THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND TAKES POSSESSION OF INVERNESS.

Immediately after the decisive action at Culloden, the duke took possession of Inverness, where six-and-thirty deserters, convicted by a court-martial, were ordered to be executed: then he detached several parties to ravage the country. One of these apprehended the lady Mackintosh, who was sent prisoner to Inverness. They did not plunder her house, but drove away her cattle, though her husband was actually in the service of government. The castle of lord Lovat was destroyed. The French prisoners were sent to Carlisle and Penrith: Kilmarnock, Balmerino, Cromartie, and his son the lord Macleod, were conveyed by sea to London; and those of an inferior rank were confined in different prisons. The marquis of Tullibardine, together with a brother of the earl of Dunmore, were seized and transported to the Tower of London, to which the earl of Traquaire had been committed on suspicion: in a few months after the battle of Culloden, Murray, the pretender’s secretary, was apprehended; and the eldest son of lord Lovat, having surrendered himself, was imprisoned in the castle of Edinburgh. In a word, all the gaols of Great Britain, from the capital northwards, were filled with those unfortunate captives; and great numbers of them were crowded together in the holds of ships, where they perished in the most deplorable manner, for the want of necessaries, air, and exercise. Some rebel chiefs escaped in two French frigates, which had arrived on the coast of Lochaber about the end of April, and engaged three vessels belonging to his Britannic majesty, which they obliged to retire. Others embarked on board of a ship on the coast of Buchan, and were conveyed to Norway; from thence they travelled to Sweden. In the month of May, the duke of Cumberland advanced with the army into the highlands as far as Fort-Augustus, where he encamped, and sent off detachments on all hands to hunt down the fugitives, and lay waste the country with fire and sword. The castles of Glengary and Lochiel were plundered and burned; every house, hut, or habitation, met with the same fate without distinction; all the cattle and provision were carried off; the men were either shot upon the mountains like wild beasts, or put to death in cold blood, without form of trial; the women, after having seen their husbands and fathers murdered, were subjected to brutal violation, and then turned out naked, with their children, to starve on the barren heaths. One whole family was enclosed in a barn, and consumed to ashes. Those ministers of vengeance were so alert in the execution of their office, that in a few days there was neither house, cottage, man, nor beast, to be seen in the compass of fifty miles: all was ruin, silence, and desolation.