Duncrub, the seat of Lord Rollo, near Perth. Here he awaited the arrival of the young Chevalier; and here he was introduced by his cousins, the daughters of Lord Rollo, to the Duke of Perth and to Lord George Murray. The Chevalier Johnstone was one of the first Low-countrymen that joined the standard of Charles Edward.

Lord George Murray very soon discovered that the requisites for forming a good soldier and an active partizan were centred in young Johnstone. For the former he was qualified by an open and impetuous character, generally combined with a desperate courage. The jollity and licence of the Cavalier school, which characterized Johnstone, did not materially detract from, but added rather to the popularity of his character. As a partizan, he has proved his zeal by his Memoirs, which afford a sample of much heat and prejudice, and which have, in upholding Lord George Murray, done an injury to the memory of Charles Edward, of which the adversaries of his cause have not failed to take advantage. To many errors of character, and to some egotism, the Chevalier Johnstone, as he came to be called in after-life, united a kind heart and an enthusiastic disposition. He acted for a considerable time as aide-de-camp to Lord George Murray, and afterwards in the same capacity with the Prince. But his liveliest admiration appears to have been directed towards the general who has been classed with Montrose and Dundee,[28] and no subsequent service under other masters ever effaced his impression of respect and confidence to Lord George Murray. After the battle of Preston-Pans Johnstone received a captain's commission from the Prince: and, exhausted with his duties as aide-de-camp, he formed a company, with which he joined the Duke of Perth's regiment. His history, mingled up as it is with that of the General under whom he first served, must necessarily be incorporated with the following narrative.

Lord George Murray continued, for some time, busily engaged in rallying around him his brother's vassals. The Duke of Atholl is partly proprietor, partly superior, of the country which bears his name. That region is inhabited by Stuarts and Robinsons, none of the Duke's name living upon his estates. Of these, several have fiefs or mortgages of the Atholl family, and command the common people of their respective Clans; but, like other Highlanders, they believe that they are bound to rise in arms when the chief of their whole Clan requires it. The vassals on the Atholl territory were well-affected to the Stuarts, great pains having been taken by the father of Lord George Murray, notwithstanding his efforts to appear loyal to the Government, to infuse the spirit of Jacobitism among them.[29]

Of the events which succeeded his joining the Prince's standard at Perth, until the commencement of the retreat from Derby, Lord George Murray has left a succinct relation. It is written, as are his letters, in a plain, free, manly style, which dispels all doubt as to the sincerity of the narrator.

"I joined the standard at Perth,"[30] he begins, "the day his Royal Highness arrived there. As I had formerly known something of a Highland army, the first thing I did was to advise the Prince to endeavour to get proper people for provisors and commissaries, for otherwise there would be no keeping the men together, and they would straggle through the whole country upon their marches if it was left to themselves to find provisions; which, beside the inconveniency of irregular marches, and much time lost, great abuses would be committed, which, above all things, we were to avoid. I got many of the men to make small knapsacks of sacking before we left Perth, to carry a peck of meal each upon occasion; and I caused take as many threepenny loaves there as would be three days' bread to our small army, which was carried in carts. I sent about a thousand of these knapsacks to Crieff, to meet the men who were coming from Atholl."

The difficulties which Lord George encountered were, it is evident, considerable. Upon the arrival of Charles Edward at Perth, his army amounted only to two thousand men,[31] until he was joined by Lord George Murray, by the Duke of Perth, and by Lord Nairn, and other persons of distinction.[32] There were few persons in that army who were capable, by being versed in military affairs, of giving Lord George Murray any advice or assistance. The Highland chiefs possessed the most heroic courage; but they knew no other manœuvre but that of rushing, sword in hand, upon an enemy. The Irish officers were equally deficient in experience and knowledge; and, with the exception of Mr. Sullivan, are stated "to have had no more knowledge than the whole stock of subalterns, namely, the knowing how to mount and quit guard." Such is the description given of the collected forces by Johnstone. But, although not trained as regular soldiers, and accustomed chiefly to the care of herds of black cattle, whom they wandered after in the mountains, the Highlanders had a discipline of their own. Their chiefs usually kept about them several retainers experienced in the use of arms; and a meeting of two or three gentlemen was sure to bring together a little army, for the habits of the clansmen were essentially military. It was, some considered, a circumstance favourable to Lord George Murray, that, being unprepared by an early military education, he was unfettered by its formal rules, and therefore was more calculated to lead an undisciplined army of Highlanders, whose native energies he knew how to direct better than a skilful tactician would have ventured to do.[33] During his stay at Perth, the Highlanders, so prone to irregularities when not in active service, were tranquil under the strictest military rule.[34]

It was here, however, that the first seeds of dissension were sown between Charles Edward and Lord George. Sir Thomas Sheridan, the tutor of the Prince, who was allowed to "have lived and died a man of honour," but who was manifestly incapable of the great charge intrusted to him, both in the education of the young Princes and as their adviser in after-life, added to his other deficiencies a total ignorance of the British constitution and habits of thinking. The Prince, of course, was equally ill-informed. They were therefore in the practice, in conversation, of espousing sentiments of arbitrary power, which were equally impolitic and unbecoming. Sincere and shrewd, Lord George Murray lost no time in expressing to Charles Edward his decided disapproval of this tone of discourse.