Glenfinnan:
19 August 1745.
I can almost see the Pretty Prince with three or four confused,
non-Scottish speaking French companions and a bunch of local clansmen (not only
confused, but ambivalent), standing around on the flat, marshy ground at the
head of Loch Shiel on a cold, grey, wet West Coast day, wondering about the
suitability of the site for a monument (bearing in mind the unsuitable clothing and footwear of American tourists), thinking about their warm homes, warm women and hot toddies, wondering whether it would be impolite to simply say "I
know what you're saying, Chuck, but the opposition has a much better team and
we don't stand a snowflake's chance of winning an away game at Culloden without
the Camerons", when the faint strains of bagpipes could be heard, followed
shortly after by the magnificent sight of the Camerons in full kit, cresting
the hills to the east, having marched for days and arriving (unfortunately, as
it would turn out) in the nick of time.
If only the Camerons had stayed for another round at the Maryburgh Inn, the Bonnie Prince might have,
like his father, lost his nerve and gone home to Paris.
The tyranny of small decisions, indeed!
From such seemingly inconsequential decisions in a public bar in an Inn in the small highland village of Maryburgh ("One more, anybody?" "No, we'd best no' keep the wee poof waiting.") is the fabric of history woven.
What would the difference have been if the Camerons had been late and Charlie had slunk away from Glenfinnan rather than Culloden?
From such seemingly inconsequential decisions in a public bar in an Inn in the small highland village of Maryburgh ("One more, anybody?" "No, we'd best no' keep the wee poof waiting.") is the fabric of history woven.
What would the difference have been if the Camerons had been late and Charlie had slunk away from Glenfinnan rather than Culloden?
Only
a few thousand dead highlanders.
Antonio David’s painting of Charles Edward Stewart in
the National Museum of Scotland makes me inclined to agree with Billy Connolly,
who called him “a little Italian poof”.
The epicene
Bonnie Prince arrived from France with an army of half a dozen supporters to
start a rebellion, then appears to have displayed all the military prowess that
characterized his antecedents at Solway Moss and Flodden, but with the added
Gallic flair of knowing when to make a timely exit and how to cross-dress.
Like the people of Glasgow (who "had never been
friendly to the Stewarts"), I have had my reservations about the Bonnie
Prince and his forebears, but I hadn't been aware of his incompetence,
impetuosity, arrogance and obstinacy. I was astounded by the repeated examples
of his ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, his refusal to take
advice from his loyal and capable lieutenants, such as Lord George Murray, and
his resentment of contrary opinions.
I have also learnt that “the main cause of the failure
(of the rebellion) was, however, quite a simple one – few people really wanted
the return of the Stewart kings”. Ambivalence in the lowlands for the claims on
the crown by the Bonny Prince was not because a large proportion of Scots were
less than enthusiastic about a short, cross-dressing Italian nancy-boy, but
because he was Catholic.
It also brings to mind the immeasurable misery brought
upon the Scottish people by the ambition and arrogance of this delusional
family of upper
class thickos.
Charles Dickens described James VI/I as cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty and cowardly.
John O’Farrell* asserts that Charles I was said to combine all the arrogance and certainty of the English upper classes, with an acute lack of intelligence and a natural tendency to deceive.
(Charles II was fairly normal - a drunken womanizer who fathered 14 illegitimate children.)
class thickos.
Charles Dickens described James VI/I as cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty and cowardly.
John O’Farrell* asserts that Charles I was said to combine all the arrogance and certainty of the English upper classes, with an acute lack of intelligence and a natural tendency to deceive.
(Charles II was fairly normal - a drunken womanizer who fathered 14 illegitimate children.)
The
cowardly and defeatist James VII/II was called Séamus á chaca (James the Shit) by the Irish after the Battle of
the Boyne, and his son, James Francis Edward Stewart (the Old Pretender,
Chuckie's dad) was apparently every bit as useless, indecisive and weedy a
hypochondriac as his father.
I could
probably accept the limitations of the Stewart family as being the result of
their Norman heritage and their inbreeding were it not for James IV, who, with
characteristically Stewart impulsiveness, decided to solve the problem of the
Border Reivers by the exemplary execution of a random selection of my forebears
at Jedburgh in 1510.
A pox on them all.
The Cameron cairn at Drummossie Moor, site of
the Battle of Culloden on April 16, 1746. Two hundred and fifty-five Cameron
clansmen were killed in the battle.
(“Shoulda
had another pint at the Maryburgh Inn, lads.")
* O'Farrell, John, An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots In Charge (London: Doubleday, 2007)
* O'Farrell, John, An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots In Charge (London: Doubleday, 2007)