Series 2 > Origins of the 'Forty-five

WITH PRINCE CHARLES
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not, it’s fitting that you go and take your punishment
elsewhere ! ’—which dilemma was immediately solved by
the Highlander’s sword. Another Minister, seeing the
case his Brother was in, and being in a fair way to share
the same fate, begged his life of another Highlander for
Prince Charles’s sake, by which means he preserved
what he would otherwise inevitably have lost.
We now took possession of the enemy’s baggage, camp,
and eight pieces of cannon; which they had not time to
carry off—besides a few prisoners, the chief of whom
was Major Lockhart, who, after having his life given him,
and his liberty upon his parole of honour, afterwards
spumed against gratitude itself, by not only being hein¬
ously perjured, but more than ordinarily thirsty of those
prisoners’ blood who just before had spared his life.1
We had now about one-hundred prisoners, one of
whom seeing his situation and ours, said with a grave
countenance to his companion : ‘ By my soul, Dick, if
Prince Charles goes on in this way. Prince Frederick will
never be King George ! ’ But of the five or six thousand
men that went with the Prince to the field of battle,
scarce three thousand returned back with him, for many
of them, having loaded themselves with booty, returned
up to the hills. It was now a great loss to us, that we had
neither fort or other secure place to keep our prisoners
in, so that, if it were not merely out of mercy, it was to
no purpose to take prisoners, being without the means
of keeping them.
And now being come again to Stirling, the enemy being
fled to Edinburgh, and finding the siege of the Castle went
on but slowly the spirit of the army began much to change.
Factions, grudges, and private interest were now judged
proper to be exercised, so that the Prince was in a mortify¬
ing situation, seeing himself deserted by half his army,
and the others mightily turned. But as it is not for me
to say more than what relates to myself, I shall only
1 Lockhart was a major in Cholmondeley’s regiment, the 34th (now the Border
Regiment). He was taken prisoner at Falkirk and released on parole.
After Cujloden he especially distinguished himself by extraordinary barbarity
and the perpetration of terrible cruelties on the hunted fugitives. For instances
refer to the Lyon in Mourning.