November he marched. He set off on the famous march south. In this
undertaking, as before, the same extraordinary good-fortune attended
upon the Stuart arms. His little army of less than six thousand men
reached Carlisle, reached Manchester, without opposition. On December
4th he was at Derby, only one hundred twenty-seven miles from London.
Once again, by skill or by good-fortune, he had contrived to slip past
the English general sent out to bar his way. Cumberland with his forces
was at Stafford, nine miles farther from the capital than the young
Prince, who was now only six days from the city, with all his hopes and
his ambitions ahead of him, and behind him the hostile army of the
general he had eluded.

Never, perhaps, in the history of warfare did an invader come so near
the goal of his success and throw it so wantonly away; for that is what
Charles did. With all that he had come for apparently within his reach,
he did not reach out to take it; the crown of England was in the hollow
of his hand, and he opened his hand and let the prize fall from it. It
is difficult to understand now what curious madness prompted the
Prince's advisers to counsel him as they did, or the Prince to act upon
their counsels. He was in the heart of England; he was hard by the
capital, which he would have to reach if he was ever to mount the throne
of his fathers. He had a devoted army with him--it would seem as if he
had only to advance and to win--and yet, with a fatuity which makes the
student of history gasp, he actually resolved to retreat, and did
retreat.

It is true, and must not be forgotten, that Charles did not know, and
could not know, all his advantages; that many of the most urgent
arguments for advance could not present themselves to his mind. He could
not know the panic in which Hanoverian London was cast; he could not
know that desperate thoughts of joining the Stuart cause were crossing
the craven mind of the Duke of Newcastle; he could not know that the
frightened _bourgeoisie_ were making a maddened rush upon the Bank of
England; he could not know that the King of England had stored all his
most precious possessions on board of yachts that waited for him at the
Tower stairs, ready at a moment's notice to carry him off again into the
decent obscurity of the electorship of Hanover. He could not know the
exultation of the metropolitan Jacobites; he could not know the
perturbation of the Hanoverian side; he could not kno