Killing Fields of Scotland

by R J M Pugh

  The Prince’s army probably numbered 7,000 and was drawn up in three lines. On the right wing were the three regiments of the Atholl Brigade, with the men of Clans Robertson, Menzies, Rattray and Mercer under Lord Nairne, then the Camerons under Lochiel, the Stewarts of Appin, Clans Maclaren and Murray, then Lord Lovat’s Frasers. In the centre were ‘Colonel Anne’s’ Mackintoshes led by Colonel MacGillivray of Dunmaglas, the Macleans of Drimmin, the Macleods of Raasay, the Farquharsons led by Francis Farquharson, John Roy Stewart of Ardshiel commanding the Edinburgh Regiment, then Clan Chisholm. The Duke of Perth commanded the left wing which comprised the MacDonalds of Clanranald, Keppoch and Glengarry with a few Mackenzies of Seaforth and Grants of Glen Urquhart and Glenmoriston. The weaker second line from left to right comprised the Irish picquets (foot soldiers in the French army) commanded by Brigadier Stapleton, the French Royal Scots (Ecossaise Royale) and the Duke of Perth’s regiment. Next was what remained of Gordon of Glenbucket’s regiment, the bulk of which had been left behind at Carlisle and taken prisoner by the Duke of Cumberland on 30 December 1745. The extreme right was held by Lords Lewis Gordon and Ogilvy. The third line from left to right contained Lord Kilmarnock’s foot guards, then the cavalry of Lords Strathallan, Pitsligo, Balmerino and Elcho. On the extreme right, Fitzjames’s Horse provided the Prince’s escort. Once again, the MacDonalds complained they had been denied their traditional honour of fighting on the right wing; on this occasion their complaint was dismissed without further argument. Perhaps sense prevailed, given the extremely vulnerable right wing position occupied by Lord George Murray.

  Facing the Jacobite army was the Hanoverian front line; from left to right were the regiments of Wolfe (8th Foot), Barrell (4th Foot), Munro (37th Foot), Campbell’s Royal Scots Fusiliers (21st Foot), Price (14th Foot), Cholmondeley (34th Foot), St Clair’s Royal Scots (1st Foot), Pulteney (13th Foot), Kingston (Light Dragoons) and Kerr (11th Dragoons). The front line was commanded by the Earl of Albemarle. The artillery commanded by Colonel Belfort was placed in the centre. The Hanoverian second line from left to right commanded by Major General Huske comprised Cobham (10th Dragoons), Sempill (25th Foot), Bligh (20th Foot), Ligonier (48th Foot), Fleming (36th Foot) Howard’s Old Buffs (3rd Foot) and Battereau (62nd Foot), with Blakeney (27th Foot) behind Bligh’s Regiment forming the reserve commanded by Brigadier Mordaunt.34e Cumberland’s army contained three Scottish regiments; they were not necessarily fighting for him and England but for Scotland.

  The Highland army numbered between 5,000 and 7,000. Facing the Jacobites was an army of between 10,000 and 14,000 although Cumberland committed only about 7,000 troops to the battle. When the hapless Colonel O’Sullivan viewed the entire Hanoverian army drawn up at Drummossie, he rode white-faced to report to the Prince. At one point O’Sullivan stated that the Prince had appointed him commander of the Jacobite army; when he was challenged on this claim by Lord George Murray, the Irishman backed down. Again, the Prince was gripped by a terrible temper, drunk on whisky, ranting about the Scots who had betrayed him, declaring they were a treacherous race.35

  Clan chiefs Lochiel and Keppoch begged the Prince not to fight on that day of wind, rain and sleet. Lord George Murray was undecided whether to fight; his position on the right wing was vulnerable to enfilading fire from the dry-stone wall which enclosed the pasture of Leanach, a wall that denied him any opportunity to manoeuvre. Murray asked the Prince to allow him to find more favourable ground but his request was again refused; the Prince made it abundantly clear that he was in command and O’Sullivan was his deputy commander. Although it cannot be stated with certainty, it is thought that the Prince rode from the field before the battle reached its climax; he certainly did not witness the carnage and debacle of Culloden. His absence from the field would explain why there was no order issued for the clansmen to begin their attack.

