Battle for jewel of Fortress Highlands

relieve the garrison

at Fort William, which now stands out as the most

important redoubt in the north.

Michael Fry reports that the Jacobites have marked a new turn in their campaign by concentrating their efforts on bombarding the garrisons held for King George II

FORT WILLIAM, March 9 - The Jacobites have laid siege to the last major outpost in the Highlands held for King George II. Their concerted effort to overwhelm this and other garrisons, bypassed when they first set out to conquer Scotland and England, marks a new turn in their campaign. It is of a piece with the strategy of Fortress Highlands, the policy imposed by the clan chiefs on a reluctant Prince Charles Edward Stuart, now lying ill with pneumonia at Culloden House.

Small local operations are anyway probably of little interest to him, since he must know that only big battles will restore his father to the throne. But it is the kind of war the chieftains want to fight for traditional reasons, the expansion of their power and the security of their lands and people.

Fort Augustus fell to the Jacobites four days ago. The assault on it had begun a week before, led by Brigadier Walter Stapleton, an Irishman in the French service. He at once captured the old barracks built in 1721. This position overlooks the new fort, completed only in 1742. The Jacobite artillery was too puny to batter down the walls, but Stapleton resorted to mortars.

Two days of bombardment smashed t he royal troops' quarters and eventually blew up the magazine. The garrison then surrendered. The victorious Highlanders ransacked the fort, destroyed one side of the ramparts and plundered their prisoners, who may be sent to France as hostages.

Meanwhile two chieftains, Donald Cameron of Lochiel and Alexander MacDonald of Keppoch, marched further south to Fort William. It has been beleaguered since the onset of the rebellion by irregular bands of clansmen roaming around the country. This activity increased alarmingly after the Jacobite army started its retreat from central Scotland.

Leaving nothing to chance, the general of the Government's army, the Duke of Cumberland, had already sent the fort a new commander, Captain Caroline Scott, a veteran of the war in Flanders with a reputation for ruthless efficiency. From his present headquarters in Aberdeen, the duke has also set up a network of supply for the garrison, with provisions being shipped in from Liverpool, arms and ammunition from Dublin, and reinforcements of troops from Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Cumberland has thus underlined the importance of this strongest redoubt in the North, and strategically the most crucial ever since it was built at the head of Loch Linnhe nearly 100 years ago. Its regular garrison, now swelled by 350 militiamen from Clan Campbell, is a symbol both of British authority and of Scottish loyalty, since the Campbells have always been staunch Whigs and fierce foes of the Jacobites. At the moment it is in effect a far-flung outpost of the Duke of Argyll's territory, part of a defensive perimeter organised from his seat at Inveraray by his cousin, Major-General John Campbell of Mamore.

When Lochiel arrived, he set up his headquarters at the House of Glennevis and threw a cordon of Camerons and MacDonalds round Fort William. After Brigadier Stapleton brought his 1500 men to join them the day before yesterday, the siege began in earnest. The importance of the operation in the Jacobites' present calculations can be gauged from the fact that these units make up a large part of their entire army's strength. The strategy of Fortress Highlands can hardly work if the British Government still has a presence in the heart of Lochaber.

Success here would also give the Jacobites a vital western outlet to the Atlantic Ocean for help from France, now that the Royal Navy's blockade has sealed off the coasts of the North Sea.

Still, it is a tall order. On the first day of the siege, Captain Scott rejected with contempt a summons to surrender. Already his guns have beaten down the Jacobites' initial attempts to form a battery, which will in any case be ineffective while they have no heavy pieces of ordnance. But they also lack horses to drag extra guns and other supplies down from Fort Augustus. Arrangements have been made to feed the clansmen from girnels built round Lochiel's house at Achnaharry on Loch Arkaig, yet the provisioning problems are likely to remain acute.

Worse still, the besiegers have no hope of cutting off Fort William from Argyll. Regular runs up Loch Linnhe have been made for some weeks by three sloops of the Royal Navy, which have been fired on from the shore but cannot otherwise be stopped. It looks as though the Jacobites are in for a long siege. But their time is short, if the operation in not to be overtaken by deficiencies in supply of every kind.

Their strategy therefore obviously has its flaws, despite the chieftains' enthusiasm for it. They intend, assuming they can keep the Duke of Cumberland holed up in Aberdeen, to establish complete control over the North of Scotland. This will safeguard their base in Inverness, the last town which can form the pivot of a regular campaign. Even if it comes under pressure, its possession for now keeps open the option of falling back on guerrilla tactics in the Great Glen.

The Jacobite military commander, Lord George Murray, cheerfully envisages a campaign lasting several years which will force the English to come to terms. But all this presupposes elimination of the Hanoverian garrisons. Without that, the Jacobites' superiority in the rest of the Highlands may count for little. While they now move to protect their homes and kin, in the North-east the Duke of Cumberland builds up his well-provisioned forces almost unmolested.

n Another dispatch next week