Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Battle of Culloden
As a general background to the Battle of Culloden, we need to review the somewhat tedious history of the Stuart monarchy of England, beginning with the Union of the Crowns and the crowning of James VI of Scotland as James I of England in 1567. He fathered Charles 1st, who lost his head in 1649, but not before siring two sons; the elder became Charles II, and the younger James. Of course, Oliver Cromwell happened along for a few years, but he was round-headed, and his republican-style government and his despotic rule didn’t outlast him at his death. Charles II was crowned in 1660, and upon his death in 1685, his younger brother James succeeded him as James II of England - James VII of Scotland.
James II was a Catholic, and in 1688 he produced a catholic heir, James Francis Edward Stuart. Through some pretty bad displays of kingship, reinforced by his heavy-handed attempts to ensure freedom of religion for his Roman Catholic citizens, he sufficiently alarmed some of the most powerful of the protestant nobility that they petitioned William of Orange to claim the throne. William just happened to be married to James II’s daughter Mary, which, when you think of it, is a good catholic name, but seemingly did not inspire Mary to oppose the ouster of her father. William arrived with a formidable army, and James fled to France. William and Mary were crowned joint King & Queen in 1689.
Louis XIV of France welcomed the deposed James, and provided the financial means to allow him to establish his own Court in exile. England being France’s perennial enemy (all the more so as a protestant nation), clearly Louis’ motive was to destabilize the new English monarchy.
When James died in 1701, Louis declared James’ 13-year old son - James Francis Edward Stuart - James VIII of Scotland and James III of England. He became known as the Old Pretender, and his supporters as the Jacobites, from the Latin for James - Jacobus. Just one year later, William met an inglorious end from the effects of a fall from his horse that stumbled over a molehill. Mary remained Queen for a time.
With the help of a French army of some 6000 men, James attempted an invasion of Britain. His plan to supplant his sister rested on his hope that he could inspire sufficient support principally from the Scottish-based Jacobites, but it all ended in defeat and chaos.
James had a second chance seven years later. In 1715 under the Stuart standard, the Earl of Mar raised an army of 10,000 and marched south to Sheriffmuir to meet the forces of George I, commanded by the Duke of Argyll. The ensuing battle was indecisive, as was a simultaneous uprising of Jacobite supporters in England. James arrived belatedly at Peterhead, but the momentum was lost, and he returned to France and exile.
Ostensibly to support the Old Pretender’s claim, yet another attempted invasion of Britain by a Spanish army in 1719 failed miserably when – reminiscent of the Great Armada of 1588 - the large Spanish fleet was all but destroyed in a storm. After both attempts, reprisals against James’ Jacobite following were draconian.
There was to be one last attempt to place James on the British throne. In 1744 a massive French invasion force was assembled by Louis XV, but yet again the fleet was destroyed in a storm, and the invasion had to be abandoned. This was to be the last serious attempt by the Old Pretender. The banner was now to be passed to James’ son - Charles Edward Stuart – born in 1720, and who became known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Undeterred by the fiasco of 1744, on July 25, 1745 ‘The Young Chevalier’ landed with a handful of supporters at Loch nan Uamh near Arisaig. Upon his call, the Highland chiefs rallied to his side, and at Glenfinnan on August 19th Charlie’s father was declared James VIII of England & James III of Scotland. A small army was assembled, and Lt-General Sir John Cope was sent north to meet it, but marched instead to Inverness leaving the way clear for Charles to march to Edinburgh, which he occupied on September 17th.
Cope - who was now in Dunbar - started to march on Edinburgh, but in less than 10 minutes his army was routed at the Battle of Prestonpans. This incident was undoubtedly the inspiration for that Calgary Burns Club Singers’ standard, beginning with the line: “Cope sent a challenge frae Dunbar”. Charlie’s army marched south, taking Carlisle then moving on to Manchester, and finally on December 4th, to Derby. Now, just 127 miles away, London was to be the next stop, and the English were in a panic.
Despite these spectacular successes, there were disagreements among his commanders, and some of the gallant highlanders were getting homesick. And the earlier commitments of support from thousands of English Jacobite sympathizers yielded few actual recruits.
So, on December 6th the decision was made to retreat back to Scotland. There were many battles and encounters with English troops, as well as with Scottish burghers who were not Jacobite supporters, but by-and-large Charles’ forces maintained control of their diminished advantage.
The Jacobite army was billeted in Inverness during the winter of 1746. The English response was to appoint the 25-year-old William, Duke of Cumberland, 2nd son of George II, commander of an army that reached Aberdeen in February; already a formidable force, it grew in size with later reinforcements. On April 8th, Cumberland was in Nairn, a fact unbeknown to Charles and his command as a result of bad intelligence. But upon learning of this, on April 14th Charles rallied his army in Inverness for battle.
