In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's Highland army crossed the Forth at Alloa with cannon and war materials to shorten their journey south to Edinburgh. In addition to pressing the town's carpenters to build flat-bottomed boats for the crossing, they (and Charles' French allies) raised much needed money by forcing the Customs and Excise men to pay up.
The Highlanders placed cannon on the shore at Alloa and Airth to fire on Government ships should they appear.
Newspaper articles quoted below are from that year.
"Yesterday Ewan MacPherson of Cluny Esq; attended by a detachment of his Clan, came to the Abbey of Holyrood house, kissed the Prince's hands, and had the honour to dine with His Royal Highness. This gentleman left 400 more of his followers at Alloa, who serve as escort to 300 waggons with Artillery, Ammunition, Arms, etc. which are expected at Dalkieth tomorrow."
"A party of Highlanders and French came to Dunfermline on the 27th, to collect the cess and excise, and committed several outrages there and at Alloa."
"The Prince's Army having now secured the passage over the Forth, at Alloa, by planting batteries of 14 cannon on each side of the river, the march of the Forces from the North will be 3 or 4 days less than formerly."
Ewan MacPherson of Cluny
Ewen MacPherson of Cluny, also known as "Cluny Macpherson" (11 February 1706 – 30 June 1764), was the chief of the Clan MacPherson at the time of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. He took part as a supporter of Charles Edward Stuart and after the rebellion was crushed he went into hiding.
The territory of the Clan MacPherson covered Badenoch, south-east of Loch Ness, but the Macphersons were also part of a federation of other clans, called the Chattan Confederation (also called Clan Chattan). This alliance, which dated back to the 13th century, included the Mackintoshes, MacGillivrays, Davidsons, Shaws and others. A meeting of these allied clans in 1724 established that leadership was with the Mackintoshes.
In August 1745, with rumours of a Jacobite uprising circulating, the government offered Cluny command of an independent company in Lord Loudon’s regiment. This required swearing an oath of allegiance to George II. Once Charles Edward Stuart raised his standard at Glenfinnan in that same month, Cluny was in a bind. His clan had been Jacobite in 1715, but not all were similarly inclined thirty years later. A historian has noted that he ‘had no particular reason, economic, political or religious, strong enough to propel him into the Jacobite camp’. Moreover, his wife Jenny wanted her husband to remain faithful to the government.
Cluny did remain loyal to the government, to the extent of turning up with his company to assist the Government general John Cope on his march north in August 1745 to head off the Jacobite army. However, as it was understrength, he was sent back by Cope to raise more troops. Then, whilst home in Cluny Castle on the night of 28 August, he was taken prisoner by a Jacobite raiding party composed of Camerons (his mother’s family). To some extent, he may have wanted to be taken prisoner. Taken to Perth, he emerged within two weeks as a newly minted colonel in the Jacobite army.
He went north to raise troops for the Jacobite cause, but needed to use both persuasion and threats of violence to raise about 300 men. He was present at the Battle of Prestonpans on 21 September, when Cope’s forces were routed in a 15-minute battle. He met Bonnie Prince Charlie at Holyrood House in Edinburgh in late October. In December he took part in an attack on the Duke of Cumberland’s cavalry, at the Skirmish of Clifton Moor, near Penrith. He was also present at the Battle of Falkirk in January 1746. By February, with the Jacobite army retreating northwards, Cluny was sent ahead to raise more men, ‘burning the houses and killing the cattle of any reluctant to serve’.
He was not present at the Battle of Culloden in April, and went on the run after the Jacobite defeat there. His clansman surrendered in June, the same month Cluny House was plundered and burnt. On the last day of June, his elderly father Lachlan died ‘of a broken heart among the ruins of his son’s estate’. His father-in-law Lovat was captured by government forces in this same month, whilst his cousin Cameron of Lochiel escaped to France in October with the Prince.
Cluny spent the next nine years in hiding with a price on his head. In winter he was relatively safe from discovery. In summer, with troops on patrol, he led an itinerant existence. A report by a government officer suggested he ‘haunts the houses of his kindred and his wife’s in the day time, and he has proper places of retirement in the night time, to which he repairs by turns, according to the danger he (fears) he’s in, from the different motions of the troops’. He had many hiding places, although his most famous one was a small cave on Ben Alder, known as ‘the Cage’. It was in an area ‘full of great stones and crevices and some scattered wood interspersed’. Luckily, the colour of the rock obscured any smoke.
It is here he spent a week with Charles Edward Stuart in September.
In September 1754, Charles Edward Stuart (then living incognito in Paris) asked Cluny to come, and to bring any effects or money he had left over from the rebellion. So, still with a price on his head Cluny travelled through Edinburgh and arrived in London, where he spent several days among Jacobite sympathisers. He then went to Dover and arrived in Calais in May 1755. His Prince had moved to Basel, Switzerland at that point, which is where Cluny also went. It was not a happy reunion. The often-intoxicated Prince expected Cluny to account for the large sum of money given to him in 1746 to distribute among the disaffected and ‘to keep up the spirit of Jacobitism’. This money became known as the Loch Arkaig Treasure and is rumoured to still be buried there.