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Book description
I first read about James Johnstone in Dr. Jim Hunter’s excellent book “A Dance Called America”. Dr. Hunter explained how Johnstone served as a French Officer during the Seven Years War, when he was aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Montcalm and was present at the surrender of Quebec to the British. French rule in Canada did not long survive the Battle of Quebec, but as Dr. Hunter eloquently added, something else that did not survive the Battle was the world view “that a properly patriotic Scot ought to identify with France and not with England.”Johnstone wrote his memoirs after his return to France from Canada, and I understand they were translated into English in the 1820s. This particular book only covers his experiences in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, which is a pity since much of his other life sounds like it would be worth reading. He was born in 1719 into a family whose religious adherence was Episcopalian. In the context of Scotland at the time that made Johnstone much more likely to be sympathetic to the Jacobite cause. The book’s introduction also explains that he was a particularly dissolute youth, and that as a young man he was sent to Russia to stay with two uncles who were in business there. Unfortunately in this memoir we only have a couple of brief mentions of his time in Russia, and an admission that he was a youth of “passionate, impetuous and imprudent character.”On joining the Jacobite Army, Johnstone was appointed aide-de-camp to Lord George Murray. He is highly critical of Prince Charles Stuart and argues that once he had gained control of Edinburgh he should have declared himself King of Scotland and dissolved the union rather than bidding for the crown of Great Britain as a whole, since “What man in his senses could think of encountering the English armies and attempting the conquest of England with four thousand five hundred Highlanders?” He is even more critical of the Prince’s “Every man for himself” order after the Battle of Culloden, when Johnstone himself indicates that the Jacobite army expected to rally and to continue the rebellion. It must be said though, that Johnstone’s account includes obvious errors that mean he cannot be trusted in his description of the campaign as a whole. For instance, he states that Fort William was the last of the Highland forts to be taken by the Jacobites “and when it came into our possession it was razed like the rest.” In reality Fort William was besieged but not taken. Where this memoir works best is in Johnstone’s eyewitness descriptions, his forthright opinions, and the tale of his adventures after Culloden. He can be both perceptive and amusing. After the Jacobites’ crushing victory at Prestonpans, Johnstone describes how the Prince returned to Edinburgh “where he was received with the loudest acclamations by the populace, always equally inconstant in every country of the world.” He doesn’t hold back in his expressing his views. The English are “naturally of a cruel and barbarous disposition,” but his main ire is reserved for the Presbyterian majority in Scotland, who opposed the Jacobites. “This holy rabble…These hypocrites, the execration and refuse of the human race” are amongst the many insults levelled at them. The most entertaining section of all is the story of his remarkable escape from Culloden to the Continent, which was made via Dundee, Edinburgh and London. I personally found the tale all the more entertaining because, despite Johnstone’s best attempts to portray himself in a positive light, he actually comes across as a bit of a cad. He escapes from Culloden battlefield by fighting another man for possession of a riderless horse, and dismisses his rival as a “cowardly poltroon” without apparently stopping to think that his own conduct was no better. During his journey south he is comically outraged at the memory of people who refuse to help him, even though they could only have done so at considerable risk to their own lives. It’s also clear that he was something of a ladies’ man, constantly going into raptures about the “perfect beauty” of various young women he encountered during his wanderings. He actually receives considerable assistance from women throughout his escape, and it seems fairly clear that he had a level of charm that some women responded to.I would be interested to read Johnstone’s complete memoirs. He may not have been the most admirable of characters, but he is a lively read (credit as well to the translator for that), and he was an eyewitness to some big history.
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