THE BATTLE OF CULLODEN. 45 



in the masses of infantry that now pressed upon each other in helpless confusion, 

 indulged the spirit of revenge to its full extent. But the Highlanders did not 

 sink under the iron hoof and sabre of the horsemen unavenged ; although 

 entirely broken, in a military sense, they were still unsubdued in spirit.* Here 

 and there, like a stag at bay, turning desperately on their pursuers, they cut their 

 reins, wounded their horses, and, in falling, dragged the troopers to the ground. 

 Others, maimed and bleeding on the ground, but with sufficient life remaining 

 to render them formidable even in that miserable condition, sprang convulsively 

 from the earth as one of the exterminating horsemen approached, and plunging 

 his dirk into the charger's flank, brought his insulting enemy to the ground. 

 Scattered at short distances, detached groups of the clans almost buried 

 in the mass of horse that charged them stood back to back, the buckler in 

 one hand and the broadsword in the other, and forming in appearance a sort 

 of armed testudo, made desperate but ineffectual struggles to retrieve the fate 

 of the day. Their sable plumes and waving tartans, surged for a time in 

 rapid agitation, then, gradually sinking under the irresistible shock of cavalry, 

 disappeared like rocks in the continued rush of an overwhelming tide. Others 

 of the clans, struck with panic at a scene which threatened annihilation to their 

 cause, fled like deer before the hunter, and were cut down without even an 

 effort to resist, or a prayer for mercy. It was a moving sight to observe with 

 what native dignity the worsted but still unvanquished Celt met his fate. 

 Disabled by wounds, or exhausted by fatigue, he drew himself up feebly on 

 the ground, clenched the still bloody but useless steel, extended his target, and 

 with the attitude and expression of a dying gladiator, perished in the succeeding 

 charge. Others, unable to rise from the ground, but keenly alive to the scene 

 passing before them, followed with eager eyes the standard of the prince ; but 

 at last, seeing the tartan the badge of heroic clanship and " the blue bonnets 

 of the north," strewn around them like leaves in a sudden tempest, the sight 

 was heart-breaking. The spectacle of their prince and their chiefs crushed in 

 evil hour, inflicted an agony more poignant than their wounds, and falling 



Never was the peculiar and irresistible power of a charge of Highlanders more fearlessly displayed 

 than in this their last feudal engagement on their native hills. It was the emphatic custom before an 

 onset, says a spirited historian of this rebellion, to scrug their bonnets that is, to pull their little blue 

 caps down over their brows, so as to ensure them against falling off in the ensuing melie. Never, perhaps, 

 was this motion performed with so much emphasis as on the present occasion, when every man's forehead 

 burned with the desire tc avenge some dear friend who had fallen a victim to the murderous artillery. A 

 Lowland gentleman who was in the Jine, and who survived till a late period, used always, in relating the 

 events of Culloden, to comment, with a feeling of something like awe, upon the terrific and more than 

 natural expression of rage which glowed on every cheek, and gleamed in every eye, as he surveyed the 

 extended line at this moment. Chambers. 



VOL. II. N 



