Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/362

 348 "The duke of Argyll," he says, "grows so intolerably uneasy, that it is almost impossible to live with him any longer. He is enraged at the success of this expedition, though he and his creatures attribute to themselves the honour of it. When I brought him the news of the rebels being run from Perth, he seemed thunderstruck, and was so visibly concerned at it, that even the foreign officers that were in the room took notice of it. . . . Since the rebels quitting Perth, he has sent for five hundred or six hundred of his Argyllshire men, who go before the army a day's march to take possession of the towns the enemy have abandoned, and to plunder and destroy the country, which enrages our soldiers, who are forbid, under pain of death, to tale the value of a farthing, though out of the rebels' houses. Not one of these Argyll men appeared whilst the rebels were in Perth, and when they might have been of some use."



It would appear plain enough here that Argyll's motives were jealousy of the honours Cadogan was acquiring by the success of the expedition which he had compelled the duke to make, and every part of which was a proof of his previous neglect or something worse. His plundering the country is by no means in keeping with the plea that he acted so as to spare the Highlanders; and yet the subsequent events of 1717 and 1718 showed that he was not averse to listening to proposals from the pretender. When he arrived at Dundee on the 3rd, the rebel army was already gone. He and Cadogan then separated, taking different routes towards Montrose. Cadogan, whose heart was in the business, pushed on a-head, and on the 5th at noon reached Arbroath, where he received the news that the pretender had embarked at Montrose and gone to France. For some time it was said that he had turned a deaf ear to the advice of his officers, to secure his person by his escape to sea; but when it was at length determined on, every measure was taken to prevent the soldiers coming to a knowledge of it. He gave orders for the army to be ready about eight at night to march towards Aberdeen, where he assured them they would find a considerable force just landed from the continent to join them. Every rumour of his intended flight was positively denied. His horses were brought to the door of his lodgings: a guard of honour paraded there as usual. All suspicion was thus lulled. The soldiers were satisfied that he was going to accompany them in their march to Aberdeen, when it became known that he had privately slipped out at a back door, proceeded to Mar's lodgings, and thence, by a byeway, to the water-side, where he embarked with Mar, the earl of Melfort, lord Drummond, lieutenant-general Sheldon, and ten other gentlemen, on board a small French vessel, the "Maria Theresa," of St. Malo, and put to sea. In this manner did the descendant of a race of kings and the claimant of the crown of Great Britain sneak away and leave his unhappy followers to a sense of his perfidious and cruel desertion. His flight, no doubt, was necessary, but the manner of it was at once most humiliating and unfeeling. The consternation and wrath of the army on the discovery were indescribable.

He left behind him two letters, one to the duke of Argyll, inclosing a small sum of money, probably all he had, but most inadequate to its object—that of relieving the poor people who had been burnt out of their villages betwixt Perth and Stirling; the other was to general Gorden, explaining the inexorable necessity, from his disappointment in the amount of force provided in this country., and still