n Liddel water; here he slept, the
Highlanders finding their quarters for the night as well as they could
in barns, or byres, or houses, as their fortune might be. On the eighth
of November Charles Edward, proceeding down the Liddel water, met the
column of horse which had taken the middle road by Selkirk and Hawick.
They joined him at Gritmill Green upon the banks of the Esk, four miles
below Langholm. Shortly afterwards the first division of the Prince's
army crossed the river, which here separates the two kingdoms, as the
Tweed does at Berwick, and trod upon English ground. That event was
signalized by a loud shout, whilst the Highlanders unsheathed their
swords. But soon a general panic was spread among the soldiery, by the
intelligence that Cameron of Lochiel, in drawing his sword, had drawn
blood from his hand.[74] This was regarded as an omen of mournful
import. What was of much more vital consequence was the incessant
desertion of the troops, especially from the column which the Prince
commanded. Arms were afterwards found flung away in the fields, and the
roads to Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire were crowded with these
renegades. This circumstance Lord George Murray accounted for in these
terms, when, upon a subsequent occasion, he wrote to his brother,
complaining of the fact: "We are quite affronted with the scandalous
desertion of our men: it was the taking money instead of the best men,
which is the occasion of all the evil; for good men, once coming out,
would have been piqued in honour, and not deserted us on the point of
fighting the enemy."[75]

Such was the skill and secrecy with which the whole of this march had
been planned, chiefly by the suggestions of Lord George Murray, that the
forces were very much surprised on finding that all the three columns
arrived nearly at the same time, on a heath in England, about two miles
distant from the city of Carlisle. The plan was executed with such
precision, that there was not an interval of two hours between the
junction of the columns.[76]

It was now resolved to invest Carlisle. Few cities in England have been
the scenes of more momentous events than that which was now the object
of the Chevalier's efforts. Long the centre of border hostilities, it
was the fate of Carlisle to be at once the witness of the insurrection
of 1745, and the scene of punishment of those who were concerned in that
movement.

In modern times, the importance of Carlisle as a fortres