Part 32

"The Duke of Tarentum is of a good size, of a slender make, but robust and pale-faced, with eyes full of fire; his smile is sardonic, his bearing military, and his manners polished. I believe him to be a sincere friend; and although he showed a weakness of character in the council of war which occasioned the loss of the battle of Trebia, we cannot but allow him to have all the firmness necessary to a good general."

It has been already shown that the misfortune on the banks of the Trebia arose from circumstances over which the marshal had no control; but it was a battle that he fought long and gallantly.

He was thrice married; first to Mademoiselle Jacob, one of the most beautiful girls in France, by whom he had two daughters, one of whom married Sylvester Rene, Duke of Massa, in Italy; and the youngest to Alphonse Comte de Perregaux. He married secondly, Madame Joubert, formerly Mademoiselle de Montholon, widow of his comrade the brave General Joubert, who was slain in battle against Suwarrow at Novi, on the 16th of August, 1799. By her the marshal had an only daughter, afterwards the Marchioness de Rochedragon. He married thirdly, Madame de Bourgoing, daughter of the superintendent of the Royal Hospital at St. Denis, and widow of the Ambassador Baron de Bourgoing.[30]

They had two children: to the joy of the old marshal one of these was a son, whom he named Alexander, and who in October, 1824, was held at the baptismal font by his Majesty Charles X. and Madame the Dauphinesse, and who now inherits the dukedom of Tarentum, and the sabre of Mont Tabor.

Such was the career of Stephen Macdonald, the son of an obscure Scottish fugitive from the field of Culloden, who thus became a Marshal Duke of the Empire, and by his worth and bravery shed a glory on his father's name and on the rank he won.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: "General Macdonald, who has come forward with so much _eclat_ as commander of a French column, is the descendant of a Mr. Macdonald of Argyleshire. His uncle is Mr. Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart. He preserves his clannish affections, and in the campaign of Pichegreu in Flanders and Holland, having command of a brigade which had to press on a British brigade, where he discovered a _namesake_, he supplied his countryman during the memorable retreat with every comfort which a camp could afford."--_Edinburgh Herald_, 10th January, 1799.]

[Footnote 26: General Sarrazen says _fifteen_ thousand (?)]

[Footnote 27: Bourienne.]

[Footnote 28: _Bourienne._]

[Footnote 29: "The sabre I recognised at once; only since I had last seen it, the following words had been engraved on the blade:--_Sabre worn by the Emperor on the day of the battle of Mount Tabor_."--_Bourienne_, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 30: _Biographie Universelle_, &c.]

THOMAS DALYELL,

OF BINNS, GENERAL OF THE SCOTTISH ARMY, AND FIRST COLONEL OF THE SCOTS GREY DRAGOONS.

In my novel of _The Scottish Cavalier_ I have endeavoured to portray the character of this celebrated cavalier officer, with all that military sternness and ferocity of disposition which has generally been attributed to him, but chiefly by his enemies, for the poor man seems never to have found a single friend among the many historians of the Covenant. Thus, notwithstanding his unwavering loyalty to the House of Stuart in the days of its declension, by his extreme severity when that House was in the zenith of its power, he became so unpopular in Scotland, that his memory is still execrated there. He is stigmatized as a "persecutor," as the _Bloody Dalyell_, whose spirit is yet averred to haunt the fields where he routed or slew the children of the Covenant--who had sold himself to the devil; one who was shot-proof, and

"Whose form no darkening shadow traced Upon the sunny wall;"

one who, when he spat, burned a hole in the earth; one in whose military boots water would boil, and whose spectre, habited in a buff coat and morion, wearing that voluminous white beard for which he was so remarkable, still haunts the house in which he was born and the tomb in which he lies.

Descended from an old baronial family, which was afterwards ennobled by the Earldom of Carnwath, and which acquired its estates about the end of the sixteenth century he was the son of Thomas Dalyell, of the Binns, in West Lothian, and of the Honourable Janet Bruce, a daughter of the first Lord Bruce of Kinloss, the eminent minister of James VI.--a peer whose skill in statecraft, in conjunction with the Earl of Mar, was of great service in securing James's peaceful accession to the English throne in 1603.

