One step from South Uist one step from Ruler of France
John Morrison followed in the footsteps of Neil MacEachen from South Uist to Sancerre for the BBC.
It was late April. The wind which whistled around Nunton house in Benbecula still carried an Arctic chill as the MacDonald chief and some of his closest friends discussed the military catastrophe that had occurred 12 days earlier on the icy fields of Culloden. Whichever way it was viewed, the outlook was dark for the clans that had risen for the young Prince.
But even the men of Clanranald could not have predicted the full scale of the avenging forces that would eventually be ranged against them. Their estates would be seized; their language and culture would face extinction.
The hushed message on the doorstep had a more immediate and life-changing impact on one of the young men at the table.
Neil MacEachen, tutor to the Clanranald children and friend of Charles Edward Stuart, made a decision that instantly put his own life and the lives of his family in danger. It would eventually mean that he died in abject poverty in a foreign land.
Born in Howbeg, a small village on the west coast of South Uist, Neil was an intelligent, pious young man who felt he had a calling for the priesthood. At the time no one could train to be a priest in Protestant, post-Reformation Scotland so Neil had to go to the Scots College in Paris.
Between the two Jacobite risings, the College was more political than ecclesiastical. Young Neil was there at the same time as many leading Jacobites including the Duke of Perth and the Earl of Traquair. Even today, although the building is now used as a children's nursery, the main entrance hall is dominated by a portrait of the Old Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie's father. Several prominent Jacobites are buried beneath the floor of the chapel.
Neil never completed his studies and returned to Uist where he tutored the chief's family but this may have been a cover for his activities as a Jacobite spy. It is claimed that he fought in the 1745 rebellion and was present at Culloden but there is no real evidence.
However, there is no question about the importance of his role in helping the Prince evade capture and eventually escape to France.
Every child in Scottish schools knows the story of the Prince dressing in women's clothes, changing his name to Betty Burke and escaping “across the sea to Skye” with Flora MacDonald.
Flora was in the boat that slipped across the Minch early one morning but so was her cousin, Neil MacEachen. For several weeks he had been the Prince's constant companion as he hid from the Red Coat soldiers in isolated caves around South Uist.
The message on the Nunton doorstep was short but its impact was profound. Neil MacEachen did not hesitate when he heard the whispered words, “The Prince has landed.”
Fluent in Gaelic, English and French and with an intimate knowledge of the moor and the coastline of Uist, Mac Eachen knew that he could be the difference between life and death for the Prince.
Charles Edward Stuart had been on the run for nearly a fortnight when his ship arrived at Rosinish on the east coast of Benbecula. There was a reward on his head of £30,000 from the British Government, which is worth about £4.5 million pounds in today's currency. The reward for Osama bin Laden after 9/11 was about £12.5 million.
Eventually Neil, 'Betty Burke' and Flora MacDonald crossed to Skye and onto the mainland. Months later the two men and other Jacobites were picked up by a French vessel and escaped to Paris.
In France, all the Jacobite officers who had fled from Scotland were recruited to the army and Neil became a lieutenant. He had changed his surname to MacDonald. It is not clear why but various theories have been put forward. It could have been through loyalty to the MacDonald clan or because the Prince was known to trust the MacDonalds. Or was it simply because MacEachen was too difficult for the French to pronounce?
Whatever the reason, Neil's name can still be seen in the French military records at the Chateau de Vincennes outside Paris. The archivist, Dr Nathalie Genet Rouffiac, an expert on the Jacobites in France showed me Neil's name in a report on the Ogilvie regiment in 1761.
She said, “It's interesting that a handwritten note in French, English and Scots in the margin records that Neil MacDonald has a very close bond with Charles Edward Stuart. Obviously the military authorities thought this was important enough to write it down.”
However, two years later a peace treaty between England and France led to redundancies in the French army and Neil's life was to change for the worse. The English negotiators insisted that Bonnie Prince Charlie should be expelled from France. Several years later the Jacobite regiments were disbanded and Neil moved his young family to the town of Sancerre on the banks of the Loire river.
Sancerre had considerable attractions. The cost of living was cheap, the wine was good and the town was home to a small Jacobite community including Lord Nairn and the MacNabs. Indeed a plaque can still be seen on the wall of Lord Nairn's house, with inscriptions in French and Gaelic, commemorating the historic links with the Jacobites.
But Neil was now extremely poor and forced to live in cramped conditions in one room of a house with a wife he was not getting on with and their two children.
A local historian, Jean-Yves Ribault, said, “Neil's wife took in laundry and took cleaning jobs but it seems he did very little. The family would not have survived without financial support from better off Jacobites.”
Neil MacDonald eventually paid a heavy price for his loyalty to the Prince. He died in 1788 in exile and poverty far from the beautiful white beach of his childhood in Howbeg.
