At Stirling, with his northern reinforcements, Charles may have had some seven or eight thousand men wherewith to meet General Hawley (a veteran of Sheriffmuir) advancing from Edinburgh.  Hawley encamped at Falkirk, and while the Atholl men were deserting by scores, Lord George skilfully deceived him, arrived on the Falkirk moor unobserved, and held the ridge above Hawley’s position, while the General was lunching with Lady Kilmarnock.  In the first line of the Prince’s force the Macdonalds held the right wing, the Camerons (whom the great Wolfe describes as the bravest of the brave) held the left; with Stewarts of Appin, Frazers, and Macphersons in the centre.  In the second line were the Atholl men, Lord Lewis Gordon’s levies, and Lord Ogilvy’s.  The Lowland horse and Drummond’s French details were in the rear.  The ground was made up of eminences and ravines, so that in the second line the various bodies were invisible to each other, as at Sheriffmuir—­with similar results.  When Hawley found that he had been surprised he arrayed his thirteen battalions of regulars and 1000 men of Argyll on the plain, with three regiments of dragoons, by whose charge he expected to sweep away Charles’s right wing; behind his cavalry were the luckless militia of Glasgow and the Lothians.  In all, he had from 10,000 to 12,000 men against, perhaps, 7000 at most, for 1200 of Charles’s force were left to contain Blakeney in Stirling Castle.  Both sides, on account of the heavy roads, failed to bring forward their guns.

Hawley then advanced his cavalry up hill:  their left faced Keppoch’s Macdonalds; their right faced the Frazers, under the Master of Lovat, in Charles’s centre.  Hawley then launched his cavalry, which were met at close range by the reserved fire of the Macdonalds and Frazers.  Through the mist and rain the townsfolk, looking on, saw in five minutes “the break in the battle.”  Hamilton’s and Ligonier’s cavalry turned and fled, Cobham’s wheeled and rode across the Highland left under fire, while the Macdonalds and Frazers pursuing the cavalry found themselves among the Glasgow militia, whom they followed, slaying.  Lord George had no pipers to sound the recall; they had flung their pipes to their gillies and gone in with the claymore.

Thus the Prince’s right, far beyond his front, were lost in the tempest; while his left had discharged their muskets at Cobham’s Horse, and could not load again, their powder being drenched with rain.  They received the fire of Hawley’s right, and charged with the claymore, but were outflanked and enfiladed by some battalions drawn up en potence.  Many of the second line had blindly followed the first:  the rest shunned the action; Hawley’s officers led away some regiments in an orderly retreat; night fell; no man knew what had really occurred till young Gask and young Strathallan, with the French and Atholl men, ventured into Falkirk, and found Hawley’s camp deserted.  The darkness, the rain, the nature of the ground, and the clans’ want of discipline, prevented the annihilation of Hawley’s army; while the behaviour of his cavalry showed that the Prince might have defeated Cumberland’s advanced force beyond Derby with the greatest ease, as the Duke of Richmond had anticipated.