ries, and the picture of a young prince marching through
conquest after conquest to a crown; the second part prefaced by a
disastrous resolution leading to overwhelming defeat and ending in
ignominious flight and the extinction of the last Stuart hope. From the
moment when the Stuart standard fluttered its folds of white and crimson
on the Highland wind it seemed as if the Stuart luck had turned. Charles
might well conceive himself happy. Upon his sword sat laurel victory.
Smooth success was strewn before his feet. The blundering and
bewildered Cope[30] actually allowed Charles and his army to get past
him. Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a terrible
blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon Inverness
Charles was triumphantly entering Perth. From Perth the young Prince,
with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, marched on Edinburgh.

The condition of Edinburgh was peculiar: although a large proportion of
its inhabitants, especially those who were well-to-do, were stanch
supporters of the house of Hanover, there were plenty of Jacobites in
the place, and it only needed the favor of a few victories to bring into
open day a great deal of latent Jacobitism that was for the moment
prudently kept under by its possessors. The lord-provost himself was
more than suspected of being a Jacobite at heart. The city was miserably
defended. Such walls as it possessed were more ornamental than useful,
and in any case were sadly in want of repair. All the military force it
could muster to meet the advance of the clans was the small but fairly
efficient body of men who formed the town guard; the train-bands, some
thousand strong, who knew no more than so many spinsters of the division
of a battle; the small and undisciplined Edinburgh regiment, and a
scratch collection of volunteers hurriedly raked together from among the
humbler citizens of the town, and about as useful as so many puppets to
oppose to the daring and the ferocity of the clans.

Edinburgh opinion had changed very rapidly with regard to that same
daring and ferocity. When the first rumors of the Prince's advance were
bruited abroad the adherents of the house of Hanover in Edinburgh made
very merry over the gang of ragged rascals, hen-roost robbers, and
drunken rogues upon whom the Pretender relied in his effort to "enjoy
his ain again." But as the clans came nearer and nearer, as the air grew
thicker with flying rumors of the succes