Part 23
Now, this battle went as might be looked for when brave men on both sides met: those lost who were fewer in numbers. And when all King Olaf's force had fallen, then leapt he overboard himself, holding his shield above his head; and so did Kolbjorn, his marshal, but his shield was under him on the sea, and he could not manage to dive, wherefore the men who were in the small ships took him, but he received quarter from the Earl. And after this all leapt overboard who yet lived; but most of these were wounded, and those who received quarter were taken as they swam: these were Thorkell Netja, Karlshead, Thorstein, and Einar Bowstring-shaker.
But after the battle was ended Earl Eric took for his own Long Snake and the other ships of King Olaf, and the weapons of many men who had wielded them manfully to the death.
Most famous has been this battle in Northland; first by reason of the brave defence, next for the attack and victory, wherein that ship was overcome on the deep sea which all had deemed invincible, but chiefly because there fell a chief famous beyond any of the Danish tongue. So greatly did men admire King Olaf and seek his friendship, that many would not hear of his being dead, but declared that he was yet alive in Wendland or in the south region. And about that many stories have been made.
FOOTNOTE:
[36] The Swedes were still heathens, and ate horses, meat then forbidden to Christians.
_THE DEATH OF HACON THE GOOD_ (A.D. 961)
[Eric Bloodaxe, Harold Fairhair's favourite son, ruled Norway for a year or so after his father's death. Then he and his queen Gunnhilda became so hated by the people that they welcomed as king his brother Hacon, who returned from England, where he had been brought up. Eric was forced to flee. For some time he was in Northumberland; he fell in the west while freebooting, about A.D. 950. Gunnhilda and her sons went to Denmark; they made many attempts to recover Norway; the issue of the last is here told.]
KING HACON, Athelstan's foster-son, long ruled over Norway; but in the latter part of his life Eric's sons came to Norway, and strove with him for the kingdom. They had battles together, wherein Hacon ever won the victory. The last battle was fought in Hordaland, on Stord Island, at Fitjar: there Hacon won the victory, but also got his death-wound.
And this battle came about in this wise. Gunnhilda's sons sailed northward from Denmark, taking the outer way, nor came they to land oftener than for men to get knowledge of their goings, while they also got knowledge of the public banquets given to King Hacon. They had ships well-found in men and weapons; and in their company was a mighty viking named Eyvind Skreyja; he was a brother of Queen Gunnhilda.
Hacon was at a banquet at Fitjar on Stord Island when they came thither; but he and all his men were unaware of their coming till the ships were sailing up from the south and had now gotten close to the island. King Hacon was even then sitting at table.
Now came a rumour to the King's guard that ships were seen sailing; wherefore some who were keenest of sight went out to look. And each said to his fellows that this would be an enemy, and each bade other to tell the King; but for this task none was found save Eyvind Finnsson, who was nicknamed Skald-spoiler.
He went in before the King, and spake thus: 'Fleeting hour is short, sire, but meal-time long.'
Said the King: 'Skald, what news?'
Eyvind answered:
'Vengers ('tis said) of Bloodaxe crave The battle-shock of belted glaive; Our sitting-time is done. Hard task, but 'tis thine honour, King, I seek, who here war tidings bring. Arm swiftly, every one!'
Then answered the King: 'Eyvind, thou art a brave wight and a wise; thou wouldst not tell war tidings unless they were true.' Whereupon all said that this was true, that ships were sailing that way, and within short space of the island. And at once the tables were taken up, and the King went out to see the fleet.
But when he had seen it he called to him his counsellors, and asked what should be done.
'Here be sailing many ships from the south: we have a force small but goodly. Now, I wish not to lead my best friends into overwhelming danger; but surely would be willing to flee, if wise men should not deem that this were great shame or folly.'
Then made answer each to other that everyone would rather fall dead across his fellow than flee before Danes.
Whereat the King said: 'Well spoken for heroes as ye are! And let each take his weapons, nor care how many Danes there be to one Norseman.'
Thereafter the King took his shield, and donned his coat of ring-mail, and girded him with the sword Millstone-biter, and set a golden helm on his head. Then did he marshal his force, putting together his bodyguard and the guests of the feast.
Gunnhilda's sons now came up on land, and they likewise marshalled their force, and it was by far the larger. The day was hot and sunny; so King Hacon slipped off his mail coat and raised his helm, and egged on his men to the onset laughing, and thus cheered his warriors by his blithe bearing. Then the fight began, and it was most stubborn. When the missiles were all thrown, King Hacon drew sword and stood in front under the banner, and hewed right and left; never did he miss, or, if he missed his man, the sword bit another.
