On the 1st of November they marched, three detachments by three roads, and the meeting-place Carlisle.  All went most merrily well.  On the 10th of November began the siege of Carlisle.  The Prince had cannon now, some taken at Prestonpans, some arrived, no great time before, from France, first fruits of French support.  The English General Wade was at Newcastle with a larger army than that of the Jacobites.  But the siege of Carlisle was not lifted by Wade.  After three days city and castle surrendered.  Charles Edward and his army entered England.

From Carlisle they marched to Penrith—­to Kendal, Lancaster, Preston, Manchester—­clear, well-conducted marches, the army held well together and in hand, here and there handfuls of recruits.  But no flood of loyally-shouting gentry, no bearers of great names drawing the sword for King James III and a gallant, youthful Regent!  Each dawn said they will come!  Each eve said they have not come!  One month from leaving Edinburgh found this army of Highland chiefs and their clans, Lowland Scots, a few Englishmen, a few Irishmen, and a few Frenchmen, led by skilful enough generals and by a Prince the great-grandson of Charles I, deep in England, but little advanced in bulk for all that.  Old cavalier England stayed upon its acres.  Other times, other manners!  And how to know when an old vortex begins to disintegrate and a mode of action becomes antiquated, belated?

Wade was to one side with his army, and now there loomed ahead the Duke of Cumberland and ten thousand English troops.  Battle seemed imminent, yet again the Scots force pushed by.  The 4th of December found this strange wedge, of no great mass, but of a tested, rapier-like keenness and hardness, at the town of Derby, with London not a hundred and thirty miles away.  And still no English rising for the rightful King!  Instead Whig armies, and a slow Whiggish buzzing beginning through all the country.

The Duke of Cumberland and Marshal Wade, two jaws opening for Jacobite destruction, had between them twenty thousand men.  Spies brought report of thirty thousand drawn up before London, on Finchley Common.  The Prince might have so many lions of the desert in his Highlanders, but multitude will make a net that lions cannot break.  At Derby also they had news from that Scotland now so dangerously far behind them.  Royal Scots had landed from France, the Irish brigade from the same country was on the seas, and French regiments besides.  Lord John Drummond had in Scotland now at least three thousand men and good promise of more.  The Prince held council with the Duke of Perth, Lord George Murray, Lord Nairn, the many chiefs and leading voices.  Return to Scotland, make with these newly gathered troops and with others a greater army, expect aid from France, stand in a gained kingdom the onslaught from Hanoverian England?  Or go on—­go on toward London?  Encounter, defeat, with half his number, the Duke of Cumberland’s ten thousand,