the
shortness of the action, the cheapness of the victory, and, above all,
the moderation the Prince had shown during his prosperity,--the
leniency, and even tenderness, with which he had always treated his
enemies. But that which was done on the field of Culloden was but a
prelude to a long series of massacres committed in cold blood, which I
shall have occasion to mention afterwards."[262]

The Chevalier, leaving that part of the field upon which bodies in
layers of three or four deep were lying, rode along the moor in the
direction of Fort Augustus, where he passed the river of Nairn. He
halted, and held a conference with Sir Thomas Sheridan, Sullivan, and
Hay; and, having taken his resolution, he sent young Sullivan to the
gentlemen who had followed him, and who were now pretty numerous.
Sheridan at first pretended to conduct them to the place where the
Prince was to re-assemble his army; but, having ridden half a mile
towards Ruthven, he there stopped, and dismissed them all in the
Prince's name, telling them it was the Prince's "pleasure that they
should shift for themselves."

This abrupt and impolitic, not to say ungracious and unsoldier-like
proceeding, has been justified by the necessity of the moment. There
were no magazines in the Highlands, in which an unusual scarcity
prevailed. The Lowlanders, more especially, must have starved in a
country that had not the means of supporting its own inhabitants, and of
which they knew neither the roads nor the language. It is, however, but
too probable, that various suspicions, which were afterwards dispelled,
of the fidelity of the Scots, induced Charles to throw himself into the
hands of his Irish attendants at this critical juncture.[263]

The Duke of Perth, with his brother Lord John Drummond, and Lord George
Murray, with the Atholl men, and almost all the Low-country men who had
been in the Jacobite army, retired to Ruthven, where they remained a
short time with two or three thousand men, but without a day's
subsistence. The leaders of this band finding it impossible to keep the
men together, and receiving no orders from the Prince, came to a
resolution of separating. They took a melancholy farewell of each other,
brothers and companions in arms, and many of them united by ties of
relationship. The chieftains dispersed to seek places of shelter, to
escape the pursuit of Cumberland's "bloodhounds:" the men went to their
homes.

Such is the statement of Maxwell