he
right.

After enduring for some time the terrible cannonade of the English, the
battle began when the Macintoshes charged with all their old desperate
valor upon the English. {225} But the English were better prepared
than before, and met the onslaught with such a volley as shattered the
Highland attack and literally matted the ground with Highland bodies.
Then the Royal troops advanced, and drove the rebels in helpless rout
before them. The fortunes of the fight might have gone very
differently if all the Highlanders had been as true to their cause as
those who formed this attacking right wing. "English gold and Scotch
traitors," says an old ballad of another fight, "won . . . , but no
Englishman." To no English gold can the defeat of Culloden be
attributed, but unhappily Scotch treason played its part in the
disaster. The Macdonalds had been placed at the left wing of the
battle instead of at the right, which they considered to be their
proper place. Furious at what they believed to be an insult, they took
no part whatever in the fight after they had discharged a single
volley, but stood and looked on in sullen apathy while the left wing
and centre of the prince's army were being whirled into space by the
Royalist advance. The Duke of Perth appealed desperately and in vain
to their hearts, reminded them of their old-time valor, and offered, if
they would only follow his cry of Claymore, to change his name and be
henceforward called Macdonald. In vain Keppoch rushed forward almost
alone, and met his death, moaning that the children of his tribe had
deserted him. There are few things in history more tragic than the
picture of that inert mass of moody Highlanders, frozen into traitors
through an insane pride and savage jealousy, witnessing the ruin of
their cause and the slaughter of their comrades unmoved, and listening
impassively to the entreaties of the gallant Perth and the death-groans
of the heroic Keppoch. In a few minutes the battle was over, the rout
was complete; the rebel army was in full retreat, with a third of its
number lying on the field of battle; the Duke of Cumberland was master
of the field, of all the Highland baggage and artillery, of fourteen
stands, and more than two thousand muskets. Culloden was fought and
won.

{226}

It is not necessary to believe the stories that have been told of
Charles Stuart, attributing to him personal cowardice on the fatal day
of Culloden. The evid