penetrated into England, and conducted an
enterprise, bold in its conception, and admirable in its performance.

At Glasgow, the melancholy fate of the brave garrison in Carlisle became
known to the Jacobite army. Two days after the Prince had left, the Duke
of Cumberland invested it, and began to batter that part of the wall
which is towards the Irish gate. The governor of the Castle, Mr.
Hamilton, determined to capitulate even before a breach had been made in
the walls; and his proposal was vainly resisted by the brave Francis
Townley and others, who were resolved to defend themselves to the last
extremity. "They were in the right."[160] They might have held out for
several days, and perhaps obtained better terms; but the governor
persisted in surrendering to the clemency of King George, promised by
his inhuman and dishonourable son. Assurances of intercession were given
by the Duke of Cumberland, and the garrison of three hundred men
surrendered. On the Duke's return to London, it was decided by the
British government that he was not bound to observe a capitulation with
rebels. The brave, and confiding prisoners perished, twelve of the
officers by the common hangman, at Kennington; others, at Carlisle--many
died in prison. Their fate reflected strongly upon the conduct of
Charles Edward; but the general character of that young Prince, his
hatred of blood, his love of his adherents, prove that it was not
indifference to their safety which actuated him in the sacrifice of the
garrison of Carlisle. He was possessed with an infatuation, believing
that he should one day, and that day not distant, re-enter England; he
was surrounded by favourites, who all encouraged his predilections, and
fostered the hereditary self-will of his ill-starred race. The blood of
Townley, and of his brave fellow-sufferers, rests not as a stain on the
memory of Lord George Murray; and the Prince alone must bear the odium
of that needless sacrifice to a visionary future. "We must draw a veil,"
says the Chevalier Johnstone, "over this piece of cruelty, being
altogether unable either to discover the motive for leaving this three
hundred men at Carlisle, or to find an excuse for it."[161]

On arriving at Glasgow, the Prince sent a gentleman to Perth to procure
a particular account of the state of affairs in that part of the
country; and on finding that his forces were so widely scattered that a
considerable time must elapse before they could reass