  The battle commenced at 1pm with an exchange of artillery fire; the Jacobite guns opened up first but did little damage. Cumberland’s artillery responded with a deadly cannonade; the professional artillerymen found their targets not in the front line but the rear where the Prince was stationed. This may have been deliberate, although some accounts consider the Hanoverian guns were firing too high, while others describe the cannonballs landing in the boggy ground, failing to find their mark. Be that as it may, clansmen began to fall like scythed grass in long orderly lines. When they saw their comrades being slaughtered, many Clan officers demanded the order be given for the attack. No such order came, possibly because the Prince had left the field with his small escort of Fitzjames’s Horse. It is believed that after twenty minutes of incessant grapeshot, canister and ball, Lord George Murray ordered the attack. On the left wing the Duke of Perth urged the MacDonalds forward but they refused to face the hail of cannonballs; some threw themselves to the ground while others fled the field. The left wing began to buckle, it having lost many officers; those remaining MacDonalds became engaged in a firefight which they could not hope to win. Only the clans in the centre went forward, led by the heroic Colonel MacGillivray of Dunmaglas. Dunmaglas’s charge veered to the right, crowding Murray’s Atholl Brigade, already hampered in their movements by the stone wall of the Leanach pasture. On the other side of the wall, Murray’s worst fears were realized; it gave shelter to the 8th Foot commanded by Major James Wolfe who would distinguish himself at Quebec in 1759 against the French General Montcalm. Wolfe’s men poured a steady fire into the Athollmen. The Camerons and the Atholl Brigade – between 500 and 800 – charged Barrell’s regiment and the Munros who had fled the field of Falkirk; Cumberland’s men had been ordered to withhold fire until the clansmen were within thirty yards which they did, firing a deadly volley that decimated the charging Highlanders. Those left standing engaged in hand-to-hand combat, falling foul of the new bayonet technique introduced by Cumberland. Nonetheless, Barrell’s Regiment split in two, allowing the clansmen to mingle with the Redcoats. One of Cumberland’s officers, Lord Robert Kerr bayoneted the first Cameron he faced, only to be cut down by Gillies MacBean of the Mackintosh regiment, Kerr’s head being split from crown to collarbone by the clansman’s broadsword. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Rich commanding Barrell’s Regiment lost his left arm at the wrist, then his right arm at the elbow.36 Barrell’s and Munro’s Regiments then engaged in close-quarter combat while the Regiments of Sempill, Conway, Wolfe and Bligh moved in to form a three-sided enclosure, shaped like a horseshoe, trapping the clansmen inside and executing bloody work on them. Those who had no weapons reputedly resorted to throwing stones at their opponents.

  The Jacobite second line was hardly committed, being fewer in number than the front line. Then the Argyll Campbells broke down the Leanach stone wall, opening the way for Cumberland’s dragoons commanded by General Hawley who had a score to settle after the ignominy of Falkirk. The Hanoverian dragoons on both flanks attacked the disorganized clansmen. Now the flight began. Barely any of the 500 clansmen who had penetrated Cumberland’s front line escaped with their lives. On the left, O’Sullivan with the Duke of Perth admitted to Captain O’Shea of Fitzjames’s Horse (which had returned to the field) that the battle was lost. In his account written later, O’Shea claimed that he urged the Prince to leave the field or else he would be taken prisoner by the English dragoons. O’Sullivan’s account flattered the Prince, glossed over his foul temper and insisted that he never heard the Prince utter a harsh word against Lord George Murray. (Too many other surviving accounts dispute O’Sullivan’s narrative, chiefly those of Lord Elcho and James, Chevalier de Johnstone, the Prince’s ADC.) Another damning description of O’Sullivan’s ineptitude came from the pen of Lord George Murray who in a letter to the Prince dated 17 April 1746 lays the blame for the disaster of Culloden on O’Sullivan as well as other blunders he was guilty of during the ’Forty-Five.37 These began with the capture of the guns and stores from the Du Teillay, then the argument with Murray about the best position from which to attack Cope at Prestonpans and most damning of all, the di
sastrous choice of ground at Culloden. It should be obvious that after the ’Forty-Five, O’Sullivan, an unemployed, penniless Irish officer wrote his obsequious account for James VIII and III in the hope of obtaining a royal pension for his ‘loyalty’.

  Miraculously, Lord George Murray escaped unscathed, as did Lord Nairne and John Roy Stewart of Ardshiel; Cameron of Lochiel was carried away, both ankles broken by grapeshot, his brother Archibald being among the wounded. Fitzjames’s Horse covered the retreat of some of the men intent on reaching the safety of Inverness; these survivors were relentlessly pursued by the Hanoverian dragoons and many were slaughtered along the road, the bloodshed continuing up to the very walls of the town. The battle of Culloden had lasted a single hour.

