erland. But the Prince's army was not well conditioned: it was
demoralized by retreat, hungry, ragged, dizzy with lack of sleep. Even
the terrors of the desperate Highland attack were no longer so terrible
to the English troops. Cumberland had taught his men, in order to
counteract the defence which the target offered to the bodies of the
Highlanders, to thrust with their bayonets in a slanting direction--not
against the man immediately opposite to its point, but at the unguarded
right side of the man attacking their comrade on the 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. 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 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