Eyvind Skreyja went fiercely forward in the battle, challenging the Norsemen's courage. And chiefly pressed he on where Hacon's banner was, crying, 'Where is the Norsemen's king? Why doth he hide him? Why dares he not come forth and show himself? Who can point me to him?'
[Illustration: Hacon casts his shield away]
Then answered King Hacon: 'Hold thou on forward, if thou wilt find the Norsemen's king.'
And Hacon cast his shield by his side, and gripped his sword's mid-hilt with both hands, and ran forth from under the banner.
But Thoralf Skumsson said, 'Suffer me, sire, to go against Eyvind.'
The King answered: 'Me he wished to find; wherefore me he shall first meet.' But when the King came where Eyvind was, he hewed on either side of him, and then, with Millstone-biter in both hands, hewed at Eyvind's head, and clove him through helm and head right down to the shoulders.
This battle was not good for men weak in strength, weapons, or courage. Nor was it long after the fall of Eyvind Skreyja ere the whole Danish force turned and fled to their ships. Great numbers fell on the side of Eric's sons; but they themselves escaped.
King Hacon's men followed them far that day, and slew all whom they might; but the King bade his swift ship be launched, and rowed northwards along the coast, meaning to seek his house at Alrekstead, for he had gotten a wound by an arrow that pierced his arm while he drove before him the flying foe. And he lost so much blood that he swooned away. And when he came to the place called Hacon's Stone (it was where he was born), there he stayed for the night, bidding his land tent be set up and himself be carried ashore.
And as soon as King Hacon knew that his wound was mortal, he called to him his counsellors, and talked at large with his friends about those things that had been done in his days. And of this he then repented, that he had done much against God and Christian men's laws during his rule.
His friends offered to convey his body westwards to England, and bury it there in Church ground.
But the King answered: 'Of this I am not worthy; I lived as heathen men live, so, too, shall ye bury me.'
He bewailed the quarrels of himself and his kin; and having but one daughter, a child, and no son, he sent a letter to Gunnhilda's sons, wherein it was written that he gave to his kinsman Harold Grayfell his guard and his kingdom.
After this King Hacon died: he had ruled Norway for twenty-six years. He was mourned both by friends and foes. As Eyvind Skald-spoiler says:
'The King is born in blessed day Such love who gains: Of his fair age ever and aye Good fame remains.'
His men carried his body to Soeheim in North Hordaland, and raised a mound over it.
_PRINCE CHARLIE'S WAR_
I
THE BOYHOOD OF PRINCE CHARLIE
IN 1734 the city of Gaeta, in the kingdom of Naples, was held by an Austrian force, and was besieged by a mixed army of French, Walloons, Spaniards, and Italians, commanded by the Duke of Liria. Don Carlos, a Spanish prince, was doing his best, by their aid, to conquer the kingdom of Naples for himself. There is now no kingdom of Naples: there are no Austrian forces in Italy, and there is certainly, in all the armies of Europe, no such officer as was fighting under the Duke of Liria. This officer, in the uniform of a general of artillery, was a slim, fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of thirteen. He seemed to take a pleasure in the sound of the balls that rained about the trenches. When the Duke of Liria's quarters had been destroyed by five cannon shots, this very young officer was seen to enter the house, and the duke entreated, but scarcely commanded, him to leave. The boy might be heard shouting to the men of his very mixed force in all their various languages. He was the darling of the camp, and the favourite of the men, for his courage and pleasant manners.
This pretty boy with a taste for danger, Charles Edward Stuart, was called by his friends 'the Prince of Wales.' He was, indeed, the eldest son of James VIII. of Scotland and Third of England, known to his enemies as 'the Pretender.' James, again, was the son of James II., and was a mere baby when, in 1688, his father fled from England before the Prince of Orange.
The child (the son of James II.) grew up in France: he charged the English armies in Flanders, and fought not without distinction. He invaded Scotland in 1715, where he failed, and now, for many years, he had lived in Rome, a pensioner of the Pope. James was an unfortunate prince, but is so far to be praised that he would not change his creed to win a crown. He was a devout Catholic--his enemies said 'a bigoted Papist'--he was the child of bad luck from his cradle; he had borne many disappointments, and he was never the man to win back a kingdom by the sword. He had married a Polish princess, of the gallant House of Sobieski, and at Gaeta his eldest son, though only a boy, showed that he had the courage of the Sobieskis and the charm of the Stuarts. The spies of the English Government confessed that the boy was more dangerous than the man, Prince Charles than King James.