  Aftermath

  Estimates vary as to the casualties on both sides. The government’s official account of Culloden gives only four officers and forty-six men killed and 259 wounded, including eighteen officers. Jacobite losses were about 1,200, possibly slightly less;38 some accounts give 2,000 killed and wounded, half being killed. Cumberland took only 154 clansmen prisoners in addition to Lord John Drummond’s 222 French of the Ecossaise Royale. Among the dead were Dumnaslas’s standard bearer who had been among the first to fall in the Highland charge; Lord Nairne’s brother, Robert Mercer of Aldie and his son – a mere child – lost their lives although their bodies were never found, possibly as they were burnt alive (see below); other fatal casualties included Gillies MacBean, Alistair MacDonald of Keppoch and his brother Donald as well as many MacDonald officers who braved the field when their clansmen refused to advance. Maclean of Drimmin was murdered when he went back to Drummossie Moor to look for his sons. Officers of Clans Fraser, Chisholm and Maclachlan who sought refuge in a barn were deliberately burnt alive.39

  Those who escaped included Lieutenant General Lord George Murray who died in Holland in 1760; Lieutenant General James Drummond, 3rd Duke of Perth who died of wounds during his passage to France on the French frigate La Bellona. Perth’s brother, Colonel John Drummond (later 4th Duke of Perth) also managed to escape along with Colonel John William O’Sullivan, private secretary Sir Thomas Sheridan, Commissary John Hay of Restalrig, Donald Cameron of Lochiel who died in France in 1748, Young Clanranald and John Roy Stewart of Ardshiel. Sent to prison were William Murray, Duke of Atholl and Rannoch (the Marquis of Tullibardine) who died in 1746; old John Gordon of Glenbucket taken at Carlisle on 30 December 1745 died of dropsy before his trial. Another victim was the sickly Francis Strickland, one of the Seven Men of Moidart; Strickland was also captured at Carlisle and died of dropsy three days later. John Murray of Broughton turned King’s Evidence and was discharged.40 A further eighty men were executed, excluded from an Act of Indemnity passed in June 1747.41

  Lord Balmerino, Colonel of the Horse Life Guards was beheaded on 18 August 1746 on Tower Hill, London as was Lord Kilmarnock on the same day. The eighty-two-year-old Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, who although not present at Culloden had supported the Prince was also imprisoned in the Tower of London. Like Balmerino and Kilmarnock, Lovat was found guilty of treason. On his way to the scaffold, an old hag screeched at him, ‘They’re going to hang ye, ye old Scotch dog’. Lovat responded thus, ‘I believe they will, ye old English bitch’.42 Donald MacDonald of Kinlochmoidart, the first Clan chief to join the Prince, was hanged at Carlisle in October 1746.43

  The site of Culloden is marked by a tall circular cairn which was erected in 1881 by Duncan Forbes; the memorial cairn stands about halfway between the opposing battle lines. The clan gravestones, rough boulders bearing the names of the clans are scattered about the field; later additions were the memorial to the Irish-French (1963) and the French Memorial (1994) commemorating the Ecossaise Royale. The battlefield is now under the management of the National Trust for Scotland.

  Only a generation had elapsed since Mar’s rebellion in 1715; despite the government’s measures to pacify the Highlands – Wade’s roads, the construction of forts, the creation of the Black Watch government regiment – yet another rebellion had occurred, one much more serious than Mar’s and which had come close to success. Understandably, the government was even more concerned about the security in Highland Scotland which might support another Rising and threaten to topple the Hanoverian king. Accordingly, the Duke of Cumberland took measures to ensure there would be no such rebellion in the future. The severity of these measures made his name a byword for cruelty; in England, he was known as Sweet William; in Scotland he was called Butcher Cumberland and Stinking Billy. Even those who had little or no sympathy with the cause of the House of Stuart deplored Cumberland’s excessive atrocities. One of Cumberland’s chief supporters in England, Lord Chesterfield did not mince his words; he wrote that as Scotland had been the nursery of rebellion he hoped it would become its grave. Chesterfield proposed an act of parliament for transporting to the West Indies every man involved in the ’Forty-Five, arguing that this would be preferable to hanging a mere few and letting others go free to begin a new rebellion.

