The prince had opened trenches for a regular siege of Stirling Castle, when he learned that General Hawley with 8,000 men, most of them veterans from the French wars, was marching against him. Lord George Murray—knowing that with such an army as that of the rebels, the chances of success lay more in attack than defence—made a rapid march on Hawley. On the afternoon of January 17th, a battle was fought on Falkirk Moor. It was a wild fight, in a blinding storm of wind and rain. The darkening mists prevented combined operations on both sides. Divisions of each army drove back their immediate opponents, but themselves got into disorder in pursuit. Hawley in belief of defeat, fired his tents, fell back on Linlithgow, and next morning took his army to Edinburgh.
After the battle of Falkirk, the prince was for continuing the siege, but such plodding work did not suit the Highlanders, and the chiefs addressed a memorandum to him, advising retreat. He fumed and protested, but had again to yield. On February 4th, the Forth was forded, and the retreat began; it was a leisurely one, no royalist force of any magnitude being in the Highlands. Inverness was occupied by the prince on February 18th. Forts George and Augustus surrendered; Lord Loudon took what royalist troops he could collect into Ross-shire, where they were joined by the Whig MacDonalds.
The Duke of Cumberland came to Edinburgh, and organized an army. In addition to his British troops, 6,000 Hessians were landed at Leith. The army marched by Perth to Aberdeen. On the 8th of April, the Duke left Aberdeen; on the 14th, he was at Nairn, 16 miles north of Inverness. His troops numbered 9,000 men,—a compact, well-fed, well-disciplined army, with full confidence in their leader, as a man of courage and large military experience.
The prince had not expected that the duke would leave Aberdeen before May, and his troops were scattered about. They had been for weeks in a state of semi-starvation, and had to roam the country to find food for a bare subsistence. The men were discontented for lack of pay; the leaders were jealous and suspicious of each other; some of the clans claimed special rights and precedences. It was a divided, a disheartened, almost a demoralized army of 7,000 men which, on April 15th, stood, with barely one ration for each man in the commissariat, upon Culloden Moor, about four miles north-east of Inverness.