The battlefield was chosen by Charlie on bad advice from a rakish Irish advisor, John O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan - who was woefully ignorant of warfare and battlefield strategy - managed to persuade the young Prince to make his stand on what we now call Culloden Field, then known as Drumossie Moor. His men were starting out hungry, the main provisions having been left behind in Inverness.
Culloden is a very odd choice of a battlefield for a highland army of the time, whose strength lay in its fearsome infantry charges. Those who have visited the battlefield will appreciate the madness of actually choosing to fight on such ground. Being flat, it gave the Scots no advantage of high ground or any other topographical feature. And the moor is severely bogey and full of gorse and other bushes, root stumps and moundy obstructions to infantry movement - not at all conducive to a foot charge. Furthermore, it has almost no cover, which was a boon for the superior English artillery.
On the night before the battle, the Scots launched a would-be sneak attack by a contingent of marauders against Cumberland’s encampment. It was thought that they could surprise the drunken English who were celebrating the Duke’s 25th birthday, but with the enemy soldiers already stirring from their revelry of the previous night, they reached the camp too late. And so, they had to abandon the planned attack and march back to Culloden…exhausted, with Cumberland hard on their heels.
Charles arranged his tired, hungry force of 5000 men in three lines of battle. Cumberland’s also had three lines, but with 8000 soldiers in total, he outnumbered the Scots by about 3000. The Scots had 13 inferior artillery pieces to Cumberland’s formidable ten 3-pounder guns and six coehorn mortars which were used to devastating effect. The English also had the advantage of 800 mounted dragoons.
The highlanders had a well-earned reputation for their FEARSOME charges, but there was confusion in the Scottish Command, with much dithering; and so the order to charge was delayed. In the meantime, the Scottish lines were taking wave after wave of frightful volleys of musket fire from orderly, disciplined English infantrymen, supplemented by the deadly fusillade of grapeshot made up of canisters of nails, lead balls and iron scrap fired by Cumberland’s artillery. The effect was gruesome and bloody for the Scots.
When the uncoordinated charge was finally launched, it had little effect on the English battle lines, which for the most part held, and the line of charging Scots was decimated. That failure spelt the end of the battle.
From beginning to end, the battle was all over in one short hour. It is estimated that at least 1000 clansmen died on the battlefield - including almost all the battlefield wounded who were slaughtered were they lay. Hundreds more on the road to Inverness and in the surrounding countryside were butchered in the days and weeks following the battle. The Scots began to fall back in an orderly - even heroic - retreat. Prince Charlie was led from the field, reportedly in tears. Lord George Murray led the retreating forces, only to receive a message the next day from Charles that it was every man for himself.
The pursuing English Infantry behaved abominably. All of the Scottish wounded on the battlefield were bayoneted and bludgeoned to death, and on the road to Inverness, not only the fleeing soldiers, but also hundreds of civilians - including women and children- were needlessly massacred; these were non-combatants who had merely come to watch the battle or who were local crofters trying to escape from the English Army.
Cumberland not only allowed his soldiers to loot, pillage and kill almost at will, but encouraged them to do so, leaving the surrounding countryside a veritable wilderness. Local crofts and houses were burned, and thousands of cattle, horses and sheep were taken away and sold, leaving many innocent local residents to face terrible poverty and even starvation. Of nearly 3500 men and women taken into custody in the ensuing pogrom, 120 were executed, 936 were transported to the colonies in America and sold into slavery, 222 were banished, and 700 are unaccounted for but believed to have died of wounds or disease in English jails. Some were arrested merely for toasting the success of the Prince’s campaign.
The commanding butcher - William, Duke of Cumberland - returned to London to a hero’s welcome, and a big increase in his royal stipend. Handel wrote “The Conquering Hero” in his honour, and the English named a flower after him… “Sweet William”. The Scots reciprocated by naming a weed after him…“Stinking Willie”.
The justification behind the savagery towards the battlefield wounded as well as the fleeing soldiers and innocent civilians can be traced to an evil act of skullduggery by Cumberland. On the eve of the battle itself, the lead commander of the Scottish soldiers, Lord George Murray, issued customary battle orders in writing to his officers and troops. It was standard and inoffensive stuff about battlefield conduct, but Cumberland got a copy of the orders and fraudulently inserted an instruction that upon the victory of Prince Charles’ army, the clansmen were “to give no quarter to the Elector’s troops on any account whatsoever”. This was well-known code for “take no prisoners”. Cumberland distributed copies of this doctored document to his troops, who were incensed, and this was used to exhort the officer and men of the victorious English army to carry out the acts of slaughter that they did on the battlefield towards the Scottish wounded and afterwards on the road to Inverness, and in their rampage over the countryside in the ensuing weeks. For the British army, it was a shameful episode of unprecedented savagery, and wholly against the accepted rules of war.