Thomas Dalyell, the younger, is said to have been born about the year 1599, during the reign of James VI. in Scotland, at his father's house of Binns, in the parish of Abercorn, Linlithgowshire. The ancient name is Dalyell; but the _z_ has since crept in, by the corruption of the letter _y_ in old Scottish orthography, and hence the pronunciation of it so puzzling to an English tongue.

Dalyell is first heard of as an officer of those auxiliary Scottish troops sent to Ireland by their native Parliament, at the request of Charles I., to protect the Ulster colonists, and assist in repressing the rebellion under Sir Phelim O'Neil and Macguire, when the dreadful massacre of the English took place.

For this service the Parliament of Scotland levied eight battalions of infantry, of whom two thousand five hundred were Highlanders. Arms for three thousand men were offered to the Irish Protestants, and the castles of Craigmore and Carrickfergus, two small strongholds in the north of Ireland, were supplied with all requisite munitions of war from the magazines at Dumbarton.

The colonels of the eight Scottish regiments which mustered in November, 1641, were as follow:--

Archibald, Earl of Argyle, afterwards executed for treason in 1660.

Sir Duncan Campbell, of Auchinbreck, who was afterwards slain at the battle of Inverlochy.

Sir Mungo Campbell, of Lawers. These three had Highland battalions.

Alexander Lord Forbes, who had served the King of Sweden.

William, Earl of Lothian.

Alexander, Earl of Eglinton.

Lord Sinclair.

The Earl of Lindesay.

Major-General Sir David Leslie, of Pitcairly, was to command the whole. Argyle deputed the leading of his regiment to its lieutenant-colonel, James Wallace, of Auchans; Lord Sinclair's was led by his major, Sir James Turner, the celebrated military memorialist, and that of the Lord Lindesay was led by Major Borthwick.

Thomas Dalyell was an officer in these forces, but to which corps he was attached is not clearly known. He was with the first column of those auxiliaries which, under Major-General Munro--an officer who had long served with distinction in Germany, at the head of Lord Reay's Highlanders--embarked on the 2nd of April, 1642, for Ireland. He had with him three thousand infantry, six hundred cavalry, and a train of guns. Landing in the north of Ireland, he took possession of Carrickfergus, and in it placed a garrison under young Dalyell's command.

The second column sailed for Ireland on the 27th of July under Sir David Leslie, the same general who afterwards commanded the Scottish army at the battle of Dunbar, and for his services was raised to the peerage as Lord Newark.

At Carrickfergus Munro shot thirty Irish prisoners who were accused of committing outrages upon the Protestants. Local tradition has swelled this number to _three thousand_, and adds that they were thrown over certain rocks named the Gobbins.

On the 28th and 29th of April Munro was joined at Carrickfergus by Lord Conway and Colonel Chichester, with eighteen hundred English infantry, five troops of horse, and two of dragoons; and in May he succeeded in effecting a junction with Sir Henry Tichbourne of Beaulieu, when their united forces mustered only two thousand horse and twelve thousand infantry. At this time the pay of an English colonel was 3_l._ a week; of a captain, 2_l._; of a private, 3_s._ 6_d._ In 1645 more troops were required in Scotland to oppose the Cavaliers on the one hand, and the Irish on the other; thus, on the 27th of February, the Scottish shires and boroughs mustered a great force, whose pay was 6_s._ Scots per day.

It is not improbable that Dalyell was at the battle of Benburb, a village of Tyrone, where, in the spring of 1646, General Munro was defeated by the Irish, and forced to retire, with the loss of three thousand four hundred and twenty-three slain; Lord Montgomerie, twenty-one other officers, a hundred and fifty privates, the Scottish artillery, twenty stand of colours, and fifteen hundred baggage and cavalry horses taken. "In vain did Lord Blaney take pike in hand, and stand in the ranks. Though exposed to the play of Munro's guns and musketry, the Irish infantry charged up hill without firing a shot. They met a gallant resistance; but Blaney and his men held their ground long, till the superior vivacity and freshness of the Irish clansmen bore him down."

