180 WORKMEN AND HEROES ties, the sporting squires, and the smugglers drank to " The king over the water," but there enthusiasm began and ended. More was expected, and till assured of more, France held aloof, while making promises enough. Even the Highland chiefs said that without a French army nothing could be done. In 1744 Charles left Rome, under pretext of a hunting party, concealed his withdrawal with great skill, and reached Paris. He was obliged, however, to be incognito and was not received by the king. An invad- ing force was crowded on board ship. The chance seemed excellent, England's forces being mainly abroad ; but the old friends of England, the winds, drove the battered fleet back into harbor, and Charles in vain tried to persuade the Earl Marischal to accompany him to Scotland in a small fishing vessel. One result followed the reception of Charles by France, niggardly as that reception was war with England broke out, and the French army of invasion was moved from Dunkirk to Flanders. The prince, not permitted to serve in the French army, returned to Paris, where he had been falsely assured by Semple and ./Eneas Macdonald that England was ready to rise for him. Murray, who visited him in Paris, tried to dissuade him from a wild venture ; in Scotland he found the chiefs of his own opinion, but the letter carrying the news never reached the prince. His Irish friends urged him on; "the expedition was en- tirely an Irish project." He borrowed money from his bankers, the Waters, he pawned his share of the Sobieski jewels, and, with a privateer man-of-war and a brig, La Doutelle, he left Belleisle on July 13, 1745. Neither the French court nor his father knew that, attended only by seven men, "The Seven Men of Moidart," he had set out to seek for a crown. The day before he embarked he wrote to James ; he said that no man would buy a horse, nor trust a prince, that showed no spirit. " I never intend to come back," he added. So, dressed as a student of the Scots College, he started. He lost his convoy, the Elizabeth, on the way, after a drawn battle with the Lion (Captain Brett). Resisting all advice to turn back, as ./Eneas Macdonald, who accompanied him, narrates, he held on in La Doutelle, and reached Erisca, an islet between Barra and South Uist, on August 2, 1745. An eagle hovered over his ship, and Tullibardine hailed the royal bird as a happy omen. But he found himself unwelcome. Boisdale bade him go home ; " I am at home," said the prince. He steered for Moidart, the most beautiful but the wildest shore of Scotland, a region of steep and serrated mountains, of long salt-water straits, winding beneath the bases of the hills, and of great fresh-water lochs. Loch Nahuagh was his port ; here he received Clan Ranald, whose desolate keep, Castle Tirrim, stands yet in ruins, since "the Fifteen." Glenaladale (whose descendants yet hold their barren acres), Dalilea, and Kinlochmoidart (now, like Clan Ranald, landless men) met him with discouraging words. But, seeing a flash in the eyes of a young Macdonald, of Kinlochmoidart, Charles said, " You will not forsake me?" "I will follow you to death, were no other sword drawn in your cause." The chiefs caught fire, Charles landed, with the seven men of Moidart ^Eneas Macdonald, the Judas of the cause ; the Duke of Athol (Tullibardine),