By the time of Neil's death his son, Etienne Alexander MacDonald, had started his brilliant military career. A clever boy like his father, Lord Nairn and other Jacobites, paid for his early education. But it was in the army that he revealed his genius, which, allied to a considerable political surefootedness, allowed him to survive and thrive in one of the most turbulent periods in French history. Four years older than Napoleon Bonaparte his career followed a similar path, with one notable difference.
By 1799 revolutionary France was in trouble on several fronts. Its armies were being outfought by a coalition of Britain and the Russian, Austrian and Ottoman Empires. A political faction planned a coup d'état and wanted a General to head it.
Napoleon Bonaparte, who had recently returned from fighting in Egypt, led that coup but he wasn't first choice. Jean Didier Hache, a French historian who has a house in Benbecula, has translated Marshall MacDonald's diary into English explained what happened, “The people who were backing the coup d'état looked for 'a sword', in other words a General who would back it. Firstly they went to General Joubert but he was killed in Italy. They then went to General Moreau who also refused. Afterwards they went to MacDonald who also said 'No I won't do it'. Eventually they approached Bonaparte who said, 'Yes, I'll do it by all means'. So the he coup that toppled the regime was led by Bonaparte backed by the Army, including MacDonald.”
It is incredible to think that the most powerful man in Europe could have been Emperor MacDonald of France, a man who was one step away from a poor crofting village in South Uist.
As MacDonald continued to prove his military prowess winning battles across Europe, his value to France was recognised by Napoleon who appointed him a Marshall of the Empire and then the Duke of Taranto in 1810.
But only three years later Napoleon and France suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of Leipzig and the Allied forces soon occupied Paris. MacDonald and other Generals went to Fontainbleau to convince Napoleon to abdicate.
In his memoirs MacDonald described their last meeting, “He was seated before the fire, clothed in a simple dressing gown, his legs bare, his feet in slippers, his head buried in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees. The Emperor appeared to wake from a dream and to be surprised at seeing me.”
Napoleon presented his Marshall with the sword he had worn in his Egyptian campaign and said, “Keep it in remembrance of me and my friendship for you.”
MacDonald then tried to negotiate the best possible terms of abdication with the Allies, and in particular with the Czar of Russia.
Napoleon was sentenced to exile in Elba but escaped and raised an army of loyal veterans. He asked MacDonald to join him but by this time he had sworn allegiance to the restored Monarch, King Louis the XVIIIth and refused. Napoleon's dream of returning to power was eventually broken at Waterloo and he was soon back in exile where he died in 1821.
While Napoleon's memory faded away MacDonald prospered. He became a Minister in the French Government, a Peer of the Realm and was elevated to Arch-Chancellor of the order of the Legion d'Honneur. His statue now stands on the side of the Louvre, his name is inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe and one of the boulevards of Paris was named after him.
By now MacDonald was a very rich man. He owned a massive house on the banks of the Seine and a chateau and estate on the Loire, not far from Sancerre where his father had died in poverty.
But the son of South Uist had never forgotten the stories his father had told him as a boy and in 1825 he went on a remarkable pilgrimage back to Howbeg. His diary records the purpose of his trip:
“29th of June 1825. We are now under sail for the Hebrides. The purpose of my journey is to see the house where my father was born, the cave where he hid with Prince Charles for three weeks, as well as what is left of our family.”
The newspapers of the time said that 600 people came out to see this rich, powerful French man with the incredible history. It is likely the turnout was boosted by the barrel of whisky he brought with him.
It must have been an emotional experience for the Marshall. He writes in his diary, “We are welcomed by a quantity of MacDonalds. I meet an elderly spinster who sheds tears of joy: she is my first cousin.”
The Marshall's diary also observes the poverty of the people who were now living in constant fear of Clearance, of being removed from their ancestral lands by their own landlords, in many cases their own flesh and blood. MacDonald, who was a benign and progressive landowner in France, offers no opinion or explanation.
When Etienne Alexander MacDonald died in 1840 at the age of 70 he was given a State funeral and buried in the Marshall's Boulevard in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Soil he had brought from his father's house in South Uist 15 years earlier was buried with him.
It was the end of a remarkable story that spanned more than 100 years of Scottish and European history, involved the last battle fought on British soil and the Emperor Napoleon. And it all started in a thatched house near the stunning white beach at Howbeg on the Atlantic coast of South Uist.
The 1825 travel diary of Marshall MacDonald, translated by Jean Didier Hache, is published by the Islands' Book Trust. More information on www.theislandsbooktrust.com
The television programme, Domhnallaich na Frainge – The MacDonalds of France, was produced by Caledonia TV and directed by Les Wilson: www.caledonia.tv