  Cumberland remained in Scotland until 18 July, exacting retribution from the clans with torch, sword and musket. A disarming act much more severe than that of 1725 was passed; the penalties imposed for the possession of weapons ranged from a heavy fine, six months’ imprisonment and exile to the colonies for a first offence, seven years’ transportation for a second offence.44 The wearing of Highland dress was proscribed, with penalties similar to those who transgressed the new legislation.45 By these and other measures, the ’Forty-Five brought about the last vestiges of the feudal system; the people of Scotland had long since rejected feudalism and the clan system was a relic of feudalism. The common people, having seen the ‘Protestant winds’ destroy the French invasion fleets of 1708, 1715, 1719 and 1744 were convinced that God – and a Protestant god at that – was on their side.

  The ’Forty-Five has often been called a civil war which is only partly the case. The Presbyterian clergy, the lawyers and Lowland burghs were all united in their hostility towards Jacobitism, the feeling most intense in the King’s or royal burghs, with their special relationship to the reigning monarch.

  As for Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, there was little that was bonnie about him after his victory at Prestonpans. It is unnecessary here to revisit his flight in the heather and his association with Flora MacDonald other than to make the point that during his five-month period on the run, no Highlander ever claimed the £30,000 reward put on his head – so much for the Prince’s accusations of betrayal by the clansmen. After his escape on 18 September 1746 by way of Skye and other parts of the west Highlands on the French frigate L’Heureux, all of Scotland must have breathed a sigh of relief. The Prince would never again set foot in Scotland which, but a year or so ago, he had called ‘home’. In Rome, James Francis Edward Stuart the Old Pretender was pre-occupied not with the failure of the ’Forty-Five but how his arrogant, impetuous, hotheaded son would conduct himself in his future dealings with the French court. After all, the French had let both father and son down badly.

  On his return to France, the Prince began to show signs of megalomania; deliberately avoiding words like ‘defeat’ and ‘failure’, he insisted that with a little help from France, he would soon be master of Scotland and England.46 He assured Louis XV he would need only a ‘handful’ of men to achieve this; the handful became 18,000 – 20,000 soldiers, arms, ammunition and money. Louis XV, fighting a losing war in Flanders must have thought his cousin Charles was deranged. The Prince lied about his campaign, saying he had in fact reached London and that had he commanded a few thousand more soldiers at Culloden, he could have beaten Cumberland. The Prince was indeed deranged, unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lies.

  On 1 January 1766, James Francis Edward Stuart, styling himself James III of Great Britain passed away; technically, his death meant that his elder son was now Charles III. By 1766, the Prince was a physical wreck, a stooping figure whose face was bloated and red with th
e effects of alcohol; with his dead eyes and a drooping, dribbling mouth, his fatty jaws merged with his neck which spilled over his cravat. He hobbled about unsteadily on legs that were weeping with ulcers;47 he had become a disgusting, smelly old drunk at the age of forty-five. In 1772, despite his rapidly declining health, he married Princess Louise Stolberg-Gedern, daughter of Gustave Adolphe, Prince of Stolberg-Gedern who had been killed fighting for Empress Maria Theresa during the War of the Austrian Succession when Louise was only five years old. Before his marriage, the Prince had had two mistresses, Clementina Walkinshaw (by whom he had a daughter, Charlotte) and Madame Talmont, formerly Princess Marie-Louise Jablonowski. It has to be said that his marriage to Princess Louise was not intended to produce an heir; the Prince was only interested in companionship and the prospect of a French pension, as he was penniless. For a time he curbed his excessive drinking, then resumed his old ways. On 30 January 1788, Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Chevalier, the Young Pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie died aged sixty-five; his brother Henry was the last of the Stuart dynasty which ended with the latter’s death in 1807.

  Postscript

  Culloden was the culmination of an ancient royal dynasty which reached back into the fourteenth century; it also heralded the end of a way of life in northern Scotland. The clan system was broken and with it the last vestiges of the anachronistic feudal conservatism which had propped it up for centuries. However, the Hanoverian government of 1746 learnt a valuable lesson; the brave clansmen could and would be transformed from warriors into disciplined soldiers. Scottish regiments were raised to fight in the American War of Independence, then against Napoleon Bonaparte, Czar Nicholas I in the Crimean War, Queen Victoria’s ‘Little Wars’ against Dervish and Zulu, the two Boer wars and the two world wars of the twentieth century.