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who could not be prevailed upon 'to move one Foot', and
realising that it was hopeless to expect anything further
of them. Cope and the rest of the officers rode off at their
head, as this was found to be the only way of keeping them
together. The lane along which they retreated from Preston
up the side of Birsley Brae, is still known as 'Johnnie
Cope's Road'.
In spite of having posted himself with his life-guards well
in advance of the Highland reserve, the Prince saw little
of the fighting. Scarcely more than five minutes elapsed
from the onslaught on the royal foot to the breaking of
the entire front line, and by the time that he and the reserve
came up 'we saw no other enemy on the field of battle',
wrote Johnstone, 'than those who were lying on the ground
killed and wounded, though we were not more than fifty paces
behind our first line, running always as fast as we could
to overtake them, and near enough never to lose sight of
them'.
In the rout that followed, the royal infantry, encumbered
by their tight clothing and heavier equipment, had little
chance of escape. In their panic they threw away their arms
in order to run faster, and following the dragoons' example
fled back to the park walls of Preston, where some few managed
to find their way to safety through the breaches, but many
more were killed as they tried to climb the high walls,
or struggled to reach the defile. Few fell by small-arm
fire; nearly all by the broadsword, and the battlefield
'presented a spectacle of horror, being covered with heads,
legs, and arms, and mutilated bodies . . . '. It was indeed
a formidable weapon, and a single stroke of a Highland officer's
sword is said to have severed the arm of a grenadier of
Murray's raised to ward off the blow, and to have penetrated
his skull, so that he died instantly. Hardly less effective
were the scythe-blades of a company of MacGregors belonging
to the Duke of Perth's regiment, which ' cut the legs of
the horses in two; and their riders through the middle of
their bodies', and as a historian has remarked, the sight
of such butchery must have had the same effect on many of
the young soldiers as it was to have a century later on
those who fought in the Zulu wars. Nor would their stories
of bloodshed and terror lose anything in the telling, and
as fear breeds cruelty, it is not over-fanciful to suppose
that some of the royal army's excesses after Culloden were
inspired by them.
The Highlander, once his blood is up, is not remarkable
for self- control, and Lord George Murray's statement that
'never was
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