An Appreciation of Alfredo Epps’ ‘The Last Jacobite’ by Michael Bloor

Alexander Korda’s 1948 film ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, starring a moustache-less David Niven, was a famous flop, in both Britain and America.  At the time, it was suggested by the critics that Niven had been miscast, but Alfredo Epps’ new release, ‘The Last Jacobite,’ implies that there was a deeper problem with Korda’s original movie. Namely, that the main character was at fault, not the main star.

Epps’ take on history, and that of his anonymous Argentinian scriptwriter, is that the real Prince Charles Edward Stuart was a narcissistic 25 year-old, who had swallowed wholesale the self-serving doctrine of The Divine Right of Kings, lied to the clan chiefs about English Jacobite and French armed support, and failed catastrophically to follow military advice. The main character in Epps’ movie isn’t the prince, it’s a minor historical figure, Dr Archibald Cameron (played, like all Epps’ characters, by an unknown, Andy McIntosh). He was the last Jacobite to be hung and beheaded for high treason, when he was hunted down in 1753, seven years after the slaughter on the battlefield of Culloden. ‘Dr Archie,’ as he was known, was the younger brother of the Camerons’ chief, Donald Cameron of Lochiel (played by Will Forbes).

The film opens with the landing at Loch nan Uamh of Charles Edward (played by an almost creepily handsome Bertrand DuPont), with just seven companions, no French artillery and precious little French gold. Lochiel immediately dispatched his brother Archie to persuade the prince to return to France. This first meeting of the prince and Dr Archie did not go well: we see that the highlander was too deferential to continue to press his case when Charles flatly refused to return to France. Lochiel, a lifelong loyal Jacobite, felt compelled, in turn, to comply with his prince’s wishes. Other clan chiefs then followed Lochiel’s lead and the tragedy began. Dr Archie was tasked with mustering and organising the Clan Cameron contingent in the Jacobite forces. The film shows how the threat of evictions ensured a good turnout of the clan.

The subsequent Scottish campaign was a lightning success. The Highlanders marched south, gathering more support at Perth and Falkirk and entering Edinburgh with about 2,400 men. The government troops at Prestonpans, outside Edinburgh, were caught by surprise and swept away in a battle that lasted barely a quarter of an hour. In effect, Charles Edward’s forces were, for the time being, masters of Scotland. It’s in the film’s depiction of the days of triumph in Edinburgh that Charles Edward’s narcissistic character is nailed down. In a zooming close-up of the prince’s face, we see his reaction to the fawning adulation of Edinburgh’s high society: he is a true believer in his own seeming glittering destiny.

The clan chiefs were satisfied. Their duty, they believed, was done: the Stuart line was restored to the kingship of Scotland. So there was then consternation when they discovered that Charles Edward required their further service: the tiny army must now invade England, so that the Stuarts might reign again as Kings of England and Ireland. The prince secured their acquiescence by telling them that English Jacobites would flock to their banner. And, more importantly, France would land men and armaments in the south of England. Lochiel confesses to his brother that he is uneasy, but he has no military intelligence to contradict the prince’s confident claims. Dr Archie shares his brother’s misgivings. He ends what Epps clearly meant to be a pivotal declaration, with the words: ‘Notions of “Honour” and “Loyalty” are fine for the troops, but for commanders they are liable to end in heroic failure.’

Dr Archie was now physician to the prince and the film shows him on the march south, tending to those who were lightly wounded at Prestonpans. In one long shot, we see the clansmen striding past yet another prosperous English village, with good pasture and tillage, and a stately country house in the distance. The camera captures the wonder on the faces of the highlanders, a wonder that has begun to turn to doubt and disbelief.

They eventually marched into Derby in the English Midlands, a mere 120 miles from London. The prince enjoyed further adulation from the local gentry in a ball at the Derby Assembly Rooms, but English Jacobites had not flocked to his banner: on the march south, just a few hundred disaffected catholics had joined up.

