the outbreak took place so soon after
Marlborough had been professing the most devoted attachment to the
cause of the Stuarts, and had declared, as we have said already, that
he would rather cut off his right hand than do anything to injure the
claims of the Chevalier St. George. But it would not seem that any
advice Marlborough might have given was followed out very strictly in
the measures taken to put down the rebellion. We may be sure that
Marlborough's would have been military counsel worthy of the greatest
commander of his age. But in the measures taken to put down the
rebellion we can see nothing but incapacity, vacillation, and even
timidity. An energetic man in Argyll's position, seeing how James
Stuart halted and fluctuated, must have made up his mind at once that a
rapid and bold movement would finish the rebellion, and we find no such
movement made, until at last the most peremptory orders from London
compelled Argyll at all hazards to advance. If then Marlborough gave
his advice in London, which is very likely, it would seem that, for
some reason or other, the advice was not followed by the commanders in
the field. The whole story reminds one of the belief long entertained
in France, and which we suppose has some votaries there still, that the
great success of the Duke of Wellington, in the latter part of the war
against Napoleon, was due to the military counsels of Dumouriez, then
an exile in London.

There was a plan for the capture of Edinburgh Castle, which, like other
Stuart enterprises, would have been a great thing if it had only
succeeded. Edinburgh Castle was then full of arms, stores, and money.
Some eighty of the Jacobites, chiefly Highlanders, contrived a
well-laid scheme by which to get possession of the Castle. They
managed by bribes and promises to win over three soldiers in the Castle
itself. The arrangement was that these men were to be furnished with
ladders of a peculiar construction suited to the purpose, which, at a
certain hour of the night, they were to lower down the Castle rock on
the {130} north side--the side looking on the Prince Street of our day.
By these ladders the assailants were quietly to ascend, and then
overpower the little garrison, and possess themselves of the Castle.
When the stroke had been done, they were to fire three cannon, and men
stationed on the opposite coast of Fife were thereupon to light a
beacon; and the flash of that light would be the signal