ould have been than the
miserable career which was yet to lend no tragic dignity to the
prolonged, pitiful, pitiable life of the Young Pretender!

However, for good or evil, the insane decision was made. Charles'
council of war persistently argued for retreat. There were thirty
thousand men in the field against them. If they were defeated they would
be cut to pieces, and the Prince, if he escaped slaughter, would escape
it only to die as a rebel on Tower Hill, whereas, if they were once back
in Scotland, they would find new friends, new adherents, and even if
they failed to win the English crown, might at least count, with
reasonable security, upon converting Scotland, as of old, into a
separate kingdom with a Stuart king on its throne. By arguments such as
these the Prince's officers caused him to throw away the one chance he
had of gaining all that he had crossed the seas to gain.

It is only fair to remember that the young Prince himself was from the
first to last in favor of the braver course of boldly advancing upon
London. When his too prudent counsellors told him that if he advanced he
would be in Newgate in a fortnight, he still persisted in pressing his
own advice. Perhaps he thought that where the stake was so great, and
the chance of success not too forbidding, failure might as well end in
Newgate as in the purlieus of petty foreign courts. But, with the
exception of his Irish officers, he had nobody on his side. The Duke of
Perth and Sir John Gordon had a little plan of their own. They thought
that a march into Wales would be a good middle course to adopt, but
their suggestion found no backers. All Charles' other counsellors were
to a man in favor of retreat, and Charles, after at first threatening to
regard as traitors all who urged such a course, at last gave way.
Sullenly he issued the disastrous order to retreat, sullenly he rode in
the rear of that retreat, assuming the bearing of a man who is no longer
responsible for failure. The cheery good-humor, the bright heroism,
which had so far characterized him he had now completely lost, and he
rode, a dejected, a despairing, almost a doomed man, among his
disheartened followers. It is dreary reading the record of that
retreat; yet it is starred by some bright episodes. At Clifton there was
an engagement where the retreating Highlanders held their own, and
inflicted a distinct defeat upon Cumberland's army. Again, when they
were once more upon Scottish soil,