In 1648 we still find Dalyell, then a colonel, in command at Carrickfergus, when that little fortress was surprised by General Monk, who took possession of it in the name of the English Parliament, and made both Munro and Dalyell prisoners of war. The former he sent to London.

Henry Guthry, Bishop of Dunkeld, in his Memoirs, asserts that the castle was surrendered to Monk treacherously, by the Earl of Glencairn's regiment, which formed the garrison.

Dalyell was so deeply imbued by the Cavalier loyalty of the period, that about this time, on the death of Charles I., to testify his grief, he made a vow never to shave his beard until he had avenged him; and he cultivated this appendage to his stern visage until it attained great length and volume, for it covered his whole breast and descended below his girdle, as we may still see by the portraits of him. At this period _vow beards_, as they were named, were not unusual with the more resolute and enthusiastic of the Cavaliers. The comb with which Dalyell was wont to dress his hair is still preserved at Binns, "and it gives a vast idea of the extent of beard and of the majestic character of Dalyell in general, being no less than _twelve_ inches broad, while the teeth are at least six inches deep."

Dalyell was too enterprising and restless a spirit to remain long a prisoner; for he soon achieved his liberty, and, on returning to Scotland, was appointed major-general, and held that rank in the army, which consisted of eleven regiments of horse and twenty battalions of infantry, with fourteen field pieces, and which was led by Charles II. into England in 1651. At the head of his brigade he fought bravely at the fatal field of Worcester, where, on the defeat of the Scots, he had the misfortune to be again taken prisoner, and, with other officers and captives of rank, was marched, under a sure guard, to London, and committed to the Tower.

Sir Walter Scott, in his history of Scotland, mentions (but I know not on what authority) that he had previously served in the wars of Montrose.

For his loyalty and service in England his estates were declared, by the dominant party in Scotland, to be forfeited, and his name was specially excluded from the general Act of Indemnity. But Dalyell was not to be withheld even by the guards or gates of the Tower of London, for he soon after effected his escape again--_how_ is not recorded; but after lurking somewhere on the Continent, he suddenly made his appearance, in March, 1654, off the northern coast of Scotland, in a small vessel, at a time when the Lowlands were overawed by eighteen of Cromwell's garrisons and by ten thousand regular forces maintained by him, by Argyle, and his adherents.

This was in anticipation of the Restoration, and at a time when the cause of royalty in Britain seemed most desperate. Being joined by a Colonel Blackadder and a slender band of loyalists, he took possession of the castle of Skelko, and, wherever he went, boldly proclaimed the king, and denounced Argyle and Cromwell as rebels and regicides. To stimulate his exertions, he received the following characteristic letter from the young king, Charles II.:--

"Tom Dalyell,

"Though I need say nothing to you by this honest bearer, Captain Mewes, who can tell you all I would have said, yet I am willing to give it to you under my own hand, that I am very much pleased to hear how constant you are in your affection to me, and in your endeavours to advance my service. We have all a hard work to do; yet I doubt not God will carry us through it: and you can never fear that I will forget the good part you have acted, which, trust me, shall be rewarded, whenever it shall be in the power of your affectionate friend,

"Charles R."[31]

"Colen, 30th Dec. 1654."

This attempt of Dalyell's had been made in unison with the Earl of Glencairn's rash but gallant expedition to the Highlands, when Glengarry, Lochiel, Struan, and other chiefs, whose swords were never in the scabbard when Scotland or her king required them, met in the wilds of Lochearn, and made an arrangement to rise in arms and attempt a restoration; but all hope of success soon proved desperate, and they dispersed. Dalyell abandoned the castle he had taken, and retired once more to the Continent, where he obtained from the exiled king a letter or certificate, in which his bravery, loyalty, and faith, were warmly extolled and recommended.