In Derby, Bonnie Prince Charlie attended a gloomy Council of War. Scouts returning to Derby from the south of the county reported that the route to London required the highlanders to cross the River Trent at Swarkestone over a medieval stone bridge and a mile-long, narrow, stone causeway across a marsh – a dangerous bottleneck for an invading army. There was a false report that government forces now stood between them in London (in reality, the government was preparing to flee). Worse than the near-absence of English Jacobite support, the prince was forced to admit that no French invasion of England would occur. The council voted to retreat; the prince raged (a striking contrast to his normal complacent charm), but he raged in vain. The camera watches him stalk, still shouting, from the council chamber.

The army then returned on a similar route to their former advance. They paused to besiege and capture Carlisle castle. The prince insisted on leaving behind at the castle a garrison of 400 men, a depletion they could ill-afford. Back across the border, they besieged Stirling castle. A government force sent to relieve the siege was beaten off in a bloody and confusing encounter in a snow storm in the dusk on Falkirk muir. We follow Dr Archie into the confusion, the murk and the storm. He was wounded in the fight.

In the aftermath, Lochiel tells his brother that the Jacobite success at Falkirk owed much to the successful charge of the Macdonalds on the right flank, but probably owed even more to the fact that the government artillery took no part in the battle, having become mired in the mud before it could be deployed. Unfortunately, after plundering the government baggage train, numbers of highlanders made off homewards with their booty. The loss of the plunderers led to a decision to abandon the Stirling siege and move north to Inverness to obtain more recruits.

Culloden, outside Inverness, was a tragic killing ground. The highlanders were out-numbered, out-gunned, and exhausted after an unsuccessful night-time manoeuvre to try and surprise the government camp. We are told that, in contrast, the prince had spent the night drinking and feasting at Culloden House. The clans were drawn up on a flat, bare moor and subjected to deadly artillery fire for a long hour before the order to charge was given.  Those who made it as far as the government lines were too few to break through. Epps’ movie focuses less on the progress of the battle and more on Dr Archie’s frantic search, among the smoke and the carnage, for his wounded brother, Lochiel. It was known that the government troops would give no quarter to the wounded who could not escape. The clan chief was eventually located and carried off, but many of his clan wounded were left to their fate.

Like the prince, Dr Archie and Lochiel were hunted fugitives before they could make their way to exile in France: they hid for some months in a  cave with their cousin, Ewen MacPherson of Cluny ((John Meikleour, looking like a young Anthony Hopkins). Mealtime in the cave provides the only droll episode in the film

In France, Dr Archie became the prince’s secretary, no easy task as Charles Edward had become a drunken sot and spendthrift. In 1753, the prince dispatched Dr Archie back to Scotland to seek and recover the buried Loch Arkaig Treasure. The treasure was Spanish gold to support the Jacobite cause, but it had arrived too late, after the slaughter of Culloden, and was entrusted to Cluny MacPherson, Dr Archie’s fugitive cousin.

Though there had been a price on the head of Dr Archie, the prince and other jacobite leaders, no impoverished clansman ever betrayed them. It was a clan chief and government spy, Alasdair MacDonell of Glengarry (played by Arthur Johnson), who betrayed Dr Archie. Seized, and tried, and found guilty of high treason, Archie was publicly hung and beheaded at Tyburn in London, on 7^th of June, 1753.

The film ends with the news of the beheading arriving back in the Cameron lands. A veteran of the rebellion turns to his weeping wife, and speaks in the only Scots Gaelic heard in the film. As the camera pans away to a ruined cottage and outhouses, the English translation appears on the screen:

‘Let there be no mourning here. The doctor drove me off to fight, and finally the troops came and drove my cattle off to market. And they fired my house for good measure. On Falkirk muir, I lost my good right arm. It’s surely only justice that Dr Archie should lose his head.’ 

Dr Archie is clearly a more complex and interesting figure than David Niven’s gallant prince. The doctor was loyal to his chief and to his prince. He was attentive to his patients. But it was all in the wrong cause: a good man whose wrong loyalties only served to hasten the destruction of the clans and the end of Highland society.

So if you like myth-busters, Epps’ latest offering is one for you – with a bonus of fine cinematography and an intelligent script. If you like your myths intact, best to stick with Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.

Michael Bloor

Image: brown, old fashioned cinema seats at the end of the row – from Pixabay.com