[Illustration: 'IN THE BORGHESE GARDENS PRACTISED THAT ROYAL GAME OF GOLF']
While Charles, at Gaeta, was learning the art of war, and causing his cousin, the Duke of Liria, to pass some of the uneasiest moments of his life, at home in Rome his younger brother Henry, Duke of York, aged nine, was so indignant with his parents for not allowing him to go to the war with his brother, that he flung away his little sword in a temper. From their cradle these boys had thought and heard of little else but the past glories of their race; it was the dream of their lives to be restored to their own country. In all he did, the thought was always uppermost with Charles. On the way from Gaeta to Naples, leaning over the ship's side, the young Prince lost his hat; immediately a boat was lowered in the hope of saving it, but Charles stopped the sailors, saying with a peculiar smile, 'I shall be obliged before long to go and fetch myself a hat in England.'
Every thought, every study, every sport that occupied the next few years of Charles' life in Rome, had the same end, namely, preparing himself in every way for the task of regaining his kingdom. Long days of rowing on the lake of Albano, and boar-hunting at Cisterna, made him strong and
## active. He would often make marches in shoes without stockings,
hardening his feet for the part he played afterwards on many a long tramp in the Highlands. Instead of enjoying the ordinary effeminate pleasures of the Roman nobility, he shot and hunted; and in the Borghese Gardens practised that royal game of golf, which his ancestors had played long before on the links at St. Andrews and the North Inch of Perth. His more serious studies were, perhaps, less ardently pursued. Though no prince ever used a sword more gallantly and to more purpose, it cannot be denied that he habitually spelled it 'sord,' and though no son ever wrote more dutiful and affectionate letters to a father, he seldom got nearer the correct spelling of his parent's name than 'Gems. In lonely parts of Rome the handsome lad and his melancholy father might often have been seen talking eagerly and confidentially, planning, and for ever planning, that long-talked-of descent upon their lost kingdom.
If his thoughts turned constantly to Britain, many hearts in that country were thinking of him with anxious prayers and hopes. In England, in out-of-the-way manor-houses and parsonages, old-fashioned, high-church squires and clergymen still secretly toasted the exiled family. But in the fifty years that had passed since the Revolution, men had got used to peace and the blessings of a settled government. Jacobitism in England was a sentiment, hereditary in certain Tory families; it was not a passion to stir the hearts of the people and engage them in civil strife. It was very different with the Scots. The Stuarts were, after all, their old race of kings; once they were removed and unfortunate, their tyranny was forgotten, and the old national feeling centred round them. The pride of the people had suffered at the Union (1707); the old Scots nobility felt that they had lost in importance; the people resented the enforcement of new taxes. The Presbyterians of the trading classes were Whigs; but the persecuted Episcopalians and Catholics, with the mob of Edinburgh, were for 'the auld Stuarts back again.' This feeling against the present Government and attachment to the exiled family were especially strong among the fierce and faithful people of the Highlands. Among families of distinction, like the Camerons of Lochiel, the Oliphants of Gask, and many others, Jacobitism formed part of the religion of gallant, simple-minded gentlemen and of high-spirited, devoted women. In many a sheiling and farmhouse old broadswords and muskets, well-hidden from the keen eye of the Government soldiers, were carefully cherished against the brave day when 'the king should have his own again.'
In 1744 that day seemed to have dawned to which Charles had all his life been looking forward. France, at war with England, was preparing an invasion of that country, and was glad enough to use the claims of the Stuarts for her own purposes. A fleet was actually on the point of starting, and Charles, in the highest spirits, was already on shipboard, but the English admiral was alert. A storm worked havoc among the French ships, and it suited the French Government to give up the expedition. Desperate with disappointment, Charles proposed to his father's friend, the exiled Lord Marischall, to sail for Scotland by himself in a herring-boat, and was hurt and indignant when the old soldier refused to sanction such an audacious plan.
Charles had seen enough of hanging about foreign courts and depending on their wavoring policy; he was determined to strike a blow for himself. In Paris he was surrounded by restless spirits like his own; Scots and Irish officers in the French service, and heart-broken exiles like old Tullibardine, eager for any chance that would restore them to their own country. Even prudent men of business lent themselves to Charles's plans. His bankers in Paris advanced him 180,000 livres for the purchase of arms, and of two Scottish merchants at Nantes, Walsh and Routledge, one undertook to convey him to Scotland in a brig of eighteen guns, the 'Doutelle,' while the other chartered a French man-of-war, the 'Elizabeth,' to be the convoy, and to carry arms and ammunition. To provide these Charles had pawned his jewels, jewels which 'on _this_ side I could only wear with a very sad heart,' he wrote to his father; for the same purpose he would gladly have pawned his shirt. On June 22 he started from the mouth of the Loire in all haste and secrecy, only writing for his father's blessing and sanction when he knew it would be too late for any attempt to be made to stop him. The companions of his voyage were the old Marquis of Tullibardine, who had been deprived of his dukedom of Athol in the '15; the Prince's tutor and cousin, Sir Thomas Sheridan, a rather injudicious Irishman; two other Irishmen in the French and Spanish services; Kelly, a young English divine; and Aeneas Macdonald, a banker in Paris, and younger brother of the chieftain Macdonald of Kinloch Moidart, a prudent young man, who saw himself involved in the Prince's cause very much against his will and better judgment.