Furnished with this, and having nothing else in the world now but his sword and his stout heart, the penniless cavalier resolved to seek his fortune in foreign wars. Proceeding to Russia, which has ever formed so ample a field for Scottish enterprise and valour, he visited the barbarous court of the czar, and applied for military service.

The sovereign then reigning was Alexis Michailowitch, grandson of the patriarch Fedor Romanoff, who in his fifteenth year had succeeded in 1645 to the title of czar; and is chiefly remarkable as being the father of Peter the Great, who raised the Muscovites from the depths of barbarism to a state of comparative civilization.

The letter of Charles II. at once procured for Dalyell the rank of lieutenant-general in the service of Muscovy; but great obscurity involves his career in that country, for even the wars in which he was engaged were little noted by the rest of Europe.

He was now in his fifty-fifth year.

Alexis invited several other Scots to join his army being anxious to introduce a more regular system of discipline into his ranks; but the most eminent of these were General Drummond, Governor of Smolensko, and the two Gordons,[32] who, under Peter the Great, brought to perfection the standing forces of Russia, which however were so few, that in 1687 they amounted to no more than ten thousand men. An old topographical work, published at the Savoy in London, in 1711, mentions that "the Russians endeavoured to bring their soldiers under better discipline; for which end they made use of a great many Scots and German officers, who instruct them in all the warlike exercises that are practised by other European nations."

At that time--the beginning of the last century--their infantry were armed with a musket, sword, and an axe, which were slung behind; their cavalry were clad in steel morions and cuirasses, and were armed with bows, arrows, iron mouls, sabres, targets, and spears; and in the epoch of Dalyell, their army had a great battle-drum, which was fastened to the backs of four horses abreast, and had eight drummers to beat upon it.

His first active service was against the Poles, with whom Alexis Michailowitch had gone to war in 1653, and from whom he captured Smolensko, which he united to Russia, and Kiow, after committing frightful devastations in Lithuania. The Russian armies then invaded Livonia, stormed Dorpt, Kokenhausen, and other places, but were obliged to retire from before Riga with severe loss.

Dalyell was now raised to the rank of full general, and commanded against the Tartars, and the Turkish armies of Mohammed IV.--the son of the debauched Sultan Ibrahim--against whom Alexis declared war about this time (1654-5); and in these contests, waged at the head of barbarous hordes against hordes equally barbarous, the wanderer must have acquired much of that unyielding sternness, if not ferocity, which characterized his future proceedings in his own country. In these campaigns quarter was never asked nor given; prisoners were shot, beheaded, impaled, or put to death by slow fires, and by every species of torture that Muscovite brutality, or the most refined cruelty of the Oriental mind could suggest; and in this terrible arena of foreign service was schooled the future commander-in-chief of the Scottish troops--the scourge of the Covenanters--he to whom was given full power to crush and to destroy the men who struggled for freedom of religious opinion, for liberty of conscience, and who, as they phrased it, "drew the sword for an oppressed Kirk and broken Covenant."

After eleven years of service in these wild and snow-covered regions, Dalyell requested permission, by desire of Charles II., to return to Scotland. The king had now been restored; Cromwell was in his grave; the Parliament and great officers of state had once more taken upon them the _mis_government of Scotland, and a wicked war was maintained there against the Presbyterian Church, which Lauderdale and his ministry were leaving nothing undone to subvert and to suppress. The Laird of Binns now requested from the czar a certificate of his faithful service in Russia, and a missive to that effect was passed under the great seal of the empire.

"Part of this document," says Chambers, "was conceived in the following terms:--

"That he formerly came hither to serve our great Czarian Majesty: whilst he was with us, he stood against our enemies and fought valiantly. The military men that were under his command, he regulated and disciplined, and himself led them to battle: and he did and performed everything faithfully, as a noble commander. And for his trusty services we were pleased to order the said lieutenant-general to be a general. And now having petitioned us to give him leave to return to his own country, _We_, the great Sovereign and Czarian Majesty, were pleased to order, that the said noble General, Thomas, the son of Thomas Dalyell, should have leave to go to his own country.