It needs to be said that many combatants in Cumberland’s army were Scots, mostly lowlanders who volunteered to prevent the ascendancy of a Catholic king to the British throne. That made Culloden all the more a tragic civil war than if it had just been a fight between an English and a Scottish army. In the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, there were a great many Scots that were delighted to see the Jacobites defeated - mostly, but not exclusively, from the lowland areas, and including the leadership of the established church.
A bounty of 30,000 pounds was placed on Bonnie Prince Charlie’s head. His adventures in escaping from Scotland are well-known, and quite another tale. But he did make it back to France and lived for another 42 years, only to die drunken and dissolute in Rome…not at all the image of the Young Chevalier. The defeat at Culloden was also to spell the end of any effective Jacobite movement.
In the few years following, many cruel sanctions were exacted by the English overlords, mainly directed at the highland clans and their autonomy. It resulted in much devastation to the wretched highland population, and probably led to, or at least hastened, the infamous Highland Clearances. Surprisingly perhaps, despite this defining defeat, and what followed in its wake, Scotland did flourish over the next several decades. The period not long following Culloden heralded the age of enlightenment that placed Scotland at the forefront of European and world literature and philosophy, and, later, scientific achievement.
Footnote:
For those who have not yet had the opportunity, the battlefield is well worth a visit. There are many historic markers, including stones placed where the fallen of the various clans are reportedly buried. Concerning the specific clans represented in the battle, those that are known include:
Cameron, Chisholm, Drummond, Farquarson, Ferguson, Fraser, Gordon, Grant, Innes, MacDonald, MacDonell, MacGillivray, MacGregor, McInnes, MacIntyre, Mackenzie, MacKinnon, Mackintosh, MacLachlan (note, even tho the spelt their name funny!), MacLean, MacLeod of Ramsey, MacPherson, Menzies, Murray, Ogilvy, Robertson and, finally, Stewart of Appin.
It is thought that there were others.
As a general background to the Battle of Culloden, we need to review the somewhat tedious history of the Stuart monarchy of England, beginning with the Union of the Crowns and the crowning of James VI of Scotland as James I of England in 1567. He fathered Charles 1st, who lost his head in 1649, but not before siring two sons; the elder became Charles II, and the younger James. Of course, Oliver Cromwell happened along for a few years, but he was round-headed, and his republican-style government and his despotic rule didn’t outlast him at his death. Charles II was crowned in 1660, and upon his death in 1685, his younger brother James succeeded him as James II of England - James VII of Scotland.
James II was a Catholic, and in 1688 he produced a catholic heir, James Francis Edward Stuart. Through some pretty bad displays of kingship, reinforced by his heavy-handed attempts to ensure freedom of religion for his Roman Catholic citizens, he sufficiently alarmed some of the most powerful of the protestant nobility that they petitioned William of Orange to claim the throne. William just happened to be married to James II’s daughter Mary, which, when you think of it, is a good catholic name, but seemingly did not inspire Mary to oppose the ouster of her father. William arrived with a formidable army, and James fled to France. William and Mary were crowned joint King & Queen in 1689.
Louis XIV of France welcomed the deposed James, and provided the financial means to allow him to establish his own Court in exile. England being France’s perennial enemy (all the more so as a protestant nation), clearly Louis’ motive was to destabilize the new English monarchy.
When James died in 1701, Louis declared James’ 13-year old son - James Francis Edward Stuart - James VIII of Scotland and James III of England. He became known as the Old Pretender, and his supporters as the Jacobites, from the Latin for James - Jacobus. Just one year later, William met an inglorious end from the effects of a fall from his horse that stumbled over a molehill. Mary remained Queen for a time.
With the help of a French army of some 6000 men, James attempted an invasion of Britain. His plan to supplant his sister rested on his hope that he could inspire sufficient support principally from the Scottish-based Jacobites, but it all ended in defeat and chaos.
James had a second chance seven years later. In 1715 under the Stuart standard, the Earl of Mar raised an army of 10,000 and marched south to Sheriffmuir to meet the forces of George I, commanded by the Duke of Argyll. The ensuing battle was indecisive, as was a simultaneous uprising of Jacobite supporters in England. James arrived belatedly at Peterhead, but the momentum was lost, and he returned to France and exile.
