alarm gun. At the very end of the marsh there was a deep ditch, three or four feet broad, which it was necessary to spring over, and the Prince, in leaping across, fell upon his kness on the other side. I laid hold of his arm, and immediately raised him up. On examining his countenance, it appeared to me that he considered this accident as a bad omen.

"Lord George, at the head of the first line, did not give the English time to recover from their surprise. He advanced with such rapidity that General Cope had hardly time to form his troops in order of battle, when the Highlanders rushed upon them sword in hand. They had been frequently enjoined to aim at the noses of the horses with their swords, without minding the riders; as the natural movement of a horse, wounded in the face, is to wheel round: and a few horses wounded in that manner, are sufficient to throw a whole squadron into disorder, without the possibility of their being afterwards rallied. They followed this advice most implicitly, and the English cavalry was instantly thrown into confusion.

"Macgregor's company did great execution with their scythes. They cut the legs of the horses in two; their riders through the middle of their bodies. Macgregor was brave and intrepid, but, at the same time, altogether whimsical and singular. When advancing to the charge with his company, he received five wounds, two of them from balls that pierced his body through and through. Stretched on the ground, with his head resting on his hand, he called out to the Highlanders of his company," My lads, I am not dead! -I shall see if any of you does not do his duty!" The Highlanders instantly fell on the flanks of the infantry; which being un

covered and exposed from the flight of the cavalry, immediately gave way. Thus, in less than five minutes, we obtained a complete victory; with a terrible carnage on the part of the enemy. It was. gained with such rapidity, that in the second line, where I still was by the side of the. Prince, not having been able to find Lord George, we saw no other enemy on the field of battle than those who were lying on the ground killed and wounded, though we were not more than fifty paces behind our first line, running always as fast as we could to overtake them, and near enough never to lose sight of them. The Highlanders made a terrible slaughter of the enemy, particularly at the spot where the road begins to run between the two inclosures, as it was soon stopped up by the fugitives; as also along the walls of the inclosures, where they killed, without trouble, those who attempted to climb them. The strength of their camp became their, destruction. Some of them attempted to rally in the inclosure, where there was an eminence which commanded the field of battle, and from which they fired some shot; but they were soon put to flight by the Highlanders, who immediately entered the inclosure in pursuit of them.

"The field of battle presented a spectacle of horror, being covered with heads, legs, and arms, and mutilated bodies; for the killed all fell by the sword. The enemy had thirteen hundred killed; and we made fifteen hundred prisoners, and took six field-pieces, two mortars, all the tents, baggage, and the military chest. General Cope, by means of a white cockade, which he put in his hat, similar to what we wore, passed through the midst of the Highlanders without being known, and escaped to England, where he carried the first news of his defeat. This victory cost us forty killed, and as many wounded. The greatest advantage which we derived from it was, the reputation which the Prince's army acquired in the outset ; which determined many of his partisans who were yet wavering, to declare themselves openly in his favour. The arms of the vanquished, of which we stood in need, were also of great service to us. Prince slept next night at Pinky-house, about a quarter of a league from the field of battle. He committed to my care one hundred and ten English officers, who were our prisoners, with orders that they should want for nothing.

The

"The panic-terror of the English surpasses all imagination. They threw down their arms that they might run with more speed, thus depriving themselves by their fears of the only means of arresting the vengeance of the Highlanders. Of so many men in a condition, from their numbers, to preserve order in their retreat, not one thought of defending himself. Terror had taken possession of their minds. I saw a young Highlander, about fourteen years of age, scarcely formed, who was presented to the Prince as a prodigy, having killed, it was said, fourteen of the enemy. The Prince asked him if this was true? "I do not know," replied he, "if I killed them; but I brought fourteen soldiers to the ground with my sword." Another Highlander brought ten soldiers to the Prince, whom he had madeprisoners, driving them before him like a flock of sheep. This High

lander, from a rashness without example, having pursued a party to some distance from the field of battle, along the road between the two inclosures, struck down the hindermost with a blow of his sword, calling, at the same time, "Down with your arms." The soldiers, terror-struck, threw down their arms without looking behind them, and the Highlander, with a pistol in one hand, and a sword in the other, made them do exactly as he pleased. The rage and despair of these men, on seeing themselves made prisoners by a single individual, may easily be imagined. These were, however, the same English soldiers who had distinguished themselves at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and who might justly be ranked amongst the bravest troops of Europe." (P. 24-30.)

We have quoted this account of the battle of Preston Pans at length, partly because it will serve to correct some of the errors which the vivid delineations in the romance of Waverley may have imprinted on the minds of our readers; but still more, because it completely unfolds the cause of the success of the Highlanders. Cope was taken by surprise, and his camp forced in a quarter where it seemed impregnable. The troops could not avail themselves of their superiority in arms and discipline. In a scene of confusion, which annihilated all subordination, and left neither time nor space for military evolutions, the mountaineer was more than equal to the soldier; for he had more confidence in his personal exertions than his adversary-his courage was less dependant on the co-operation of others-and the dirk and sword were more than a match for the musket and bayonet. The mode of fighting practised by the Highlanders is distinctly explained in a subsequent part of the memoirs:

"They advance with rapidity, discharge their pieces when within musket-length of the enemy, and then, throwing them down, draw their swords, and holding a dirk in their left hand with their target, they dart with fury on the enemy, through the smoke of their fire. When within reach of the enemy's bayonets, bending their left knee, they, by their attitude, cover their bodies with their targets, that receive the thrusts of the bayonets, which they contrive to parry, while at the same time they raise their sword-arm, and strike their adversary. Having once got within the bayonets, and into the ranks of the enemy, the soldiers have no longer any means of defending themselves, the fate of the battle is decided in an instant, and the carnage follows; the Highlanders bringing down two men at a time, one with the dirk in the left hand, and another with their sword." (P. 86.)

In the battle of Preston Pans the numbers were nearly equal. Cope had somewhat more than 2,100 men, the rebels about 2,400; of whom upwards of 600, forming the reserve, were not engaged. The author of Waverley deviates so far from the fact, as to estimate them at 4,000. It may be worth while to remark, as an illustration of what is of infinite importance both in public and