II
PRINCE CHARLIE'S LANDING
ENGLAND and France being at war at this time, the Channel was constantly swept by English men-of-war. The 'Doutelle' and her convoy were hardly four days out before the 'Elizabeth' was attacked by an English frigate, the 'Lion.' Knowing _who_ it was he had on board, Walsh, the prudent master of the 'Doutelle,' would by no means consent to join in the fray, and sheered off to the north in spite of the commands and remonstrances of the Prince. The unfortunate 'Elizabeth' was so much disabled that she had to return to Brest, taking with her most of the arms and ammunition for the expedition. At night the 'Doutelle' sailed without a light and kept well out to sea, and so escaped further molestation. The first land they sighted was the south end of the Long Island. Gazing with eager eyes on the Promised Land, old Lord Tullibardine was the first to notice a large Hebridean eagle which flew above the ship as they approached. 'Sir,' he said, 'it is a good omen; the king of birds has come to welcome your royal highness to Scotland.'
Charles had need of all happy auguries, for on his arrival in Scotland things did not seem very hopeful. With his usual rash confidence he had very much exaggerated the eagerness of his friends and supporters to welcome him in whatever guise he might come. Never had fallen kings more faithful and unselfish friends than had the exiled Stuarts in the Highland chiefs and Jacobite lairds of Scotland, but even they were hardly prepared to risk life and property with a certainty of failure and defeat. Let the Prince appear with 5,000 French soldiers and French money and arms, and they would gather round him with alacrity, but they were prudent men and knew too well the strength of the existing Government to think that they could overturn it unaided.
The first man to tell the Prince this unwelcome truth was Macdonald of Boisdale, to whom he sent a message as soon as he landed in Uist. This Boisdale was brother of the old Clanranald, chief of the loyal clan Macdonald of Clanranald. If these, his stoutest friends, hesitated to join his expedition Charles should have felt that his cause was desperate indeed. But his mind was made up with all the daring of his five-and-twenty years, and all the ill-fated obstinacy of his race. For hours he argued with the old Highlander as the ship glided over the waters of the Minch. He enumerated the friends he could count on, among them the two most powerful chiefs of the North, Macdonald of Sleat, and the Macleod. 'They have both declared for the existing Government,' was the sad reply. Before taking leave of the Prince, Boisdale again urged his returning 'home.' 'I am come _home_,' replied Charles passionately, 'and can entertain no notion of returning. I am persuaded that my faithful Highlanders will stand by me.'
[Illustration: 'I WILL, THOUGH NOT ANOTHER MAN IN THE HIGHLANDS SHOULD DRAW A SWORD']
On July 19 the 'Doutelle' cast anchor in Loch na-Nuagh, in the country of the loyal Macdonalds. The first thing Charles did was to send a letter to the young Clanranald to beg his immediate presence. The next day four of the chief men of the clan waited on Charles, Clanranald, Kinloch Moidart, Glenaladale, and another who has left us a lively picture of the meeting. For three hours, in a private interview, Clanranald tried in vain to dissuade the Prince. Then Charles--still preserving his incognito--appeared among the assembled gentlemen on deck. 'At his first appearance I found my heart swell to my very throat 'writes the honest gentleman who narrates the story. His emotion was fully shared by a younger brother of Kinloch Moidart's who stood on deck silent from youth and modesty, but with his whole heart looking out of his eyes. His brother and the other chiefs walked up and down the deck arguing and remonstrating with Charles, proving the hopelessness of the undertaking. As he listened to their talk the boy's colour came and went, his hand involuntarily tightened on his sword. Charles caught sight of the eager young face, and, turning suddenly towards him cried, 'Will _you_ not assist me?' 'I will, I will; though not another man in the Highlands should draw a sword, I will die for you.' Indeed, years after all had failed, young Clanranald prepared a new rising, and had 9,000 stand of arms concealed in the caves of Moidart.
The boy's words were like flint to tinder. Before they left the ship the hesitating chieftains had pledged themselves to risk property, influence, freedom, and life itself in the Prince's cause. These gallant Macdonalds were now willing to run all risks in receiving the Prince even before a single other clan had declared for him. Old Macdonald of Boisdale entertained Charles as an honoured guest in his bare but hospitable Highland house. All the people of the district crowded to see him as he sat at dinner. The young Prince delighted all present by his geniality and the interest he showed in everything Highland, and when he insisted on learning enough Gaelic to propose the king's health in their native language, the hearts of the simple and affectionate people were completely gained.