"And by this patent of our Czarian Majesty, we do testify of him, that he is a man of virtue and honour, and of great experience in military affairs. And in case he should be willing _again_ to serve our Czarian Majesty, he is to let us know of it beforehand, and he shall come into the dominions of our Czarian Majesty, with proper passports. Given at our Court, in the Metropolitan City of Moscow, in the year from the Creation of the World 7173, January 6."[33]

From Russia he was accompanied by his countryman and old fellow-soldier, who had served with him in Ireland, General Drummond, who was also summoned by Charles II. and obeyed the royal behest. In an Act passed by the Scottish Parliament in 1686, granting this officer the lands of Torwoodie, it is stated "that upon a call from his majesty's royal brother, after his restoration, he left a splendid and honourable employment under the Emperor of Russia to give obedience to his native prince, and since his return to this kingdom, he did good and signal service as major-general, in the defeat of the rebels and suppression of the rebellion raised in 1686."

From a passage in Burnet it would seem, that when the nonjuring exiles at Rotterdam and other Covenanters, were preparing to rise in arms in 1665, and when Charles II. found the necessity of raising more troops, he formally summoned Dalyell home.

"Two gallant officers," continues the Bishop, in the "History of his own Times," "that had served him in the wars, and when these were over had gone with his letters to serve in Muscovy, where one of them, Dalyell, was raised to be a general, and the other was advanced to be a lieutenant-general and Governor of Smolensko, were now, but _not without great difficulty_, sent back by the czar."

There can be little doubt that Dalyell returned to Scotland, with a heart boiling with rancour against those who had sold and destroyed the king; and who had brought so many of his brother soldiers--the Scottish Cavaliers of Montrose, of Hamilton and Munro--and so many of his own kinsmen, to the scaffold. With this sentiment may have been a longing for vengeance upon those who had been so long dominant in the land; who had deprived him of his estate and driven him into exile; and all these bitter sentiments were doubtless fostered by the inborn prejudice of class, religion, education, and the foreign service of years. To all these must be attributed many of the fierce and relentless acts which are related of him by the historians of the Covenant. Many of these dark deeds must, however, be doubted; and many accepted with caution.

After the Restoration, the Parliament of Scotland, which was presided over by Lieutenant-General the Earl of Middleton as High Commissioner, proved a very pliant and complying body. They granted to Charles II. a revenue of 40,000_l._ for life, and rescinded all the acts passed by their wiser predecessors for defining or _restricting_ the royal prerogative. The Solemn League and Covenant was pronounced a treasonable and seditious bond; and they passed other acts, by which the Earl of Lauderdale, Secretary of State for Scotland, gradually prepared a way for the abolition of Presbytery, and the restoration of an Episcopal Hierarchy. Alarmed by these measures, the Scottish Kirk sent James Sharpe, one of their most eminent divines, to expostulate with Charles II.; but Sharpe abandoned his colours, and betrayed their cause by accepting the Archbishopric of St. Andrews, while the Marquis of Argyle, James Guthrie, and Johnstone of Warriston, who had conspired with Cromwell, and directly, or indirectly, abetted the sale and execution of Charles I., were consigned to the headsman. Such was the new aspect of affairs, and it made religion and rancour grow side by side in the land.

The rash king next enjoined the Scottish privy council openly to establish Episcopacy, and bishops for the new dioceses were consecrated in England; while Fairfowl, Archbishop of Glasgow, was insane enough to solicit an act of council to eject all recusant ministers, and close their churches until episcopally ordained incumbents could be procured: and by this act, _three hundred and fifty_ parishes, about a third of those in the kingdom, were declared to be vacant; and this tyranny was attempted after all the wars, battles, and bloodshed in defence of the Covenant--after all the armies levied and lives lost since 1638, and after the king himself had perished in attempting to subvert the rights of the people! Now, the Scots became justly more than ever inflamed against the cruelty and injustice of their own government.