Ostensibly to support the Old Pretender’s claim, yet another attempted invasion of Britain by a Spanish army in 1719 failed miserably when – reminiscent of the Great Armada of 1588 - the large Spanish fleet was all but destroyed in a storm. After both attempts, reprisals against James’ Jacobite following were draconian.
There was to be one last attempt to place James on the British throne. In 1744 a massive French invasion force was assembled by Louis XV, but yet again the fleet was destroyed in a storm, and the invasion had to be abandoned. This was to be the last serious attempt by the Old Pretender. The banner was now to be passed to James’ son - Charles Edward Stuart – born in 1720, and who became known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Undeterred by the fiasco of 1744, on July 25, 1745 ‘The Young Chevalier’ landed with a handful of supporters at Loch nan Uamh near Arisaig. Upon his call, the Highland chiefs rallied to his side, and at Glenfinnan on August 19th Charlie’s father was declared James VIII of England & James III of Scotland. A small army was assembled, and Lt-General Sir John Cope was sent north to meet it, but marched instead to Inverness leaving the way clear for Charles to march to Edinburgh, which he occupied on September 17th.
Cope - who was now in Dunbar - started to march on Edinburgh, but in less than 10 minutes his army was routed at the Battle of Prestonpans. This incident was undoubtedly the inspiration for that Calgary Burns Club Singers’ standard, beginning with the line: “Cope sent a challenge frae Dunbar”. Charlie’s army marched south, taking Carlisle then moving on to Manchester, and finally on December 4th, to Derby. Now, just 127 miles away, London was to be the next stop, and the English were in a panic.
Despite these spectacular successes, there were disagreements among his commanders, and some of the gallant highlanders were getting homesick. And the earlier commitments of support from thousands of English Jacobite sympathizers yielded few actual recruits.
So, on December 6th the decision was made to retreat back to Scotland. There were many battles and encounters with English troops, as well as with Scottish burghers who were not Jacobite supporters, but by-and-large Charles’ forces maintained control of their diminished advantage.
The Jacobite army was billeted in Inverness during the winter of 1746. The English response was to appoint the 25-year-old William, Duke of Cumberland, 2nd son of George II, commander of an army that reached Aberdeen in February; already a formidable force, it grew in size with later reinforcements. On April 8th, Cumberland was in Nairn, a fact unbeknown to Charles and his command as a result of bad intelligence. But upon learning of this, on April 14th Charles rallied his army in Inverness for battle.
The battlefield was chosen by Charlie on bad advice from a rakish Irish advisor, John O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan - who was woefully ignorant of warfare and battlefield strategy - managed to persuade the young Prince to make his stand on what we now call Culloden Field, then known as Drumossie Moor. His men were starting out hungry, the main provisions having been left behind in Inverness.
Culloden is a very odd choice of a battlefield for a highland army of the time, whose strength lay in its fearsome infantry charges. Those who have visited the battlefield will appreciate the madness of actually choosing to fight on such ground. Being flat, it gave the Scots no advantage of high ground or any other topographical feature. And the moor is severely bogey and full of gorse and other bushes, root stumps and moundy obstructions to infantry movement - not at all conducive to a foot charge. Furthermore, it has almost no cover, which was a boon for the superior English artillery.
On the night before the battle, the Scots launched a would-be sneak attack by a contingent of marauders against Cumberland’s encampment. It was thought that they could surprise the drunken English who were celebrating the Duke’s 25th birthday, but with the enemy soldiers already stirring from their revelry of the previous night, they reached the camp too late. And so, they had to abandon the planned attack and march back to Culloden…exhausted, with Cumberland hard on their heels.
Charles arranged his tired, hungry force of 5000 men in three lines of battle. Cumberland’s also had three lines, but with 8000 soldiers in total, he outnumbered the Scots by about 3000. The Scots had 13 inferior artillery pieces to Cumberland’s formidable ten 3-pounder guns and six coehorn mortars which were used to devastating effect. The English also had the advantage of 800 mounted dragoons.
The highlanders had a well-earned reputation for their FEARSOME charges, but there was confusion in the Scottish Command, with much dithering; and so the order to charge was delayed. In the meantime, the Scottish lines were taking wave after wave of frightful volleys of musket fire from orderly, disciplined English infantrymen, supplemented by the deadly fusillade of grapeshot made up of canisters of nails, lead balls and iron scrap fired by Cumberland’s artillery. The effect was gruesome and bloody for the Scots.
When the uncoordinated charge was finally launched, it had little effect on the English battle lines, which for the most part held, and the line of charging Scots was decimated. That failure spelt the end of the battle.
From beginning to end, the battle was all over in one short hour. It is estimated that at least 1000 clansmen died on the battlefield - including almost all the battlefield wounded who were slaughtered were they lay. Hundreds more on the road to Inverness and in the surrounding countryside were butchered in the days and weeks following the battle. The Scots began to fall back in an orderly - even heroic - retreat. Prince Charlie was led from the field, reportedly in tears. Lord George Murray led the retreating forces, only to receive a message the next day from Charles that it was every man for himself.
The pursuing English Infantry behaved abominably. All of the Scottish wounded on the battlefield were bayoneted and bludgeoned to death, and on the road to Inverness, not only the fleeing soldiers, but also hundreds of civilians - including women and children- were needlessly massacred; these were non-combatants who had merely come to watch the battle or who were local crofters trying to escape from the English Army.
Cumberland not only allowed his soldiers to loot, pillage and kill almost at will, but encouraged them to do so, leaving the surrounding countryside a veritable wilderness. Local crofts and houses were burned, and thousands of cattle, horses and sheep were taken away and sold, leaving many innocent local residents to face terrible poverty and even starvation. Of nearly 3500 men and women taken into custody in the ensuing pogrom, 120 were executed, 936 were transported to the colonies in America and sold into slavery, 222 were banished, and 700 are unaccounted for but believed to have died of wounds or disease in English jails. Some were arrested merely for toasting the success of the Prince’s campaign.
The commanding butcher - William, Duke of Cumberland - returned to London to a hero’s welcome, and a big increase in his royal stipend. Handel wrote “The Conquering Hero” in his honour, and the English named a flower after him… “Sweet William”. The Scots reciprocated by naming a weed after him…“Stinking Willie”.
The justification behind the savagery towards the battlefield wounded as well as the fleeing soldiers and innocent civilians can be traced to an evil act of skullduggery by Cumberland. On the eve of the battle itself, the lead commander of the Scottish soldiers, Lord George Murray, issued customary battle orders in writing to his officers and troops. It was standard and inoffensive stuff about battlefield conduct, but Cumberland got a copy of the orders and fraudulently inserted an instruction that upon the victory of Prince Charles’ army, the clansmen were “to give no quarter to the Elector’s troops on any account whatsoever”. This was well-known code for “take no prisoners”. Cumberland distributed copies of this doctored document to his troops, who were incensed, and this was used to exhort the officer and men of the victorious English army to carry out the acts of slaughter that they did on the battlefield towards the Scottish wounded and afterwards on the road to Inverness, and in their rampage over the countryside in the ensuing weeks. For the British army, it was a shameful episode of unprecedented savagery, and wholly against the accepted rules of war.
It needs to be said that many combatants in Cumberland’s army were Scots, mostly lowlanders who volunteered to prevent the ascendancy of a Catholic king to the British throne. That made Culloden all the more a tragic civil war than if it had just been a fight between an English and a Scottish army. In the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, there were a great many Scots that were delighted to see the Jacobites defeated - mostly, but not exclusively, from the lowland areas, and including the leadership of the established church.
A bounty of 30,000 pounds was placed on Bonnie Prince Charlie’s head. His adventures in escaping from Scotland are well-known, and quite another tale. But he did make it back to France and lived for another 42 years, only to die drunken and dissolute in Rome…not at all the image of the Young Chevalier. The defeat at Culloden was also to spell the end of any effective Jacobite movement.
In the few years following, many cruel sanctions were exacted by the English overlords, mainly directed at the highland clans and their autonomy. It resulted in much devastation to the wretched highland population, and probably led to, or at least hastened, the infamous Highland Clearances. Surprisingly perhaps, despite this defining defeat, and what followed in its wake, Scotland did flourish over the next several decades. The period not long following Culloden heralded the age of enlightenment that placed Scotland at the forefront of European and world literature and philosophy, and, later, scientific achievement.
Footnote:
For those who have not yet had the opportunity, the battlefield is well worth a visit. There are many historic markers, including stones placed where the fallen of the various clans are reportedly buried. Concerning the specific clans represented in the battle, those that are known include:
Cameron, Chisholm, Drummond, Farquarson, Ferguson, Fraser, Gordon, Grant, Innes, MacDonald, MacDonell, MacGillivray, MacGregor, McInnes, MacIntyre, Mackenzie, MacKinnon, Mackintosh, MacLachlan (note, even tho the spelt their name funny!), MacLean, MacLeod of Ramsey, MacPherson, Menzies, Murray, Ogilvy, Robertson and, finally, Stewart of Appin.
It is thought that there were others.
